Missiology 101

About this video

Nigel Rooms introduces missiology through the idea of a shifting culture and static church. He argues that Western churches need a paradigm shift as culture has changed around it. Drawing on thinkers such as Thomas Kuhn, David Bosch, and Bevans and Schroeder, he centres on Missio Dei. This is the mission that originates in God’s very nature, not primarily in the church. The church exists to participate in what God is already doing. This reframes mission as discernment, dialogue, justice, inculturation, reconciliation, and spiritual attentiveness, while honestly confronting Christianity’s colonial past and affirming a polycentric, global future for mission.

Background

Produced in 2026. Provisional captions. This talk is divided into chapters as follows:

1. The Bridge and the Moving River: Setting the Problem 0:10 – 2.55

• Opening image of the Choluteca Bridge as an analogy
• The church as a solid structure whose cultural “river” has moved
• Introduction of paradigm shift as the key interpretive lens

2. Paradigm Shifts, Biography, and Mission Experience 2:55 – 5:52 

• Explanation of paradigm shifts (Kuhn, Galileo, Heisenberg)
• “No theology without biography”
• Personal narrative: vocation, Tanzania, and cultural displacement

3. Missio Dei: Mission as God’s Nature 5:52 – 13:00

• Introduction of Missio Dei
• David Bosch and Transforming Mission
• Mission shifts from church activity to God’s own being
• Trinitarian theology: God as “mission” and self-giving love

4. Church, Critique, and Decolonising Mission 13:00 – 20:30 

• Church participation in God’s mission (not ownership of it)
• Critiques of mission history: colonialism, violence, silencing
• Decline of missiology in Western academia and its reframing
• Global South, polycentric mission, and ongoing relevance

5. Prophetic Dialogue and the Practice of Mission Today 20:30 – 26:00

• Bevans & Schroeder: Prophetic Dialogue
• Six elements of mission (witness, worship, justice, dialogue, inculturation, reconciliation)
• Inculturation and contextual theology
• Concluding synthesis: simplicity and complexity of mission.