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Title: The Great Story and the Great Commission: Participating in the Biblical Drama of MissionAuthor: Christopher J.H. WrightPublisher: Baker Publishing 2024ISBN: 978-1-540968869Price: £9.95 (paperback)Rev Dr Chris Wright is well qualified to write on this after a lifetime in biblical studies, primarily the Old Testament, and most of that in a mission context: teaching at Union Biblical Seminary in Pune, India, Principal of All Nations in the UK and having worked internationally with Langham Partnership for the last 20 years. This book is not a mission tool kit, an ABC of how to “do” mission, but it does lay very important, even crucial, foundations. Getting our thinking straight as to what we mean by mission and why mission is our business is surely important for all of us wanting to engage in our Diocesan Years of Mission.The author presents the biblical narrative as a “drama” moving from creation in the first chapter of Genesis to new creation in the last chapters of Revelation. The “drama” is in seven acts: creation, rebellion, promise, Christ, mission, judgement, new creation. That great story is “a declaration of the mission of God to rid his whole creation of evil and create for himself a people redeemed from every tribe and nation of humanity as the population of the new creation”. The people of God (Israel in the Old Testament, the church in the New) participate with God in bringing that about.Chris Wright then challenges us to see the great commission of Jesus in Matthew 28 as a call to his disciples to play their part in that Great Story, which means it’s not just about evangelism. The Bible narrative as a whole and the great commission show the whole mission of God being about: 1) evangelism and teaching, 2) justice and compassion, 3) creation responsibility.This is a helpful book. It effectively sets out the seven act drama of God’s mission, which in turn helps us to see where we feature in the “great story”. It will help us avoid seeing mission as a “bolt-on extra”. It will keep us humble when we see God at work in our mission activity and keep us hopeful when things don’t work out as we want.There are helpful diagrams: the depiction of the great story, the role of Israel and the Church, and the gospel-centre of the different aspects of mission.The author’s breadth and depth of understanding of the bible enables him to speak from the whole of scripture (the “whole will of God”) rather than a few proof texts. Similarly, a lifetime of working with scholars from around the world helps avoid the pitfalls of partisanship. The “Five Marks of Mission” which he discusses are of course those of the global Anglican church.Wary as I am of critiquing Chris Wright, I would make two observations.I suspect he has in mind churches, probably more in America that the UK, that so emphasise evangelism that mission in matters of justice and compassion is neglected and mission in matters of creation responsibility possibly even rejected. I suspect over-involvement in evangelism is not a problem in many of our churches.In seeking balance, the book’s language of rejecting the “primacy of evangelism” risks downplaying our need to prioritise it. My analogy would be the supermarket trolley that always veers to the left. To steer straight you need to put more effort towards the right. If our churches are to keep balanced the three aspects of mission we do need to put more effort into evangelism. Otherwise, it somehow falls off our agenda because evangelism is hard work, because we are not used to it, because we struggle to catch up with how far British society has moved from the Christian norms and understandings of sixty years ago.Having said that, I would thoroughly recommend the book to those wanting to participate in God’s mission to the World. It is massively helpful to be able to see ourselves in God’s Great Story and to have a holistic picture of mission. It leaves the challenge of how each of our churches, and indeed each of us individually, respond to the great commission. And for that the eight-session course, Understanding Mission might be worth a look! (see UnderstandingMission.org), the tool perhaps to work out the implications for us of the book’s concluding statements:God’s whole mission is for God’s whole churchThe whole church’s mission includes every church memberEvery church member’s mission includes the whole of life.Canon Alan Chadwick