Posts tagged ‘missiology’

Feb 15

Introducing CMS Australia’s new vision

Tamie and I work with CMS Australia, a network of people who care about crossing cultures with the message of Jesus. Worldwide, CMS is one of the oldest world mission groups — for other groups in the CMS family, check out NZCMS, CMS Ireland, CMS UK and Crosslinks.

CMS Australia recently launched a new vision for the coming years. Below are some of the highlights for me. I’m particularly excited by the ways in which the vision helps us to use more missiologically astute language.

What stands out to you? Let us know in the comments below. Read more

Nov 4

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John Stott on salt and light

A few weeks ago I read John Stott: a portrait by his friends. I was particularly encouraged to read this quote, from David Turner, a member at All Souls and a friend of John Stott’s since 1972.

I recall early in my legal career going to see [John Stott] to discuss the possibility of leaving the bar, at which I was just beginning to practise, to explore possibilities of ordination. He was gracious but firm in discouraging me from that route. “We need Christian lawyers” he said. The seriousness with which he took so-called ‘secular’ work was wonderfully affirming. There was no message that such work would be ‘second best’, there was no arena in which God’s people were not needed, where they could not serve effectively. Read more

Oct 29

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‘Be not do’

“Mission is all about going, very little about doing and everything about being.” Naomi Reed spoke on this quote at CMS SA’s Summer Encounter in January this year. For the last 10 months, it’s been rolling around in my head and I re-listened to her talk on this last week. Read more

Oct 25

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God and the nations in the psalms: Conclusion

Missiologists love to talk about the parts of the Psalms that call on the nations to praise God and there are a lot of them. But there are even more references to their defeat! On top of that, it seems to be God’s glory that is the focus, not the nations. So what can we say about God’s attitude to the nations? Read more

Oct 19

God and the nations in the Psalms: the nations’ defeat

We saw a link between God’s preference for Israel and the nations’ praise in Psalm 96 and 67 but what about God’s punishment of the nations and their defeat? Psalms 47 and 87 help us to address this. Read more

Oct 15

God and the nations in the Psalms: Israel’s praise

So far in this series we’ve seen 4 themes about the nations in the Psalms:

God rules the nations
Defeat of the nations
Calls for the nations to praise God
Israel among the nations

Just because the defeat of the nations is the most common reference doesn’t make it God’s primary attitude to the nations though. Actually, there’s no single psalm which has the nations’ defeat on view without also calling for them to praise God. So how does that work? Read more