Journal: Southern Baptist Journal of Theology
Volume: SBJT 23:3 (Fall 2019)
Article: The Church’s Mission Constrained By The Covenants: Engaging Christopher Wright’s Conception Of The Bible’s Covenantal Structure
Author: John A. Wind

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The Church’s Mission Constrained By The Covenants: Engaging Christopher Wright’s Conception Of The Bible’s Covenantal Structure

John A. Wind

John A. Wind is Assistant Professor of Theology at Colorado Christian University, Lakewood, Colorado. He earned his PhD in Christian Missions from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky. He is the author of Do Good to All People as You Have the Opportunity: A Biblical Theology of the Good Deeds Mission of the New Covenant Community (P&R, 2019). Previously, Dr. Wind served with his family in Asia for eight years.

Christopher J. H. Wright is one of the leading evangelical voices today addressing the theology of the church’s mission. Wright, an Anglican pastor, Old Testament (OT) scholar, and International Ministries Director of Langham Partnership International, is a key figure in the Lausanne Movement. This includes his role as the chair of the Cape Town 2010 Statement Working Group which drafted the Cape Town Commitment, the third major declaration of the Lausanne Movement, following the 1974 Lausanne Covenant and the 1989 Manila Manifesto. Both the Cape Town Commitment and the larger body of Wright’s publications are expressions of his project “to present a whole-Bible approach to missional theology,” framing the Christian mission within the metanarrative of Scripture and the larger mission of God.1 As an OT scholar, Wright particularly wants Christians to see the special role of the

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OT in formulating missiology, an expression of what Wright calls “the great love-affair of my life with the ethical study and relevance of the Old Testament.”2

Not only does Wright highlight the importance of framing missions within the larger story of Scripture but also the importance of having “the right story ‘in our heads,’” with Wright especially emphasizing that God’s mission—and related human missions—are central to understanding “the right story” of the Bible.3 The right story produces the right conception of missions since “if we are to understand the mission of the church, then, we must understand the overarching biblical narrative within which the church participates.”4 Furthermore, Wright identifies the centrality of the biblical covenants to this scriptural storyline. According to Wright,

the story of the covenants in the Bible is the story of God, and vice versa ... The succession of covenants recorded in the Bible is l...