May 2009

May 29, 2009

On the redemption of cultures

WORD OF WARNING: I am not an expert on these issues, by any means. There are many others who write on this far more authoritatively than I. My hope is to raise awareness of this and galvanize further discussion. Where you find errors, I welcome the critique. However, I hope that as well as giving critique, you will write something new which adds to our store of knowledge and  thinking on this critical issue! For the spiritual destiny of any individual there are only two possiblities: redemption or destruction. As we all know and believe, one’s relationship with Christ determines which occurs. [...]

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May 28, 2009

Why (theoretically) Lambert lost American Idol, and what it has to do with missions

Are you bothered by how many people in your church or your denomination don’t bother with what you’re passionate about? If so, take heart. Here’s why. This year, we are on home leave, and we have been (along with many others) following the progress of American Idol. Now that it’s over, I was reflecting the other day on why the vote ended the way it did—it was very surprising to me (although I wasn’t particularly fond of Lambert’s style, I did expect him to win). I don’t really “know” why Lambert lost American Idol. There are a lot of theories [...]

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May 28, 2009

A mission agency as a mission platform

There are a lot of mission agencies and missionaries in the world: more even than we commonly recognize. The Mission Handbook, for example, accounts for 825 agency listings in its latest edition—but misses out on a huge number of small agencies, church based agencies, and what I call “mom and pop” agencies. For example, the Mission Handbook doesn’t list the 501c3 agency some friends of mine have registered for themselves, and yet they were directly involved in mentoring workers in Nepal, Bhutan and Tibet who have played substantial roles in evangelism in those countries. For a very long time, we [...]

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May 21, 2009

Dr. Ralph Winter, 1924-2009

Who in the evangelical missions world hasn’t been touched, in some way, by the life of Ralph Winter? I certainly was. Just as an expression of appreciation, let me take a moment to share some of the ways that Ralph was a blessing to me. (If you like, you can add your own thoughts in the comments below.) * Ralph Winter’s efforts at promoting unreached peoples at least in part inspired the Operation Unreached program at AIMS, which is where I got started in missions—reading people group profiles. * When I went to work for the World Christian Encyclopedia, and [...]

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May 13, 2009

Mission Researchers Respond to the Muslim Demographic Video

There is a video that is getting a lot of views (over 4.8 million) on Youtube, focusing on Muslim demographics in Europe. It’s shown up on a lot of Christian mission blogs, and has been twittered quite a bit. Unfortunately the statistics used on the video are unsourced, so I don’t know their origin. However, they are dramatically different from anything that missionary researchers project. In this posting, well known missions researchers have been invited to talk about the video and highlight a few things they feel deserve response. Jason Mandryk (editor, Operation World): One element that we cannot possibly [...]

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