Religions of Man » missiology

10 Ways to Encourage Missionaries

Michael — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:49:41 +0000

Mark Rogers recently posted an article on The Gospel Coalition Blog with a list of 10 ways to encourage missionaries based on responses he got from missionaries themselves. Read the full article here.

1. Pray for them and let them know that you are doing so frequently.

2. Send “real mail.”

3. Pray for the people the missionaries serve and not only for the missionaries and their families.

4. Recruit others to pray for the missionary’s area of service (city, people group, etc.) or for the missionaries themselves.

5. Go visit them with the purpose of serving and encouraging them in their work.

6. Send them updates and pictures of you and your family (by mail or email).

7. Ask questions about their work.

8. Continue to be a Christian friend and continue to minister to them.

9. Support them financially.

10. Seek to encourage them when they are on stateside assignment.

Remember that missions is not just about praying, giving, and going, but also about supporting those we have sent.

Seven Themes of Fruitfulness in Muslim Contexts

Michael — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 17:34:56 +0000

In the latest issues of International Journal of Frontier Missions (26:2), Eric Adams, Don Allen, and Bob Fish discuss the characteristics of effective field practitioners in Muslim contexts in their article Seven Themes of Fruitfulness (pdf). They identified the seven themes of fruitfulness after surveying and interviewing 300 missionaries from 34 different agencies which work among Muslim peoples. The seven themes they found among those who saw substantial and long-lasting fruit are:

1. Fluency: The worker communicates the gospel in the peoples’ heart language (the language they speak at home), rather than their trade language.

2. Storying: The majority of Muslim peoples live in functionally oral societies, so the workers communicate biblical truth through culturally-appropriate storying methods.

3. Christ-like Character: The workers have a good reputation among the people. They are seen as respectful of the host culture. They are seen as spiritual people who love and serve others. They also are known for sharing meals and being hospitable.

4. Social Networks: They seek to reach “networks among whom trust-relationships already exist,” like families and other natural social groups, instead of just reaching individuals.

5. Scripture: They use the Bible as “their primary means of sharing the gospel, training new believers and developing leaders.”

6. Intentional Reproduction: From the very start they teach seekers and new believers to teach others what they are learning. They plant churches and train leaders who can spiritually reproduce.

7. Prayer: Workers are people of prayer, individually and corporately. They also take the time to establish extensive prayer networks in support of their work.

LDS Contextualization and Christian Missions

Michael — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:48:41 +0000

I came across an interesting article in the Salt Lake Tribune about how the LDS church is seeking to contextualize their faith around the world. From the article, it appears that the church is trying to remove some of the American cultural trappings that have been such an important part of the LDS faith up to this point. It will be interesting to see how much contextualization can take place in light of the ecclesiastical structures that are foundational to the LDS faith.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries many Protestant missionaries failed to contextualize the Gospel. Missionaries, knowingly or unknowingly, often exported not only the Gospel message but also western culture. This often led to syncretism, theological confusion, and surface-level Christianity. Therefore, in many of these places Christianity remained a foreign religion.

Thankfully, since that time, missionaries have realized the need to contextualize the Gospel. The Gospel message stays the same, but the ways in which it is communicated should take different forms depending on the context. However, contextualizing how the Gospel is communicated is not enough.

The ways in which Christians live and worship must also be contextualized. This type of contextualization, although assisted at the start by a missionary, should ultimately be done by the local believers. Local believers, under the guidance of the Bible and the Holy Spirit, are able to best determine how the gospel and their churches are to look in their context. When local believers contextualize the Gospel and their churches, Christianity has a far greater chance of not being seen as a foreign religion. A great resource on Contextualization is David Hesselgrave’s Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally