“I fear that books on global Christianity are undervalued in Western evangelicalism – probably because of their academic style as well as their unfortunate classification as “missions” literature, rather than “theology” or “ecclesiology” literature. But books like this challenge the fundamental conscious and unconscious assumptions of every day Christians about their mundane religious thinking and practices.”
“It is good for us to evaluate our own American Christian expressions by the standard of Chinese ecclesiology, or by Ghanaian worship forms, or by Nigerian missiology, or by Indian theology. Indeed, this is one of the great, unique, aspects of the Kingdom of God – our diversity reflects the God who is, as Jonathan Edwards once described, the “admirable conjunction of diverse excellencies”. The multiplicity of Christian expressions arising out of the teaching of a single Book keeps us humble and constantly investigative in our own forms of the Christian life. In this way, global Christianity, in its diversity, is a tremendously sanctifying gift of grace to the local church.”
...More here.
Last night at approximately 9:05PM a great man died on this earth.
Dr. Ralph Winter now worships God in the very company of so many formerly unreached peoples that he, by God’s hand, helped to reach with the Gospel.
When “giants” in the Kingdom of God die, we have an incredible opportunity to obey Hebrews 13:7:
Remember your leaders, those who spoke to you the word of God. Consider the outcome of their way of life, and imitate their faith.
What can we learn when we “consider the outcome of [Dr. Winter’s] way of life”?
- Live a wartime lifestyle. Dr. Winter once wrote in his classic article “Commitment to a Wartime Lifestyle: “I believe that God cannot expect less from us in our Christian duty to save other nations than we in wartime require of ourselves to save our own nation. This means that we must be willing to adopt a wartime lifestyle if we are to play fair with the clear intent of Scripture that the people who sit in darkness shall see a great light. Otherwise, as Isaiah said, ‘I faint when I hear what God is planning’ (Isaiah 21:3).”
- Use every skill that you have for the advancement of the Kingdom of God. Dr. Winter had a blazing extraordinary skill: his mind. Oh how many paradigm shifting articles Dr. Winter wrote! Untold are the full influence of his work on sodalities and modalities, the history of the Kingdom, the existence and the priority of unreached peoples, the real war between God and Satan, and more! He thought years ahead of his [KEEP READING]
One of the modern day heroes of the faith for me is George Verwer. Verwer is most known for founding and leading the global missions organization Operation Mobilization and for founding Send the Light, one of the largest literature distribution companies in the world. When I think of people who have modeled a “long obedience in the same direction”, Verwer comes to the front of my mind, along with only a few others.
Check out the tremendous influence of OM. Currently, OM has 5,400 missionaries from 91 nationalities working in 110 countries and on board 2 ocean going ships. 37 million people in more than 140 nations have been on one of OM’s ships (p. 219). The ships have welcomed 38 million people in nearly 500 cities and distributed 50 million Scripture portions (OMUSA website) More than 125,000 young people have been drawn to the mission training of OM (OMUSA website). Overall, over 100 million people have been touched by OM’s gospel ministry. They have impacted presidents, global influencers as well as the poorest of poor. Wow. Read those numbers again. Amazing!
I have been challenged and encouraged by reading about the history of OM and the life of George Verwer. As vibrant young leaders, we need to enrich our minds with the thoughts and stories of the older among us who can testify more to the greater story of how God is working.
Therefore, I was VERY excited when I heard that Verwer has released his newest book online for FREE. I think this should be reading [KEEP READING]
In this series of blog posts, we bring attention to people groups around the world with little or no access to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We call these groups of people, “unreached peoples”. The main point we make is that we as individuals and as churches should make engaging unreached peoples with the Gospel one of our top priorities.
Part 1 introduces “problem” of the unreached. Part 2 explains who are the unreached peoples of the earth. Part 3 below illustrates the contrast between the life of a person with access to the Gospel and a person with no reasonable access.
Today we ask a simple question. If you’ve never heard the good news about Jesus Christ, how will you become a follower of Jesus Christ? Romans 10:17 says, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the word of Christ”. In this series of posts, we are highlighting those peoples who have the particular problem of not having a chance to hear the Gospel.
A PERSON WITH NO ACCESS TO THE GOSPEL
Let’s just say that you are one of the Asahan people that we referenced in a previous post in this series…
..... You are a Muslim.
..... You live in the area known as Batubara, on the island of Sumatra.
..... You are one of 541,000 Asahan people.
..... There are no known Christians among your people.
..... There are no churches among your people.
..... There are no missionaries living among you.
..... There are no missions agencies that have committed to reach you.
..... How [KEEP READING]