Missions
Christian missionaries are witnesses, warriors, and ambassadors in exile. It is common to view missions in terms of tasks such as proclaiming the gospel or, with modern trends, incarnating it. (1) There are problems we encounter when we limit ourselves to these words. Proclamation is something we send out, but with global work not all […]
In Evangelism in the Early Church, Michael Green highlights three Greek words used with the expansion of Christianity: martureo (and related words meaning “witness”), euaggelizomai (“telling good news”), and kerusso (“proclamation”).1 Of the three words, Green spends the least amount of time and attention on “witness.” This is understandable since the other words are used […]
Forgive the pretentious title. It encapsulates thoughts that are broad, but they may or may not be deep. You decide. Perhaps I am scattered, but I hope to share a wide range of thoughts I think must go together. I am a missionary, but there are men and women who have been missionaries longer. Twenty-something […]
I think about missions a lot. I am a pastor and a missionary, and I serve on a missions committee for a church I do not pastor. I think about it every day. I have been a Christian a lot longer: forty-six years. When I started reading the Bible back in 1973, something began to […]
Michael Horton and the WHI Team are launching an exciting new column in Modern Reformation. Our prayer is that this new feature encourages all of us as we see Christ building his church around the world, a church against which the gates of hell shall never prevail (Matt. 16:18). This new initiative invites our brother […]
For the Word of God is quick, and mighty in operation, and sharper than any two-edged sword: and entereth through, even unto the dividing asunder of the soul and the spirit, and of the joints and the mary [marrow]: and judgeth the thoughts and the intents of the heart: neither is there any creature invisible […]
Marco Polo describes a hidden city, Berenice, to his host and captor Kublai Khan.1 It is really two cities, one above and another hidden from view, “behind the shops and under the stairs.” Evangelical Protestant missions is like that. There is a world you can easily see of structures, conferences, how-to manuals, and endless debates. […]
In my article “Learning How to Live and Thrive with Post-Postcolonial Missions” in the last issue of Modern Reformation (September/October 2019), we started a new topic that I would like to finish off now. I proposed that evangelical missions works according to one of two paradigms, colonial missions and postcolonial missions, with a third paradigm […]
Most people I know who are engaged in missions (overseas or at home) seem to reflect one of two orientations: either they are old-school colonial-era missionaries and the nationals who work with them, or they are postcolonial missionaries and nationals. I suggest that both options are a dead end. My conviction is that the only […]
Protestant theology and missiology have been experiencing a flood, and it seems to be surging right now. It started trickling back in the 1970s and has been building ever since. It is a flood of books all framed by a single umbrella issue. Let me frame it as a question: “Who are you?” It is […]
“Protestants Abroad: How Missionaries Tried to Change the World but Changed America” by David A. Hollinger
David A. Hollinger begins Protestants Abroad with a startling assertion: “The Protestant foreign missionary project expected to make the world look more like the United States. Instead, it made the United States look more like the world” (1). A reader could well imagine that missionaries went to other parts of the world in hopes of making […]
When it comes to Western Protestantism, there are usually a lot of plates spinning. If Zygmunt Bauman is correct (and I think he is), we are living in a “liquid-modern” rather than “postmodern” age. Rapid change is Western society’s only real constant. Despite postmodernist boasts to the contrary, we are still in the grip of […]
“Insider Jesus: Theological Reflections on New Christian Movements,” by William A. Dyrness
Insider Jesus: Theological Reflections on New Christian Movements by William A. Dyrness (IVP Academic, 2016) is a significant book. It received Christianity Today’s 2017 Book of the Year Award of Merit, which signifies a couple of things. First, it means that the book was recognized for merit (we will look more carefully into whether such […]
The work of Bible translation has been an exciting and unifying endeavor for generations of American and other Western evangelicals. Translators were recruited from among our best and brightest church members, and churches themselves went with them by financially supporting this brave new work. We were all in a hurry to gift the world with […]
Many Western Christians have a problematic understanding of faith. The concept of “faith” has been reduced to a person’s religious beliefs or the mere intellectual assent of an individual to a specific set of religious doctrines or dogmas. This view of faith is not only incomplete when compared to how the Bible speaks of faith, […]
