Discerning Spiritual Realities in Islamic Contexts: Missional Reflections of a Boring Charismatic | The Religious Other (Langham 2020)

In this post I would like to introduce a chapter of mine in the recent book published by Langham, The Religious Other: A Biblical Understanding of Islam, the Qur'an and Muhammad.

This chapter is titled, “Discerning Spiritual Realities in Islamic Contexts: Missional Reflections of a Boring Charismatic.” And yes, I did just start my own denomination. Let me know if you also want to join the Boring Charismatics.

From the introduction:

“Islam is not a religious system. It is an actual spiritual being that holds people in bondage. Pray with me to break the Spirit of Islam!” exclaimed the conference speaker to begin a time of corporate prayer. The clear implication of his statement was that Muslims everywhere are imprisoned by the same malevolent force and all suffer the identical demonic oppression. And yet, are there other ways to think of the spiritual conflict in ministry to Muslims? Merely asking such a mitigating question often leads to accusations of “minimizing truth” and failing to engage the “dark side of Islam.” So, how do we discern the spiritual realities in Islamic contexts?

Since 9/11, Islam has frequently been denounced by evangelicals as demonic and inherently violent. Within the evangelical community the opening quotation is neither an isolated incident nor even a particular rarity. Especially in the American context, demonization of Islam spans three centuries and finds deep roots in American history. This kind of spiritualizing of a religion’s adherents is often absent when considering Buddhists, Hindus or Mormons. There are historical and political reasons that explain these tendencies, but my purpose here is not to explore these.

Evangelicals who serve within a Muslim context frequently report confrontations with the occult and demonic oppression. Subsequently, there are many extraordinary stories of healing and miraculous divine intervention. Theological hermeneutics and denominational traditions play a large role in shaping practical responses to spiritual conflict, but again, a discussion of these issues goes beyond the scope of this chapter. It is all too easy to get caught in the philosophical/theological crossfire: colleagues of mine who minister in the “signs and wonders” camp claim I am not charismatic enough, while coworkers on the other side of the spectrum accuse me of being too supernaturally oriented. In finding my own place in these issues, I classify my personal theological stance on spiritual gifts and supernatural conflict in mission as that of a “boring charismatic.” I do believe in all the supernatural gifts (although I’m still waiting for mine!), but I’m adverse to the sensationalism that often follows contemporary charismatic movements.

So rather than discuss the practical implications of supernatural ministry among Muslims, my emphasis in this chapter is more fundamental and pertains to our biblical theology of Islam. I will focus on the nature of the spiritual conflict in Islamic contexts. Does the spiritual conflict stem from Islam itself – as an evil spiritual covenant or as an actual demonic entity masquerading as a religion? In what ways are the evil, supernatural powers in Islamic contexts essentially different when compared with other religious traditions? Are military metaphors appropriate for conceptualizing our ministry to Muslims? What exactly are the spiritual realities we face in the Christian-Muslim encounter?

In this chapter, I hope to demonstrate how a biblically-grounded approach to spiritual conflict (and to the “religious other”) can make us more discerning and, in turn, fruitful in our missiological encounter with Muslims.

I continue this with the following sections:

• Spiritual Profiling?
• Ordinary Muslim Piety
• Sources of Spiritual Conflict in Islamic Contexts
• Idolatrous Loyalty and Spiritual Oppression
• Beyond Military Metaphors for Mission

This is one of the most challenging pieces I have written on ministry to Muslims, but I believe it is one of the most important and unique contributions I have made. There is a lot in here I wish I would have known 20 years ago.

From the conclusion:

I identified as a “boring charismatic” in this chapter for two main reasons. First, my charismatic emphasis denies the rose-colored lens and affirms the reality of oppressive supernatural conflict among Muslims wherein special gifts and persons are sometimes required to deal with these realities. Secondly, I am “boring” because I avoided the gray lens and the sensationalistic claims that Islam is either some extreme case or a monolithic, evil conspiracy against Christianity.

Understanding the various spiritual realities in Islamic contexts is an exercise in biblical discernment. We seek to relate to Muslims, not under the triumphal metaphor of war and empire, but as people who are very similar to who we once were, including many of the same idolatry and spiritual issues. We must also become sensitive to the temptation of spiritually stereotyping all Muslims or of imagining the activity of Satan at greater or lesser degrees in Islamic contexts compared to all others.

