Missiological Spirit (PDF)

The field of the theology of mission has developed variously across Christian traditions in the last century. Pentecostal scholars and missiologists have made their share of contributions to this area. 'The Missiological Spirit' brings the insights of Pentecostal theologian Amos Yong to the discussion. It delineates the major features of what will be argued as central to a viable vision and praxis for Christian mission in a postmodern, post-Christendom, post-Enlightenment, post-Western, and postcolonial world. What emerges will be a distinctively pentecostally and evangelically informed missiological theology, one rooted in the Christian salvation-history narrative of Incarnation and Pentecost that is yet open to the world in its many and various cultural, ethnic, religious, and disciplinary discourses and realities. The argument unfolds through dialogical engagements with the work of others, concrete case studies, and systematic theological reflection. Yong's pneumatological and missiological imagination proffers a model for Christian theology of mission suitable for the twenty-first-century global and pluralistic context, even as it exemplifies how a missiological understanding of theology itself unfolds amidst engagements with contemporary ecclesial practices and academic/theological impulses.