Scripture Engagement

The Spirit of the Lord is on me...  "... because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour." Isa 61.1-2; Luke 4.18-19 The passage in Luke is often given the title: ‘Jesus rejected at Nazareth.’ That is part of it. It reinforces Jesus’ identity as a prophet – just at those before him were rejected (e.g. Elijah, the first prophet, v26), so will Jesus. It ought, perhaps, to be entitled ‘Jesus’ Manifesto’. This has more of a focus on what Jesus actually says (rather than the hometown’s rejection of him). Jesus 'owns' the Isaiah quote by claiming that it is fulfilled today (their today), in a region inhabited by Judeans, in his home town. So what do we notice about Jesus’ manifesto (quote is from Isa 61:1-2)? The Good News Jesus is proclaiming is: A great example of integral mission (ministry to ...

 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 tha...

Integral mission, which leads to holistic transformation, can be defined as follows: Integral mission or holistic transformation is the proclamation and demonstration of the gospel. It is not simply that evangelism and social involvement are to be done alongside each other. Rather, in integral mission our proclamation has social consequences as we call people to love and repentance in all areas of life. And our social involvement has evangelistic consequences as we bear witness to the transforming grace of Jesus Christ. Micah Declaration (2001) Prior to that the Lausanne covenant had said something similar: We affirm that God is both the Creator and the Judge of all men. We therefore should share his concern for justice and reconciliation throughout human society and for the liberation of men and women from every kind of oppression. Because men and women are made in the image of God, every person, regardless of race, religion, colour, culture, class, sex or age, has an intrinsic digni...

We often talk about holistic mission. What does that mean? It's about mission to the whole person not just their 'soul' (inner being). There's nothing unspiritual about meeting someone's basic needs for food, clothing and so on. In fact we encouraged to do so. ...learn to do good; seek justice, correct oppression; bring justice to the fatherless, plead the widow's cause. Isaiah 1:17 ESV http://bible.com/59/isa.1.17.ESV We also have Jesus' example to follow: Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. Luke 8:35 ESV http://bible.com/59/luk.8.35.ESV Both his physical and spiritual needs had been met by Jesus. Lastly, you might ask how this works in  mission. Those working within a community are often told of needs within that community. How can these be met? Well, those with medic...

In Wycliffe/SIL we talk a lot about how Bible translation can contribute towards language development. For minority languages this is true. That is not the main motivation behind our involvement in BT ministry though. Most of us want to see lives and communities impacted by the gospel. So we have a scripture engagement end in sight - changed lives! We have overlapping SE and LD goals that we can neatly label holistic mission, especially when literacy is part of the programme. Isn't it time we acknowledged holistic mission as our main raison d'être? This might help many of our partners see that we share a common vision. Here's a visual journey through my thinking: