Our calling extends beyond our local communities. Let's discuss how as churches we can engage with our global mission.
Resonate
Joel
Steve
David
Fronse
Do you have a Muslim neighbor? Or doctor or dentist? Many Muslims are immigrating to Canada and the United States and are moving into our communities. How much do you know about Islam, and are you prepared to reach out to your Muslim neighbor in a loving way?
Reports about missions in the news typically feature short term visits by people with big hearts but who sometimes have very little background understanding. Long term missionaries, if attended to at all, are often seen through the lens of The Poisonwood Bible. It doesn't always happen, of course, but
Missionary giant Hudson Taylor said, "When we work, we work. When we pray, God works." Discover ways to mobilize your church to pray for both local and global missions.
In Asset Based Community Development, we talk a lot about church as asset for positive community change. In what ways can church be gift to neighborhood transformation? I wonder what you would add to this list?
In this webinar you'll discover ways to mobilize your church to pray for both local and global missions.
International mission has been communicated most powerfully by pictures of people engaged in ministry and those hearing the Good News about Jesus. Ten students at Dordt College travelled to Mexico to shoot video of ministries going on in that country through Christian Reformed World Missions missionaries and their partners.
In the 1980s the buzzword in international missions was unreached people groups. In the last decade or so the buzzword has been partnership. We need to partner with Christians around the world to do collaborative ministry among the unreached.
Community development or mission work is not something we do for people — it is something we do with people. So often we think in terms of projects, participants, and measurable results. But really the challenge is to look for transformation in the lives of people.
Whether our relationships are cross-cultural or within our own culture it is human to have a tendency to compare ourselves with others.
Churches can end up with lots of missionary connections. Gradually, and for a variety of reasons, new relationships are established. Soon the congregation has a dozen or more commitments. Even the missions committee or GO team has a hard time remembering
On 27 July, 2011, the Church lost one of its greatest leaders, Rev. John Stott. He contributed so much in so many areas that it is hard to overstate his significance. He was called "a Renaissance man with a Reformation theology." Indeed. He made a number of important contributions in the area of mission that deserve
Sometimes a short-term mission trip is just a beginning. At least, that’s what it was for Carol Van Klompenburg.In 2008, a team leader asked members of a 2008 service and learning team to the Nehemiah Center in Nicaragua what each of them was seeking from the trip. Carol answered, “A bigger world—mine is too small.”
As with any buzzword there are varieties of meaning attached to the word "missional," and sometimes people talk past each other because each has different connotations in mind when saying "missional."
Here is a video which shows how a half-dozen scientists who originally were raised in the evolutionary paradigm have been persuaded by the evidence that the evidence for evolution is lacking.
Christian Reformed World Missions has been working with World Renew and other agencies to offer webinars on a variety of topics including The Changing Face of World Missions, The Millenium Development Goals, and When Helping Hurts.
I choose to post this on the Global Mission site because this is where I tried to nudge conversation a year and a half ago (see the blog: Concept of a Global World Missions Agency). Pray with all that ensuing decisions will lead to the necessary, concrete steps to getting the CRCNA's world-wide witness "together again."
As a kid, I thought of a cross-cultural missionary as a church planter or community developer sent by a denominational agency to some remote country in Latin America, Asia or Africa. As I grew older I realized that my childhood image was not all that Biblical.
The practice of mission work has changed dramatically in recent decades, and the pace of change seems to constantly accelerate. The way that we celebrate missions in the churches should also be dynamic. The idea of a mission emphasis week, often connected to a Faith Promise program for mission support, goes back several decades in CRC history.
I grew in Sully, Iowa, in the 1960’s. Every year my parents would take us to Mission Fest at Market Square in Pella. I thought of missionaries as rather exotic creatures who travelled to far off lands. They showed slides that could have been borrowed from the files of National Geographic.
I want to encourage short term mission trip planners/participants to think long term commitment. We have talked with Steve Brauning about the "commando" mission trips, where a team drops in, does the work and disappears, never to be seen or heard from again...
Circles of friends can warp into ethnic or denominational bubbles or even just plain Christian bubbles. And sometimes we are tempted to think that we have been sent on a mission to or for those outside our bubbles.
Many have criticized John Calvin and his fellow Reformers as being indifferent to the cause of missions outside the bounds of what was considered Christendom in the 16th century. A Latin American missiologist will be
In the last few years I've heard a lot of pessimistic statements about the state of Christianity in America. Evangelical leaders in the Global South, however, see growth in the influence of Evangelical Christianity in their countries. Take a look at the news release and the survey link below.
The question was really quite simple, “Can we be friends?” My first unspoken instinct was the somewhat sarcastic rejoinder that in my opinion we were already friends. But I bit my tongue and instead asked Darryl what he meant by his question.
I’ve had the opportunity to see what the Father is doing in India through the careful distribution of simple, paper tracts. The numbers are so vast, they can only be believed when I recognize the immense power of God to use a low-caste slum dweller with a Gospel tract to bring a Hindu to faith in Jesus.