For some reason an article I wrote many years ago (2006/7) has become very popular online. It has really taken off on Academia.edu. The name is "Challenges in Doing Church-Initiated Community Development in the Philippines." Admittedly, my writings are FAR FROM VIRAL. Still, relatively speaking it is quite surprising how many people are reading it. …
Month: October 2021
Using Non-Christian Works to Lead People to Christ?
A friend of mine is writing a paper on the use of the Qur'an as part of the evangelization process of Muslims. In his research he got some pushback. Some feel that it is inappropriate for a Christian to use a non-canonical work (obviously using the term 'canonical' from the Christian rather than Muslim perspective). …
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Divine Empowerment to do Evil
BACKGROUND STORY Today I have reached my 11th anniversary on this webpage. A few months ago I figured out that if I took all my my writing, removed the images from it, and then published it as a standard hard-cover book, it would be over 2000 pages long. That is a lot of writing. Today, …
Christian Medical Missions— Can it be Done in a God-honoring Manner?
Twelve years ago, I finished my dissertation at Asia Baptist Graduate Theological Seminary. It was on medical missions in the Northern Philippines. Although I would have written some of it different now than I did back then; still, the findings were solid. I hope that the findings are helpful to people, but all too often …
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The Missionary’s Two Homes
Sometimes as Christians we talk about the idea that this world is not our real home--- heaven is our real home. One of my favorite gospel songs as a youth spoke of this. The first verse said, "This wold is not my my home, I'm a just a passin' through. If heaven's not my home, …
The Unappetizing Worm and the Squid Game
Photo by Sippakorn Yamkasikorn on Pexels.com I did a lot of fishing when I was young. Truthfully, I did not care for fishing all that much. I enjoyed hiking and exploring, but fishing only allowed one to do those things for a short while followed by hours of sitting or standing in a hot sticky …
The Wrong Answer to Grief
A guilty pleasure of mine, of sorts, is true crime podcasts. I was listening to one recently. It was on "Crime Junkies," regarding "The Hendricks Case." In that case, a woman and her three children were killed in their home while the father was on a business trip. More information can be found in the …
Reading the “Lost Books of the Bible”?
I have been reading a fairly old book "The Lost Books of the Bible" that is a collection of books from much longer ago. So far I have read, "The Gospel of the Birth of Mary," "The Protoevangelium," "The First Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ," "Thomas Gospel of the Infancy of Jesus Christ," …
“Enoughness” Part 2
You are welcome to look back on Part 1 if you want. However, that was more of a critique of a podcast and where I was inspired by the 'not-so-correct' English term "Enoughness." For me, I would like to think of "Enoughness" as a characteristic of commonality of humans. None of us are identical with …
“Enoughness” Part One
I was listening to the podcast "The Missions Podcast" (by ABWE). They had a guest, E.D. Burns, who wrote a book called "The Transcultural Gospel: Jesus Is Enough for Sinners in Cultures of Shame, Fear, Bondage, and Weakness." I have not read the book, it just came out, but here are a few quick thoughts before …