Apostolic Imagination: Recovering a Biblical Vision for the Church's Mission Today

by J.D. Payne

A leading expert in the field of Christian missions encourages the church to recover the apostolic imagination that fueled the multiplication of disciples in the first century. J. D. Payne examines the contemporary practice of Western missions and advocates a more central place for Scripture in defining missionary language, identity, purpose, function, and strategy. He shows that an apostolic understanding of the church's disciple-making commission requires rethinking every aspect of missionary engagement. The book includes end-of-chapter discussion questions and action steps to help pastors and church leaders develop an apostolic imagination.

Genres: Christian

216 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 8, 2022

About the author

J. D. Payne (PhD, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) is pastor of church multiplication at The Church at Brook Hills in Birmingham, Alabama, and has served as missionary.

Reviews

[Will Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a mixed, muddled bag. Payne's overall desire to return the missionary activity of the Church to a more Gospel-proclaiming paradigm is a good one. We would all do well to ask ourselves, "What does biblical missions work look like?" and then to realize that preaching the Gospel is head-and-shoulders greater in importance than anything else we might deem "missions" today. Yet there are significant setbacks to a whole-hearted praise for Payne's book. Most prominently is that Payne does not define all his favorite terms until chapter 5, leaving the close-reader in confusion as to what he means by all the adjectival uses of "apostolic." Additionally, Payne seems to not consider whether the function of biblical "apostolic" work is now performed by the explicitly given offices of Evangelist and Pastor, and instead opts to encourage the Church towards the large-scale establishing and supporting of "apostolic teams" who perform all the functions of Paul's Apostolic ministry. And though not the focus of his book, Payne also has clear progressive, "social justice" leanings when describing the overall mission of the Church. I think the average Christian won't get much out of this book.

[Ken Guenther · Rating 4 out of 5]

The apostolic imagination is the vision the apostles had to proclaim the Gospel to those who had not heard the Good news. The author discusses whether cross-cultural missionaries engaging the unreached are also apostles, but seems to conclude that although they may not be called apostles, they fulfill the apostolic functions. Payne differentiates between the pastoral approach and the apostolic approach. He argues for the priority of evangelism and church planting as core to the apostolic imagination.

[Joel Porter]

To say I read this book would be an overstatement. It was more of a light skim. Payne argues that the church today uses the word missions wrong and attempts to understand the imagination that the Spirit and the Word created and shaped, which resulted in disciples being made, leaders being risen up, and churches being planted. It sounds very good but it just didn’t catch my attention. I may go back to it one day

[Bud Houston · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr. Payne has acknowledged that this book is polarizing. I found it incredibly helpful for us that have the apostolic imagination and seek to pursue movemental forms. Most of the less-than-stellar reviews fall within what Dr. Payne calls the pastoral hegemony. I think is examination and conclusions are fair and a very much-needed voice and posture for the church in the West.

[Scott Ray · Rating 5 out of 5]

Important book that missionaries, pastors, and laymen need to read. Shows the missional drift in the church and the reasons behind it. Payne argues for a return to the apostolic foundations of the missionary task.

[Christopher Humphrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have been dreading writing my review of J.D. Payne's "Apostolic Imagination: Recovering a Biblical Vision for the Church's Mission Today." I have dreaded this task because Payne begins his work with an intriguing thesis: modern missions should be premised on the Apostolic model found in the New Testament, but the concept of missions has morphed into many good things while leaving the proclamation of the Gospel behind. This is a solid thought. To develop this thought, Payne used the moniker Apostolic Imagination as a placeholder for WWTAHD (what would the Apostles have done). So far, so good. But this project seemed to go off the rails early and never get back on track, and that is unfortunate, because I suspect that Payne is correct, and so this issue needs to be front and center in current missiology debate and thought. That is why I have dreaded this review.

For the first part of the book I seriously considered the possibility that the book was written by an AI algorithm. I know it wasn't, but the flow of thought, the disconnected sentences and the seemingly endless non-sequiturs caused me to at least have this thought. Either this work was mined from yet another work or the editor needed a longer book, but the first part of this book was, at best, ponderous and hard to follow. There was no coherent thread other than the oft-repeated theme of "apostolic imagination"--and this phrase was repeated over and over again.

Yet the book became stronger and easier to read and comprehend in part 2. This was the practical section of the book where Payne described how based on the Apostolic Imagination model how the church could reimagine its primary mission. I found this section helpful, informative, and thought-provoking. This section of the book challenged my incorrect assumptions about the pervasiveness of the spread of the gospel throughout the Majority World (I found the statistics both sad and motivating). The second half of the book is important and with some good editing this book can be great.

Notwithstanding my criticisms, this is a book that should be read by Church leaders, as those leaders plan how to apportion limited time and resources. Pastors should read this book because I suspect, like me, they may be filled with misconceptions about the state of play on the ground in the Majority World. Mission Boards and agencies should follow-up on this work to further the arguments identified by Payne, So, please, despite its shortcomings--read this book!

I am not an editor (nor am I the son of...you get the idea), but if I were to wade in to the task of fixing this book, my modest proposal would be as follows: (1) If you want to continue with the metaphor of Apostolic Imagination, then clearly define what you mean up front; (2) Once defined, clearly trace this concept through the text of Scripture (the first part of this book reads like a list of disconnected biblical truisms); and (3) Devote more space to Part 2 of this book. Based on the premise that the preaching of the gospel is the essence of Missions, then clearly define where that is happening, where it is not happening (and why) and how to get this project back on track.

I really hope that many will wade through this book, because in doing so, the reader will be better informed, more focused and, I believe, more faithful to the Great Commission. Happy reading!