Mission Between the Times

C. René Padilla

Langham monographs

© 2013 by C. René Padilla

Published 2010 by Langham Monographs

an imprint of Langham Creative Projects

Revised and expanded edition of Mission Between the Times. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1985.

Langham Partnership

PO Box 296, Carlisle, Cumbria, CA3 9WZ

www.langham.org

ISBN 978-1-907713-01-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher or the Copyright Licensing Agency.

The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A., and are used by permission. All rights reserved.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Padilla, C. Rene.

Mission between the times: essays on the Kingdom. -- 2nd rev. and updated ed.

1. Mission of the church. 2. Evangelistic work.

3. Christianity--Latin America.

I. Title

266'.001-dc22

ISBN-13: 9781907713019

Cover design: projectluz.com

Book design: To a Tee Ltd, www.2at.com

To John Stott

in appreciation for his friendship

for over fifty years,

and in loving memory of

Catharine Ruth Feser (1932–2009),

my wife and coworker

for almost fifty years.

CONTENTS

Abbreviations

Acknowledgments

Preface to the First Edition

1 From Lausanne I to Lausanne III

2 Evangelism and the World

3 Spiritual Conflict

4 What is the Gospel?

5 The Contextualization of the Gospel

6 Christ and Antichrist in the Proclamation of the Gospel

7 The Fullness of Mission

8 The Unity of the Church and the Homogeneous Unit Principle

9 New Testament Perspectives on a Simple Lifestyle

10 The Mission of the Church in Light of the Kingdom of God

ABBREVIATIONS

KJV King James Version

NASB New American Standard Bible

NEB New English Bible

NIV New International Version

NKJV New King James Version

NRSV New Revised Standard Version

RSV Revised Standard Version

TEV Today’s English Version

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I do not wish to take for granted all the work that has been done to make this publication possible in time for Lausanne III, and thus would like to express my gratitude to Pieter Kwant and his team at Langham Literature, and to the Langham Partnership, for their most valuable help in preparing this anniversary edition of this book. In particular, I would like to express my deep appreciation to Gretchen Abernathy, who updated the text to take account of changes in language usage since these essays were written, to Virginia Robinson who checked that the quotations from the Bible matched the New Revised Standard Version, and to Isobel Stevenson, for her editorial work.