“If you really cared about the unreached peoples of the world, you’d be more involved in missions.” “If you truly understood the Great Commission, you’d be a missionary.” “If only you were made aware of the opportunities to share the gospel, you’d go on a mission trip.” “If you honestly saw the need, felt the urgency, or recognized the importance [...]

We’ve got to stop distinguishing between “missions” and, well, “not missions.” The old paradigm was this: ministry is sharing the gospel. If you preached to believers, you were called a “pastor.” If you preached to non-Christians in your own culture, you were an “evangelist.” If you needed a passport to get there, you were a “missionary.” If those distinctions were [...]

Syncretism is a key missiological concept that refers to the all-too common practice of overlaying one set of beliefs with another, disparate one. People often go to great lengths to reconcile different, even opposing, belief systems in order to make sense of the world around them. When African tribes were (forcibly) “converted” to Christianity by imperialist missionaries in the 18th [...]

Much of what I write here centers around metrics- how we measure what we do. I believe that our desire to have measurable results of some kind has driven our strategy into a deeply human-centered pragmatism. From numbers to feelings, we try everything to try to get a handle on what it is that God wants from us. To illustrate: [...]