Rethinking Global Mobilization: Calling the Church to Her Core Identity

by Ryan Shaw, Jason Mandryk (Foreword)

Roughly one-third of the world’s population is still in the category of unreached people groups , having too small of an indigenous Church to adequately reach their own people.

It is common to ascribe reasons for this as the difficulty of the peoples themselves, opposition to the Gospel, lack of finance and more.

Yet there is much more to why still so many people remain unreached. Could it be because of how the Church understands and engages in mission mobilization?

In Rethinking Global Mobilization, you will learn about God’s big-picture, comprehensive, holistic intent for mission mobilization as calling the global Church to her core identity, in contrast to the common, yet limiting, understanding of mobilization as primarily recruiting individual workers.

By developing a Biblical missiology of mobilization , the whole Church can engage in her priority calling of local and global mission.

Providing Biblical, theological, missiological, theoretical, practical and historical reflections, Rethinking Global Mobilization addresses needed paradigm shifts in mission mobilization, while providing a strategic framework for a local ministry, organization, church network and national church to be dynamically engaged in mission mobilization among their own people.

The book affirms God is preparing the global Church for widespread, comprehensive mission mobilization, in every nation of the earth. The growing number of ministries, organizations, national associations, courses and conferences devoted to mission mobilization reveal this growing trend. The book aims to bring definition, understanding, clarity, focus and strategy to this developing move of God.

309 pages, Paperback

Published February 27, 2022

Reviews

[Marti Wade · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s far too easy and common to reduce mission mobilization to inviting individuals to respond to the Great Commission—specifically by becoming missionaries. But do we really believe every Christian has a part in to play in God’s global mission and that it’s a calling for the whole Church? If so, how might that enlarge and energize our mobilization efforts?

Ryan Shaw is President of Global Mission Mobilization Initiative (GMMI, formerly SVM2) and has spent recent decades catalyzing mission mobilization efforts in many countries. He invites us to rethink mission mobilization, develop a biblical theology of mission mobilization, recognize historical patterns of mission and mission mobilization, and devote ourselves to a more unified strategy of global mission.

Although plenty of books have been written to mobilize Christians for world mission, little has been written about mission mobilization itself. This sweeping volume—not too thick but quite thorough—may prove to be a seminal one.

There’s a whole chapter on types of mission mobilizers, another looking at each of the Great Commission passages, and a chapter about why the author sees the fulfillment of the Great Commission as central to the mission of the Church. Along the way, he addresses objections and obstacles and supports his points with scripture and other citations.

I did find typos, but I was reading a pre-release edition, so these may have been fixed before publication.

[Liz · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a good summary of the Perspectives Course, but it doesn't seem to really add anything to the conversation about the modern missions movement. It's not new information to suggest that the church is primarily growing in the global south nor is it novel to consider sending missionaries from the global south.