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New Year's Resolutions and Church Planting

Some people feel that an essential part of the New Year is to set new resolutions or goals. Often these goals are related to health, fitness, or other self-improvement....

Reflections on the Impact of Business-as-Mission, by Abdul Bundu Conteh

Economic issues rank high on the agenda for much of the world today. For good or ill, commercial priorities and the behavior of business leaders are shaping global events, in some notable cases far beyond the capacity of traditional centers of influence, such as governments, to control or match. In many countries unemployment rates are skyrocketing, and the plausible solutions to this and other apparently unrelated issues, such as HIV/AIDS or human trafficking, require a business-oriented respon...

Latest Learnings from the BAM world

GSI is co-leading a Business-as-Mission Missions Agency Workgroup. In conjunction with this, Heather recently attended a conference organized by our partner BAM Global Network. Here are her observations and insights:...

The Power and Beauty of the Simple

The simple lifestyle has recently become trendy in the West. You can go on a mindfulness retreat and pay someone to take your cell phone away from you. The KonMari de-cluttering method claims we can change our lives by throwing out everything in our house that doesn’t give us joy. The tiny house movement advocates living in small houses for environmental consciousness and life simplification. On the more extreme fringe, you can take on the challenge of the “no spend year”....

Discovering God's Vision in your Planning

Some Christians believe there is no need to plan. If it is God's will, the doors will open, resources will fall into place, and everything will work out perfectly. But in the Bible, God makes plans and so do God's people....

Is Business Bad for Mission?

Have you ever thought of God as a worker? Because that's what He is: God made the world and keeps it going (Psalm 145). We humans are to work too – not alone, but with and for God as His managers (Genesis 1:28). He tells us to be creative like He is, and to add value. Which is what business does. So 'work' and 'business' are not necessary evils or a curse. They are a privilege; wonderful vocations to be enjoyed in the Spirit. As God takes pleasure in the physical aspects of His creation, w...

Part 8 of 8: Confidence

"It's not about the money, money, money". Thus spake pop vixen Jesse J a few years back. From the mouths of babes comes wisdom? Of course she also sang "Ain't about the (uh) ch-ch-ching ch-ching, ain't about the (yeah) bl-bling-bl-bling" in the same song, so forgive me if I stick to my Kierkegaard and Hauerwas for profundity. The last article touched on why is actually is about the money, at least when it comes to missions. The insertion of affluence, economic disparity, and financial expe...

Part 7: Money and Prosperity

Unless you live in a cave, you will have heard of the astronomical amount of money won in the recent Powerball lottery in the USA. $1.6 billion, split three ways. To put that in perspective, a lottery was worth more than the Gross National Product of 31 different countries (according to UN statistics). If the siren call of worldly wealth didn't work on us for mere thousands or millions, then over a billion probably sufficed to get our attention. I'm sure most of us imagined all the good thing...

Part 6: Our Mission and The End Days (Part II)

"It should come as no surprise that the recovery of the eschatological dimension is manifested particularly clearly in missionary circles. From the very beginning of the Christian church, there appeared to have been a peculiar affinity between the missionary enterprise and expectations of a fundamental change in the future of mankind." So stated theologian David Bosch in his massively influential tome Transforming Mission. And he was right. All the more reason to ensure that we have done...

Part 5: Our Mission and the End Days

When we talk about the fulfillment of the Great Commission, like it or not, we really also have to talk about eschatology. But the question of our end times belief seems an issue many Christians today would prefer to avoid. Sure, we are happy to see the Church grow and for good works to be done in Jesus' name, but let's not talk about anything that reminds us of the countless premature Rapture countdowns, the untold number of failed prophecies, the hastily churned out books and B-movies that com...

Part 4: Missiology

The global Church spends many millions of dollars and commits many thousands of people every year to mission activity. And yet, for the large majority of us, we would be hard pressed to clarify our missiology in any coherent manner. Is there any other enterprise on such a scale that could get away with such fragmented thinking, disjointed operations and lack of overarching strategy? How can any mission of any size properly function without a well-developed missiology? Theologian Karl Barth exp...

Part 3: Missional Urgency

The Church is a living organism and, as such, it grows, changes, and goes through phases. It also suffers from viral infections. There are a number of beliefs present in various parts of the Body of Christ that cause damage to their host. Such beliefs can cause more damage than any external factor, such as persecution or opposition. It is certainly no accident. Any entity seeking to destroy or cripple the Church would be well served to poison it, as much as to combat it. And so, in our efforts...

The Task Remaining: Part II

Jason Mandryk explores why the task of reaching every person with the Gospel remains so huge. The greatest challenge we face with the Great Commission is the plain fact that it is indeed so very giant in scale. The Annual Statistical Table of the IBMR (International Bulletin of Missionary Research) is pretty much the authority on this issue. And according to the 2015 edition, there are still 2.1 billion people who are unevangelized in the world today. This is remarkable, in a century where i...

The Mission of God: The Task Remaining - Part I

Over 200 years ago, William Carey, a British missionary and Baptist minister, published an enquiry reflecting his recently acquired but strongly-held conviction that it was incumbent upon the Church to bring the Gospel to the heathen. Fifty years later, and Hudson Taylor felt the weight of this burden for the many millions in the Chinese world. The China Inland Mission was born – and evolved into OMF. As the 19th Century was nearing an end, thousands of young believers rallied around the cr...

A Vision of Sustainability

Every few years, the missions community finds new buzzwords around which to centre conversation. Blog posts are uploaded. Forum discussions are saturated. Books are written. This next thing promises to make all the difference in how we do mission. You're familiar with most of these words, no doubt: "Contextualisation." "Partnership." "Transformation." Even "missional." Some are more helpful than others. I came across one article actually entitled "Co-laboring to Catalyze Cascading Church Planti...

Leaders Don't Just Appear

How are you supposed to feel when handing over leadership of a ministry after twenty years: Relief? Fulfilment? Happiness? Pride? (oops; shouldn't really admit that!) Satisfaction? Bereavement? All of the above? As I reflect upon (and recover from) two decades of field leadership, perhaps my overriding feeling is one of awe. It has been exciting, rewarding, challenging, often exhausting but, at the same time, awesome to have seen and experienced God at work, transforming lives. I think back t...

In Sustainability, Change is the Only Constant

"Change is the only constant." So stated Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, over five centuries before Christ. He has never been more right than today. Change is the answer to the question on so many people's lips today. Whether in development, science, education, marketing, creative writing or other industries, the bottom line is, "So what?" With our limited attention and resources, we need a good answer to the question, "Why should anyone care?" Sustainability in mission, as described in my p...