When scaling up requires us to get small

Luke 3, John 1, and John 3 record a remarkable progression about the life of John the Baptist. He bursts on the scene, seemingly out of nowhere. It is as if his life blazes suddenly into being, a bonfire that explodes up into the night. He inspires people to action: his message seems to draw [...]

Reality-Check: A Promise is Not a Call

J. D. Greear at Resurgence.com has written a passionate post on The Confusing Language of “Calling” in which he says in part:
“Jesus made it clear that his will was for people of every nation to know the gospel. Why, then, are so many Christians waiting on a warm and fuzzy sensation—for God to spell out [...]

Christianity on the Cheap

Every weekend, in any given city, you find yard sales. Somebody has decided they have too much “stuff.” Perhaps they are moving and don’t want to box it all up. Perhaps they need to make way for newer stuff. For whatever reason, the pattern is the same. Go down to city hall and for a [...]

Metrics, misunderstood

Today Ernest (Missions, misunderstood) wrote an interesting piece, “Metrics,” where he questions some of the ways we measure success. Since its a piece dealing with statistics, research and measurement, the subject is near and dear to my heart.
Ernest thinks:

If you believe that God does the saving (not us), then measuring the number of salvations is [...]

Are missionaries only about words?

Today Ted Esler wrote the first entry in a blog series about megachurches. Most of what he had to say seemed pretty good to me, but I had qualms with the final couple of paragraphs and decided this was a big enough issue to write about it here. In his post, Esler wrote:
Missionary work is about [...]

More than 650 people groups left to reach, not done by 2025

Over the last couple days I’ve been noticing some various twitter spurts about “only 650 people groups left to reach” and “all of the people groups will be reached by 2025.” I’m not sure of the precise source of these quotes; I’ve twittered back but haven’t received a response. However, I think it’s important to [...]

Can a problem be too big to tackle?

Is any problem too big to tackle? For example, consider:

200 million antipersonnel landmines in the world 
Over 1 billion unevangelized people in the world
Over 170 million alcoholics in the world
Over 60 million abandoned children and infants (1990)

Whether these problems are too large depends upon the available resources. They are too big for a single individual. Could [...]

How not to be distracted

It’s the political season, and even though I live in Southeast Asia, it seems like news and opinions about the American elections are everywhere. And, they are mostly dominated Friendfeed, which I use mostly to give me a heads up about leading events. And, of course, there’s plenty of other economic news, plus the typical [...]

When it is beyond our ability

We talk a lot about our desire to see the Great Commission completed, but the simple reality is that some pretty big portions are beyond our reach. Afghanistan is a classic example. If you want to see the whole world reached with the Gospel, then Afghanistan must be reached. Yet much of “reaching Afghanistan” is [...]

The Missional Path

The term “missional” has become widely used especially by bloggers having to do with the emergent church. Recently (June 23rd) a number of bloggers participated in a “synchroblog” on the topic of missional. Without necessarily having read every single one of the more than 50 blog entries that participated, it seems that an online publication [...]