I recently finished reading the book The Pastor as A Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015). The authors write, “Our task in this book is to argue, first, that pastors must be theologians; second, that every theologian is in some sense a public theologian; and third, that a public theologian is a very particular kind of generalist.” (p. 5) I am not going to review this excellent book but use it as a springboard to the question of missionaries as public theologians. First I would argue that missionaries, like pastors, must be theologians. The missionary task is fundamentally a theological task. Unfortunately, theology is often seen as impractical and esoteric. But theology is practical; “William Ames [a Puritan] says it is simply the teaching of ‘living to God’.”(Vanhoozer and Strachan, p. 16) “To be a Christian theologian is to… Read the whole post