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.

Avoiding Relationship Pitfalls

So often we from the west want to ensure that things are done in a certain way or at a certain standard, so we keep taking over from those young disciples who are trying to lead.  We must allow them to make decisions, sometimes they will fail, and sometimes they will succeed extraordinarily, but if we never give our disciples opportunity for increased responsibility and leadership then we are setting them up for failure.

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."

Planting New Churches

If the churches missionaries plant have terminal life, after ten years their field will have 100 churches. If the missionaries die or return home, the number of churches remains static, for they do not plant other churches. The same ten missionaries, by planting churches that have germinal life, will in ten years have 5,110 churches in their field. If the missionaries die or return home, the churches will continue to multiply, because they have germinal life.

How To Get Businesspeople Into Missions

Business-as-Missions (BAM) is about creating legitimate businesses that enable church planting in areas that would otherwise be closed to evangelism. BAM is needed today because it is increasingly difficult for church planters to live and share the gospel in many countries around the world. Think places such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and China, where governments continue to crack down on mission work. If we make it our "ambition to preach the gospel, not where Christ has already been named" (Rom. 15:20), then we need to help church planters find creative means for gaining access into these countries.

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.