By John Devalve | My wife and I lived in a remote predominantly Muslim region of West Africa with few believers for more than a decade. Not long after we arrived, I faced a new challenge: contextualizing a rite of passage ceremony for a new community of Christ followers.
By Christi Trimbur | Kinship unity develops when diverse members graft together to form one entity. When those groups choose to humbly reach out to each other in acceptance, true partnership or koinonia naturally follows.
By Harley Talman | The C-Spectrum introduced more than 20 years ago provided a tool to categorize different types of Christ-centered communities among Muslims. The Foreignness-Spectrum, or F-Spectrum, focuses on foreignness as the point of reference in appropriate contextualization. It gives needed correction to the C-Spectrum while also building on the C-Spectrum’s foundation.
By Don Allsman | God is sending hundreds of unreached people groups (UPGs) from their homelands to other parts of the globe. These UPG communities are no longer only accessible to long-term missionaries. Urban collaborative ecosystems provide a low-cost method to mobilize large-scale service from non-apostolically gifted people to reach the unreached urban diaspora.
By Luke Lundstedt | The world is changing as people from around the world work together side-by-side. Mission organizations must adapt to accommodate changing dynamics. Improving organizational cultural intelligence is key to sustaining diverse and inclusive teams that can effectively engage in today’s mission environment.
By David R. Dunaetz | Understanding acculturation strategies helps missionaries know what they personally experience and what members of a diaspora community experience. It also provides several insights relevant to diaspora church planting.
By Collin Cornell | Does God’s faithfulness end when our usefulness runs out? While most Christians would deny this, the way we tell the story of God’s mission reveals otherwise. This places a significant question mark over God’s faithfulness, and it threatens our spiritual formation and our evangelistic integrity.
By Tamie Davis and Moyra Dale | Patronage relationships are common in many cultures. Western missionaries in these environments are often viewed as patrons by default. This can be an uncomfortable role. However, when we understand how reciprocity works in these contexts, we can participate in ways that strengthen local relationships.
By Grant Klinefelter | Do we know the story of what God is doing today? Often, we know how God has worked in the past and we have hope for what God will do in the future. But do we really know what God is doing here and now in the present? Across America, giving to missions is declining. And across the West, missionary attrition is rising. I believe one reason for this is that we have not done well telling stories of what God is doing around the world today.
By Charis Jackson and Lynn Green | To say Loren Cunningham reshaped missions is not an overstatement. It’s a fact. From the vision of waves turning into young people on every shore, to the last catalytic call to see every native tongue have an oral translation of the Bible, Loren was a man who loved the Lord and inspired peoples from every nation to join in on the adventure of God.
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