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Anvil Volume 25 Number 3 2008

Creating Space: Hospitality as a Metaphor for Mission

Cathy Ross

Beginning with the biblical witness, Cathy Ross explores the character of hospitality and shows how it can function as a powerful metaphor for mission. Using this metaphor we are encouraged and enabled to reflect on the importance of shared meals and being at the margins, the need to see and respect the guest and stranger as other, and above all the value of understanding both hospitality and mission in terms of creating welcoming space just as God has welcomed and made space for us.

Dr Cathy Ross is Manager for the CMS Crowther Centre for Mission Education and J V Taylor Fellow in Missiology at Regent's Park College and Wycliffe Hall. She is editor, with Andrew Walls, of Mission in the 21st Century (DLT, 2008).

The Holy Spirit in the world: a global conversation

Kirsteen Kim

Drawing on extensive research on the Christian understanding of the Spirit in both Asian and Western contexts, Kirsteen Kim explains how different cosmologies have shaped Christian pneumatology. The contrast between belief in one universal Spirit and many spirits is then related to the experiences of modernity and post-modernity, contemporary interest in 'spirituality' and the theological reflection and mission practice of both charismatic and liberation theology.

Dr Kirsteen Kim is Associate Senior Lecturer, Leeds Trinity and All Saints and Vice-Moderator of the Commission on World Mission and Evangelism, World Council of Churches. She is author of The Holy Spirit in the world: A global conversation (Orbis/SPCK, 2007) and co-author, with Sebastian C.H. Kim, of Christianity as a world religion (Continuum, 2008).

CMS and New Mission

Tim Dakin

In this and the next issue of Anvil, Tim Dakin, General Secretary of the Church Mission Society, reflects on the changing challenges and shape of world mission. This first part of the article examines four levels of change in mission and outlines four responses. The first two of these responses, relating to evangelistic mission and mission community, are then explored in more depth. The final two will be explored in the second part of the article.

The Revd Canon Tim Dakin is General Secretary of the Church Mission Society (CMS), Hon Canon Theologian of Coventry Cathedral and a Trustee of Anvil.

Models of mission in Church of England Baptism services

Philip Tovey

Baptismal liturgies and practice have developed over time in the Church of England though recent changes have not been seriously examined. Phillip Tovey here traces three different mission models found in Anglican initiation services - various biological growth models, transfer growth models and conversion models. He argues that the latest services in Common Worship set mission, particularly to adults, at the heart of the initiation services and explores some of the practical implications for parish ministry if we take this reconnecting of baptism with mission seriously.

Revd Dr Phillip Tovey is Director of Licensed Lay Ministry Training (Reader) in the Diocese of Oxford, Liturgy Tutor (part-time) at Ripon College Cuddesdon, and chair of the Group for Renewal of Worship.

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