Every time a new thought gains wide interest there is the tendency to describe it as entirely new and distinct from earlier ideas. I have noticed this since I myself have done a lot of thinking about the emergence of frontiers in mission. The bulletin of the U.S. Center for World Mission is actually named Mission Frontiers, and has been published continuously for more than 25 years. The International Society for Frontier Missiology has been around many years, and its associated journal, the International Journal of Frontier Missions just now completes its 21st year, which I have edited the last four years.

There are Many Mission Frontiers

More specifically, I have dealt with 12 major frontiers which, as I see it, have gained attention during the relatively short history of our work here. That paper may be found in the the larger compilation, Frontiers in Mission, which is a 300page "course-pak" of over 50 of my writings in this area which I recently put together for a class I taught at Columbia International University entitled, Frontiers in Mission Thinking.

Those twelve frontiers range widely over the general field of missions and, of course, in particular frontiers in mission. In that list I include frontiers that are no longer entirely frontiers, such as the massive switch in mission thinking from evangelizing individuals of whatever background, to the evangelization of specific people groups. This particular frontier peaked in a way in 1980 at the World Consultation of Frontier Missions held in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Another frontier I mention is far less well addressed as yet, and has been called "Radical Contextualization." It is closely associated with the even more radical concept of the Gospel expanding now around the world in ways not associated directly with identifiable forms of what we loosely call "Christianity." This more radical frontier I have called "Beyond Christianity."

Other frontiers mentioned in that paper touch on the way we train leaders in the mission lands, the rarely considered interface between Christianity and science, and the perplexing confusion about the works of Satan today, such as clever disease germs displaying unexplainable intelligence, which continue on unnoticed and almost totally unassailed from a theological or Christian point of view.