Theology of Mission: A Concise Biblical Theology

by J.D. Payne

God's mission is on every page of Scripture. In Theology of A Concise Biblical Theology, J. D. Payne traces the theme of mission throughout Scripture. The Bible is a story of God's mission. God takes initiative to dwell with humanity. He desires to be known. To this end, he sends and is sent. Through Christ, God redeems sinful humans and recreates the cosmos. And he has invited his people to join in this mission.

Payne shows that God's mission is on every page of the Bible and is foundational to the church's own existence. With reflection questions following concise chapters, all readers can consider their place in God's work.

Genres: Christian

285 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 16, 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

[Salvador Blanco · Rating 5 out of 5]

Actually concise. Actually biblical. Historical! I highly recommend this book for a theology of mission in under 150 pages. It has a great bibliography and footnotes that can take you deeper if needed.

Favorite quote:

"God's mission did not begin in the first century; God's mission did not change in the first century. The church has an ancient heritage with deep roots. Contemporary preaching and teaching must connect the Great Commission to Torah, Prophets, and Writings" (147).

[Levi Porter · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'd really rather give this 3.8 stars. There's a few reasons for it.

First, Payne does a really good job in the first half of the book detailing mission in the Old Testament. This is where he shines. He's thought well and carefully about the mission of God to the nations in the Old Testament. I think he accomplishes his thesis in this first section. God elected a people whom he established in the world to be his witness to the nations. However, it wouldn't be until the final days when the nations would be brought in and given equal status with Israel. All this, very clear and well thought out.

Second, once he gets to the New Testament, his writing intent switches. He moves from summarizing themes of mission in major chunks of the Old Testament to, essentially, just summarizing each New Testament book and then connecting it to mission. He starts to assume a heavy familiarity with the New Testament books, which I'm fine with, if it's clear. As I read, I had to read too much between the lines to gather what he was attempting to say about mission.

Third, when he moves away from the Synoptics, Acts, and Paul's epistles to the general epistles, he misses his mark. He spends a good deal of time showing that God's mission is still in play, but he's not as clear on how this mission connects to God's people. Partly, mission is not heavily emphasized in these. What he does is summarize each of the different books, pulling different themes out, and then expects you to connect the themes to mission. He spends more time on the themes than explaining how the themes relate to mission. Everything he says is good and true, it's just not clearly connected to mission. It would have been better, I think, if he'd picked up the themes of mission represented in each of these books and then applied them to the lives of believers. Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, the 3 Johns, and Revelation all are encouragement to believers to be set apart and keep running the race of God's mission. This has much to say about God's mission to us, but since he doesn't go that route, he misses out on this.

Lastly, and most importantly, his definition of mission is not complete. He describes mission as, "How God is glorified through the blessing of the nations.... refer[ing] to all God had done, is doing, and will do to redeem sinful humans and recreate the cosmos into the new heaven and new earth," (II). His definition starts with the fall. Mission starts prior to the fall with humanity being given the image of God and the dominion mandate. These, understood together, were how humanity would bring God's mission to the ends of the earth. This means it's not just God's mission alone. We were created to be on mission, bringing his mission to the ends of the earth and we failed to do that. Genesis 3 on is how God is still using humanity to bring his kingdom on earth by his great grace and mercy.

Read the book for the first 70 pages and his discussion on the mission of God in the Old Testament. Find a fuller definition of mission elsewhere and maybe just read Christopher J. Wright's books on mission instead.

[Miranda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This took me almost 2 years to read! It’s not long- it’s described as concise and it is. This is such a rich text of bringing theology and mission together. It just reads more like a dissertation and therefore was a bit hard to get through (for me!). 5/5 for content for sure. I’m not clicking the spoiler button but the spoiler is: the entire bible is about the mission of god :)

[Aubrie Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book did a really good job of looking at the history of missions throughout the Bible. The only thing not in its favor is that it is a bit of a hard read, and was slightly challenging to understand easily. Overall, an excellent, thought provoking read!!

[Cheney Hanken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book. You can also listen to the podcast season he does on his podcast “strike the match” which covers the same topic of Theology of Mission.