New Trends in Mission: The Emerging Future

Book info: New Trends in Mission: The Emerging Future (Paperback, 408 pages) – Orbis, 2022. Language: English.

A comprehensive overview of new trends in Catholic mission, from SEDOS Mission Symposium 2021. Includes essays by Steve Bevans, Ilia Delio, and Maryknoll Father James Kroeger. About the Author Peter Baekelmans, CICM, is a Belgian Catholic theologian and member of the Congregation of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. He was a missionary in Japan for twenty years, and he holds an MA in comparative religions, an MA in Buddhist studies, and a PhD in theology of religions. He is director of SEDOS in Rome, Italy, and guest professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Sciences of Catholic University of Louvain.


Marie-Hélène Robert, OLA, is a missiologist, full professor of dogmatic theology at the Faculty of Theology of Lyon Catholic University, and a member of the Sciences and Humanities Confluence Research Center. She has published numerous books and articles, and presents papers at various national and international conferences. She is a sister of the Missionary Institute of Our Lady of the Apostles. Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Introduction


“The frog in the well” is a well-known expression in Japan to refer to those who think they know the world but have only seen a small part of it, their “own” world. Missionaries are graced to have come out of the well and to have seen a wider world, not only as tourists but as those who have shared the language, customs, joys and pains, culture and religion of other people. They are the “frontier missionaries”1 who set a concrete example to all baptized people to move out of their usual environment to meet people, to be with people, and to help the needy among them. Mission means to live as Jesus did: always on the road, ready to go wherever the Spirit moves them.

Mission is in essence a missio Dei (being called and sent by God), and this mission is carried out by way of “prophetic dialogue.”2 Missionaries can therefore never be “self-referential” (Pope Francis), as they will always refer spontaneously to the God they love and the people they were sent to. Mission-minded theologians too will automatically go against every theological “inbreeding” and will seek to integrate their experience and knowledge of the wider world in their theological reflections, as does, for instance, a liberation theologian, a theologian of religions, or a cyber-theologian. However, missionaries also keep a certain “prophetic” stance toward the people they are sent to, because there is a message to be transmitted, the gospel message, which is not only about peace and harmony, but also about justice and respect for the wholeness (and holyness) of Creation.