The Priesthood of All Students , livre ebook

Timothée Joset’s Priesthood of All Students is a welcome scholarly contribution to the missiological significance of student ministry in diverse contexts for the rapid expansion of global Christianity. His in-depth analysis of the internal ethos, theology and formation process, integrating diverse cultural identities and apprehension of the Christian faith, gives insight into why students and graduates of IFES continue to play significant missional roles in all spheres of engagement. It also comes as no surprise for products of such internal process to be entrusted with leadership roles within church and society. Without a doubt, the ongoing vital impact of student ministry in universities as a whole will continue to have implications for the configuration of the global mosaic of Christianity and mission. I commend this book to all students of God’s mission in our generation and beyond.
Femi B. Adeleye, PhD
Executive Director,
Institute for Christian Impact, Ghana
Research Fellow,
Akrofi-Christaller Institute for Theology, Mission and Culture, Ghana
This book is a timely contribution as we celebrate seventy-five years of IFES ministry, since its formation in 1947. In The Day of His Power (InterVarsity Press,1983), Pete Lowman provided an inspiring and exciting account of the formative decades of the fellowship. Now, Timothée Joset comes up with a fresh, passionate, energetic, yet thoughtful review of the past seventy-five years. He avoids the bias that an ardent militant might have by copiously exploring the literature that advocates for or criticizes the strategic and missiological choices made by IFES in its history.
Beyond the purely descriptive perspective of a historian, he suggests and establishes a coherent missional basis for IFES’s engagement in campus ministry. He finds in the concept of the “priesthood of all believers” the adequate thread that leads to understanding the theological, ecclesiological and missiological rationale that underpins IFES’s ministry and strategic choices.
This book is a must-read for all leaders within IFES today and those involved in university ministry. For those involved with IFES it serves as a perfect marker in the fellowship’s journey: reminding us where we have come from, giving thanks for where we are today, and providing us with confidence for the future. In a nutshell, it strengthens our sense of identity, nurtures our trust in the faithfulness of God and “praises His wondrous deeds to the next generation” (Ps 145).
Michel Kenmogne, PhD
SIL International Executive Director
Based on intense archival research, Joset’s ambitious history of IFES is both theological and global. This useful study will stimulate further research into the important contribution of IFES in the making of worldwide, multi-cultural evangelical Christianity. It convincingly demonstrates why the missiological analysis of global networks is essential to understanding world Christianity today. I highly recommend it.
Dana L. Robert, PhD
William Fairfield Warren Distinguished Professor,
Director, Center for Global Christianity and Mission,
Boston University, Massachusetts, USA
Samuel J. Mikolaski Professor of Religious Studies,
Crandall University, Canada
Evangelical ministry within universities has been a crucial shaper of the contours of contemporary world Christianity, especially in disproving the false connection too often drawn between conservative theology and indifference to issues of social justice. Timothée Joset’s well-documented and theologically informed history of IFES will become a standard source for future researchers.
Brian Stanley, PhD
Professor of World Christianity,
University of Edinburgh, UK
In seventy-five years a remarkable movement of Christian mission to university students has swept across more than 165 countries. How did this come to be? What were the impulses, the struggles and turning points, the sociopolitical contexts, the theologies and callings that shaped the remarkable expansion of IFES to the present? Timothée Joset’s learned and deeply researched book traces the incipient power of belief in a priesthood exercised by students that can be personally and institutionally transformative.
This book reveals how IFES leaders grappled with the waning of imperialism, postcolonialism and decolonization, with race and civil rights movements, Vatican II and the Lausanne movements, and the challenges of indigenization and contextuality as the Majority World has injected a new energy into a vision of student ministry. The Priesthood of All Students perceptively points to new frontiers where there is a shift of emphasis from doctrinal defense to a more socio-missiological focus that engages the whole university and reaches through it to the world. Every leader in IFES and world missions to university will benefit immensely from the rich insights and searching issues that this book brings into the present and heralds for the future.
Terence Halliday, PhD
Emeritus Research Professor,
American Bar Foundation and Honourary Professor,
Australian National University, Australia

The Priesthood of All Students
Historical, Theological and Missiological Foundations of a Global University Ministry
Timothée Joset

© 2023 Timothée Joset
Published 2023 by Langham Global Library
An imprint of Langham Publishing
www.langhampublishing.org
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Langham Partnership
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ISBNs:
978-1-83973-832-6 Print
978-1-83973-876-0 ePub
978-1-83973-877-7 PDF
Timothée Joset has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the Author of this work.
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Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright © 1989 National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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ISBN: 978-1-83973-832-6
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To the many women and men of all five continents whose names never appear in this research but whose often unnoticed yet faithful, prayerful, sacrificial and humble missionary commitment has made the history, theology and missiology of IFES. One day we shall know and rejoice about your world-changing witness.
Contents

Cover


List of Abbreviations


Acknowledgments


Introduction


Historical Background


The Priesthood of All Believers


Methodology


About the Author


Summary


Part 1


A Selective Overview of the History of IFES


1 Student Work before IFES (1800–1909)


2 The Master Narrative of a Separation (1909–1935)


Status of the Bible


Understanding of the Atonement?


A Social Gospel?


Long-Term Consequences


3 Meeting for Conferences (1934–1946)


4 It All Began in a Changing World (1946–1962)


Founding a Fellowship


Constitution


They Were Not Alone: The WSCF and the Early Years of IFES


5 Good News for a World of Revolutions? The 1960s


The Two Ways of Listening and Assertion


Whither Missions?


Staying Firm through the Storm of 1968


Traditional Doctrines for Turbulent Times: General Committee 1971


6 When the South Comes North: The 1970s


Coming to Terms with Marxism: Latin America and Misión Integral


When IFES Changed the Theological World: Lausanne 1974


Lasting Changes


7 Growing Partnerships: The 1980s


1982–83: What Is IFES?


Partnerships on a Global Scale


Graduate Work


The One-Another Ministry of Students to Students


8 A New World Map to Finish a Century: The 1990s


New Nations, New Thinking


Defining the Ecclesiological Character of IFES


Ministering Holistically to the University?


Pioneering, Empire and Indigeneity


A New Time for Mission: GC 1999


Deep Debates for the End of the Millennium


9 IFES in a New Millennium


Provisional Conclusion: History in Writing


Part 2


IFES Activities


10 The Practical Functioning of Student-Led Ministry


Witness


Prayer


Bible Reading


Fellowship


The Complex Role of Staff Members


Partial Synthesis


Part 3


Ecclesiological and Missiological Reflection in IFES


11 A Firm Basis


Genesis of the Doctrinal Basis


Yet Another Creed? Justifying the Doctrinal Basis


Can a Doctrinal Basis Be Reformed?


IFES, Theology and the DB


Theological Analysis


Partial Synthesis: Anchoring Truths for a Changing World


12 IFES Authors Discussing Ecclesiology


T. C. Hammond: In Understanding Be Men


John Stott: One People


Jim Stamoolis: “Ecclesiology and Mission”


René Padilla: “An Ecclesiology for Integral Mission”


David Zac Niringiye: The Church: God’s Pilgrim People


Partial