Posted on November 1st, 2008 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Contextualization • Culture • Evangelism • Missional • Outreach
Categories: Evangelism
passion for the Great Commission
From the outset of this article, I want to be clear that I believe in and promote evangelism. One of my ministries offered to our FEB churches through Northwest and FEBInternational is that of coaching for evangelism following the grassroots method of encouraging Significant Conversations. Furthermore, it is not my intention [...]
Posted on September 1st, 2008 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Evangelism
Categories: Evangelism
An Incomplete Wedding Shower
I remember a friend relating to me the story of a mentally handicapped young woman who lived with her parents. Every time there was a wedding shower for a bride-to-be at the church, the mother would take her daughter to the event. One day, the young woman asked her mother, “When do [...]
Posted on December 3rd, 2007 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Culture • Dialogue • Evangelism • Intercultural • Missional • Missionary • Training • Worldview
Categories: Evangelism
The Common hunger of Humanity
What we as human beings search for and value in life is the “meaningful” and the “good.”
With regard to the “meaningful,” we are always trying to make sense of our world. Hopelessness, which is what we seek to avoid, is the antithesis of the “meaningful” and happens when the [...]
Posted on October 4th, 2007 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Evangelism • Intercultural • Missional • Missionary • Sindhi • Translation
Categories: Evangelism
Check out the SISI system – an alternative grassroots approach to engage your community for Christ
Canada is not Pakistan
Evangelism in Pakistan was easy. I would occasionally travel in a bus with a pile of tracts in Sindhi with an invitation to visit me printed on the back.1 I would read a tract by holding [...]
Posted on October 2nd, 2007 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Cross-Cultural • Evangelism • Intercultural • Islam • Language • Leadership • Missional • Missions • Short Term Missions • Sindhi • Training • Translation
Categories: Uncategorized
Coordinator of the Centre for Intercultural Leadership Development (CILD)
Mark served along with Karen, his wife, in Pakistan among the Sindhi Muslim people for fourteen years, doing evangelism, church planting and leadership development. He continues with his responsibilities as the supervisor and primary exegete for the Sindhi Old Testament translation project. Here at Northwest Mark’s responsibilities [...]
Posted on February 5th, 2007 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Communication • Culture • Evangelism • Intercultural • Missional • Missions
Categories: Missional Church
In The Shaping of Things to Come, St Thomas’s Crookes is given as an example of a church that is shaped around its participation in God’s mission to the world. The basic level of the church consists of cells whose aim is to relate relevantly and redemptively with a particular [...]
Posted on February 4th, 2006 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Communication • Cross-Cultural • Culture • Evangelism • Intercultural • Religion • Sindhi • Worldview
Categories: Culture and Worldview
Part II: Worldview Clarification
Worldview distinct from Theology
In these articles I am arguing that we should speak of “Christ centered worldviews” in the plural, rather than claim that there is only one “Christian worldview” that is correct to which all people should conform. It is important to realize that “worldview” is very [...]
Posted on September 4th, 2005 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Cross-Cultural • Culture • Ethnic • Evangelism • Language • Leadership • Mentoring • Missional • Missionary • Missions • Training
Categories: Cross-cultural leadership training
The Need for Cross-cultural Leadership Training:
Why FEBInternational is developing
the CLTP program
“We no longer need ‘general practitioner’ missionaries here.” This comment from an experienced FEBI missionary points to an important reality in missions today: the need for quality personnel who can provide “value added” ministry. A guiding principle to validate [...]
Posted on March 4th, 2005 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Cross-Cultural • Evangelism • Leadership • Missional • Missionary • Missions
Categories: Missions
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 [...]
Posted on December 4th, 2004 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Communication • Contextualization • Cross-Cultural • Culture • Evangelism • Language • Missionary • Religion
Categories: Contextualization
Learning to be an effective change agent for Jesus Christ in another culture is the goal of a missionary. This can be mistakenly reduced to methods of communicating the gospel message which do not reflect sufficient appreciation or validation of the existing culture. Cross-cultural ministry is not a matter of learning [...]
Posted on November 4th, 2004 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Culture • Dialogue • Evangelism • Islam • Missions • Religion • Worldview
Categories: Culture and Worldview
"I have become all things to all people so I could save some of them in any way possible." (1 Co 9:22)
Making Room
The beginning of missions is "making room" for others as they are; adjusting our program and perspective to match the concerns and priorities of another society. It is opening [...]
Posted on August 4th, 2004 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Culture • Evangelism • Pluralism • Religion
Categories: Culture and Worldview
Adapted from Crucial Issues for Christian Mission 5.3 Living in a Pluralistic Society
by Mark Naylor Oct, 2002
Through our church Karen and I run an unconventional Bible study which we affectionately call our "heretics Bible study". Within this group we welcome unorthodox opinions and encourage questions that reflect belief [...]
Posted on July 4th, 2004 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Communication • Culture • Dialogue • Evangelism • Islam • Missionary • Missions • Pluralism • Religion • Sindhi
Categories: Culture and Worldview
Approaches to Interfaith Dialogue
E. Stanley Jones was a Methodist missionary in India during the first half of the 1900s who was a strong advocate of interfaith dialogue. He set the rules for his "round table talks" so that "no one argue, no one try to make a case, no one talk [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2004 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Communication • Cross-Cultural • Dialogue • Evangelism • Islam • Missions • Religion • Sindhi
Categories: Culture and Worldview
In Pakistan we lived next door to a mosque. The Maolvi (Muslim clergy) and I would occasionally talk and one day I gave him a New Testament to read. The next time we met he informed me that "this is not God’s Word. But it contains God’s Word." Further clarification revealed [...]
Posted on July 3rd, 2003 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Cross-Cultural • Evangelism • Missionary • Missions
Categories: Missions
"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 [...]
Posted on June 3rd, 2003 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Cross-Cultural • Culture • Evangelism • Islam • Leadership • Missionary • Missions • Sindhi
Categories: Contextualization
Karen and I worked in evangelism and church planting for 10 years among the Sindhi Muslim people in Pakistan. Although our goal was to plant a church and a number of Sindhis became followers of Christ, we were not successful in establishing a "3-selfs" church (self-governing, self-supporting, self-propogating). Whenever we [...]
Posted on April 3rd, 2003 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Cross-Cultural • Evangelism • Islam
Categories: Evangelism
As an evangelical I cringe when evangelism is described as "humanizing," as if the focus of salvation has somehow changed from what God has done for us in Christ, to what we are to accomplish for ourselves. However it is never wise to quickly dismiss another point of view without grappling with the questions [...]
Posted on March 3rd, 2003 by Mark Naylor
Tags: Church • Evangelism • Missions
Categories: Missions
Can Mission be measured?
Mission 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 viewpoint is [...]