Book Review - 5/24/2010

Reaching and Teaching: A Call to Great Commission Obedience, M. David Sills, 2010, Moody Publishers, Chicago, ISBN 9780802450296, 227 pages, $16.99, softcover

Christian missions in the last 50-75 years has shifted into overdrive. Since missionaries and missiologists first began realizing that “all the nations” Christ referred to in Matthew 28:19 (panta ta ethne in Greek) had a much broader meaning than simply the geopolitical entities we call countries, the drive to send messengers of the Gospel to every unreached people group on the globe has expanded the Church to never-before-seen levels.

While this explosion of activity has clearly been a God-ordained, Spirit-led movement, in Reaching and Teaching, M. David Sills stands up to say, “slow down” to the missionary establishment, calling readers’ attention to the full scope of Christ’s mandate for the nations. Sills, a former missionary in Ecuador and current professor of Christian missions and cultural anthropology at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky., points out that the fast-track approach to world evangelization often overlooks a key component of the missionary call that is biblically mandated and was historically integrated into mission enterprises—the theological training of national believers.

Sills looks at the state of some of the people groups who have been “reached” and finds that many individuals are falling into heresy, syncretism, and cults because of the lack of adequate training in Scripture and biblical application. He reports that the consistent response to his question for national leaders, “What is your greatest need?” is “More trained pastors.”

The foundation of the book’s argument is the second part of the Great Commission in Matthew 18:20a, “Teaching them to obey all that I commanded you.” Sills calls to task those who promote speed over substance in reaching the nations, arguing that we cannot (and should not) rush to check people groups off the list for the goal of speeding Christ’s return. He returns over and over again to these words of Christ as a clear reminder that “training in righteousness” (2 Tim. 3:16) is just as crucial to the missionary task as evangelism and church planting, and that its omission constitutes a failure to fully obey the Lord.

Reaching addresses this shortcoming by making a biblical and practical case for theological training and studying the example of the Apostle Paul’s ministry. Sills goes on to look at the nuts-and-bolts application of training, such as who should teach (missionaries, nationals, or both), what should be taught, techniques/methods, orality, and contextualization.

While Sills seems to make some straw-man arguments early in the book (regarding the scope of abandonment of theological training by mission agencies), his overall premise is quite sound and ripe for instructing today’s Church. The tone of his book is definitely one of encouragement and exhortation rather than a tearing down of the prevailing strategies. His winsome appeal is accessible to any readers interested in missions, yet does not pull any punches at a missiological level. His themes need to be encountered and applied by pastors, missions committees, missionaries, and sending agencies to their ministries and methods. Don’t let Reaching and Teaching escape your list of must-read ministry books for 2010.

Justin Lonas

Target: All/Missionaries

Type: Missiology

Take: Highly Recommended