Mission as boundary-crossing global ecclesiology
Anika Fast, CGCM student affiliate, recently published an article “The Earth is the Lord’s: Anabaptist mission as boundary-crossing global ecclesiology” in Mennonite Quarterly Review (July 2016). This essay reviews three strands of thinking – representatives of an older generation of North American Mennonite mission scholars and historians, younger voices speaking largely from within a Mennonite World Conference context, and a variety of thinkers from the Global South – to argue that all are converging to reaffirm a believers church perspective on mission in which ecclesiology and missiology are essentially connected. At a time when some North American Mennonites are questioning the legacy of mission, the author argues that it is time to move past a polarized debate, in which one is either “for” or “against” mission, to understand Mennonites’ historical involvement in mission as part of a larger story of working toward deepening relationships in the world church.