Creating a Welcoming Space: Reflections on Church and Mission: Essays in Honor of Larry Nemer, SVD

Creating a Welcoming Space is an invitation and a challenge for all believers. For Catholic Christians, it is a salient reminder that witness and proclamation happen in an environment of respect and growing understanding of other traditions. For those of other faith commitments, a welcoming space is the arena for dialogue and engagement where we can learn from and be enriched by one another. This fine collection of scholarly articles engages the concept of mission in a changing world where past approaches are assessed, and new challenges engaged, in a process of redefining the meaning and focus of mission in an increasingly secular but multicultural and religiously diverse world.

Consideration of important questions is the driving force for research and among the questions addressed are: What theological resources does the church bring to bear in its engagement with a globalized world? Where and how do we do mission today? How does mission transform the missioner? How does Catholic theology relate to other religious traditions and cultures? Where are the welcoming spaces? How do we undertake mission in the context of human trafficking? In addition to these questions about mission, we have three delightful chapters exploring global and individual issues in mission and history.

The book does more than raise powerful questions. It invites believers to ponder, to dialogue and to rethink. It does this by using the resources of faith and scholarship to probe our inherited legacy and to suggest possible directions by the address of contemporary contexts where the very foundation of our identity as Christians is put to the test.

Our authors write from different contexts: Australia, Italy, Japan and the United States. Their engagement in these different contexts, and with a variety of cultures and faiths, give their scholarship a global point of reference that is essential for effective dialogue with both tradition and history.

The chapters of this interesting and diverse text welcome us into a conversational space where we can engage our minds and hearts in search of greater truth in the service of lived faith in the one God who loves all.