What do we mean when we talk about “reaching people?” Is it the same as telling them about Jesus? What makes a people group “reached?” Having heard the gospel? Having access to it? Having a viable church planted among them? The IMB’s current strategy is to “engage” (send missionaries to) people groups that we classify as “unreached” (less than 2% [...]

Every six months or so, I have to post my thoughts on “the missionary task.” In my opinion, this is the single most important topic that no one is talking about. In another attempt to incite some discussion, I’ve also posted this to the Church Planting Forum. Below is an outline of my current thoughts on “the Task.” Please forgive [...]

I’ve posted about this before, but I’ve been hearing and reading a lot about “contextualization”of the gospel. If you’ve every read my blog before, you likely know that I believe that we the church should do all that we can to minimize the cultural differences that hinder the communication of love and truth to the people around us. If that’s [...]

This is part 76 in my long-running series about word definitions… Whenever someone shares a fresh perspective, or wants to challenge the status quo, he or she is bound to be misunderstood. It starts like this:Copernicus: “Hey guys, I’m thinking that maybe the Earth isn’t the center of the solar system.”Well-Intentioned Misunderstanding Guy: “So the sun stood still, and the [...]

It’s time to change the lingo of missions. (Including the word “missions.”) Really. Hardly any of the words that we use to talk about cross-cultural ministry accurately describe the work of our people on the field. Many of our words actually work against us. Take, for example, the idea of “reaching” people. What does that mean? I know what we [...]

For the last few days, I’ve been reading about Jesus in the Gospels. (I got the idea from Mentanna) I’ve been thinking about how all followers of Jesus see Him through their own cultural lenses. All of them. And I’m struck by the idea that our different interpretations of Jesus can be so, well, different. Reading just the Gospels has [...]

Lately I’ve been accused (and by “I,” I mean someone else entirely, but with whom I mostly agree) of wanting to “pick and choose” from contradictory “systems” of belief. The accusation sounded a little bit like this: “Your concern for social justice is clearly “Social Gospel.”Your anti-death penalty stance is taken from the Liberal’s political agenda.Your references to God’s sovereignty [...]

I recently attended a conference workshop where the speaker asked a lot of questions. She was talking about postmodernism (yeah, we still have to have the “Postmodernism” talk every time we get together), and sharing from her experience with a postmodern European guy. She presented their interaction as a case study, to illustrate the challenge of cultural translation of the [...]