Ecclesiology and Mission
Mission is not an activity of the church. Mission defines it.
Over time, many churches drift toward institutional stability and away from their mission calling in a rapidly changing world. Ecclesiology and Mission confronts this tension. Mission defines the church; the church embodies the gospel. Christians need to live out biblical concepts that will create diverse, reproducing church expressions worldwide.
In this book, scholars and frontline practitioners stress the need to reintegrate mission with church life. Case studies from Azerbaijan, India, Thailand, and Canada show how mission thrives through relationships, family networks, hospitality, and adaptive faith, even under persecution. The authors in this volume highlight a trend toward simpler, networked, relational churches that can flexibly navigate modern complexities. They provide insights into how to think about church and mission, and how churches can do mission today.
Ecclesiology and Mission equips readers to reimagine the church as a dynamic, multiplying community—faithful to Scripture and adaptable to diverse cultural contexts—so that mission once again becomes the heartbeat of the church.
Evangelical Missiological Society (EMS) Book 34
Section 1: Nature of Church
1: “We Believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church”: 3The Church and the Mission of God in the Nicene Creed by Grant LeMarquand
2: A Response to “ ‘We Believe in One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic Church’: The Church and the Mission of God in the Nicene Creed” by Grant LeMarquand by Anna Daub
3: Viewing Ralph Winter’s Modality and Sodality Through the Lens of 41John Flett’s Trinitarian Theology by Robert Reese
4: Local or Global? Global Christianity, Secularization, and a Bifurcated 55Missiology by Tim Silberman
5: Mission as Ecclesiastical Diffusion: 73The ‘Two-Structures’ in Transition by Alan Totire
6: The Anatomy Analogy: An Integrated Body Systems Image 87of Global Church Ecclesiology by Sarah Lunsford
7: The Irreducible Ecclesiological Minimum: Terminus or Starting Point 105in Church Planting? by J. D. Payne
8: Movemental Ecclesiology: Recovering a Pre-Christendom Hermeneutic of Church Multiplication by Wes Watkins
9: Polycentric Leadership in Praxis: Rethinking Ecclesiological Forms139 by Joseph Handley and Jason Richard Tan
Section 2: Church Doing Mission
10: Rebalancing Ecclesial Life Around the Greatest Commandment: The Oikos as the Foundational Context of Church and Discipleship by Manuel Becker
11: Culinary Art as a Medium for Church Engagement and Community Formation by Ellie Asker
12: From “Churching” to Full Church Integration: Church Planting with Red-Light Communities in Kolkata by Sydney Dixon
13: Without Walls, Without Names: Reimagining Church and Mission amid Hostility in India by Santosh Kumar
14: Identity, Security, and Ecclesiology: Missionary Relationships to Expatriate Christians and Churches in Restricted Access Nations by A. G. Smith
15: Recent Church Development in the Canadian Kaleidoscope by James W. Watson
Contributors
- Pages: 255
- Publisher: William Carey Publishing
- Binding: Paperback
- Publish Year: 2026
- Vendor: William Carey Publishing
