Annotated Bibliography on the World Christian Mission

This material has been selected and adapted from Book Notes, beginning with the fall of 1970. Because it seemed desirable to keep this listing to a reasonable size, some books could not be included. It was decided to omit biographies of individual missionaries and accounts of individual churches, or denominations, unless there was something which made that account unusually significant or representative. Books on the social, economic and cultural situations in which the Church carries on its mission will be the subject of a separate listing. The date at the end of each paragraph indicates the original review.

Reflections on the Contemporary World Mission

We come together today as a new Unit Committee of the Division of Overseas Ministries (DOM) at the beginning of the 1976–1978 triennium of the National Council of Churches. During this meeting, and in the months ahead, we will face important decisions which, given the magnitude of both the problems we confront and the resources we can tap, will be pressing and fateful. It would be foolish to exaggerate our role — there is very real sense in which our ecumenical vehicle is fragile and weak, far less influential on the world, national, ecclesiastical, scenes than we are prone to admit — but it would be folly as well to underrate the realistic and timely role we can assume in the exercise of the Christian stewardship expected of us in our day. Allow me to commence with a very personal recollection — perhaps unduly personal. Exactly fifty years ago this year – in 1926 — my father and mother sailed out of New York harbor bound for Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was three years old at the time and they took me along. They were setting out on an overseas ministry in the year of our nation's sesquicentennial though I doubt that they gave that fact much importance. I now look back on this ministry from the year of our nation's bicentennial and wonder at the immense changes in the context of mission and ministry between 1926 and 1976. My father was quite clear about one purpose in 1926, a clarity he never lost however unclear he might have felt in other areas of his work — he was determined to do what he could to train young men and women for the fulltime

Report of Task Force on Patterns of Service

(Presented to Program Agency of the United Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A., October 26, 1976. This report was received “for study and comment in the next six months, including comments from judicatories of the Church, overseas churches, overseas personnel and other interested persons for final reportly the Task Force at the June 1976 meeting of the Program Agency Board.” This report is published in the Occasional Bulletin as a working document. Readers who wish to ceament on the paper should write to Mr. William Miller, The Program Agency, The United Presbyterian church in the U.S.A., Room 1126, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, N.Y. 10027.)