NOTE: Mark is available to work with our FEBBC/Y churches to coach missions committees in their role in leading their local church in the area of missions. Please contact Mark via the Contact Me form or view Mark’s Coaching page
A balanced diet, a balanced economic portfolio, a balanced lifestyle – we are constantly challenged to [...]
All articles with the category "Missions".
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NOTE: Mark is available to work with our FEBBC/Y churches to coach missions committees in their role in leading their local church in the area of missions. Please contact Mark via the Contact Me form or view Mark’s Coaching page
It is so easy to become distracted! Whenever I come home from my Bible translation trips, [...]
NOTE: Mark is available to work with our FEBBC/Y churches to coach missions committees in their role in leading their local church in the area of missions. Please contact Mark via the Contact Me form or view Mark’s Coaching page
A fuzzy understanding of Missions
I have a saying on my screensaver by Joseph Jourbert: “Words, [...]
A team of Canadian youth was involved with young people from another culture for an intense two weeks of ministry in children’s camps. They came back excited and impacted, but apart from relief at their safe return home, the church and parents showed little interest in the effect that experience had [...]
The Fear of Dilution
I was recently talking with a colleague who voiced a concern about the expanding understanding of missions in some of our more missional churches. The missions committee at his church expressed the desire to incorporate local evangelistic and social efforts under the broad umbrella of “missions.” My [...]
Implications for the Church Oriented Sending Agency
The Partnership Trend
Stemming from a college professor’s interest in his international students, members from a local church began to build relationships with families from that people group. Some of the church members went on to minister full time to these people in their homeland. [...]
Proactive Churches in Missions
Field, Candidate and Church oriented Missions Agencies
Field Oriented Agencies
It may be possible to trace an historical development among North American sending agencies from being "field oriented" to becoming "candidate oriented" and now shifting to a "church oriented" initiative. A traditionally field oriented sending agency actively looks [...]
Proactive Churches in Missions
It was only a decade ago that common wisdom for finding support for missionaries said, "Forget the churches and focus on individual contacts." Some missions organizations even encouraged their members to use the churches as a means for raising individual support. In this way they sometimes [...]
During our time in Pakistan the area of the Thar desert was afflicted with a four year drought. People made destitute from the famine migrated out to more habitable regions only to be met by unscrupulous landlords who took advantage of their impoverished state to hire them for mere pennies a [...]
Even though in our churches, salvation in Christ is primarily described in terms of justice and mercy using the analogy of a celestial court, the focus of justice as a major issue for society is often overshadowed in Evangelical circles by other concerns. The death of thousands of infants through [...]
"Don’t plant churches, plant ministries!"
In our recent BC convention (May, 2003) Dr. Ray Bakke challenged us to reach the city for Christ. At one point he said "Don’t plant churches, plant ministries!" Focus on meeting the needs of people in practical ways and the transforming power of the cross will [...]
Can Mission be measured?
Missions has been defined narrowly as "carrying the gospel across cultural boundaries to those who owe no allegiance to the Jesus Christ," (Glasser & McGavran 1983:26) and more comprehensively as missio Dei – God’s mission in the world. This contrast of viewpoints is illustrated by attempts, primarily through evangelical missions efforts, to [...]
Global technological and political developments have changed the face of the world and altered forever the way the church can participate in God’s work of establishing his kingdom. The great gods of science and secularism of the 20th century are making room for the pluralism and skepticism of the postmodern mind. An increasing [...]