My Pilgrimage in Mission

Charles Van Engen summarizes his pilgrimage in mission: “I have lived a life invested in forming people as leaders, paying forward what others did for me.” Born of missionary parents, Chuck was raised in southern Mexico. From 1973 to 1985 Chuck and his wife, Jean, served in Chiapas, Mexico, in leadership formation. In 1981 Chuck received a Ph.D. in missiology under Johannes Verkuyl at the Free University of Amsterdam, followed by teaching mission theology in Michigan and, for twenty-seven years, at Fuller Theological Seminary. The Van Engens lead a ministry that provides PhD-level theological education to Latin American leaders.

Church Growth at Fuller

Conceding that the “church growth” concept and methodology have come under fire, the author shares an insider's reflections on how the movement has fared since Donald McGavran originated it three decades ago. The history of the movement and the relation between the Institute for Church Growth and the School of World Missions at Fuller Theological Seminary are traced. Dialogue and controversy with the WCC in the sixties, and growing influence within the Lausanne movement in the seventies, are sketched. The impact and consequences of church growth for world missions and for church life in the USA are noted. Finally, in a series of “random thoughts,” Glasser appraises both the strengths and weaknesses of the church growth concept, affirms that it is being corrected and enlarged, and claims for it an enduring place in the church's evolving missionary strategy of the eighties.

Unity in Diversity: Ethnotheological Sensitivity in Cross-Cultural Evangelism

Originally presented as an introduction for a visiting lectureship at Fuller Theological Seminary, this article illustrates why the author's writings are so valued by missiologists — well beyond his own tradition. And Professor Luzbetak has done for his Roman Catholic colleagues what Eugene Nida has accomplished in Protestant circles: sensitized a growing number of missionaries to the cultural dimensions of their mandated task. One key to this broad influence is found in the following article: his perceptive anthropological insights do not weaken his theological commitment, but rather inform and enhance it.