Abstract
It is certainly a great honor to be given a Lifetime Achievement Award by one’s valued guild, one’s companions in a common vocation, one’s true family in the faith. It is gratifying that longtime and newfound friends in the American Society of Missiology have recognized in my work over time something that may be called “achievement.” You know as I do that most days, in the path of our work as missioners, as leaders in the church, and as scholars seeking an understanding of the church’s life and witness, we press on under the recurring suspicion (our own, if not that of others) that very little is being achieved. Discouragement seems to be a constant travel-partner on our journey. We determine not to be deterred by it. Yet, at the end, we wonder. Has this work been important? Has it contributed to the faithfulness of the missional life of the church?
So I deeply appreciate this token that you see something of significance arising from the various avenues of my service to Christ, including as it has ministering on university campuses of southern Mississippi and northern Florida, pastoring a fledgling congregation in Mississippi, traveling alongside displaced Ugandans seeking refuge in neighboring Kenya, teaching in an undergraduate college and then a theological seminary, serving this missiology guild along the way, and generally, encouraging—in spoken and published ways—the missionary callings of communities of Christ-followers.
I accept this token with gratitude, but also with a degree of awkwardness. That is because I am surrounded here by many whose life achievements are much greater than mine. You wrote the books that have educated me. I have thrived on your ideas. Your legacy is intertwined in everything I do. You are the mentors and models whose own life achievements are immense and deserve such a recognition as you have given me.
There are two things I know are true of any achievements in which I may have played a role. The first is that they have been marked by the synergy of collaboration. This has especially been the case with whatever may have been accomplished through the Gospel and Our Culture Network—which I was privileged to coordinate for a couple of decades. The agenda of that network was framed in its early years by research groups working over an extended period of time to identify what was at stake in discerning gospel, assessing culture, and defining church. Their work, shared through The Gospel and Our Culture newsletter and explored in a series of annual consultations, led to the first book published by the network, The Church between Gospel and Culture. Later, first with the help of The Pew Charitable Trusts and then the Lilly Endowment, work was carried forward by three research teams committed to producing collaborative, coauthored books: Missional Church, Treasure in Clay Jars, and StormFront: The Good News of God. Collaborative work became a habitual way of networking together.
Second, any achievements in which I may have played a role are first and fundamentally the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s action. I say this not merely because it is customary to do so. Nor in a way that diminishes human agency. I say it to affirm what I have found to be true, that the Spirit works before, and within, and beyond human agency. From the central ideas of the missional church conversation, especially the understanding that the church’s mission is derived from the mission of God, I have been led over and over again to find in the primacy of divine agency a basic, orienting vision. I have lodged my confidence and hope in the promised Spirit of the risen Christ, “knowing that in the Lord [our] labor is not in vain” (1 Cor. 15:58).