Abiding Mission

Missionary Spirituality and Disciple-Making Among the Muslim Peoples of Egypt and Northern Sudan

Brogden

• Publisher: Wipf and Stock
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781498293310
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Abiding Mission presents the discipline of abiding as the first priority of the Christian and the base methodology of mission.Based on an exegesis of John 15, Abiding Mission illustrates the definition of abiding by examining the abiding mission lives of seven key pioneers in mission to Muslims in North Africa, including Daniel Comboni (Catholic), Samuel Zwemer (Presbyterian), Oswald Chambers (YMCA/Pentecostal League), Lillian Trasher (Assemblies of God), Lilias Trotter (Algerian Missions Band), Douglas Thornton (Anglican-CMS), and Temple Gairdner (Anglican-CMS). The work continues by looking at the operationalization of abiding as developed from interviews from current missionaries to Muslims in North Africa.

Section 1

Exegetical Foundations

This section contains the exegesis of John 15:1–17 with particular attention given to John’s use of the terms abiding and fruit.

1

Exegetical Background of John 15:1–17

Hermeneutical Background

The Bible is a missiological document. Missions—unveiled in Genesis, expounded by every contributing author of Scripture, and celebrated in Revelation—centers on the God who desires worship from every tribe, tongue, people, and nation. Everyone who bears Christ’s name must direct energy toward this passion of God.

John 15:1–17 highlights the harvest goal of God—many disciples made. It also reveals the means by which this goal shall be obtained—abiding in Christ. This passage describes three categories: (1) The disciples who abide in Christ will, in turn, make lasting disciples; (2) not all who are in Christ are abiding; not all who abide produce the disciples they should (John reveals remedial measures for both those categories); (3) those who refuse Christ’s mission and face removal from the vine and utter destruction.

The hermeneutical background of John 15:1–17 is summarized in this chapter.

John’s Missiological Gospel

The Gospel of John is a missiological gospel.1 “Since John wrote his gospel in order to fulfill a mission task, it is logical to assume that mission is a fairly prominent theme in John’s writings.”2 John conveys a Christological missiology in John 20:31. Though essentially a theologian,3 his missionary status enhanced his theological reflection. In Johannine writings, God’s mission and Christians’ mission interconnect.

For John, then, the mission of Jesus, the mission of the Paraclete, and the mission of the community are tightly stitched together . . . These missions are interrelated. All . . . are accomplished in the arena of the “world” and, ultimately have the salvation of the world as their goal . . . [The Gospel of John] distinctive as it is, shares with the rest of the Gospels a universal outlook and a missionary orientation . . . The Gospel is “mission” in orientation because its final word to the community is that authentic disciples of Jesus are “sent” as he was sent, to the whole world, to bring it life.4

E. Ridley Lewis says that John “has an eye to the whole world of his time as it stands in need of salvation, Jews and Greeks, slaves and free, men and women, educated and uneducated, and to all alike he offered then, as his gospel book still offers, the gift of the knowledge of God, perfectly manifested in Jesus.”5 John’s purpose is broader than conversion; he also intends to equip those who believe for mission.

The conviction itself which the Evangelist aims at producing is twofold . . . The whole narrative must therefore be interpreted with a continuous reference to these two ruling truths . . . Each element in the fundamental conviction is set forth as of equal moment. The one (Jesus is the Christ) bears witness to the special preparation which God had made; the other (Jesus is the Son of God) bears witness to the inherent universality of Christ’s mission.6

In John’s gospel, the evangelist not only establishes the deity of Christ, he also elucidates the need for this Christ to be preached to all people everywhere and details the means by which this is to be done. John uses the word ποστέλλω (I send with a commission) more than any other writer, with forty-one references to the sending of the Son.7 John’s Gospel, then, is missiological in intent and pedagogy.8

Purpose of John’s Gospel

John explicitly reveals his purpose in writing: “And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples which are not written in this book; but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:30–31).9 He reveals that to believe in Jesus is to elevate him, and he concentrates on the divinity of Jesus and the universal mission of Jesus to save all people from every ethnicity to himself. “It is a book about Jesus. This is underlined by the fact that John uses the name ‘Jesus’ 237 times, far and away the most in any New Testament book . . . John is absorbed in Jesus.”10 Martin Erdman writes in Mission in the New Testament: An Evangelical Approach:

This purpose clause in John 20:31 strongly suggests that John’s intention was propagandistic in nature . . . The purpose statement of John 20:3...

Table of contents

• Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Section 1: Exegetical Foundations
• Section 2: Historical Perspective
• Section 3: Field Research
• Section 4: Synthesis of Findings
• Appendix A: Semi-structured Interview Guide (Test)
• Appendix B: Semi-structured Interview Guide (Kenya)
• Appendix C: Semi-structured Interview Guide (Sudan & Egypt)
• Appendix D: Q-Sort Interview Instructions
• Appendix E: Informed Consent Form—Semi-structured Interviews
• Appendix F: Informed Consent Form—Q-Sort Interview
• Appendix G: Socio-Demographic Participant Form (Kenya)
• Appendix H: Socio-Demographic Participant Form (Sudan & Egypt)
• Appendix I: Self-Administered Electronic Survey
• Appendix J: 14 Critical Aspects of Abiding from John 15:1–17
• Bibliography