{"id":788,"date":"2008-01-23T00:37:04","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T04:37:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/788"},"modified":"2008-01-23T20:40:27","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T00:40:27","slug":"book-review-teaching-them-obedience-in-all-things-by-elliston","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/archives\/788","title":{"rendered":"Book review: Teaching Them Obedience in All Things by Elliston"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edgar Elliston\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chapter in the book, Teaching Them Obedience In All Things<\/a>:<\/em> Equipping for the 21st Century<\/em> (Evangelical Missiological Society Series Number 7. Pasadena, CA: William Cary Library, 1999. 286 pages. $9.95. ISBN 0-87808-381-2) is the seventh in a series in a collection of ten papers presented in 1998 at the Evangelical Missiological Society. Under the rubric of obedience, the papers are organized in four sections: Biblical and missiological foundations, Christian higher education, case studies, and curricular issues related to the training of missionaries.<\/p>\n

\tIn the first essay, Kenneth B. Mulholland argues that obedience in the key quality of a disciple on mission as described in Matthew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s Great Commission passage. Any appropriate understanding of what it means to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teach\u00e2\u20ac\u009d the Gospel must go beyond mere transmission of religious information, therefore. Mulholland favors what he terms \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Obedience Oriented Education,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d a concept he illustrates through two examples: practically through a missionary experience in Papua New Guinea, and conceptually through the ten theses of the Presidents and Academic Deans Declaration of 1997. The thesis of John Piper\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s paper is that knowing God and enjoying Him [sic] is the greatest need. He argues that \u00e2\u20ac\u0153knowing and being comes before doing and shapes doing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (p. 27), a statement seemingly at odds with the idea of teaching obedience, which essentially requires doing as a requisite for understanding.<\/p>\n

\tMichael Wilkins and Rick Love each presents a chapter on a Matthean and a Lukan theme interpretation respectively. Wilkins examines the meaning and use of the term disciple and discipleship in Matthew\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s gospel and applies it to the theme of teaching (discipling) for obedience. Love\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s treatment touches on the book\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s theme of obedience, but centers mostly on what he calls \u00e2\u20ac\u0153power ministry and story telling\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in examining the Lukan narrative. <\/p>\n

\tLindenfelder\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s treatment on the relationship of the university and the church is one of the strongest chapters in the book. Using the metaphors of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153plastered cisterns\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153ever-flowing springs,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Lindenfelder provides a sobering yet challenging interpretation of the limitations of both the Christian university and church in creating disciples. In a related article, Larry Poston examines the role of higher education in Christian world mission, arguing that in the debate concerning the influence of church and higher education in disciplemaking, the latter is the most influential. He reviews key historical shifts in evangelical higher education and provides both implications of current trends and a vision for a new paradigm of Christian higher education.<\/p>\n

\tTwo case studies help bridge theory to practice of the theme of teaching for obedience. Jonathan Campbell\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s case study of engaging postmodern culture in Life Community church, Los Angeles, CA challenges the cell church concept in vogue since the 1970s. The second case study reports on the Limu Valley Project in Ethiopia, presented by Adellah Usman Muktar, and provides a rich example of transformative disciplemaking from a community perspective. The editor provides an interpretive concluding postscript to the book.<\/p>\n

\tI was attracted by the title, being an advocate of \u00e2\u20ac\u0153teaching for obedience.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The book as a whole, however, was a hit-and-miss on the subject. Given the variety of contributors and the source of the material, that was to be expected. The book does however provide some nuggets of insight worth pursuing, and the breadth of contexts from which the contributors write\u00e2\u20ac\u201dmissions, university, church, Biblical scholarship\u00e2\u20ac\u201dserves to prevent a myopic understanding of Christian discipleship.<\/p>\n

galindobanner5.jpg<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edgar Elliston\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s chapter in the book, Teaching Them Obedience In All Things: Equipping for the 21st Century (Evangelical Missiological Society Series Number 7. Pasadena, CA: William Cary Library, 1999. 286 pages. $9.95. ISBN 0-87808-381-2) is the seventh in a series … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[42,126],"class_list":["post-788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-recommendations","tag-israel-galindo","tag-teaching-obedience"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/grace-ed.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}