Many missionaries are plagued by doubt. Not usually about the message. At least, not most of the missionaries I’ve interacted with. But they have deep misgivings about their ministry. It is not uncommon for a missionary of many years to wonder if they’ve had any impact at all and to say something like, “What am I […]
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Intro to Missions- Part 9 Export National Pastors
INTRO TO MISSIONS This is the audio from an introductory course on missions that a friend and I taught at our home church. In the eighth lesson, Aaron, my missionary friend in Morocco, discusses the vital work of exporting national pastors for ministry. How can ministry multiply? When is it time to release the local church […]
Intro to Missions- Part 8 Exercise for Ministry
INTRO TO MISSIONS This is the audio from an introductory course on missions that a friend and I taught at our home church. In the eighth lesson, Aaron, my missionary friend in Morocco, discusses the vital work of training ministers on the foreign field. Aaron talks about the essential step of exercising believers for ministry. The paradigm […]
Rethinking Unreached People Groups (Part 3)
A long time ago, I started a blog series trying to show that a widespread, modern interpretation of the Great Commission was a novel innovation and in fact not what the mission entails. To clarify, I’m talking about the idea that the mission of the church is to reach people from each and every ethnolinguistic group […]
Creativity: the most overvalued trait in missions (Part 3)
In the previous two posts, we examined the reasons that creativity is so highly valued in missions as well as one reason to be concerned about this trend. Let me give another. 2. This tendency betrays a lack of confidence in the gospel The reason that creative thinking is an ongoing need in other endeavors […]
Creativity: the most overvalued trait in missions (Part 2)
In the previous post, we looked at some of the reasons that modern missions is majoring in innovation and creativity. Next I want to share a couple concerns about this trend. 1. This tendency betrays a lack of clarity about the mission itself Think for a moment about why creativity is so important in some […]
Creativity: the most overvalued trait in missions (Part 1)
When I meet people for the first time and they ask me what I do, I have found that it is not very helpful to answer, ‘I’m a missionary.’ The reason is that in modern parlance, the word missionary has come to have a wider and wider range of meaning. There are all sorts of […]
Systematician: Challenges for the Ministry of the Word on the Mission Field
I have been preaching parts of the book of Mark in our new church plant here in Kaohsiung. And I’m struck once again by what a truly unique ministry experience it is to plant a church in a highly unevangelized region! While we have ‘church services’, we don’t really have a church yet. That is, […]
The End of the Movement?
The modern missionary movement didn’t start with a bang. The great missionary to India William Carey may be dubbed its father, but he was himself a child, a product, of missionaries of the previous century, men like David Brainerd and John Eliot. But the moniker fits, because Carey did leave a massive legacy. In the […]
Review of ‘Dispatches from the Front: Day of Battle’
First things first. If you haven’t already seen this film, click here and buy it. If you regret spending the money on it, write me afterwards and I’ll buy it off you. The newest installment of Tim’s Dispatches from the Front is the missions equivalent of a starter log. If you find yourself in a […]
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