I have heard it said that if you are a REAL Christian, then you will, of course, want to join together as believers in church. And I have been in situations where I could really relate to this. I remember being in the US Navy (a culture with its share of toxicity) and going to …
Continue reading Churches That Make Avoiding Church Not Seem So Bad
One of my students read an article "Conversion or Proselytization? Being Maasai, Becoming Christian" by Joshua Robert Barron. The article takes a very positive view of conversion and a negative view of proselytization. Since a lot of people (including myself) use the terms generally interchangeably, I was curious at what his point was. Conversion seems …
My favorite "Great Commission" is the one recorded in John "As the Father has sent me, I am sending you." (John 20:21). But it is not the most popular one. Some people prefer the one in Acts 1:8. That sending forth nature of the Gospel Call is inspirational. I recently read one writer who noted …
Years ago I was told (by someone, somewhere) that theological writing should be dispassionate, because it is supposed to be objective, not subjective. One is not supposed to put in exclamation points (!!!) or ALL CAPS or use strongly emotional language to express arguments or ideas. The reason I was given was that research is …
Continue reading Theology— Writing Dispassionately for Passionate People
I am considering writing a book--- or maybe only an article, we will see--- on a model of missions that embraces Weak, Small, and Poor as positive, even defining, characteristics. In line with that, I was looking a bit at Mission from a Position of Weakness by Paul Jeong (American University Studies Series 7--- Theology …
I was starting to develop a list of rules of IRD by applying Grounded Theory Analysis to several other lists developed by others. I completed the first step (Open Coding) and got a ways into the Axial Coding. However, I sort of lost steam at that point and so I came up with a list …
Continue reading My (Tentative) Rules of Interreligious Dialogue
One thing I like to say, although often fail to practice, is that when trying to teach, one should aim for 50% Information and 50% Inspiration. Information can be gathered through research or personal experience, but Inspiration is a bit harder to attain. I think it is partly a work of God, but also a …
Continue reading Book Review: “Pursuing the Call” by Danny Lamastra
Found a nice article today that I had not read before. It was written around 1994. It is on the Missio Nexus website, titled "World Evangelization by AD2000: Will We Make It?" (https://missionexus.org/world-evangelization-by-a-d-2000-will-we-make-it/). The article was written by "Anonymous." I don't know who wrote it, actually, but the address for queries suggests that he or …
Continue reading Who Are The Appropriate Targets of Christian Missions/Evangelism?