General

Missions Partnerships from the Home Church Perspective

Mission leaders today talk about the desire among churches for more direct, personal partnership with international gospel workers. On the whole, I think such desires are very good. However, like anything in a fallen world, these partnerships can be done well or done poorly, resulting in fruit or frustration, respectively... I want to offer six principles for partnering with overseas workers for the purpose of global evangelism.

David Livingstone's Perspective Of Missions

David Livingstone is one of my favorite missionaries. Clearly he had an eternal perspective. On June 18, 1853 Livingstone wrote, "Our work and its fruits are cumulative. We work towards another state of things. Future missionaries will be rewarded by conversions for every sermon. We are their pioneers and helpers. Let them not forget the watchmen of the night, we how worked when all was gloom and no evidence of success in the way of conversion cheered our path."

MissioMishmash: What Is Furlough?

Furlough conjures up many ideas to different people.  Some think it is like paid vacation and all-expenses-paid site-seeing. I blogged about this some years ago and recently stumbled upon a nice post by a Nazarene missionary, Howard Culbertson, about what furlough is--he pretended that his list was "discovered in the belongings of a missionary who had to be carried off mumbling incoherently in a strait jacket" after eleven months of furlough.

The Challenge Of Developing A Strong Indigenous Church Planting Movement In Africa

From the picturesque thatch-roofed villages to the bustling metropolises Africa is a study in contrasts.  Africa is the continent where the number one killer is still mosquito-born malaria yet it is the place where the first heart-transplant was successfully carried out.  Twenty-first century Africa is dominated by Islam in the north and Christianity across the central and southern regions yet African Traditional Religion remains the primary theological grid.