Comprehending Mission

Winner, first annual American Society of Missiology Book Award

Whether for students entering the field, or for seasoned scholars, Comprehending Mission offers an inviting new proposal for how to conceptualize this field of study. This comprehensive book offers a concise overview of the development of missiology over the last century, an introduction to its characteristic methodologies, and insight into the kinds of questions missiologists typically bring to the study of their subject.

In the twentieth century this task was complicated by multiple contending understandings of the field. Initially dominant was an understanding of missiologythat emphasized the practical challenges of foreign mission service. More recently, missiologists have highlighted the intercultural aspects of Christian outreach. In this case, missiology is less a form of practical theology than a field of study where theological concerns intersect with critical studies of Christian mission undertaken by anthropologists, historians, and other scholars.

"An extraordinary achievement . . . . Students and teachers of mission studies will find it a boon; and few readers, however learned, will put it down without learning things they did not know. . ."

-Andrew F. Walls, University of Edinburgh

"Comprehending Mission will be the standard introduction to the field of missiology for the next decade, and every student ought to begin right here."

-Amos Yong, Regent University School of Divinity

Stanley H. Skreslet is dean of the faculty of Union Theological Seminary and Presbyterian School of Christian Education in Richmond, Virginia. An ordained Presbyterian minister, he is the author of Picturing Christian Witness (Eerdmans, 2006).