Missionary Motivations

Challenges from the Early Church

Matthew Burden

This book seeks to open a window “on the way that Christians in the early centuries of our faith thought about the task of global mission” (page vii). It aims to expand our understanding of mission history with a theological mindset by exploring the theologies of mission that undergirded the spread of the gospel in the patristic period (from the end of the first century into the eighth century). To do this, the author divides the book into two parts: (1) a historical survey that examines Christian expansion within the Roman Empire, then to the east, south, and north; and (2) a sustained reflection on the motivations of these historical accounts based on the theology of Christ’s present reign expressed in communal mission practice, on the theology of human identity, on the development of missional church cultures, and insights on how the early church can offer perspective to today’s mission.