Red Twin is temporarily back in Australia after 18 months in Central Asia. She was asked to give a talk about what the first year serving cross-culturally is like. She asked for contributions from us as well as other friends who are in Europe, South Asia and other parts of […]
Areas where Protestant missionaries had a significant presence in the past are on average more economically developed today, with comparatively better health, lower infant mortality, lower corruption, greater literacy, higher educational attainment (especially for women), and more robust membership in nongovernmental associations. This is the claim of a statistical study […]
How would you go about talking ‘mission’ with Australian churches? ‘Mission’ is a term in pretty wide usage today, especially in connection with church planting and the adjective ‘missional’. This is a good thing, because ‘mission’ was once used to refer exclusively to overseas cross-cultural work — but because we […]
You hear stories from time to time of missionaries who become pluralists relativists. I can see how it happens. It might be that you go into another culture with the idea that you’re bringing something unique, only to discover that it’s already there. Red Twin tells me that it’s a […]
In the previous two posts, I’ve raised some issues to do with dependence. In an attempt to avoid fostering dependence, we may too easily become task focused, treating people as projects rather than, well, people. But avoiding dependence is motivated by recognising the full dignity of other believers. So where […]
Yesterday, I observed that the opposite of dependence is not isolation but having something to offer. In our case, that means recognising that national church leaders are often far more effective in mission and ministry in their national context than missionaries. (We are expensive, for a start, and often have […]
The question of dependence is a critical one for engaging in any sort of cross-cultural partnership. In the nineteenth century, CMS’s Henry Venn came up with three marks of a mature church: self-supporting, self-propagating and self-governing. Though he planted churches in west Africa, he believed that autonomy was key to treating […]
Meet Jesus at uni 