Worship of God outside of Christ and an ultimate faith allegiance to anything other than Jesus opens everyone to spiritual oppression which is especially devastating for those who have not been given the Holy Spirit. In light of this, we proclaim the highest and only hope for Muslims: Jesus! Through faith in him alone we find the freedom we so desperately need. May God grant us the grace, wisdom and perseverance to minister with unwavering trust as we joyfully proclaim the liberating gift of the powerful gospel: “If the Son sets you free, you will be freed indeed” (John 8:36).

Buy the book and read the whole chapter here.

Introducing Hermeneutical Hinges: How Different Views of Religion and Culture Impact Interpretations of Islam | The Religious Other (Langham 2020)

I’m excited to let you know about our new book, The Religious Other: A Biblical Understanding of Islam, the Qur'an and Muhammad which released in December 2020. Here is the book description:

We live at a time when religious diversity has become a fact of life in our globalized societies. Yet Christian engagement with Muslims remains complex, complicated by fear, misunderstanding and a history fraught with political and cultural tensions. These essays, drawn from the 2018 and 2019 Middle East Consultations hosted by the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary's Institute of Middle East Studies, engage the need for a carefully developed theological understanding of Islam, its origins and its sacred text. Weaving together the work of Christian scholars of Islam, the Bible, theology and missiology, along with the insights of ministry practitioners, this book combines scholarly exploration with pertinent ministry practice, offering a rich framework for the church to continue its conversation about its engagement with Muslim communities and its proclamation of Christ worldwide.

I have contributed three chapters in the volume; two of them are new. In this post I would like to highlight my essay in section 5.3, “Hermeneutical Hinges: How Different Views of Religion and Culture Impact Interpretations of Islam.” Here is my introduction.

As Martin Accad has proposed, “Your view of Islam will affect your attitude to Muslims. Your attitude will, in turn, influence your approach to Christian-Muslim interaction, and that approach will affect the ultimate outcome of your presence as a witness among Muslims.” I would like to add a more foundational layer to this proposal, namely, that your understanding of religion and culture will affect your view of Islam. In other words, your view of Islam inevitably hinges upon your approach to religion and culture, and specifically, the relationship between the two.

In this article, I would like to show how these ideas play out in the missiological discourse of ministry to Muslims. In the interest of space, I will not focus on a theology of religion (although the discerning reader will see hints of it throughout). Instead, I will focus on the more basic concepts of religion and culture. As we will see, the contemporary debate concerning approaches of ministry to Muslims is complex, and different presuppositions about culture and religion can lead to drastically different understandings of Islam.

The chapter continues with the following sections:

• Culture: Secular, Evil or Theological?
• Religion: Western Invention, Belief System, or Subset of Culture?
• Epistemological Perspective: Top-Down or Bottom-Up?
• Form and Meaning: Equated, Separate, or Corresponding?
• Islam: Cultureligion or Religiolatry?

My approach in this essay offers examples from missiology where different answers to the above questions will take you in diverse directions as you interpret “Islam.”

Here is my final section, Concluding Reflections: Getting Comfortable with Ambiguity:

We are unlikely ever to reach a consensus on a proper biblical theology of religion and culture. With the publication of Christ and Culture in 1951, Niebuhr called this issue an “enduring problem” for the Church through the ages. While we can make some general clarifications, as I have done here, it seems to me that many of these issues can’t be solved at the abstract, theoretical level. There is simply too much knowledge rooted in experience and context making the issues extremely difficult to evaluate in a historically “Western” way, i.e. in the realm of ideas.

Interestingly, during the infamous Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, the assembled reflected on the experience of God’s work among them. A next step in this discussion would be to put approaches of ministry to Muslims in dialogue with the Muslim and MBB experience of Islam (religion? culture? both?), which, as we already know, varies. I am very sympathetic to the charge that this discussion has been dominated by Western voices. And yet I find that non-Westerners and MBBs have similar discussions and similar disagreements around these concepts as well.

