Carlos F. Cardoza-Orlandi. "Mission: An Essential Guide"

An Essential Guide is written with a particular perspective that may help the reader rethink and rediscover mission in a new way — a perspective from one who was missionized and who believes in mission.



Most mission textbooks in English are written by writers from the Euro-Atlantic context who have missionary experience and who have a deep commitment to the gospel. There are a few written by writers in the Southern continents,1 but most of these focus on one dimension of missionary work—interreligious dialogue, contextualization, interpretation of Scripture, and so forth. Very few English texts, whose purpose is to provide a general but informed perspective on mission, are written from the side of those who experience a double identity: we have been the object of mission and we are subjects of mission. This book presents a missional reflection from a Caribbean/ Hispanic-Latino perspective. This means that in a very particular way, I share my missional knowledge and perspective from the experience of being missionized. At times, being the object of mission symbolized a religious and social location that assumed that my cultures were inferior and that my multiple religious backgrounds were deficient.