The Great Story and the Great Commission: Participating in the Biblical Drama of Mission

In The Great Story and the Great Commission, Christopher Wright explains that how we read the Bible has a profound impact on how we understand what mission is. According to Wright, "People read (and preach) the Bible in tiny bits and pieces, for its promises or rules or doctrines, and fail to take it . . . as the true story of the universe, past, present, and future, within the plan and purposes of God--a story in which we are called to participate as coworkers with God." Wright encourages us to explore the Bible's grand narrative and to bring the whole counsel of God in Scripture to our understanding of who we are and what we must do as God's people. He helps us understand mission in its broadest sense, including our creational responsibilities, by exploring the question, "How does our purposeful activity as God's people in God's world reflect the breadth of God's own intentions for his whole creation and all nations?" Wright's goal is to get readers excited about the dramatic vista of the whole Bible and to help them understand the breadth and depth of missional engagement that they are called to live as actors in that drama. This book will appeal to professors and students of the Bible and mission as well as pastors, lay theologians, and other Christian readers.

Publisher: Baker
Type: Paperback
ISBN: 9781540968869

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Christopher J. H. Wright (PhD, University of Cambridge) is global ambassador and ministry director of the Langham Partnership, a ministry founded by John Stott that is committed to strengthening the majority world church. He taught Old Testament at Union Biblical Seminary in India for five years and was academic dean and then principal of All Nations Christian College for thirteen years. Wright has written many books, including Old Testament Ethics for the People of God, The Mission of God, The Mission of God's People, Knowing God through the Old Testament, and commentaries on Exodus, Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, Lamentations, and Ezekiel.

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"Chris Wright is one of a handful of authors about whom I tell my students to read everything they have written. Trained as an Old Testament scholar, Chris works across biblical studies and missiology, an exceptionally fertile crossroads and one that few have the skill set to execute as well as he does. Chris has long thought, taught, and written about the issues he deals with in this book, and the reader is gifted with the results of all that hard work in comparatively short compass. I cannot recommend this book highly enough!" Craig Bartholomew, director, Kirby Laing Centre for Public Theology, Cambridge