Category: Church in Mission

  • Everett Cattell’s Principle of Authority (pt. 3)

    Series contents | Intro | Part Two | Part Three | Part Four | Part Five Cattell’s understanding of authority is derived from Christ, who is the head of the church. He argues that there is a tendency in the church to choose some one authority over another. Christ as head relativizes arguments over authority…

  • A Quakerism Worth Believing In

    The convictions of the First Friends were what ordered their theo-political imagination (as Cavanugh calls it). This ‘imagination’ guided their practice, their missionary-inspired anti-Constantinian message that Christ had retunred and is the head of the church. The head of the church is not the state, it’s not learned clergy, but  Christ alone. The Quaker narrative…

  • Wilbert Shenk on Ecclesiology and Mission

    In discussing how particular, newly planted and non-Western, churches could potentially develop “in loco an ecclesiology at once biblically and theologically responsive,” mission historian and theologian, Wilbert Shenk argues that ecclesiology has in the past often been ignored or fallen secondary to the primacy of evangelism and conversion of individuals. This is largely due to…

  • Everett Cattel on the Great Commission (pt. 2)

    Series contents | Intro | Part Two | Cattell believes that mission must start from the Great Commission, not only a central theme in the New Testament, but a central theme throughout all of Scripture. He remarks that if the Gospels authors would not have penned the Great Commission, it would not matter because we…

  • Everett Cattell: Quaker and Mission Theologian

    Series contents | Intro | Part Two | This is a part of a series I will be doing on Cattell and his contributions to the Friends Church and missiology. Everett Cattell is an important figure when it comes to missiology within the Friends Church. He and his wife Catherine De Vol were sent to…