Pentecostal Missions Education

Click to join the conversation with over 500,000 Pentecostal believers and scholars

164

Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191

Bob Brenneman, W. R. Brookman, and Nan Muhovich, eds., Java and Justice: Journeys in Pentecostal Missions Education (Minneapolis: North Central University Press, 2006). xiii + 359 pp., $13.95, paper.

Java and Justice is a collection of nineteen mission-related essays divided into three sections. The ﬁrst section oﬀers articles related to the foundations of Pentecostal missions and education. Bob Brenneman reﬂects on his thirty-ﬁve years of being a Pentecostal. Dan Notley provides a historical retrospect of the development of North Central University from 1936 to 2006. Nan Muhovich suggests story telling as a biblical model of mission’s education and provides numerous Old and New Testament examples; she states, “Story telling is a great teaching methodology useful around the world” (38) and suggests that God’s favorite methodology for teaching is through narrative. The next three chapters provide various models of successful church planting: Richard and Farella Shaka address planting ethnic churches in urban America; Rocky Grams reviews the ongoing revival in Argentina and provides what he calls essential “ingredients” for training ministers; and Carolyn Tennant details the passion, method, and legacy of Patrick’s missionary endeavor to Ireland in the ﬁfth century ce . Amos Yong concludes this section with a pneumatological/Pentecostal theology of religions. Yong suggests that Pentecostal mis- sionaries do not adequately take into consideration the religious “otherness” of those it seeks to convert. His challenge to Pentecostal missions is to consider how the former religious identity of another “informs [their] commitment to Christ and [their] Christian confession in anticipation of the impending Kingdom of God” (105).

Section two is comprised of six articles contemplating missionary challenges in speciﬁc contexts. Muhovich addresses ministry among the poor and oppressed. Mark Hausfeld focuses on mission service in areas of hostility and violence. Myra Crane reﬂects on the diﬃculty of female missionaries in Arab countries. Beth Grant expresses the great need for missionary outreach to women and children sold into sexual slavery in India and other areas of the world. She provides a biblical foundation and practical considerations for the devel- opment of outreach among this oppressed class. Brenneman provides an informative survey of ministry among the Kurdish people and Robert Doebler concludes this section with a historical look at Christian expansion in China.

The ﬁnal section of the book provides six articles relevant to an ongoing missions educa- tion. Using four metaphors — scholars, saints, servants, and soldiers — Brenneman devel- ops a model for training “millennials” (born after 1980) for missionary service. He states, “Christian millennial youth will need to be saints to keep their innocence, scholars to understand complex issues, servants to the poor and oppressed, and soldiers to challenge the dark forces of wickedness, which they will face in the world we ﬁnd ourselves in” (234). His article is “a must” read for educators. Muhovich develops a strategy for teaching and mentoring millennials, postmodernists, and the growing number of those in adult educa- tional contexts. Using a variety of teaching methods employed in Old and New Testament texts, she suggests that these methods “may be more eﬀective, and more enjoyable to this generation of students” (254) than other methods currently employed. W. R. Brookman tackles the ongoing complexities and eﬀective strategies of language learning. Doug Lowen- berg provides a most stirring account of Pentecostal growth and ongoing mission eﬀorts in

1

Book Reviews / Pneuma 30 (2008) 147-191

165

Africa. He comments on the challenges associated with such explosive Christian expansion and concludes with a numbers of concerns, such as syncretism, universalism, ecumenism, and the ongoing struggles with harmonizing Christian faith with African traditional reli- gions, perceived association of Christianity with the early slave trade, and perceptions of Christianity as a foreign religion “clothed in western garb” (326). Brad Walz addresses the traditional ineﬀectiveness of the early and present Western missionary enterprise to instill “a missionary vision,” particularly within Pentecostal Latin American churches. His chal- lenge for a new generation of Pentecostal missionaries is to “amplify our deﬁnition of the ‘indigenous church’” concept. Speciﬁcally, Walz suggests the inclusion of the word world- wide in the oft-quoted three-self motto for promoting indigenous churches: namely, self- governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating worldwide. Wilson Awasu concludes the section with a missions theology of ministry “in harm’s way” (347).

Overall, Java and Justice accomplishes the editors’ goal of motivating and addressing the interests of a new generation of Pentecostal missionaries. Considering the relative newness of NCU Press, the book is remarkably well written and edited. Since the articles are largely “confessional” in nature — with almost all the contributors being faculty members of North Central University, an Assemblies of God liberal arts institution in the Upper Mid- west region — Java and Justice will most likely ﬁnd its place as a supplementary reader in a Pentecostal Bible College or seminary curriculum and not in the broader missiological stream of the academy. Nevertheless, Christian educators in general may ﬁnd the methods suggested for teaching, motivating, and training millennials extremely helpful, and the historical and contemporary missionary stories and strategies could very well inspire a wider missiological audience.

Reviewed by Richard A. Pruitt

2