Anthropologists sometimes spend several decades talking about people and situations they have not seen since their initial fieldwork; small wonder if their enthusiasm wanes and their credibility is sapped. But missiologists too may experience a certain tension between their teaching about and their experience of mission.
Jesus' message is for everyone and for all time, but he ministered in a particular time and place and adopted a clear perspective: that of the poor, the sinners, the outcasts. This article, heavily autobiographical, attempts to link fieldwork and ministry, the academy and the community, in the spirit of Jesus-the-missionary.
