SEEING THE SIGNS FROM STREET LEVEL

BOOK REVIEW: David Leong's Street Signs

David Leong has done us all a great service. With his recently-published book Street Signs, he has added appreciably to an understanding of what it means to live and proclaim the word of God speaking both from and into the cultural landscape.

Using Seattle as his paradigmatic exemplar, Leong, who serves as Assistant Professor of Missiology at Seattle Pacific University's new seminary, writes compellingly about what it means to exegete the neighborhood (the "signs" at street level) and to weave it into a theological context for embodying and witnessing the good news of Christ. His insights, which draw broadly on semiotics and sociology as well as missiology, will provide an additional and likely powerful filter for local churches, parachurch ministry, judicatories, and the academy in their understanding of the nexus of religion and American life -- with untold potential. Especially evocative is his three-"lens" model for urban contextual theology, discussed at length in the book but graphically encapsulated with a diagram on page 220.

As an opening salvo in the emerging subdiscipline, Leong's work does have a few rough edges and places which call for more development. The book reads a bit like a dissertation -- which, apparently, it is, in reworked form. (Leong has his Ph.D. from Fuller Theological Seminary.) At times, the insistence upon reading with the culture and being influenced by insights from the context threatens to overshadow the Biblical mandate to speak into the human story of history, culture, and society. I would have liked to see a bit more of the "hows" of practical application -- which, to be clear, are there to be mined and have great potential for working even interculturally.

For those who are serious about urban ministry, about Christianity's confrontation and interplay with culture, and about how the everyday characteristics of neighborhood life can be potent memes with semiotic significance for mission, this is a book not to be missed. David Leong has given the future of urban Christian work -- indeed, all ministry -- a true gift.

(Leong, David P. Street Signs: Toward a Missional Theology of Urban Cultural Engagement. American Society of Missiology Monograph Series, vol. 12. Eugene, Oregon: Pickwick, 2012. Pp. xx + 250)


Prince Frederick, Maryland (Providence)