1. Structural Problems in Mission Studies The Way in which Mission Studies Shapes Christian Theologies and Ministries

2. Implications for Church History  The global transformation of Christianity requires nothing less than the complete rethinking of the church history syllabus. Most conventional church history syllabus are framed, not always consciously, on a particular set of geographical, cultural, and confessional priorities. Alas, such syllabuses [sic] have often been taken over in the Southern continents, as though they had some sort of universal status. Now they are out-of-date even for Western Christians. As a result a large number of conventionally trained ministers have neither the intellectual materials nor even the outline knowledge for understanding the church as she is. The only hope of such things being acquired in perhaps the majority of theological institutions is from what is currently thought of as “mission studies.”  “Structural Problems in Mission” by Andrew Walls in The Missionary Movement (pp.145)

3. Implications for Theology and Ministerial Studies It is the very concept of a fixed universal compendium of theology, a sort of bench manual which covers every situation (referring to Western theological corpus), that mission studies challenges. In mission studies we see theology “en route” and realize its “occasional” nature, its character as response to the need to make Christian decisions. The conditions of Africa, for instance, are taking Christian theology into new areas of life, where Western theology has no answers because it has no questions. But Christians (non-Westerners and Westerners) outside Africa will need to make some responses to the questions raised in the African arena. As Christian interaction proceeds with Indian culture—perhaps the most testing environment that the Christian faith has yet encountered—the theological process may reach not only new areas of discourse, but resume some of those which earlier pioneers—Origen, for instance—began to enter. “Structural Problems in Mission” by Andrew Walls in The Missionary Movement (pp.146 )

4. Implications for Ministerial Formation A renaissance of mission studies will not be effected simply by increasing the number of faculty posts and the output of books and doctorates. It will require not just rigorous scholarship, but depth of scholarship… It will require integrated scholarship, which engages with all the existing theological disciplines and sources of which most even of the best theologians are innocent. It will need to demonstrate learning and professional competence in the phenomenology and history of religion and in the historical, linguistic, and social sciences too, for those disciplines also need the renaissance of mission studies. “Structural Problems in Mission” by Andrew Walls in The Missionary Movement (pp.151 )

5. Ministerial Formation and the Challenge of the Practice of Ministry and Mission Whatever our view of that question, I do not see that good practice is remotely likely to suffer from the quest for such transforming, mission-related scholarship as is here proposed. But I am quite sure that good people and financially influential good people, will fear that it may. It is necessary, therefore, to realize that the world of learning is a mission field too. Quality, depth, and range of scholarship are the marks of a vocation; and a collegial and demanding vocation needing all the traditional missionary attributes of devotion, perseverance, and sacrifice. Structural Problems in Mission” by Andrew Walls in The Missionary Movement (pp.152)