We just got a box of goods from our home church. It had a couple of books, some vitamins, Old Bay Seasoning, clarinet reeds, a table cloth, some letters from children and friends at our home church, and a couple of bottles of Screaming Hornets Hot Sauce. The box reminded me of a few things …
Continue reading Missionary Life: Screaming Hornets and Letters from Home
One of the two most popular posts on this blog is: From Power Encounter to Love Encounter In that post, I argued that the common missiological model of encounters, Truth Encounter, Allegiance Encounter, and Power Encounter, is flawed. Power Encounter, the challenging of the powers of evil with the power of God for missiological purposes …
Continue reading Power Encounter, Love Encounter, and Pandemic Love
Many Christians downplay the practice of public confession. Christians tend to emphasize confession as personal and private. Even among those churches that practice the rite or sacrament of confession (penance), they accomplish it in a private chamber between an individual and a priest. The one who confesses need tell no one else, while the one …
Continue reading Can Confession Serve as a Missional Outreach?
"If we desire to be obedient to Jesus' command to carry the good news of his resurrection to the world, we must be willing to become 150 percent persons. We must accept the value priorities of others. We must learn the different definitions and rules of the context in which they live. We must adopt …
Continue reading “150 Percent Person” Quote for Missionaries
"The Gospel Blimp" by Joseph Bayly is a great short story (or perhaps novella). It is a parable in the sense that it attacks commonly held "truth". The story revolves around an evangelical church in Middle America that wants to "reach their community for Christ". This was motivated by the neighbor of one church member …
Continue reading The Gospel Blimp and Holy Tee-shirt Cannons
<A related, follow-on article is Power Encounter, Love Encounter, and Pandemic Love.> In Missions there is often 3 types of "encounters" discussed. Charles Kraft, in particular, has a lot in this area and include: Truth Encounter Allegiance Encounter Power Encounter St. Boniface and Power Encounter Truth Encounter is the challenge of God's truth against the …
This is a true story, but I share it intentionally vague in terms of details. Years ago, the church convention my wife and I are members of had a partnership with the Austrian Baptists. Many people respond negatively to the term "partnership" in missions because the partnership is often in word only. In practice, it …
I have heard so many sermons stating that happiness is not something that Christians should seek, but rather, they should seek “joy”. “Joy” is described as feeling good based on some sort of spiritual empowerment that transcends one’s momentary circumstances. “Happiness” is looked upon as feeling good because good things are happening. But maybe both definitions …
No one likes critics... at least when the critic is leveling their critique at them. In theory, a critic can give positive or negative comments... but we tend to associate critics, and critiques, with negative comments. Christians are often very thin-skinned about criticism in matters of faith. We often feel that criticism of Christians, Christianity, …
It seems like it is time to redefine the term missionary. The term has tended to be defined in terms of culture. If one ministers outside of one's culture (E-2 or E-3) one is a missionary, and one is doing missions. This certainly seems to be the way the Perspectives course does it (this is, …
Continue reading What is a Christian Missionary? (Preliminary Thoughts)