A broad look at the broad topic of evangelism.
Yesterday I was riding with other faculty to a resort on the outskirts of Davao City (Mindanao). We were talking about a couple of religious groups that spun off of Christianity to the point that they could not be called orthodox, and perhaps not even Christian. Some would call them cults... but I like to …
Continue reading The “Golden Mean” Theory of Creating Cultic Groups
The Truth we communicate is a Person, not a system of thought. ... While we know this very well, it is often our practice to speak as if we were engaged primarily in an intellectual combat. We waste a lot of gunpowder shooting down people's ideas, but spend very little time in understanding why they …
Continue reading Melba P. Maggay Quote on Communicating our Faith
I was reading "Encountering the History of Missions" by John Mark Terry and Robert Gallagher. In the Reformers, particularly Martin Luther and John Calvin, they try to make the (what I consider to be) controversial argument that they were quite missional. Their argument, however, seems to boil down to, "See how much they tried to …
Continue reading If I Try to Get You to Leave Your Church to Go to My Church, Is That Missions?
Today, I was in a Bible Study. It was an evangelistic bible study. It was rather interesting. For one thing, the facilitator used Ecclesiastes. He focused on our need for purpose in life--- about what truly gives life meaning. That was, I believe a far superior strategy to, for example, the ones that try to …
Continue reading Are There Concerns With Linking the Sinner’s Prayer with Salvation?
The title says it. I don't involve myself in evangelistic events anymore. Years ago I did... and I will go into that. I have a number of reasons to, perhaps not oppose them but, choose not to support them. I will give two. #1. Historical. I come from Western New York. This area had the …
Continue reading Why I Don’t “Do” Evangelistic Events Anymore
I received an email asking if I had developed any more my idea of the Evangelism Cube--- a fairly simple idea I had written up back in 2010. My answer was essentially, "NO." However, I had actually written a bit more about this topic in my book, "Ministry in Diversity," which I put together for …
I am sure there is a nice term for this, but since I am not involved in marketing, I don't know what it is. But here are a few examples. A Christian theologian who I really appreciate moved his personal blog onto Patheos. Of course, Patheos has a LOT of advertisements on the webpage they …
Continue reading Reflecting on Crappy Ads on Christian Websites
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 …
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
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?