The Emerging Context for a Missional Hermeneutic
The Emerging Context for a Missional Hermeneutic
A missional hermeneutic (MH) is an interpretive approach that privileges mission as the key to reading the Scriptures. Practitioners of missional approaches to Scripture deploy a variety of approaches to the text (See Hunsberger’s summary from the 2008 Missional Hermeneutics seminar at the Society of Biblical Literature or my own essay “What is a Missional Hermeneutic?”).
In this essay I want to focus primarily on the world in front of the text in terms of listening to the Scripture via a missional hermeneutic in order to reflect critically on the missional context of the 21st century Western world.
My friend Alex McManus has commented on a number of occasions that “the Western world has lost its faith in the shadows of church steeples.” This is one facet of the dilemma facing the West. There has been a massive loss of adherents to the Gospel. Current estimates number the loss of Christians in the West to be about 5000 persons a day.
But there is another piece that must also be confronts: the migration into the Western world of a vast number of adherents of the world religions. The United States alone is the most multi-cultural nation in the history of the world with residents from every other nation on earth within its borders. Within a few miles of my home in Central Florida, one can find a Sikh temple, Hindu University, a Hindu temple, and the Islamic Society of Central Florida. This creates a dynamic new setting in which to engage the culture with the Gospel.
All of this raises some questions: How does one read the Bible in this sort of context? Are our current reading practices sufficient? How do our equipping practices need to change in order to prepare Christ followers to serve as viable and vibrant witnesses in our day? What would it mean to read Scripture missionally in such a context? For theological education, what changes need to be made in faculties and curriculum in order to prepare tomorrow’s missional leaders?
© 2009 Brian D Russell
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