Chapter Preview: "Mission between Theory and Practice"

Mission and the Church-Academy Rift [1]

A few years ago, I delivered three lectures at the Teachers of Missions Workshop, an annual gathering of mission educators associated with my tradition, Churches of Christ. I was busy finishing my doctoral dissertation then, so I shelved the essays for later use. Shortly afterward, I began coediting a book with Chris Flanders called Missional Life in Practice and Theory: Essays in Honor of Gailyn Van Rheenen, to which I also contributed a chapter. That chapter developed out of a portion of the lectures, and previewing it here provides a good launching point for sharing the rest of the lectures with a wider audience.

Copyright restrictions prohibit me from reproducing the chapter—and anyway, we all want you to buy the book—so instead I’ll offer a preview of the chapter and connect it with the articles that will follow in this series on mission and the church-academy rift.