Abstract
Encountering the History of Missions offers readers a succinct, accessible overview of the history of missions. In keeping with the purposes of the series in which this volume is located, this book aims to invite a new generation of scholars and practitioners to the study of missions.
John Mark Terry is department chair and professor of missions at Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, and Robert Gallagher is department chair and associate professor of intercultural studies at Wheaton College Graduate School. The authors organize the book into eighteen chapters. Beginning with the early church, they tease out different trajectories of Christian expansion around the world, including Eastern, Celtic, and Orthodox story lines, followed in subsequent chapters with insights drawn from Roman Catholic missions, the Reformation, Pietism, Moravian and Methodist missions, two chapters providing an overview of the “great century” of Protestant missions (i.e., the nineteenth), and culminating in the twenty-first century. Toward the end of the book, they cover diverse contemporary themes such as missionary councils, the church growth movement, and what they refer to as specialized missions (e.g., Bible translation and missionary aviation) and then conclude with a helpful evaluative chapter that analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of Christian missions throughout the centuries.
This text is eminently readable, allowing readers access to a treasure trove of critical material. To be fair, Terry and Gallagher mention early on that the book does not attempt to be comprehensive of everything in missions history. However, one does get the impression that the book is geared toward a North American audience and is relatively light on any historical material emanating from the non-Western world. The authors occasionally highlight key figures from the Global South throughout the book, but any greater inclusion of history as told through the lenses of World Christianity would require a different book altogether. Taken with these understandings, Encountering the History of Missions accomplishes what it sets out to do. It is an introduction to missions history, filled with helpful charts, maps, quotations, and portraits of key missionaries from the different eras.