Yeah, But…

This is post #6 in a series on developing a new missiology. Some of you, upon reading my last post, Callsourcing the Mission, might have disagreed with my proposal that we use a crowdsourced report of God’s calling, rather than people group taxonomies, as a foundation for our missiology. You may have seen some shortcomings [...]

Tags: Callsourcing, Missiology, Unreached People Groups

Callsourcing the Mission

This is post #5 in a series on developing a new missiology. Human-sized hamster ball. Dunkin’ Donuts locations. Double Rainbow.  At any given point in time, web analytics can show us what topics are “trending” in social media. An uptick in Google searches might indicate breaking news or a YouTube video going viral. Twitter trends [...]

Tags: Callsourcing, Missiology, Unreached People Groups

Missiospeak

This is post #4 in a series on developing a new missiology. In my last post, I summarized the origins of the current popular understanding of missions. People group thinking, as I call it, hasn’t been all bad. But neither has it been all good. This, I suspect, is due in large part to the [...]

Tags: Missiology, Mom-and-Pop, terminology, Unreached People Groups

What Are We Saying?

This is post #3 in a series on developing a new missiology. My previous post was about “what missions can learn from the missional movement.” In this post, I’d like to tackle the vocabulary of missions. What are we saying? It used to be the number salvations. Fifty years ago, missions was all about the [...]

Tags: Missiology, terminology

Missional… Missionaries?

This is post #2 in a series on developing a new missiology. Over the course of about ten years, the church has seen a huge shift in thinking. As western culture moved away from identifying itself as “christian,” young(er) leaders started to explore new, more appropriate expressions of church in a post-everything context. Some questioned [...]

Tags: Culture, Missiology, missional, soaicl action

Missional Missiology

I’m calling for a new missiology. The current popular one is neither biblical nor helpful. So let’s work through a new one. Of course, by “new” here I mean “old” in the sense of directly founded in scripture, but “new” in that it makes sense for today’s globalized experience. To that end, I’m starting a [...]

Tags: Missiology, Taxonomy, terminology

The Church Has A Mission

The Upstream Collective recently went to London and Paris on a Jet Set vision trip. We took 26 pastors and church leaders (and  a couple wives) to Europe to see first-hand what missions looks like in that post-Christian context. These trips have always been successful.  90% of pastors who participate find ways to become directly [...]

Tags: Church, Missiology, sending church

The Mission Has A Church

There has been an ongoing discussion among Christian leaders about the relationship of the church and the mission of God. On one side, you’ve got those who say that ecclesiology (theology of church) should come before our missiology (theology of mission). In other words, the church is the most important thing in terms of how [...]

Tags: Church, Missiology, sending church

You Know What Assuming Does

They say that assumptions can be dangerous. For example: Assuming that the size of U.S. coins have any correlation to their value will lead you to overlook the humble dime in favor of the (relatively) hefty nickel. For Americans traveling in the UK, fortunes are lost this way. Assuming that someone who looks and (seems [...]

Cultural Exegesis

Being a missionary where God has you isn’t just an attitude or posture (though it certainly begins there). It requires a certain set of skills that can be developed over time. One such skill is cultural exegesis. All you Bible scholars out there know that exegesis (literally “to draw out”) is the act of studying [...]