Still, we may offer some concluding critiques of the discussion. Many of the approaches to contextualization surveyed here assume that Muslims are practicing, not nominal, Muslims. In my experience, however, many Muslims, if they are practicing at all, use Islamic piety to keep God at a distance, either because they are afraid of punishment or because he is seen as unknowable. A Muslim friend once told me he was looking forward to eternity in Paradise, because in heaven, there “was no more worship.” For him, heaven was a man-centered place of sensual indulgence; God was present only in theory.

Additionally, Muslims do not all share the same attachment to Islam. It should go without saying, that, depending on the context, sometimes you do not have to do anything according to the context! Many Muslims do not desire to follow Christ in ways that are culturally or religiously familiar to them, although some indeed do. And yet, the Gospel has all too often been presented in Western forms, causing it to be rejected as foreign. While this may partially explain some of the tension in our discourse, it does not explain all the historical reasons for the resistance to the gospel in Muslim lands. In some Muslim contexts, there is often a very strong connection between form and meaning. For many Muslims and MBBs, some of the forms are linked with meanings that are nearly impossible to modify.

On the other hand, the automatic equation of form and meaning practically villainizes particular Islamic cultures. For mission in a postcolonial world, we must ensure that our theology of Islam does not speak pejoratively of Muslims and Islamic cultures. Unfortunately, Evangelicals have a long history of failing to obey the Golden Rule of Ethics, “Do to others what you would have them do to you” (Matt 7:12). If we understand Christianity as a religious system, we can also demonstrate that “Christianity” has (at numerous times throughout history) done evil things seemingly rooted in the demonic. Does this also mean that “Christianity” has a demonic source? Furthermore, if God saves us from our culture (as some maintain), to what culture do we turn? What is “Christian” culture? Answers only add to the ambiguity.

So, how can we understand Islam? Islam is a process of “meaning-making,” undertaken by Muslims as they interact in their context with the revelation (according to their tradition) given to Muhammad. Islam includes diverse cultural traditions, access to social networks, a sense of belonging with others, and rituals and ceremonies. Phrases such as “leaving Islam” or “remaining in Islam” are often too vague to be meaningful and can actually be confusing in discipleship. For some, “leaving Islam” could mean that a Muslim who comes to Christ must also leave his culture and community, while for others, “remaining in Islam” could mean it is automatically permissible to participate in Islamic rituals. Issues of socioreligious identity are not always clear either. What does a “Muslim” or a “Christian” identity mean within a specific setting? Answers vary with contexts. When we look at Muslim contexts, Islam is not all we see; it is one strand in the braided rope of Muslim societies.

Finally, we haven’t discussed other important issues, such as the nature of the Kingdom of God, the Church, and the gospel. These are also disputed concepts in evangelical missiology. Although we might not agree, and although we need to become more comfortable with ambiguity and messiness, we should still strive for as much Christocentric clarity as possible as we witness to Muslims in diverse contexts. Let us not forget the command to love one another and to love the religious other as we make disciples of Jesus among all nations.

Buy the book and read the whole chapter here.

Movements Research Symposium Reflections | Dave Coles on the WEA MC Blog

Dave Coles recently blogged about his experience at the Movements Research Symposium 2020 and it was posted on the WEA Mission Commission blog today:

https://weamc.global/motusdei2020/

Here it is below, reposted in full.

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Dear fellow participants in God’s mission,

Grace and peace to you in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

In early September and early October 2020, a virtual Movements Research Symposium gathered scores of researchers, theologians, and mission leaders from around the world, to facilitate a strategic discussion around the phenomenon of discipleship movements. Plenary and breakout sessions included presentations and discussion of strategic research on global movements to Christ. This symposium launched the Motus Dei (Latin for “movement of God”) Network: a collaboration between mission agencies, movement practitioners, and academic research centers.”

Keynote speakers for the opening day included David Garrison, David Lim, and Craig Ott. Seven additional keynote speakers and 14 breakout speakers with discussion filled out two additional days of interaction. These sessions introduced topics slated to become chapters in a book from William Carey Publishing, targeted for publication in the second quarter of 2021. The final day of interaction included strategic work group sessions on topics including Training of Apostolic Leaders Academic Qualitative Study of Movements, Metrics and Reporting, Sociological-Contextual Dynamics, Biblical Theology of Movements, and Common Good and Social Justice.

