Communicating God's Word in a Complex World: God's Truth or Hocus Pocus?

by Daniel R. Shaw, Charles E. Van Engen, Lamin Sanneh (Foreword)

Communicating God's Word in a Complex World reaches out to the growing number of missionaries, pastors, Bible translators and teachers, mission and theological educators and students dealing with communicating the gospel. This is increasingly difficult in today's pluralist and global contexts. What was God's message, and how has spreading that message changed through the generations? The answer to that question requires a hermeneutical process that seeks to understand the biblical text and the context in which it was originally presented.

R. Daniel Shaw and Charles Van Engen say that contemporary proclaimers of God's word can model their approach after that of the writers of scripture, who reinterpreted and restated their received texts for their audiences. Thus, Gospel communication is impacted by the way humans know God. This, in turn, is informed by contexts. Communicating God's Word in a Complex World draws lessons from the biblical authors themselves as a guide for how best to present God's message.

280 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Rennae de Freitas]

This was not an easy read but there was some important truths here.
Big takeaway: Look to communicate God's word by conveying his intention in the text. His intention is always about relationship.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful and thought provoking. I gave it 3 stars because they overstate their case on occasion and appear to undervalue the value of Scripture itself as if it were merely functional and not ontologically valuable and sufficient. This is probably due to theological presuppositions about the nature and role of scripture itself. I'm open to thinking more through their views, but I have some reservations. That being said, the main thrust of the book is absolutely correct. I suggest the book for anyone interested in cross-cultural missions.

[Tanya · Rating 3 out of 5]

As a PhD class we felt there were two sections to this book, the communication, and the missional theology. It is a great start, but we're hoping someone uses this and brings out a more integrated book that draws the two more closely together but with less diagrams. :-)

[Sara Best · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good book about contextual theologizing.