What is Integral Mission ? Rene Padilla

This is a copy and paste of the "Integral Mission blog"

Dr Rene Padilla has inspired me on my youth, I was 18 years old when I first read him. Some years later he still inspires me and I still learn a lot from him. He grew up in Ecuador and Colombia, studied in England and now lives in Buenos Aires in Argentina

Enjoy it

Dr C. René Padilla

Although it has recently become fashionable to use the term integral mission, the approach to mission that it expresses is not new. The practice of integral mission goes back to Jesus himself and to the first century Christian church. Furthermore, a growing number of churches are putting this style of mission into practice without necessarily using this expression to refer to what they are doing: integral mission is not part of their vocabulary. It is clear that the practice of integral mission is much more important than the use of this new expression to refer to it.

The expression integral mission (misión integral) came into use principally within the Latin American Theological Fraternity (FTL) about twenty years ago. It was an attempt to highlight the importance of conceiving of the mission of the church within a more biblical theological framework than the traditional one, which had been accepted in evangelical circles due to the influence of the modern missionary movement. In the last few years the expression has been used so widely that the literal translation into English, integral mission, is gradually becoming a part of the vocabulary of those who are pressing for a more holistic approach to the Christian mission, even outside Spanish-speaking evangelical circles
What is this approach to mission? In what aspects does it differ from the traditional approach?

The Traditional Approach to Mission

In the traditional approach, which took shape within the modern missionary movement especially since the end of the eighteenth century, the Christian mission was conceived of mainly in geographical terms: it consisted in crossing geographic frontiers for the purpose of taking the gospel from the Christian West to the mission fields of the non-Christian world (the heathen). In other words, to speak of mission meant speaking of transcultural mission.

.... it continues here http://integral-mission.org/blog/2006/03/what_is_integral_mission_anywa_1.html

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