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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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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 …