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Integral Mission vs. Holistic Mission - What's the Difference?

 A lot of people are talking about integral mission these days, whereas the idea of holistic mission seems to have fallen by the wayside. What's the difference?

Holistic mission is mission to the whole person, taking into account their physical as well as spiritual needs. Evangelism is combined with social action. Unfortunately, this term has been used for some years now, and much mission that was labelled 'holistic' was mainly social action.

Integral mission has more focus on communities and their felt needs. What issues of poverty and (lack of) justice are there? How can a given community begin to address these issues? What input do they need from outsiders as they do so? How can they define kingdom goals that will bring them out of their physical and spiritual poverty? Lausanne defines it here.

The fact is that the neediest communities are often ones that lack the Bible, and lack a clear orthography (alphabet corresponding to the phonemic system of the language, and that fits their sociolinguistic needs also). Therefore those of us involved in Bible translation and linguistics are often working with these communities, and helping them gain some traction in the areas of education, language development, Scripture engagement and Bible translation. Just because a community is small, doesn't mean we should ignore it (unless there are language vitality issues). The question is, what would they like to see changed?

Some types of ministry that emphasise the actual ('felt') needs of the community are:

  • Literacy and education (e.g. church-based literacy programmes)
  • Health education
  • HIV/Aids awareness
  • Trauma Healing
  • Freedom Ascent
  • Faith & Farming
Alongside all of these, it is good to have good Bible teaching and discipleship training. In fact this can be incorporated into these ministries.


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