Bill texted me early today. “I CAUGHT DEATH!! GET OVER HERE NOW!” Bill was not one to CAP LOCK his messages so I figured it was important. I drove over and Bill opened his door even before I got out of the car. “Get in here now! I got him... or it... or whatever!” I …
Continue reading “When Bill Caught Death”— A Reflective Story
I have been teaching Inter-religious Dialogue (IRD) for several years now. While teaching it, I teach several different list of "rules" associated with IRD. However, the one I tend to focus on is the 7 Rules compiled by Max Warren. But as I have been thinking about it, it occurred to me that I should …
Continue reading My Rules of Interreligious Dialogue Project
We live in a world of nuance, but as humans we like to categorize things. Nothing wrong with that. Things are complicated and so we simplify things to understand them. One way we simplify things is to assume that much in the world can be placed into one of two bins--- "The Right Way" or …
Continue reading Doing Christian Missions Both Wrong and Right
I wrote an unnecessarily long article on asceticism and Christmas, and then added the positive spin on Christmas having both sacred and secular symbols and stories. I argued that there is a balance needed in Christmas between the pressures to embrace asceticism or revelry. I also argued that there is value Christmas as a sacred …
<I put this on my other webpage... the missions page of my wife and mine. But it is relevant here as well... so here it is.> One of those things that is considered “normal’ in the mission field is getting robbed. It is simply presumed in many cases that since one is moving to a …
Continue reading Robbery and Missions— a Generally Balanced Reflection
Ollie hatched and drifted up to the surface of the pond. As his eyes adjusted to the surrounding landscape. He saw a dragonfly clinging to some grass growing from the edge of water. Of course Ollie did not know what a dragonfly was, or grass. All he knew was his name and he did not …
Instead of going to Academia.edu, you can read it below. APOSTLES/EVANGELISTS OF THE FIRST THREE CENTURIES AS EXEMPLARS OF MODERN MISSIONARIES
I recently finished an article titled, "Apostles/Evangelists of the First Three Centuries as Exemplars for Modern Missionaries." The abstract is as follows: This paper considers the challenge of defining the term missionary in a way that is useful--- neither excessively broad nor narrow in scope. It is suggested that rather than focusing on a definition …