For as long as I can remember, my life has been shaded by clinical depression that comes in its seasonal form every autumn like an unstoppable glacier. It happens in waves, with low points sometimes lasting anywhere from a few days to several months. It’s something I’ve become much more attuned to these past seven years serving in international missions.
This is a nod to every other person currently bracing for the oncoming months.
We are funded largely by some wonderful, faithful individual supporters and churches. The struggle is that often when people give you money, it creates this sense that you work for them.
This is the third post in a three-part series that addresses some of the common myths and misconceptions we experience most regularly.
If you’re basing your opinion of us on social media, it could totally appear that we have a lot of time on our hands and we’re really living it up. That’s because we do have fun…as our closest friends would say has always been the case for us. As much as we have fun, we also wrestle with the hardships inherent to departing one’s native culture and entering a new one.
The legacy image of what international missions should look like always seems to linger. We’re not digging wells, converting villages of poor people, and dressing in some relatively exotic fashion. The dissonance that image creates with the parts of our experience we’re able to communicate, combined with the hallmark American fear of getting duped or flimflammed, often results in some unfortunate encounters and assumptions.
The first of a three-part series that addresses some of the common myths and misconceptions we experience most regularly.
The topics of money, wealth, and what Christian economy should look like are as vital to the rebirth of the Christian church as they are uncomfortable for Christians to talk about. Why? Because the economy of a faith community should be in stark contrast to the economy of empire.
Thinking about this Thanksgiving holiday got me reflecting about gratitude and sharing a table with friends. I thought it could be interesting to consider how Jesus shared a table — which he did often. Multiplied out over a the span of a year, that’s almost 1,100 meals!
In the book of Luke alone, there are 10 stories of Jesus dining with various people. Let’s revisit these stories and ask how the tables of the first century after Christ’s birth could relate to ours today in 2018.
Those moments when the church expects or assumes a shared cultural connection are simultaneously the most unifying and divisive moments we have experienced in the church, because in these moments new/unorthodox folks can go from feeling included to feeling like spectators. It can be easy to forget that some cultural hurdles are impossible (or inappropriate) for some people to overcome and, without ill-intention, we may foster an environment where folks are continually confronted with the reality they can never fully enter our community.
This is a problem, because Christian communities must accommodate and integrate outsiders.
Why is it that we don't always recognize so many Biblical heroes start as underdogs? God used ordinary people to show His extraordinary goodness. When Jesus was on earth, he surrounded himself with underdogs -- misfits, outcasts, and societal losers.
Feel like the odds are against you? You’re in good company.
Christmas, named after the “Mass of Christ,” has become an abomination to its name. I can’t imagine a time of year that inversely reflects the values of Christ more strongly. In what world does it make sense to take Jesus, a radical revolutionary set on guerrilla global transformation, and associate him with consumerism, the fulfillment of personal wants, needs, and ritualistic religion?
Yet this is where we stand.
I'm going to let you in on a secret: I'm a Christian missionary and I loathe the term "evangelism."
My friend Hal used to say people like me don't like evangelism because we "have seen evangelism done wrong time and time again." Those words have proven to be pivotal for me. If it's possible for evangelism to be "done wrong," what does it mean to be "done right?"
