Building on my previous post of A Biographical Profile of Lesslie Newbigin, I wanted to now provide a theological profile to illustrate the nature and significance of Newbigin’s contribution to the theology of mission and most particularly to the present emerging/missional conversation. Newbigin’s work predates the emerging/missional terminology, but particularly as regards the missional conversation, his work is foundational. In 1998, the year he died, The Bible Society published a special issue of The Bible in TransMission as a Tribute to Lesslie Newbigin with contributions from Martin Robinson, Wilbert Shenk, Harold Turner, Dan Beeby, George Hunsberger, and Colin Greene. Wilbert Shenk calls him a missionary theologian, a contextual theologian, and strategic theologian, three of the headings in his article, “Lesslie Newbigin’s Contribution to the Theology of Mission.”

Lesslie Newbigin is one of the most significant figures to the emerging/missional conversation, and is often referenced but less often read. A large number of conversational participants were born in the 1980s around the time his seminal Foolishness to the Greeks: The Gospel and Western Culture was printed. It was brand-new and required reading for anyone with more than a passing interest in the “missions” track when I entered Bible College. With new books arriving on the emerging/missional scene weekly we can sometimes forget the dusty imprints that have gone before, and in the case of authors like Newbigin who have passed into the beyond, the fact that new books do not appear can push them from our minds as anything more than an endnote in the bibliography of something more “currently relevant.” In Newbigin’s case, he was much before his time, and anyone engaged in this ongoing conversation owes it to themselves to understand something of his work and his contribution. With that in mind, I thought I’d take it upon myself to attempt to provide a sketch.