# Thoughts on Leslie Newbigin and Missions



## deathtolife (Oct 13, 2017)

Has anyone ever heard of him? Thoughts? Do you all recommend any of his works?


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## yeutter (Oct 13, 2017)

Lesslie Newbigin is very influential in liberal reformed circles because of his missional church movement, and his ecumenicalism. I find Newbigin's approach to contextualization/inculturation of the Gospel in the mission field very disturbing.

Newbigin is spoken of with awe by liberal protestant missionaries. The indigenous conservative Anglican, Reformed, and Baptist pastors I have talked with in Asia revile him.


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## deathtolife (Oct 13, 2017)

yeutter said:


> Lesslie Newbigin is very influential in liberal reformed circles because of his missional church movement, and his ecumenicalism. I find Newbigin's approach to contextualization/inculturation of the Gospel in the mission field very disturbing.
> 
> Newbigin is spoken of with awe by liberal protestant missionaries. The indigenous conservative Anglican, Reformed, and Baptist pastors I have talked with in Asia revile him.



Thank you for sharing that!


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## RamistThomist (Oct 13, 2017)

I read a little of him in 2008. I initially liked the totality approach to worldview and his anti-state comments. But you can get that stuff from the recons.


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## Guido's Brother (Oct 13, 2017)

I've read a few books, but have never really been that impressed with him. He's too ecumenical (in the bad sense of the word, i.e. too caught up in the orbit of the World Council of Churches). A much more reliable author in this area is David Hesselgrave.

Reactions: Like 1


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## jw (Oct 13, 2017)

deathtolife said:


> Has anyone ever heard of him?


It appears so.

Reactions: Like 1


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## Pergamum (Oct 13, 2017)

To the liberals everything the church does is missional and the mission of the church. 

Many newer missiologists make it okay to talk a lot about missions even while talking very little about the preaching of the gospel and the conversion of the heathen (that was so last century). 

But whenever everything is missions..then really nothing becomes missions.


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## Pilgrim (Oct 14, 2017)

I haven't read much of him, and what I have read is in some of his more "conservative" books like "Foolishness to the Greeks" and "The Gospel in an Pluralist Society." 

I came out of a mainline background, so it was surprising to see some perceptive (and relatively "conservative") quotes of his with regard to culture. Much of his career was spent in India. Perhaps largely for that reason, he saw things about secularism and Islam that many evangelicals would do well to remember or to learn for the first time. There are things in his writings that conservatives can agree with up to a point, and of course there are things liberals will agree with, although he isn't nearly as far left as the average NCC/WCC type is today. But he did clearly reject things like inerrancy, describing it in at least one book in a way that few inerrantists would recognize. 

He may be best known for his ecumenism. I'm not sure to what degree that meant cozy relations with Rome, but he was a strong advocate for unity among Protestants, evidently believing that to be an important aspect of the church's testimony before the watching world. He was associated with "union" denominations in India and the UK that were the result of a merger of two or more denominations. 

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