What happens when an international, interdenominational faith mission agency decides that a national church it birthed has reached maturity and is ready to assume full responsibility for the church and related ministries?
It is amazing how learning and growth take place as we find ourselves in certain contexts. Our experience in church-planting ministry in France for nearly thirty years taught us this lesson.
Missionaries are ambassadors representing Christ. They either present the ugly face of the home culture as a mask for the gospel or present the glorious gospel of the King.
After months of internal wrangling, the denominational pastors board finally reached a decision. Despite the objections of some national pastors, the board approved a young man as national church president. He had recently returned from doctoral studies in the West, and was the most highly educated of all the pastors.
Recently I reached the milestone of a decade of leadership at CBInternational (CBI). It gave me pause to reflect on changes in the mission world since the early 1990s when I began my assignment. It seems like a lifetime and a world ago.
Have you ever felt like an outsider? Of course! Perhaps you were the last one picked for a game in the school yard? Or maybe you were the only one of your friends not invited to a party?
Though they may take on different forms than in the past, traditional “cross-cultural” challenges will continue to be an important aspect of missionary life during the twenty-first century.
During the latter half of the twentieth century, globalization has caused the dispersion of millions of English-speakers to the ends of the earth.
Just as WWII and the Holocaust brought about changes in intellectual paradigms, today the tumult in the Middle East challenges us to rethink our theologies in many ways.
“Expectations, expectations, expectations,” we tell our short-, medium- and long-term missionary candidates. Realistic expectations facilitate smoother transitions and generally make for happier missionary life.
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