The movement paradigm has become a hot topic in the evangelical missions community. In contrast to traditional methods, movement approaches are more group-oriented and tend to facilitate discipleship of others within their contexts. This yields greater potential for growth, both quantitative (more disciples of Jesus) and qualitative (more mature churches).

Researchers have documented the existence of more than 1300 discipleship movements to Christ, the vast majority happening among unreached peoples. Some evangelical mission agencies are energetically pressing ahead with movement paradigms. Yet the deeper work of missiology (understanding these movements from a theological, sociological, and practical perspective), can still greatly benefit from additional research and development.

Both the complexity of the issues involved and the sheer numbers of movements being reported call for multiple researchers, institutions, and agencies partnering together to meet this task. Theology, social sciences, and mission practice offer invaluable tools and perspectives to help us understand God’s work in birthing church-planting movements today which transform lives and communities.

As a member of the Facilitation Team, I personally found it stimulating to hear a wide range of perspectives on movements from so many diverse contexts and diverse researchers around the world. The symposium offered an excellent launch into ongoing discussion about crucial issues related to discipleship movements. Among other things, we discerned together that to improve relationships and mutual comprehension, we need more nuanced understanding of some commonly used terms. We also noted great value in better observing the ways movements are transforming their broader communities, and the importance of improved relationships and understanding between longer-established churches and emerging kingdom movements.

Within the next month we hope to launch a website so that interested others can join us in grappling with these and related issues. For now you can see a bit more on the Motus Dei blog.

The Motus Dei Research Symposium has made a good start toward presenting in-depth descriptions of movements that will bear sustained examination from robust academic critique. We look forward to seeing the Lord increase our understanding of how movements are happening and how they can be fostered more effectively.

Recent Movements and UPG Resources

If you aren’t already, you should be aware of Steve Addison’s Movements Podcast and website https://www.movements.net.

Recently, Steve interviewed Dave Coles on the episode “Telling the Story of Movements.” He has also interviewed Victor John on the episode, “Pioneering Movements in North India.” With 234 episodes and counting, you can tell Steve has done his research!

Together, Victor and Dave authored Bhojpuri Breakthrough: A Movement that Keeps Multiplying. This case study will also be featured in the upcoming Motus Dei volume.

Additionally, the Global Assembly of Pastors for Finishing the Task (GAP4FTT) held a virtual conference in October to build collaboration toward engaging unreached people groups with movements. There are about 50 plenary and workshop videos pre-recorded. You will recognize some of the names and faces from our Movements Research Symposium. This library of resources is available here for the next month. The content is also available on GAP4FTT's YouTube channel.

Excursus: Yep, I did just use the term “unreached people groups” in the above paragraph. That term and concept has fallen into disrepute in some corners of missiology. However, the recent edition of EMQ was dedicated to Rethinking People Group Missiology and has redeemed the concept for me. Easily one of the best issues of EMQ ever. I feel comfortable using the term again.

If you only have time for one article in that issue, I recommend Reimagining & Re-envisioning People Groups by Leonard N. Bartlotti (subscription required). From his section titled “Church Growth Where There is No Church”:

We need to re-envision the connection between the frontier missions and the church growth. Amidst the global flow of goods, ideas, and people, mega-, multiethnic, and urban/regional house church networks are thriving from Argentina and Chile, to Nigeria, India, and Indonesia, as well as the West. Despite common roots and exceptions, the two streams are largely disconnected professionally and missionally. Reestablishing synergy and sharing resources would advance an “all peoples” vision.

UPG enthusiasts need to deconstruct categories and recognize that church movements need not be monoethnic to engage and penetrate UPGs. Gospel freedom allows and celebrates, but does not demand, homogeneous ethnic churches. Some church movements involve ethnic blends, with homogeneity in evangelism, and heterogeneity in discipleship. Others facilitate homogeneity in smaller relational circles, and heterogeneity in larger ones. Homogeneity may suit first generation immigrants, but heterogeneity, the children of immigrants (e.g. pan-Asian and pan-Latino churches). Other churches have an ethnically dominant group plus mixed cultural groups (e.g. Persian, Arab). Mobilizing urban conglomerate churches, house church networks, and proximate believers, and purposefully connecting diaspora disciple making with other frontier initiatives, would help revitalize movement toward UPGs.

