Articles

This article is in response to “Reflections on the Meaning of ‘All Nations,'” by Frank Severn in the October 1977 issue of EMQ.

“I don’t like the doctrine of the Trinity,” one of our students confessed. “It gives us all kinds of trouble with the Muslims, is impossible to understand, and is of no benefit.”

I was at a conference on frontier missions where a key speaker began his presentation with the question, “Which is more strategic and important—to win 100 Russians to Christ or one Uzbek?”

Missionaries returning home for visits to North America find a changing landscape. During coffee breaks at church meetings and conferences many lament the declining interest in missions in North America.

The tranquil cornfields of central Illinois stretched on mile after mile along Route 150 west of Peoria. Suddenly, a bizarre black-and-white sign MURPHY GO HOME popped up from the greenery. How unneighborly, I thought about the good farmers of Illinois.

Roland Allen, in Missionary Methods: St. Paul’s or Ours? looks over the panorama of churches established by Paul with wonder and incredulity: wonder that so many growing indigenous churches over such a broad territory could be established in just 10 years; and incredulity that so many in missions today consider the feat impossible to repeat.

One of my teammates in the Philippines, anticipating his first furlough, worried that if some of his supporters really knew how we did ministry, they might drop him.

In June, 1996, the Southern Baptist Convention passed a resolution calling upon its churches to direct “energies and resources toward the proclamation of the gospel to the Jewish people.” American Jewish community leaders reacted with howls of alarm. Some in the SBC appeared to break rank.

Church planting within Muslim societies presents a major challenge for Christian missions. As the year 2000 approaches, mission agencies are scrambling for strategies suitable for reaching Islam with the gospel.

A college friend of mine who became a physician was turned down for missionary service because he flunked the board’s physical exam. He had only one kidney. Another board, however, accepted him for work in Zaire, where he served with distinction for 35 years.