Answers from the Black Box
In the wake of my expulsion from China, my wife and I have been overwhelmed with the outpouring of prayers and kindness on our behalf. Believers and churches from all over the world have contacted us to let us know that they are praying for us and the four churches in our city. At the combined farewell service that I mentioned in the last post,…
The Lofty Status of Peons
I’ve just got one more post I want to share about our getting the boot. The drama continues there in northeast China, of course. The Chinese pastors occasionally get phone calls from the police. About a week ago, the police wanted them to turn over my bank card number so that they could check to see if I was a cult leader or not. Not…
The Hard Part
I wonder sometimes what kind of work I’d be qualified for if I couldn’t be a missionary anymore. Speaking Chinese might open up some doors. But I think the occupation that I’d be most qualified for would be one of those guys on Shark Tank that listen to inventors and entrepreneurs pitch their investment proposals. At least, I seem to find myself in a similar position…
The End of the Movement?
The modern missionary movement didn’t start with a bang. The great missionary to India William Carey may be dubbed its father, but he was himself a child, a product, of missionaries of the previous century, men like David Brainerd and John Eliot. But the moniker fits, because Carey did leave a massive legacy. In the ensuing decades, thousands of Protestant missionaries were sent to field…
Missions: Westerners Need Not Apply? (Part 2)
The last post started to discuss the idea that national believers are the most qualified to serve as missionaries (meaning, the most qualified to be exported to another place with the Gospel). Let me say again that there is certainly a core of truth here: already speaking a language and fitting into a culture are wonderful advantages. My argument in the last post, however, was…
Continue Reading Missions: Westerners Need Not Apply? (Part 2)
Missions: Westerners Need Not Apply?
I am finding more and more that people like me (middle-class Americans) are considered ill-suited candidates for church-planting missions to foreign fields. I try not to take it personally (I just close my eyes and pretend it’s just sixth grade all over again and my friends are choosing me last for a baseball team – seriously, no emotional pain whatsoever!). But I do worry that…
East Meets West: A Great Gulf Fixed?
You may have seen the recent East meets West infographic by Yang Liu that is making its rounds across the internet. As attractively designed and effectively communicative as any infographic that I’ve seen. Designed by a Chinese woman whose family moved to Germany when she was 14, the main panels of the infographic put various aspects of Chinese and German culture in juxtaposition to demonstrate…
Category Creation
John Piper tweeted (yes, that’s a word in my vocabulary now) yesterday, “Harder and just as urgent, alongside contextualization, is category creation.” Almost all modern missionary training emphasizes the importance of contextualized ministry. That is, as we enter another culture, we must give careful thought to how to communicate the Gospel so that it is comprehensible and impactful to the inhabitants of that culture. How…