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Book Review: Andy Johnson. Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global

Beautifully written and tightly argued, Incarnational Mission emphasizes the importance of being with people who are different from ourselves—those who are lapsed, seekers, those of no faith and those of other faiths, those who are hostile, our neighbors, and those who are excluded. In other words those who are “out of the fold” of traditional Christian circles. Wells’s unique contribution to the practice of and reflection on mission is his emphasis on being with as a form of mission. He contrasts this approach with the problem-solving mode of “working for” which assumes the concentration of power in the expert and the highly skilled and is the established model of social engagement, or “working with” that focuses on partnerships to empower the dispossessed and overcoming apathy, timidity, and lack of confidence. Being with as a model of mission rejects the problem-solving approach to mission and instead seeks to model enjoying people for their own sake. Wells notes that Jesus spent around 90% being with (in Nazareth), 9% working with (in Galilee), and only 1% working for (in Jerusalem). Wells takes this theological foundation of being with and discusses eight dimensions of what being with actually involves in incarnational mission. They are presence, mystery, delight, participation, partnership, enjoyment, and glory. Samuel Wells, presently Vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields, Trafalgar Square, London and former Dean of the Chapel at Duke University (2005–2012), has written a book that is “designed to stimulate renewal and reflective practice in mission” and has given the missiological world a needed perspective that is different from, or perhaps complementary to, much contemporary mission practice that is concerned more with the spiritual return on mission investment and managerial missiology than being with the Other as we join Jesus in his mission in the world.