Over the past 50 years there have been extensive innovations in world missions, including in strategies, organizations, technology and practices, according to Jim Reapsome in the book Innovation in Mission: Insights into Practical Innovations Creating Kingdom Impact, edited by Reapsome and Jon Hirst. The book consists of a number of chapters describing current innovations which are expected to have impact over the next 50 years:
- Church mobilization involves whole churches getting involved in world mission, rather than delegating it to missionaries
- Kingdom businesses are for-profit businesses whose explicit purpose is to serve God’s kingdom concerns
- Member care is a challenging cultural issue for South Asian mission organizations
- Short-term mission can be very useful if conducted according to a code of best practice
- Training of local writers and publishers is very important in countries which are culturally quite different from North America
- Content management is a challenging technological issue for publishers
- Media missions involve crafting messages which communicate the good news
- Strategic planning and partnerships have been critical to the success of the FirstLIGHT software-based training material in China
- Resourcing of Latin American pastors is being accomplished through technology
- Online learning is becoming increasingly important in the field of missionary education
- Theological education in Africa is increasingly organized by highly qualified and committed Africans, now that Africa has more Christians than North America
There is some variability in content, as usually happens in books written by multiple authors, but every chapter has some interesting and inspiring insights on how mission is changing. Unfortunately the formatting of the Kindle version of the book is disappointing, with diagrams not being rendered correctly and the table of contents not being linked to the chapters. Nonetheless the book provides a very useful survey of ways in which the mission field is changing.