Articles

One of the virtually unquestioned axioms of missionary orientation through the years has been that an effective missionary must constantly strive to “identify with the nationals.”

The Bible gives us evidence about the basis on which those who have never heard of Christ will be judged. We have sufficient light on the matter– not to stop us from going but to show us what our responsibility is.

One of the unexpected turnarounds in foreign missions in recent years has been the striking renewal of missionary interest among young people. Five or six years ago students were being written off as far as missions were concerned.

The Community of Latin American Evangelical Ministries (CLAMS) was born of the deep awareness that if the Latin America Mission was to truly realize its goal of becoming an arm of the Latin American church, radical structural change was in order.

From a safe distance of 1700 years Christians enjoy identifying with the Christian martyrs of the first three centuries. Sunday school teachers shock their children with hair-raising accounts of how Christians were fed to the lions in the Colosseum.

Writing for adult unskilled readers, like writing for children, is a highly demanding skill.

Every foreign missionary has some custom-free mental and emotional baggage that accompanies him in every contact with national Christians and non-Christians. Decisions and actions are often based on his culturally acquired sense of rightness. The effective missionary recognizes this “cultural overhang” and gets beyond it.

If you had been there, you would have seen three missionary families gathered together around a campfire singing joyously the hymns that they’d sung so often before. Listening in, you would have heard the mellow whining of a harmonica and the accompaniment of an accordion.

One of the greatest challenges today in world evangelism is the fact that Christianity is still considered “the white man’s religion” by hundreds of millions of people. To accept Christ as their Savior, non-whites around the world may think they would have to be disloyal to their people and to their own culture.

October 15, 1969, was “Moratorium Day” all across the United States. A wide variety of veterans groups, student organizations and impromptu gatherings protested the war in Viet Nam, calling for an immediate moratorium on the war. That day I was scheduled to speak in chapel at a Christian college.