Read the whole thing.

Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes | Richards and James

Richard James is an associate editor for our upcoming Motus Dei volume and will be contributing a chapter tentatively titled, Hearing the Story of “People of Peace” in Luke-Acts.

Together with E Randolph Richards, he has coauthored a new book for InterVarsity titled Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes: Patronage, Honor, and Shame in the Biblical World.

From the back cover:

The Bible was written within collectivist cultures. When Westerners, immersed in individualism, read the Bible, it's easy to misinterpret important elements―or miss them altogether. In any culture, the most important things usually go without being said. So to read Scripture well we benefit when we uncover the unspoken social structures and values of its world. We need to recalibrate our vision. Combining the expertise of a biblical scholar and a missionary practitioner, Misreading Scripture with Individualist Eyes is an essential guidebook to the cultural background of the Bible and how it should inform our reading. E. Randolph Richards and Richard James explore deep social structures of the ancient Mediterranean―kinship, patronage, and brokerage―along with their key social tools―honor, shame, and boundaries―that the biblical authors lived in and lie below the surface of each text. From Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar to Peter's instructions to elders, the authors strip away individualist assumptions and bring the world of the biblical writers to life. Expanding on the popular Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, this book makes clear how understanding collectivism will help us better understand the Bible, which in turn will help us live more faithfully in an increasingly globalized world.

Nijay Gupta, professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary, has a good review of the book at Christianity Today. Here are some highlights from his review:

Richards is a well-respected biblical scholar, bringing reliable insight and interpretation to the study of individual texts. And James (“Richard James” is a pseudonym) has been involved in church-planting ministry in the Middle East. As a team, they deftly weave in modern cross-cultural stories to demonstrate worldview factors and social values of collectivist people. And they cycle back and forth between stories and passages from the Old and New Testaments…

I wish I had been given a handbook like this 15 years ago when I was first learning how to read the Bible well…

A central assumption of this book is the idea that we all read Scripture through our own cultural lenses or “eyes.” That is not necessarily bad. We have two eyes but only one perspective. Many modern Western readers of the Bible see the world differently than the biblical writers and the many characters in our Holy Book. I am thankful that Richards and James wrote this crash course in collectivism versus individualism to help us avoid many faux pas and pitfalls.

Read the whole review. Buy the book.

Talking about Movements and CPM “Dangers”

An article recently released at Desiring God titled, What Could Be Wrong with ‘Church Planting’? Six Dangers in a Missions Strategy provides a nice anecdote of some of the problematic issues in talking about movements today.

In the introduction, the author remarks that:

…by his grace, God used me to start a movement that helped plant churches.

But he then attempts to refute “church planting movements.”  Basically, he has started a movement that helped plant churches but he is against church planting movements. Let that sink in for a moment.

There were several misunderstandings and inaccuracies in his argument and portrayal of CPM/DMM, but that is for another post. The author concludes:

Missionary fads come and go. Clear proclamation of gospel truth in the context of healthy biblical churches will last until Jesus returns.

I am not an apologist for DMM, although I believe the approach is more biblically and missiologically sound than the author portrays it. Indeed, no strategy is perfect. We will not shy away from these issues in Motus Dei.

However, I’m more curious about his approach to talking about “movements” in this article. I take him at his word that God used him to start a “movement” that helped plant churches. Why can’t we talk about that?

What is the nature of this movement? What is its scope? How did it begin? What were the factors that contributed to its success? What was his strategy? How did they network? What is the vision of the movement? How did new people join? What sustained it? What were the socio-contextual factors in that context that potentially facilitated its emergence? How did it relate to context? How did the community view it? What changes happened in society as a result? Is it still continuing today? What would they do differently if they could start over? Etc.

From my perspective, our missions community would have been better served by his own empirical case study, rather than simply warning people of the “dangers” of a strategy that appears to be misunderstood and has plenty of positive case studies of its own.

“If you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Gal. 5:15).

To be fair, it was a short blog post. We are free to criticize error when we see it.

But to the extent that this article criticizes movements, I don’t think we’re quite there yet. Our missiological discourse on movements needs to go deeper and wider. We still have much to discover, complex issues to unravel, unity in Christ to maintain, and unengaged nations to disciple.

