All who are led by God’s Spirit are God’s sons and daughters. 15 You didn’t receive a spirit of slavery to lead you back again into fear, but you received a Spirit that shows you are adopted as his children. With this Spirit, we cry, “ Abba, Father. ” 16 The same Spirit agrees with our spirit, that we are God’s children. 17 But if we are children, we are also heirs. We are God’s heirs and fellow heirs with Christ, if we really suffer with him so that we can also be glorified with him.
In 1910 Protestant missionaries from around the world gathered in Edinburgh to explore the role of Christian missions in the twentieth century. In this collection, leading missiologists use the 100-year anniversary of the Edinburgh conference as an occasion to reflect on the practice of Christian mission in today’s very different context: a context marked by globalization, migration, ecological crisis, and religiously motivated violence. The contributors explore the meaning of Christian mission, the contemporary context for mission work, and new forms in which the church has engaged—and should engage—in its missionary task. From these essays, a vision of twenty first-century mission begins to emerge—one that is aware of issues of race, gender, border spaces, migration, and ecology. This renewed vision gives strength to the future of shared Christian ministry across nations and traditions.