The work of ministry on any significant scale requires resources. This is especially true of the work of missions. Nearly every country that admits missionaries requires them to be fully supported from outside sources so that they do not take jobs from the national population. This almost always means the missionaries will need to raise… Continue Reading
Jeff Straub Last week, I began to offer some advice to help churches become more missions-minded. My first counsel was that the pastor must himself take the lead on missions in the assembly. He should read missionary letters regularly so that he may pray privately and publicly for the missionaries more deliberately. He should answer… Continue Reading
Jeff Straub Seminary professors who come to the classroom with missionary and pastoral experience can offer immense practical value to men preparing for ministry. I recently observed my fortieth anniversary of preaching the gospel. I began vocational ministry a few years later, in the fall of 1980, and spent a total of nineteen years in… Continue Reading
Short-term mission trips are now part of the warp and woof of evangelical Christianity. Like so many other things, short-term trips have their pros and cons. Last week, I considered some of the virtues of taking a short-term missions trip. This week, I want to examine some of the challenges and difficulties. These issues are… Continue Reading
Travel through any international airport in the world today, especially during the summer, and you will see them: in numbers large and small, youth, college, career, even senior citizens are headed to or returning from a short-term mission trip. Quite often, you can identify them from across the terminal by their pastel t-shirts that say… Continue Reading
Last week, I shared some observations gained from a busy summer of teaching internationally. I received a number of replies, both supportive and questioning, that merit some further clarifications. Let me say categorically—I unequivocally support church planting! But I also believe in theological education. Both have their place in world evangelism. My goal last week… Continue Reading
In May and July, the Lord gave me the opportunity to travel overseas to teach church history in three different countries. Two of the countries were in Africa and the other was a major Asian country. Two of the countries were new places for me to visit. In all three locations, I was in urban… Continue Reading
Conversations about missions and music often revolve around an insistence that in order to reach unbelievers in a target culture, we need to contextualize the message into their language, be it spoken, acted, or sung. Here are some helpful words from an excellent journal article by Mark Snoeberger that I think get to the heart of… Continue Reading
The purpose of culture is not to reach the lost or give authentic expression for Christians; it is to express and cultivate right worship. In my last article I addressed the argument for using contemporary music forms based on a missions philosophy that stresses indigenous ministry. I suggested that such an argument is based upon… Continue Reading
Last week, I spoke at the Preserving the Truth Conference in Troy, MI. Of the three points that I made in my presentation (notes, audio), one is especially relevant to the discussion of missions. The antithesis, then, presents us a goal: to explore and articulate a Christianity that is Christian all the way down. The… Continue Reading
Here’s the reality: those of us blogging here fully realize that our positions are not popular. Not popular, I suppose, greatly underestimates the matter: for many Christians today, our positions are not even fathomable—it is impossible for them to believe that anyone could hold a position as outlandish, and even as offensive, as ours. And… Continue Reading
A missionary cannot properly evaluate the differences among cultural expressions until he has understood their universals. At the root of the most thoughtful defenses of contemporary worship today is an appeal based on a missions philosophy that stresses indigenous ministry. If, as the International Missionary Council asserted as far back 1938, an indigenous church is… Continue Reading
In my handful of posts this month, I want to give some anecdotes from church history to inform us as to how missionaries, attempting to plant indigenous church, should approach the issue of music in the culture in which they minister. My posts will not always touch on music per se, but instead explore the… Continue Reading
One of missionaries most challenging issues is what kind of music to use as they plant indigenous churches. Two extremes exist: on the one hand are missionaries who simply impose American musical forms on the foreign church; on the other hand are those who indiscriminately adopt the forms of the native culture in their worship.… Continue Reading
On Saturdays we repost articles from the archives that apply to current issues. The following article deals with what music should be used for indigenous church planting. _________________________________________ Here is a question about culture and missions I recently received by e-mail: I am intrigued by this idea of culture and music. It seems a number… Continue Reading
On Saturdays we repost articles from the archives that apply to current issues. The following article discusses whether a missionary should simply adopt a culture’s music in church planting. ____________________________________________ I mentioned in my report on our Brazil trip that I had the opportunity to sit down with a man who grew up in a… Continue Reading
In Titus 1:5, Paul explains that the reason he sent Titus to Crete was to “straighten out” the churches. The churches themselves had already been planted, yet there were still matters to be set in order so that the churches would be strong. Appointing elders is the specific issue mentioned in the text, but no… Continue Reading
I mentioned in my report on our Brazil trip that I had the opportunity to sit down with a man who grew up in a tribe in the Amazon. His name is Rober (pronounced “HO-ber”) Guerreiro (means “warrior”), and he is a member of a Tikuna (pronounced “chi-KOO-nah”) tribe in the Amazon jungles. Now as I… Continue Reading
It seems as if several themes have been reoccurring on this site, Paleoevangelical, and a few other places over the last few weeks. These themes have to do with musical associations, indigenous church planting, and musical universals. Here are the posts I’m talking about in case you need to get caught up: On Taxonomies of… Continue Reading