Islam and the Geo Politics of the Middle East | Free Online Course by Dr. Nabeel Jabbour

As an incredibly generous gift to the church and the missions community, Dr. Nabeel Jabbour has recently released his training course available for free as a set of 47 lectures and pdf resources, about 45 hours of content. Much more than the title suggests, the course is full of missiology and practical advice for ministry to Muslims, not just simply on politics and Islam. But Jabbour’s handling of politics demonstrates just how necessary and beneficial it is to incorporate political theology into missiology – this is often a glaring blindspot for workers in general and Americans in particular.

Jabbour is also author of The Crescent through the Eyes of the Cross: Insights from an Arab Christian.

From the website for the course https://www.drjabbourcourse.com/courses/islam-and-the-geo-politics-of-the-middle-east/:

The course has been recorded and there are 47 sessions to view at your leisure. They vary in length and each session’s length is stated in brackets after the title. Each session is based on the sessions that came before it. Start with Session 1, and after you finish viewing it, click the button “Mark Complete ✔” and that allows you to go to Session 2 and on and on.

The list of materials alone is worth checking out. Thank you Nabeel!

Review of Undivided Witness: Jesus Followers, Community Development, and Least-Reached Communities (Regnum Books 2020)

I commend to you a new book edited by David Greenlee (who will have a chapter on movements and the “common good” in our forthcoming Motus Dei book), Mark Galpin, and executive director at OCMS Paul Bendor-Samuel (who is also part of Motus Dei), titled Undivided Witness: Jesus Followers, Community Development, and Least-Reached Communities. From the description:

Undivided Witness presents ten key principles linking community development and the emergence of vibrant communities of Jesus followers among the ‘least reached’. Twelve practitioners explore this uncharted missiological space, drawing on decades of serving and learning among communities in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, and South, Central and Southeast Asia.

‘Tribalism’ is everywhere, including in the missions community. There are people who are passionate about church planting. Others whose heart is for community development, social justice, and the poor. Then there are those who want to reach the least reached. These different tribes only occasionally speak, and, maybe more than they care to admit- view the other tribes with suspicion.

I remember feeling this tension when I started ministry twenty years ago while I was preparing for ministry in a poor, unreached Muslim country. Books on church planting and discipleship seemed to focus on responsive contexts that already had a local church. Community development practitioners rarely spoke about evangelism. And literature on the least-reached didn’t have much to say about God’s heart for the poor and marginalized. It was as if I was forced to choose my tribe in an either-or dichotomy. Doesn’t God care about all three?

To deal with this issue, a group of practitioners, missiologists, and scholars gathered at the Oxford Center for Mission Studies in 2018 to explore this unexplored space called ‘CDLR’ (Community Development Least Reached) which is the intersection between 1) community development, 2) the least reached, and 3) emerging, multiplying vibrant communities of Jesus-followers. What resulted is a list of ten principles which form the chapter structure of Undivided Witness:

1. Understanding the Kingdom of God is crucial to understanding how and why community development and vibrant communities of Jesus followers among the least reached are connected.
2. Our understanding of how people enter the Kingdom of God will affect how we do ministry.
3. The gospel impacts the whole person and people’s whole contexts.
4. Our motivation is to glorify Christ. We long for people to come to faith in him, but our vision does not stop there. We want to see the Kingdom of God impact people and the communities we live in.
5. Spiritual warfare and prayer are an integral part of community development.
6. Creation glorifies, praises, and witnesses to God. Caring for creation is an act of worship. Our concern for creation is an act of obedience to God and participation in his work of reconciling all things to himself.
7. Community development will only be truly transformational if it brings a vision for vibrant communities of Jesus followers and the renewal of the whole person and community.
8. Community development workers are committed to professional excellence.
9. There is significant overlap between the principles of excellence in community development and working toward the formation of vibrant communities of Jesus followers.
10. The ‘least reached’ are so for a reason, both spiritually and often in terms of poverty and development.

Undivided Witness models some of the best integrative thinking in missiology. Their ten principles of ministry on the overlap between community development, discipleship movements, and least-reached peoples are skillfully unpacked and explained with challenging case studies and deep theological reflection. This is an important conversation on perhaps the most difficult and strategic ministry context in the world today.

