Mission Frontiers Volume 1

Too Soon to Celebrate—Too Soon to Quit “Lord, why another mission agency? There are already so many good ones,” Greg Livingstone cried out on a beach in 1983. But, as he made his case to God that he should find someone else to change the world, the answer became clear: the world needed a new agency, operating in a new way, that would focus entirely on all Muslim peoples. So began the wild, risky, worthy story told in Uncharted Mission, a book that is more than the history of the founding of Frontiers. D. C. Keane weaves together interviews with over one hundred missionaries who refused to accept the status quo in missions and were willing to go where no one had gone before—to the Muslim frontiers. In this inspiring true story, you’ll meet pastors, engineers, artists, pilots, and others whose lives changed course when they discovered that Muslims were largely left out of historic missionary efforts. This is a book for innovators who ask, as Greg Livingstone always asks, “How can we do this better? How can we improve?" Don’t simply admire the groundbreakers who went before us in this compelling narrative; there is still work to be done. There are still “frontiers” of mission for the next generation of Christians who want to change the world.

This close look at what the Lord is doing to spread the gospel highlights the key scriptural principles that help Christians reach out in love to share the gospel in their own community.

This book combines a description of folk Islam, biblical perspectives, and strategies for church planting among Muslims. In his theory on Muslim evangelism, Love tackles the major issues of encountering spiritual powers, contextualization, and leadership development. Teachers of Islamic subjects and practitioners in Muslim countries enthusiastically welcome this book.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1935. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

Spanish missions in the New World usually pacified sedentary peoples accustomed to the agricultural mode of mission life, prompting many scholars to generalize about mission history. James Saeger now reconsiders the effectiveness of the missions by examining how Guaycuruan peoples of South America's Gran Chaco adapted to them during the eighteenth century. Because the Guaycuruans were hunter-gatherers less suited to an agricultural lifestyle, their attitudes and behaviors can provide new insight about the impact of missions on native peoples. Responding to recent syntheses of the mission system, Saeger proposes that missions in the Gran Chaco did not fit the usual pattern. Through research in colonial documents, he reveals the Guaycuruan perspective on the missions, thereby presenting an alternative view of Guaycuruan history and the development of the mission system. He investigates Guaycuruan social, economic, political, and religious life before the missions and analyzes subsequent changes; he then traces Guaycuruan history into the modern era and offers an assessment of what Catholic missions meant to these peoples. Saeger's research into Spanish documents is unique for its elicitation of the Indian point of view. He not only reconstructs Guaycuruan life independent of Spanish contact but also shows how these Indians negotiated the conditions under which they would adapt to the mission way of life, thereby retaining much of their independence. By showing that the Guaycuruans were not as restricted in missions as has been assumed, Saeger demonstrates that there is a distinct difference between the establishment of missions and conquest. The Chaco Mission Frontier helps redefine mission studies by correcting overgeneralization about their role in Latin America.

Twilight of the Mission Frontier examines the long process of mission decline in Sonora, Mexico after the Jesuit expulsion in 1767. By reassessing the mission crisis paradigm—which speaks of a growing internal crisis leading to the secularization of the missions in the early nineteenth century—new light is shed on how demographic, cultural, economic, and institutional variables modified life in the Franciscan missions in Sonora. During the late eighteenth century, forms of interaction between Sonoran indigenous groups and Spanish settlers grew in complexity and intensity, due in part to the implementation of reform-minded Bourbon policies which envisioned a more secular, productive, and modern society. At the same time, new forms of what this book identifies as pluriethnic mobility also emerged. Franciscan missionaries and mission residents deployed diverse strategies to cope with these changes and results varied from region to region, depending on such factors as the missionaries' backgrounds, Indian responses to mission life, local economic arrangements, and cultural exchanges between Indians and Spaniards.

As cities continue to expand, Christ calls the church to bring the gospel to these centers of population, culture, and political power.