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  • Concepts of Mission: The Evolution of Contemporary Missiology
  • Richard A. Davis
Francis Anekwe Oborji. 2006. Concepts of Mission: The Evolution of Contemporary Missiology. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, pp. 240, Pb, £14.99.

This well-designed and attractive book provides readers with an introduction to the progress of mission thinking over the last few hundred years. Given the publisher and author it is no surprise that the approach is largely a Catholic one, written for a Catholic audience, with an emphasis on Catholic figures and theology. Francis Anekwe Oborji is a Nigerian priest, currently teaching missiology at the Pontifical Urban University in Rome.

The book is split into three parts: Basic Issues, Historical Perspectives and New Perspectives. The structure delivers what the subtitle promises, an account of the evolution of missiology as a theological discipline. This is not a history of missions, but on the modern theory of missions in the modern period.

The introductory section includes an interesting chapter on the place of missiology in theological education. Far from being the mother of theology it seems that missiology is the difficult child no one wishes to care for. Throughout the historical section one finds discussion of the key concepts and important figures in missiology. These are successfully interwoven into a readable narrative so that we have an informative overview of both. This history is primarily grounded in and amongst male theologians from Northern Europe. In the last section, covering more contemporary times, the focus is on the new context for mission within the ecumenical age and alongside the church in the third world, where explicitly contextual theologies have arisen. While the foreword and blurbs make much of the author’s African origins, there is not much to identify the book as specifically African, except for Africa receiving more space in the global wrap-up in the final few pages.

The book deserved a more effective editor to eliminate some repetition and spelling mistakes. Since the book relies on so many magisterial sources [End Page 241] I expected to find a listing of these documents in an appendix, although they might all appear in the abbreviations list. Overall, however, I highly recommend this book for those wishing to gain an advanced introduction to the field of missiology and where it may be heading in the future.

Richard A. Davis
University of Edinburgh
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