In the introduction, the editors share their purpose for Undivided Witness:

Our overall hope and aim in writing this book is that it will stimulate more reflection and discussion on this area of ministry, contribute to a rarely explored theme in missiology, and encourage the discovery and recognition of the links between community development and the emergence of ‘vibrant communities of Jesus followers’ in least-reached settings. By demonstrating the synergy between church planting and community development, we hope to dissolve the perceived tension between these ministry approaches and to encourage organisations that have traditionally focused on church planting and evangelism to recognise the strategic role community development can play in achieving their Kingdom objectives in least-reached contexts—never to be used merely as a platform but as an integral feature of truly holistic mission. 

In addition, we hope that our work will influence and shape the practice of those already committed to the strategy of community development as a ministry approach in least-reached contexts, enabling them to become more effective and transformative in building God’s Kingdom. 

While we have confidence in these principles, we consider them to still be under development. Input from readers is therefore welcome to both refine the principles and to develop a robust explanation and grounding for each. In turn, this will help us contribute to a missiology that guides ministry and service involving community development among the least reached.

Buy the book now on Amazon Kindle or in print from Regnum.

Online Missiological Training: Post-Pandemic Insights and Applications

Based on "Neurobiological Data on What Online Education Could Be Doing to Our Spirituality and Our Brains: Some Augustinian/ Niebuhrian Reflections" (Ellingsten 2019) and "Makeshifting the Learning Management System: Strategies and Tactics in the Digital Classroom" (Smith 2019)  Articles Available Here

* The nature of the online world fundamentally changes the way our brains work. While accessing vast amounts of information is enhanced, "heavier online use is making us more shallow, more caught up in the present moment and its patterns, less transcendent in our thinking and behaviors" (Ellingsten 2019, 10). In short, we are less intelligent, more reactionary, and more spiritually shallow.

* Cross-cultural ministry is always more difficult, both cognitively and emotionally. Over-exposure to the internet and poor approaches to online education can have drastic effects on the missionary who will be less intellectually prepared for complex issues and impaired from the ability to love deeply.

* Increase in social media usage seems to be evidenced by those who are more depressed. Because the internet makes us less empathetic, could this be contributing to the increase in irrational online outrage/anger, the spread of conspiracy theories, and to anti-science rhetoric?

* Whether we like it or not, online training is here to stay. Things are not going back to the way they were before the pandemic.

* Learning facilitators who are more creative and involved in the online LMS (Learning Management System) tend to have higher levels of job satisfaction and also students who tend to have more transformative learning experiences (Smith 2019). Personal touches such as short videos and audio are helpful, as well as face-to-face synchronous meetings when possible.

* Online learning needs to intentionally contain elements that are offline. This includes longer stretches of reading and reflective writing while not connected to the internet. Videos and podcasts are proliferating but immersive reading needs to be maintained. Additionally, intentional offline time for the spiritual disciplines of meditation, prayer, and solitude is now MORE important in an online environment than in traditional formats.

* Online course design also needs to include the context of the learner. Learners are always in a "classroom." Especially for the missionary, the classroom is the ministry setting. Reading and writing needs to be integrated with the complicated classroom of real life. This has advantages to artificial (traditional) classrooms, but it requires more creative design from learning facilitators.

Counting Missionaries | Justin Long

Here is the latest discussion on global statistics from Justin Long in his post COUNTING MISSIONARIES published on June 3, 2020:

Globally: 425,000 missionaries (Anglican, Independent, Orthodox, Protestant and Roman Catholic)
Total in World A countries: 11,940 (3%) [World A: <50% evangelized)]
Total in World B countries: 87,000 (20%) [World B: >=50% evangelized, <60% Christian]
Total in World C countries: 326,060 (77%) [World C: >=60% Christian, of any tradition]

From the summary:

2,000 years after Christ, somewhere around 3% or less of all missionary workers are deployed amongst those who have very little chance to hear (a factor in why they have little chance to hear), while three-quarters of missionaries work in places that are over-saturated Christian countries (albeit perhaps of a different tradition than the missionaries in question). While I do not doubt that places like Germany and England and France likely need evangelistic effort, this “out of balance” situation seems to me to continue to be one in need of reformation.

Read the whole thing.