As I think about the Christmas story, I can’t get Galatians 4:4 off my mind. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the [...]

I’m still thinking about the ongoing controversy among cultural Christians over whether secular businesses greet them with “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Holidays.” A comment from Seminary Wife on my last post has got me thinking: The Christians who are worked up over this are spoiled. In the Middle East, Christians suffer persecution. In central Asia, Christ-followers are killed. In China, [...]

Is God pleased when a non-believer says “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays?” Lots of people (mostly in Texas and Florida) seem to think so.  First Baptist Church, Dallas recently launched GrinchAlert.com, (HT) a website that posts user-generate lists: businesses that greet customers with “Merry Christmas” make the Nice list, while “Happy Holidays” earns them a spot on the Naughty [...]

Why not… Require all church members to have a valid passport and go on at least one international trip every couple years? Invite representatives of unbelieving people groups into your church to speak about what they believe and what they think of Christianity? Send a care package to a missionary you don’t (yet) know? Start a blog on behalf of [...]

Believers often look to the life and ministry of the Apostle Paul as the model for missions. He did, after all, travel around telling people about Jesus and leave a trail of networked churches in his wake. But Paul isn’t the best picture of a missionary. Paul didn’t seem to0 concerned with contextualization- mostly because he stayed within his own [...]

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 [...]

The birth of Jesus is the greatest plot-twist ever. Maybe you’ve read a book where the story seems to be going in a certain direction, (maybe the identity of the killer seems obvious), but then, in a crucial and defining moment, the entire thing is turned upside-down. The rules are changed, the focus shifts, and you realize that you were [...]