For those who don’t know, the International Mission Board, which is the missions sending agency of the Southern Baptist Convention, recently announced a serious shortfall in their approximately $300 million annual operating budget. Over the last six years, the IMB has spent $210 million more than they have received in contributions. As a result of […]
Tag Archives: Church Planting
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 […]
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, […]
How We Got Here
I haven’t written yet about what our family has been up to since our deportation from China. So thought I would give a little update. We’ve been in Kaohsiung, Taiwan over four months now and are about two months into a new church plant. I never would have imagined in January of 2014 that I […]
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 […]
Intro to Missions Course- Part 2
This is the audio from an introductory course on missions that a missionary friend and I taught at our home church. This second lesson talks about what the mission is. It focuses on the OT prophecies of what this NT mission will be. How does Jesus Christ direct us to fulfill this Great Mission given […]
Product and Process
I just finished my rookie season as a parent, so I’m far from knowing it all. But I think I at least have figured out the goal of parenting. Might say it like this: “the goal of parenting is to train a healthy, mature, fully-functioning adult.” I think most parents would agree that this is […]
Ecclesioporosis, Part 3
To recap after a long intermission, by ‘ecclesioporosis’ I mean the new generation of Western believers’ lack of confidence in the local church as the vehicle for realizing change in the world. In the first post, we looked at some of the factors contributing to this condition. In the second, we examined some reasons that […]
Ecclesioporosis Case Study: Adoption
Well, nothing like a nine-month hiatus to get your thoughts together! I am terribly sorry about that, for those who might have wondered where I’d gone. There have been a couple big things in my life that have kept me from writing. The first of which is the adoption of our daughter, which has had […]
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