Conference prepares to tackle culture

The Canadian Conference of MB Churches will gather in Abbotsford, B.C. Oct. 11–13 for their bi-annual study conference to discuss culture, gospel, and church. George Hunsberger, professor of congregational mission at Western Theological Seminary in Holland, Mich., will deliver three of the keynote addresses.

An ordained pastor in the Presbyterian church, Hunsberger hails originally from Florida. Aside from pastoring congregations in Mississippi, he has worked for Intervarsity Christian Fellowship and spent time as a mission team leader in Kenya. He then moved to teaching.

During his early years as a professor, Hunsberger had his whole understanding of ministry turned on its head. The occasion was a series of lectures given by the late Lesslie Newbigin, English theologian and missionary to India.

Hunsberger explains that Newbigin looked through his 40 years of missionary service in India and saw that Western culture was as much a mission field as India. Newbigin challenged his listeners to a new approach in the West – the approach of a missionary.

“These lectures helped me connect a whole bunch of things I’d been thinking about,” says Hunsberger. He recalls a meeting where Newbigin threw down the gauntlet. “He challenged me to begin looking at how the church is by nature a missionary church.”

Hunsberger has taken Newbigin’s gauntlet seriously. Along with others, Hunsberger authored Missional Church: A Vision for the Sending of the Church in North America, which has been instrumental in helping churches rethink their role in culture. “Ultimately, the New Testament is a book about mission – about God’s mission and our part in it. Mission is not an activity of the church, rather mission is the essential character of the church,” says Hunsberger.

He also co-founded The Gospel and Our Culture Network (GOCN). Through the GOCN, Hunsberger has encouraged North American churches to develop a bigger, more biblical understanding of the gospel. Why? “First, because the ordinary path of life for Christ-followers is one of deep inner rootedness in the life and death of Jesus. And second, because it’s the responsibility of Christian communities to give the good news of God its lived expression.”

Hunsberger looks forward to interacting with Mennonite Brethren and feels that MBs have always thought carefully about the church’s place in the world. His three talks will look at the themes of the conference: gospel, church, and culture. They promise to be provocative, insightful, and challenging for all who live on the mission frontier.

—David Eagle for the Board of Faith and Life study conference committee