The Gospel in Human Contexts: Anthropological Explorations for Contemporary Missions - Softcover

While the gospel is timeless truth, it enters into ever-changing and widely varied human contexts. In order to meaningfully communicate the gospel to particular humans, those involved in cross-cultural ministry need to understand people and the particular influences--social, cultural, psychological, and ecological--that shape them. Further, we must understand ourselves and the influences that have shaped us, since our own contexts influence how we understand and transmit the gospel message. Therefore, we must master not only the skill of biblical interpretation but also the skill of human interpretation. That task is the topic of this book, the summation of a lifetime of experience and thinking by a world-renowned missiologist and anthropologist, the late Paul Hiebert.

"The Gospel in Human Contexts is something that only Paul Hiebert could have written in his mature years. This is a book designed to help us grapple with what it means to be human in any culture and how Christian mission is on solid footing only if it is fully engaged in exegeting what it means to be human in our new globalizing context. Both as a review of anthropological and theological theory, on the one hand, and as a sensitive meditation on becoming the sort of person who can be a genuine bridge builder, on the other, The Gospel in Human Contexts should be required reading in every course on mission and ministry."--William R. Burrows, New York Theological Seminary

"The gems in this, Hiebert's final work on anthropology for missions, are the recapitulation of his thinking on critical contextualization and the spelling out in new detail of his thinking about a 'systems approach' to the study of culture for mission. A new and compelling insight is the notion of 'missionaries as global mediators.' Hiebert concludes that living a life of love in Christ demands the building of multicultural relationships and maturing as transcultural persons in order to practice a ministry that leads people into transcultural discipleship."--Sherwood Lingenfelter, Fuller Theological Seminary

"In this excellent resource book, the late Paul G. Hiebert has distilled the best of his mature scholarship. Missionaries and global-minded Christian workers will savor the refreshing insights on how to bring down to earth the gospel they preach to reach the people they serve. Hiebert presents a third way to practice theology in preparing cross-cultural workers: in addition to systematic and biblical theologies, there is a need for missional theology."--Robert L. Gallagher, Wheaton College Graduate School

"This engagingly written book by the leading missiological anthropologist, the late Paul Hiebert, provides a helpful overview of and perspective on missions and missiology at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is grounded in sophisticated theory while remaining wonderfully accessible and eminently practical."--Robert J. Priest, Trinity Evangelical Divinity School