_The integral mission movement has flourished admirably, in Latin America and around the world-especially in the Majority World. While there is still work to be done in local churches, we can praise God for the progress we have seen in the practice of integral mission and hope this publication contributes to extending and deepening it even more. _

I am really excited about the impact of this book Approaching Integral Mission. When the church is committed to Integral Mission, it will incarnate the values of the Kingdom of God and witness to God's love and the justice revealed through Jesus Christ. Peter Batchelor (1926-2016) took his Christian faith seriously to be applied in practice to every aspect of life and believed this should be shared accordingly. Thus he was led to spend his life engaged in integral mission, founding Faith & Farm in Nigeria in 1958, becoming an early trustee of Tearfund UK from 1968, and co-founding RURCON Africa in 1971. The late Bishop Simon Barrington Ward KCMG speaking in 2008 to RURCON Communications Unit UK Trustees & Advisory Council of which he was Chairman for 30 years from 1980-2010, said: Integral mission is to help people to make their corporate dwelling with Christ for fullness of life now, so that all of it is transformed (farming and so on), so that Jesus Christ will be found and find them again and again. Integral Mission enables the church to bring a prophetic word, addressing the whole person, including their physical, social, and spiritual needs. By the power of the Holy Spirit, this leads to transformation at all levels - individual, family, and community. The task of the local church is to equip and mobilise men and women for God's mission - integral mission, not exclusively in the church building, but in ways that will honour the Lordship of Jesus Christ throughout all the diverse fields of human endeavour. Andrew Gwaivangmin, Executive Secretary of Nigeria Evangelical Missions Association (NEMA) & former Team Leader/CEO of RURCON Africa.

This revised version includes a new essay on the contemporary history of integral mission, a history that began with the Latin American Theological Fellowship, progressed within the Lausanne Movement, is bearing fruit globally through the Micah Network, and challenges evangelicals to address the major issues of our day. By almost any measure, a bold and confident use of the Bible is a hallmark of Christianity. Underlying such use are a number of assumptions about the origin, nature and form of the biblical literature, concerning its authority, diversity and message. However, a lack of confidence in the clarity or perspicuity of Scripture is apparent in Western Christianity. Despite recent, sophisticated analyses, the doctrine is ignored or derided by many. While there is a contemporary feel to these responses, the debate itself is not new. In this excellent study, Mark Thompson surveys past and present objections to the clarity of Scripture; expounds the living God as the Guarantor of his accessible, written Word; engages with the hermeneutical challenges; and restates the doctrine for today.

How does the church’s calling to take the whole gospel to the whole world manifest in contexts of poverty, injustice, and conflict? In this collection of essays, drawn from the 7th Micah Global Triennial Consultation in the Philippines, Christians from across the globe reflect on the church’s role in alleviating suffering and developing transformed communities. At the heart of these reflections is the topic of resilience and its role in Christian community, integral mission, and faith-based development work. Offering both theological frameworks and practical tools for the development of resilient communities, this book ignites a biblical passion for integrating justice and proclamation, witness and social concern, evangelism and community transformation. Relentless Love is a powerful reminder of Christ’s calling to join him in his work to bring wholeness, reconciliation, and redemption to the earth.

Holistic mission, or integral mission, implies God is concerned with the whole person, the whole community: body, mind and spirit. Many Christians concentrate only on one aspect. This book reaffirms that to be true to the Bible, to follow the example of Jesus, the church must address the whole person in all their needs. It considers the meaning of the holistic gospel, how it has developed, and implications for the individual Christian, for the local church, for denominations and church groups, for missionary societies, for Christian NGOs, and for theological training institutions. It takes a global, eclectic approach, with 19 writers, church leaders, academics and practitioners, all of whom have much experience in, and commitment to, holistic mission. It addresses critically and honestly one of the most exciting, challenging, and important issues facing the church today. To be part of God's plan for God's people, the church must take holistic mission to the world.

In 1974, the International Congress on World Evangelization met in Lausanne, Switzerland. Gathering together nearly 2,500 Protestant evangelical leaders from more than 150 countries and 135 denominations, it rivaled Vatican II in terms of its influence. But as David C. Kirkpatrick argues in A Gospel for the Poor, the Lausanne Congress was most influential because, for the first time, theologians from the Global South gained a place at the table of the world's evangelical leadership—bringing their nascent brand of social Christianity with them. Leading up to this momentous occasion, after World War II, there emerged in various parts of the world an embryonic yet discernible progressive coalition of thinkers who were embedded in global evangelical organizations and educational institutions such as the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, the International Fellowship of Evangelical Students, and the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians. Within these groups, Latin Americans had an especially strong voice, for they had honed their theology as a religious minority, having defined it against two perceived ideological excesses: Marxist-inflected Catholic liberation theology and the conservative political loyalties of the U.S. Religious Right. In this context, transnational conversations provoked the rise of progressive evangelical politics, the explosion of Christian mission and relief organizations, and the infusion of social justice into the very mission of evangelicals around the world and across a broad spectrum of denominations. Drawing upon bilingual interviews and archives and personal papers from three continents, Kirkpatrick adopts a transnational perspective to tell the story of how a Cold War generation of progressive Latin Americans, including seminal figures such as Ecuadorian René Padilla and Peruvian Samuel Escobar, developed, named, and exported their version of social Christianity to an evolving coalition of global evangelicals.