Andrew D Ong

World mission is initiated and empowered by the Spirit of Christ within the body of Christ across the world. Its ultimate goal is the glorification of God among the nations as people become baptized disciples of Jesus who do everything that he commanded. Toward this disciple-making end, the particular activity of world mission is the church bearing witness in word and deed to the good news of Jesus’s redemptive kingdom in all the world and seeking the obedient responses of repentance and faith in Christ for the salvation of the elect and their reconciliation to God. As an event and activity of Christ’s Spirit, world mission is thus a story of what God has been doing and continues to do in the world both through the witnesses he has sent and also among those who have encountered and accepted his witnesses. The following essay will begin with an explanation of the logic behind its definition of world mission, then lay out a biblical case for the basis of world mission, and conclude with a brief discussion of world mission history.

Despite neo-Calvinism’s thorny historic relationship with apartheid, this article retrieves from neo-Calvinism to contribute to the contemporary evangelical conversation about ethnic and multiethnic churches. Scholars of various disciplines have commonly accepted a link between neo-Calvinism and South Africa’s apartheid. Meanwhile, neo-Calvinists labor to sever this link, wishing to disentangle their tradition from apartheid’s evils, such as the enforcement of racially segregated churches. In reaction to the evils of such segregation, many contemporary Evangelicals have advocated for multiethnic churches that demographically reflect their ethnically diverse communities on the basis of Christian unity. This has implicitly and explicitly challenged the legitimacy of ethnic churches. This article contends that despite the link between neo-Calvinism and apartheid, and despite neo-Calvinist efforts to sever this link, neo-Calvinism offers good biblical and theological support for the est...

Recent evangelical scholarship increasingly calls for ethnic theological perspectives
in the American context; for just as the center of World Christianity has shifted from the
West to the Majority World, the ethnic and cultural center of American evangelicalism is
soon to shift – if it has not already. However, among the contextual theologies developed in the U.S., neither an explicitly Chinese American, nor a Chinese American evangelical
theology have been pursued. This is surprising, given that Chinese Americans are the largest demographic of Asian Americans and that the majority of Chinese American Christians identify as evangelical. Thus, this thesis pursues a contextualized Chinese American evangelical theology.
This thesis first begins by explaining the socio-historical factors behind the
prevalence of conservative American evangelicalism amongst Chinese American Christians. Secondly, it identifies the most significant ill-effects of American evangelicalism amongst Chinese American Christians, and diagnoses these ill-effects as theologically rooted in anthropological uniformity, individualism vs. collectivism confusion, and a dualistic doctrine of creation. Thirdly, this thesis considers the “pent-evangelical” theology of Amos Yong as a possible path forward. However, this thesis concludes that while Yong has much to offer Chinese American evangelicals, the neo-Calvinist tradition can not only complement Yong at many points, but also bodes greater promise with less obstacles for a robust theology of ethnicity, a harmonic vision of individuals and collectives, and a holistic doctrine of creation that is still able to maintain distinctions. Hence, this thesis takes a step in the direction of a contextualized Chinese American evangelical theology that both critiques and benefits not only Chinese American evangelicals, but the broader swath of American Christians who have uncritically embraced some of the problematic assumptions found within popular and
conservative American evangelical theology.

Despite neo-Calvinism's thorny historic relationship with apartheid, this article retrieves from neo-Calvinism to contribute to the contemporary evangelical conversation about ethnic and multiethnic churches. Scholars of various disciplines have commonly accepted a link between neo-Calvinism and South Africa's apartheid. Meanwhile , neo-Calvinists labor to sever this link, wishing to disentangle their tradition from apartheid's evils, such as the enforcement of racially segregated churches. In reaction to the evils of such segregation, many contemporary Evangelicals have advocated for mul-tiethnic churches that demographically reflect their ethnically diverse communities on the basis of Christian unity. This has implicitly and explicitly challenged the legitimacy of ethnic churches. This article contends that despite the link between neo-Calvinism and apartheid, and despite neo-Calvinist efforts to sever this link, neo-Calvinism offers good biblical and theological support for the establishment of ethnic churches in mul-tiethnic contexts without at all denigrating multiethnic churches or falling into the evils of apartheid.

A key test of any theological tradition’s relevance in the twenty-first century is whether or not and how it is able to engage with “World Christianity.” The historical roots of World Christianity as a field of study can be found in the areas of ecumenics, missions, and world religions, but it has also come to engage social science, history, and theology.1 This chapter aims to provide a twenty-first-century perspective on the interplay between the neo-Calvinist theological tradition and World Christianity as a burgeoning phenomenon
and significant field of study. It will be suggested that although neo-Calvinism has Western roots in the Dutch Reformed tradition, neo-Calvinism is not at odds with World Christianity. Rather, neo-Calvinism, at its best, possesses distinct, internal resources and theological commitments that allow it to constructively support, continually learn from, and practically engage World Christianity.