The Edinburgh 1910 World Missionary Conference was the most famous missions conference in modern church history. A century later, five conferences on five continents displayed the landscape of global mission at the dawn of the third millennium: Tokyo 2010, Edinburgh 2010, Cape Town 2010, 2010Boston, and CLADE V (San José, 2012). These five events provide a window into the state of world Christianity and contemporary missiology. Missiologist Allen Yeh, the only person to attend all five conferences, chronicles the recent history of world mission through the lenses of these landmark events. He assesses the legacy of Edinburgh 1910 and the development of world Christianity in the following century. Whereas Edinburgh 1910 symbolized Christendom's mission "from the West to the rest," the conferences of 2010-12 demonstrate the new realities of polycentric and polydirectional mission-from everyone to everywhere.Yeh's accounts of the conferences highlight the crucial missiological issues of our era: evangelism, frontier missions, ecumenism, unengaged and post-Christian populations, reconciliation, postmodernities, contextualization, postcolonialism, migration, and more. What emerges is a portrait of a contemporary global Christian mission that encompasses every continent, embodying good news for all nations.
"This is a volume that should be required reading for anyone interested in missions; be that pastor, professor, student, or layperson."
Fred H. Smith, Missiology, 2018, 46(3)
"Professor Yeh takes us on a tour de force from Edinburgh 1910 to CLADE V, 2012. He gathers mission themes and trends that no one else has been able to present because of his unique experiences attending the five major mission congresses in 2010 and 2012. Polycentric Missiology gives us a road map like no other: a comprehensive overview of twenty-first century mission. This insightful study will provide signposts for mission leadership and engagement for decades to come. I highly recommend Polycentric Missiology!"
