It is unusual for every Christian to have a personal copy of the Bible, from a historical perspective. We take it for granted that everyone can read their copy of the Bible by themselves so much that we make it an indispensable practice for spiritual health. While I’m all for every follower of Jesus reading their Bibles regularly, and I do so as part of my daily routine, there are some downsides to private Bible reading.
Read MoreIt is a given that all followers of Jesus should seek to be people of integrity. However, because ethical practices are partly determined by cultural values and expectations, being honorable people can be complicated when we engage in cross-cultural partnerships. Without realizing it, Americans can cause their international partners to lose credibility as good people in their local settings.
Read MoreThe pandemic has been hard for everyone everywhere. We could unpack all the struggles for many pages. At MRN, it was hard for us not to be able to travel internationally for well over a year. It isn't just that it was impossible to complete some of our work from the States or that Zoom is less effective than in-person meetings. Even more challenging was the emotional hit our staff took in our motivation when we could not see the impact of our work in person.
Read MoreWhile this can be good because we can share stories of what God is doing around the world and get more people excited and involved, it has some significant downsides we need to think through and train for before we send people, or go, on STMs.
Read More“Indeed, it is as though Christianity, wherever it went in the modern colonies, inverted its sense of hospitality. It claimed to be the host, the owner of the spaces it entered, and demanded native peoples enter its cultural logics, its ways of being in the world, and its conceptualities.” – Willie James Jennings
Read More“I can’t get many people in my world interested in global missions. It seems to many of them that missions is a black hole that consumes vast resources and produces little impact.”
Read More“When the Missionaries came, they brough us the Bread of Life in the plastic bag of western culture. We ate it in the bag, never really tasted it, and now we are constipated.”
Read More“Brother Bouchelle, how do we defeat the Pentecostals?” This was one of the more surprising questions anyone ever asked me.
Read MoreThere is much we can learn from businesspeople. There is a place to talk about efficiency and impact. We are called to be good stewards. That said, there are times when God calls us to do things that don't make sense to the business mind. Not everything God is up to can be justified on a balance sheet.
Read More“For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.” - Eph. 6:12
Read MoreMissions is fraught with challenges because it is based on partnerships between people who are separated across vast distances of space, culture, training, experience, expertise, and roles. What is not as well understood is the gap in understanding between field workers and many of their donors.
Read MoreThe COVID-19 pandemic created endless problems and shut many things down. But it also gave us a chance to step back and evaluate what we were so busy doing that we may have lost an objective perspective on it. In at least that respect, the pandemic was a gift hidden in a tragedy. This is certainly true when it comes to short term missions (STM).
Read MoreIt was a perplexing time for me. While things looked good on the surface at the church where I served, I could see massive obstacles ahead and didn’t know how to move through them without losing the critical mass of the congregation in the process. The demographic trends were going to overwhelm us in the next decade. I did not know what to do. We were working too hard for the results we were seeing.
Read MoreIn Revelation, Jesus' birth is told as it appears in the heavenly realms. We get to peek behind the curtain and see Christmas from the viewpoint of the angels. In this story, Christmas was hardly a silent night when all was calm and bright. It was the beginning of the decisive battle in a cosmic war that determines the future of all the universe.
Read MoreWe just love heroes and love to pretend to be heroes. Most of the time, this is harmless enough, but hero narratives become a huge problem when it comes to global missions.
Read MoreOne of the great challenges missionaries from America face is the widespread misperception that Christianity is a western religion that only makes sense to people from western cultures.
Read More“We don’t want just to throw money at some mission point, we want to be connected to something where we can actually get our members involved.”
I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve heard the above sentiment from church leaders. While I understand where they are coming from and can affirm much of what drives such a statement, I always feel conflicted when I hear this statement. Behind the good intentions reflected in this kind of thinking lurk some problems that need to be identified and screened out.
Read MoreLike it or not, the church has often taken in things from local cultures, replaced the meanings, and brought them into the practice of the Christian faith as a way of focusing existing habits on Jesus. We could look at all these things as corruptions of the faith. But are they?
Read MoreOne of the biggest challenges we face when talking about race is that we don’t have a common vocabulary. For example, using the word “justice” associated with race evokes vastly different reactions. We have had different experiences, so we don’t see the same things or use the same language to describe what we see. Therefore, we misunderstand each other.
Read More“I just wish I could put you all on an airplane so you could meet the people that have come to know the Lord because of your support.” – Ron Frietas
I can’t tell you how many times I heard Ron Frietas say this to the Alameda church in Norman, Oklahoma, back in the ‘90’s when he and his wife Georgia were our missionaries to Curitiba, Brazil.
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