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 […]
Tag Archives: missionaries
Increasing Your Church’s Missions Giving
I’ve had the great privilege over the past decade to visit many churches in the United States to talk about missions. One of the things that I’ve noticed in these travels is that there are some churches whose missions giving is out of all proportion to their size. That is, if you were to break […]
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 […]
Why Learn Chinese?
Seems that I’ve been talking to a lot of people about language learning lately. So thought I’d try to assemble some of those conversations into a blog post. I live in one of the mission fields where the vast majority of missionaries do not learn to speak the native language. There are at least a […]
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 […]
Missions: Westerners Need Not Apply? (Part 2)
The last post started to discuss the idea that national believers are the most qualified to serve as missionaries (meaning, the most qualified to be exported to another place with the Gospel). Let me say again that there is certainly a core of truth here: already speaking a language and fitting into a culture are […]
Measuring
Remember Moneyball? The story of how the Oakland A’s built a powerful baseball team by scooping up undervalued players? The central premise of their restructuring of the organization was this: teams are measuring the wrong things to determine if a player is worth their salary. By changing what they were measuring, they were able to […]
The Li Bo Perspective #3
Last bit about the Chinese Three-Self Church and whether or not it is wise for missionaries to work in coordination with them. The question that remains to be considered is: is there anything that a missionary is compelled to do that is prohibited by the Three-Self Church? Of course ‘compelled‘ is a tricky word. But […]
The Li Bo Perspective #2
In review, we’re talking about the case for the Three-Self Church, the Chinese government-sponsored Christian congregations. Li Bo is just one of many voices in China that denounce the work of missionaries who plant unregistered churches and maintain that the rightful avenue for ministry is via the government church. But I am just one of […]
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