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1716 Entries found for Keyword(s) "bart erhman"
Rediscovering the Biblical Church that Can Reach Every People
…How do you go about making disciples among a people who are regularly on the move and do not show up for meetings at regular times? What does a church look like and act like when a people is never in one place for very long? Nomadic peoples present the…
When They Don’t Show Up
…One sweltering afternoon in Niger’s hot season, I responded to a knock at my gate to find two young men from my favourite village. I didn’t know them, but they knew me! After the usual greetings we sat down in the shade and they told me they know I tell…
Book Review: Boundless
…At Pentecost, after Peter preached, how many of his listeners became Christian? When I first heard this question, I thought, “Hmm, Was it 2000 people or was it 3000 people who became Christian?” Bishop helped me to realize that actually the correct answer is zero! This is a trick question!…
What is a Nomad?
…I was talking to a colleague who works among a nomadic tribe in Sub-Saharan Africa recently. “This group are nomadic because they don’t have a consistent water source. If we can solve that problem, then they would not be nomadic, and if they are not nomadic, we will have so…
Contextualizing the True Shepherd
…Not too far from the city where we live, semi-nomadic pastoralists populate the high altitude mountain valleys of Central Asia. These dear people survive through the harshest winters one could imagine by managing large herds of goats and yak. Until now the gospel has not taken root among these Muslims. …
Perspectives ‘Opens Up Purpose’ in Your Life!
…The Perspectives course is a ministry of Frontier Ventures that continues to go from strength to strength. During spring 2016, in the USA alone, about 6,500 students took Perspectives in 184 classes, and during July 2016 Perspectives leaders gathered in Baltimore for the Perspectives National Conference to prepare for an…
When Two Bikes Split a Church
…When my wife and I entered Mozambique in 1993, the United Nations listed it as the poorest country in the world. We had been exposed to poverty before, but nothing prepared us for what we were to experience. Our first night inside the country was a sleepless one—due to stifling…
A Recipe For Dependency
…Christianity came to Kenya through the United Kingdom missionaries who accompanied their brothers, the colonists, in the second half of the 1800s (Baur, 2009). In fact, the missionaries were trying to “modernize” the African people by literally having them drop their culture and replace it with a more “advanced” European…
Four Stages to “No Place Left” in Our Generation
…The theme of the previous issues has been a growing global movement to get to No Place Left for Christ to be named (Rom. 15:23). Our deep aspiration is to launch kingdom movements in which disciples and churches can multiply throughout an unreached people group (UPG), region or city. Our…
Doing Good That Is Good!
…The following is a summary and excerpts of a book written by Dr. Robert Lupton entitled Toxic Charity: How Churches and Charities Hurt those They Help (And How to Reverse it) Many who have written about dependency issues have focused outside North America. However, Dr. Robert Lupton, author of Toxic…
The Best Way to Plant Indigenous Churches Is to Begin that Way
…I once had the opportunity to dialogue with a group of leaders in South Asia about their church planting strategies. A church planting team among them shared about some of the barriers to their effectiveness. One of those barriers related to hosting short-term teams from other countries. These teams had…
Being a World Missionary at Home
…As the director of missions at our church, I’ve seen missionary candidates encounter extreme challenges in raising their needed financial support. I have also seen them struggle with the idea of leaving behind parents and family, learning second languages, living in countries with completely different cultures and customs, working within…
The Sounds of Love and Global Transformation
…Conferences, seminaries, mission organizations and even degrees have been established around one idea: How do we reach the lost? Organizations, books, and church programs are geared to learn how we can best share the good news of the gospel, both here and abroad. For over 40 years, our commitment has…
Discovery Bible Study
…As her family gathers on Saturday morning in China, Lihua shares with them the Bible story she has just discussed at International Friendships’ Friday night Discovery Bible Study in the United States. The first thing she does when she returns home is call them, and they are eager to hear…
Getting Unstuck from Service Land
…International student ministries (ISMs) often get stuck in the land of welcoming and serving students. Hard-working ISM staff and volunteers pick students up from the airport, help them find furniture, teach them English, and organize trips across the nation. None of these activities, in and of themselves, are wrong. The…
A Generational Model for ISM Expansion
…International student ministry (ISM) in the US didn’t exactly have an auspicious beginning. One of America’s first foreign students was Francisco de Miranda, a visionary-revolutionary from South America. He studied at Yale University in 1784 and later fought in the French Revolution and with Simon Bolivar against Napoleon Bonaparte for…
The Three Phases of Movements
…“I didn’t know you wanted to hear about new churches that started in other countries, too.” We had been working alongside Raj for the last five years. In that time, we had seen the Lord grow 8 churches into a network of 167 multiplying churches. Along with that, Raj was…
Train New Disciples to Obey Jesus
…(Adapted from a mastery process developed by Family Bible Church and Troy Cooper.) Break into smaller groups as necessary for full participation within available time. Share highs and lows from the past week. Each retell the memory verse and story from the week before. Each report how they shared and…
Caring Better For Members
…Back in 2000 I planted a bilingual Cantonese/Mandarin church in Los Angeles. I worked hard at caring for our members and poured lots of effort into programs and events, drawing crowds of up to 100, but our regular membership remained around 50 adults. From the beginning I urged our members…
Hastening “No Place Left” Locally
…A few years ago MF featured David Platt’s Radical, a strategic book for mobilizing the church. We are delighted now to feature Steve Smith’s thriller No Place Left saga, designed to carry the Church further in the same direction. This excerpt is from Hastening (Book One). “Dude, haven’t you heard…