Fresh Ideas. New Voices.

“Living in context is worth doing if it reminds us that we are in a battle, indeed in a struggle for survival. It is worth doing if it tunes us into the world’s suffering and our part in it as followers of the ‘suffering servant’. It is worth doing if it gives us a new sense of urgency. ‘The end of all things is near,’ as the Apostle Peter says, ‘be serious and discipline yourselves’. Above all it challenges us to be better disciples of Jesus ‘in this present age’.”

As Christians in the 21st century, what is our context? Global megatrends—postmodernism, globalisation, postcolonialism, international migration and environmental catastrophe—may appear to be too vast for us to contemplate, let alone formulate a Christian response to; yet we cannot ignore them, as they profoundly affect who we are, how we read the Bible, and how we see the world.

In Naming the Frame, Jonathan Ingleby challenges us to commit ourselves to a deeper understanding of what is going on in the world—and what is going on in our lives—and to speak and act prophetically as faithful servants of God into these situations.

The rise of Asian mission poses important questions to the global Church: How can we best relate to these burgeoning Asian mission movements? What can we learn from them? What models of partnership, mutual support and resourcing are appropriate—on both sides?

This book presents the papers from three Asian Mission Consultations held at Redcliffe College in Gloucester between 2008 and 2010, which brought together mission leaders and practitioners from Asian and non-Asian missions to interact with these questions.

Catastrophe - natural, economic, environmental and military - has become the defining feature of our time. The choice we have as Christians is how we deal with it.

Do we see crisis as God's judgement or do we struggle to overcome it? Do we find our solutions through the mission of the church or through the structures of the world? Do we even have to face the crisis at all?

Arguing that our approach to this world determines our experience of the next, and that what we do with this planet and its people reflects our identity and our priorities, this book is a call for Christians to learn to interpret the signs of the times and to think theologically and Biblically about their response.