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.
Unconventional, innovative and prayerful. Yours to Finish the Task conveys this portrait of William Cameron Townsend, in this fourth and final installment of his memoirs.
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.
The Lord called us to Africa in the 1950s. Extensive cross-cultural ministry training served us well when we arrived in Kenya in 1966. But when we were set to furlough in the United States, no one suggested that we would suffer culture shock. After all, we were just returning home.
Those of us who have written countless newsletters have sometimes asked, “Does anyone really read this stuff?” Admittedly, the decision to read or not to read is a step supporters must make. Sandy Weyeneth’s new book, Writing Exceptional Missionary Newsletters, helps missionaries do their part by writing great newsletters supporters will want to read.
Back in September-October, 2004, I was fortunate to be among the delegates to the Lausanne Forum 2004 held in Pattaya, Thailand. This event, the 30th anniversary conference of the first Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization organized by Billy Graham, called together 1,530 men and women from 130 countries.
Defensive about your whiteness? Cringe at the phrase “dead, white males”? This book would have been absurd thirty-five years ago. Now it puts a face to white pain—like the pain of the woman told that she could not speak in a Latin American studies class due to her whiteness.
Today’s population growth is driving change in unprecedented ways. The challenges and opportunities for all aspects of life are at a critical level. No generation has ever faced these issues; there are no ready-made answers. In the last 150 years the world’s population has grown from five hundred million to six billion.
Please, tell us your stories, the villagers said to the newcomers. The villagers were all silent and smiled as the Enlightened began telling the truth. But they did not tell stories.
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.
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