Seventy-Five Years of IFMA: 1917-1992, The Nondenominational Missions Movement.

Wilson, Samuel

Because of the important contribution to past and current mission activity by member missions of the Interdenominational Foreign Mission Association (IFMA), this is an important book. Edwin "Jack" Frizen believes in the nondenominational agencies, whose association he led for twenty-eight years. This effort is welcome as his history of "faith" mission agencies.

It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of innovative missionary structures to the church's missionary task. Frizen begins with detailed, selected snippets as reminders of this unassailable fact. But his championing of faith societies implies connections for the IFMA to any and all agencies of like character. Yet some of the nondenominational agencies that he traces have no historical connection with the IFMA.

Perhaps the greatest value of the book will be for students of mission who will cull the book for facts and supply the interpretive principles his style omits. Some of his listings are seminal typologies for improved practice. This is certainly true of the organizations and patterns on page 399. Other raw data of high value are provided.

But the quasi-journalistic style leaves the reader with puzzles to solve. Frizen deprives us of engagement with his evaluative process. Immersed in the long and noble history he is sharing, he is content simply to state "what is" without marshalling evaluative arguement. All "facts" (which sometimes are opinions) appear to have equal weight.

Seventy-Five Years buttresses IFMA stances, often by stating them as if they were the only logical or right stance. So this book perplexes by leaving important questions undeveloped. Why is diversity healthy within the IFMA but dangerous outside it (especially when the theme of the concluding chapter is the power of unity as a key to world evangelization)? Why did the IFMA object to Roman Catholics in attendance at the Lausanne Congress in Manila in 1989? His quotation from a World Evangelical Fellowship position paper suffices: "We consider the members of the Roman Catholic Church to be part of our mission field." This event with Catholics to be eschewed. But why? They might have conversion experiences equal to the stuanchest non-Roman evangelical. And why is a congress with World Vision undesirable? We might have profited from greater rationale.

The style is explained if one assumes that the intended audience is the IFMA set. From within familiar stances. Frizen writes to extend the impact of the agencies he knows and loves so well. But a good editor would have addressed these issues to gain a broader hearing for valuable information.