September 2007

September 30, 2007

How to hold a mission night

In the late 1990s, my wife and I helped a group of people to organize a regular meeting focused on unreached peoples and frontier missions. The purpose of this meeting was both to help maintain the vision of people who were interested in frontier missions, and to get new people interested. It’s not that difficult to host this kind of event: here’s how we got started. Meeting 1. The first meeting was drawn together by a my friend Michael Jaffarian, who hosted it at his family’s home and invited several of us to consider the idea. The group was drawn [...]

Read more →
September 1, 2007

Church or parish?

Churches, church planting and rapidly reproducing, multiplying church planting movements are all the rage right now. Tat’s a good thing. However, we need to keep in mind that churches are not the goal: bringing people (particularly the lost) into a saving, living, transformational relationship with Christ is the goal. I do think churches are the most effective means of reaching the goal. I also think agencies (sodalities) are the most effective means of starting churches in a cross- cultural setting. Still, we must not confuse the ends with the means. Some time back, while skimming blogs on the Internet, I [...]

Read more →