Barry D. Jones - Dwell: Life with God for the World

I met Barry Jones at Dallas Theological Seminary in 2010. I had been invited to present some guest lectures to their students on the subject of Christian mission. Although my lectures had been arranged by the missiology department, I was aware that professors from other faculties had been encouraged to attend. So when Dr Jones introduced himself to me as a professor of pastoral ministries and spiritual formation I wasnt surprised, but the way he tells it I visibly recoiled. I guess that was because Id become used to professors of spiritual formation being the last people to really get what I was talking about.

It might be a caricature, but from my experience the professors who teach pastoral ministries tend to be focused on preparing their students with the skills of self-care and the establishment of what they like to call boundaries. They often seem oriented toward the inner work of self-reflection, contemplation and holiness. We missional types are more oriented to the outer work of service, justice seeking, peacemaking and evangelism. Were more in the damn the torpedoes categoryready to fix bayonets at dawn and storm any barricade. In other words, pastoral ministries professors make me nervous. And vice versa.

When Barry approached me that day after my lecture in Dallas, I might have been expecting some pushback from him about how us missional folks need to step away from unreflective and boorish activism and learn to smell the roses. But instead what I got from Barry was an invitation to dinner at a local Vietnamese restaurant. And a pretty good one at that.

Barry and I shared more than a meal that day; we shared our hearts. It had been my hope for some time that someone would write a theology of missional spirituality. Not a version of spirituality that values withdrawal over engagement and pietism over practice, but a model of spiritual formation that sees actional engagement in place and among people as the very stuff from which godly formation can take place. We need a radical spirituality of missional engagement, I pleaded with him.

This, it turned out, was Barrys same desire. He had been tooling around with the guided spiritual formation program at DTS, looking for ways to integrate missional presence with the poor and the lost into the processes of preparation for ministry. He saw justice seeking, peacemaking and neighborliness as the contextual framework for the reflection and inner work required of every follower of Christ.

That day, over a delicious bowl of pho, a friendship was struck and I urged Barry to write something in this field. He took me seriously.

Youll note that the subtitle to this book is Life with God for the World, and youll find that phrase repeated throughout. Thats not simply a snappy title to grab a readers attention. It is the very framework of Barrys thesis. We were made for life with God (spiritual formation) for the world (mission). Indeed, it is this very life that Jesus came to secure for us, and its for more of this life that we actively wait in hope. To hear Barry tell it, living with God for the world is the key to all human flourishing. It involves self-care and introspection, repentance and holiness, and place making, justice seeking, service and evangelism. In this nexus lies the hope of real, abundant, rich, beautiful human existence. Its the place that Jesus modeled for us and about which he spoke when he urged us to love God with all our hearts and souls and minds, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. In short it means to dwellto be at homewith God and for the world.

A few years after that Vietnamese meal in Dallas I was honored to be on a panel assembled by IVP to judge book proposals. I was doubly honored to be part of awarding a contract to Barry Jones for the book you now hold in your hands.

I believe Dwell makes a profound and timely contribution to both missional and pastoral studies, and is written by someone who has invested many years into understanding how to dwell both with God and for the world.

Michael Frost

Morling College, Sydney, Australia