A great deal of heat—to say nothing of light—has been generated by the insistence in some circles that the church should concentrate on the responsive elements of society.
Two articles in this issue are about church-planting and church growth. Ron Fisher makes a strong appeal for better training and more experience in the U. S. David Pickard says one problem encountered in moving into responsive areas is that the missionaries don’t know how to win souls.
The 1971 Green Lake Conference convened to identify points of tension in church-mission relations and to develop guidelines to assist the mission boards in charting future paths.
A few years ago I found myself the only white man in a crowd of several hundred marching along a road in a new suburb of the ancient city of Ife, Nigeria, lustily singing “Onward, Christian Soldiers” in Yoruba.
In his article, the new head of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar describes both external and internal crises facing the churches of Africa.
There has been little or no evaluation counseling with missionaries. Counseling has been designed primarily to deal with problems. When the foreign secretary comes to the field he may ask to see those who are having problems.
It is a hopeful sign that mission board administrators are beginning to talk about evaluating performance on the field. Admittedly, they are bucking strong pietistic trends to the contrary.
In choosing “The Christian Home” as the theme for their third General Assembly (1977), leaders of the Association of Evangelicals of Africa and Madagascar perceived the determining practical issue in the church today.
Recently the Lord provided an opportunity to be present in a Thursday night evangelistic-worship meeting held by a very dynamic and evidently born-again Coptic Orthodox priest. The setting was a Middle Eastern country.
They are among the 1.7 million Americans, plus other English-speaking people, who live in foreign countries.
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