NOTE: Articles 90 – 93 on Navigational tools for Church Missions have been revised and incorporated into a single article through Catalyst Services which is ready to be downloaded The transitions and tools described in this series of articles are used as the framework for missions coaching among Fellowship churches in Canada. If you are [...]
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NOTE: Articles 90 – 93 on Navigational tools for Church Missions have been revised and incorporated into a single article through Catalyst Services which is ready to be downloaded The transitions and tools described in this series of articles are used as the framework for missions coaching among Fellowship churches in Canada. If you are [...]
NOTE: Articles 90 – 93 on Navigational tools for Church Missions have been revised and incorporated into a single article through Catalyst Services which is ready to be downloaded The transitions and tools described in this series of articles are used as the framework for missions coaching among Fellowship churches in Canada. If you are [...]
NOTE: Articles 90 – 93 on Navigational tools for Church Missions have been revised and incorporated into a single article through Catalyst Services and is ready to be downloaded The transitions and tools described in the following articles are used as the framework for coaching Fellowship churches in Canada. If you are interested in exploring [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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: [...]
NOTE: A companion workshop to these articles is available to multi-ethnic churches that provides information, exercises and interaction to encourage the implementation of those disciplines that promote healthy intercultural relationships. Please contact Mark via the Contact Me form. The Power Distance Contrast In Pakistan there is a strong tradition of “holy men” who are called [...]
NOTE: A companion workshop to these articles is available to multi-ethnic churches that provides information, exercises and interaction so that those disciplines that promote healthy intercultural relationships can be implemented. Please contact Mark via the Contact Me form. Multicultural Fragmentation The story of Babel (Gen 11) records the story of the first failure of an [...]
Three ways to understand the Bible My wife, Karen, heard a message by a young woman with no theological training on Jer 29:11, “I know the plans I have for you….” The young woman spoke of the verse as if it was addressed to us today and talked about the plans God has for us. [...]
Validating Missional and Communal “Attractional” churches according to Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch are those congregations that develop “programs, meetings, services, or other ‘products’ in order to attract unbelievers into the influence of the Christian community.” They argue that this approach is “increasingly ineffective” and is the result of “old Christendom” ideas that need to [...]
A Fatal Trend When we were missionaries in Pakistan there was a time when “church planting” became the standard for our team – it was the tie to church planting that validated the ministries we were involved in. However, the demand for a direct church planting connection resulted in an analysis and critique of the [...]
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 segment of society. For example, [...]
Part V: Theological Basis for “Christ centered worldviews” What would this worldview look like if Christ was Lord? I remember the time a young believer brought a friend to me so that I could explain the gospel to him. We were living among the Muslim Sindhi people of Pakistan working with FEBInternational. The friend was [...]
Part I: Communication within worldviews It is quite common to come across the phrase “The Christian Worldview” in evangelical writings. I believe that this phrase is unhelpful and misleading particularly for those involved in cross-cultural missions and I would propose an alternative. I believe that we should instead speak of “Christ centered worldviews” in the [...]
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 on the lives of [...]
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 the expense and [...]
Contextualization is an important part of missiology. This is the process of discovering culturally appropriate means of communicating the transforming power of the gospel. Authenticity requires the missionary to live out the gospel with integrity according to the assumptions and priorities of his or her own culturally shaped worldview. However, missions necessitates cross-cultural sensitivity and [...]
Religions do not bring people to God H. Kraemer in his influential book, The Christian message in a Non-Christian World, builds a strong case for the inability of religions, as human constructs, to bring people to God. The revelation of God in Christ is solely a redeeming act of God, and not aided by or [...]
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 colleague was afraid that [...]
"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 up our [...]
In Canada we live in a pluralistic (1) society. How are we as Christians to respond to different philosophies, lifestyles, religions and cultures? What is the right attitude for those who believe in the exclusive claims of Christ? Should we appreciate other people’s cultures? Should we appreciate other people’s religious beliefs? It is an illusion [...]
Skepticism concerning One Truth Billy Joel (1993) wrote a popular song entitled Shades of Grey which illustrates a desperate skepticism stemming from exposure to the convictions and beliefs of others: Some things were perfectly clear, seen with vision of youth No doubts and nothing to fear, I claimed the corner on truth These days it’s [...]
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 abstractly and no [...]
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 his view that scripture [...]
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. While there they [...]
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 for new fields [...]
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 managed, often to the irritation [...]
One of the greatest shocks a missionary faces when entering a new culture with the gospel is the discovery that other religions can teach us important spiritual lessons. I can still vividly picture the follower of Sufism (a mystical philosophy of Islam) who taught me a good lesson. He stood before me dirty and disheveled [...]
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 day. Foreign missions organizations [...]
The people in the best position to teach others are those who are actually involved in doing the task that needs to be taught. This conviction is behind the goal of creating an experience-based mentored environment for the training of cross-cultural ministers through Northwest Baptist Seminary (www.nbseminary.com/), located on the Trinity Western University campus, Langley, [...]
"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 be experienced. By living [...]
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 attended a conference in Pakistan [...]
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, [...]
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 sense of [...]
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