What does the Bible say about God’s purpose for us, the witness of the church, and our mission to spread the message of the gospel?

Chris Wright’s pioneering 2006 book, The Mission of God, revealed that the typical Christian understanding of “missions” encompasses only a small part of God’s overarching mission for the world. God is relentlessly reclaiming the whole of creation for himself, and each of us fit into that big-picture plan.

In The Mission of God’s People, Wright argues that having a strong biblical theology that shapes our thinking and behavior must be in place before answering the call of the Great Commission. Wright first steps back and answers some of the biggest questions of God’s story and our place within it:

• Who are the people of God?
• What kind of people are we?
• What are the priorities and limits of our mission?
• What exactly is the gospel that lies at the core of our mission?
• What was it that made Christianity a missionary faith from the very start?

While answering these essential questions, Wright thoroughly details what the Old and New Testaments teach Christians about being God’s people. He addresses questions of both ecclesiology (the theology of the church) and missiology (the practice and methodology of missions) with topics like “called to care for creation,” “called to bless the nations,” “sending and being sent, and “rejecting false gods.”

Part of the Biblical Theology for Life series, this practical and robust book will help you and your church ground your witness-bearing purpose and worship on the solid foundation of biblical understanding and reflection.

Critic Reviews

What a marvelous author Chris Wright is! Here you get the distilled insight of someone who knows mission and knows the Scriptures—and because he is an Old Testament specialist, he gives that major part of the Scriptures the prominence it deserves, even (especially?) when we are thinking about a subject such as mission that might seem to belong to the New Testament. And he doesn’t confine himself to scriptural themes but enables us to get inside lots of particular Scriptures, all in easily manageable chunks. What do theology and mission have to do with each other? This book powerfully answers the question.
— John Goldingay, Professor