"We cannot force someone to hear a message they are not ready to receive. But we must never underestimate the power of planting a seed." —Elisabeth Elliot
Church Planting
Joseph* doesn’t care for desk work. He would much rather grow fruit than immerse himself in Hebrew. Instead of laboring over the translation of biblical terms, you are more likely to find him rounding up a swarm of bees with native friends.
How does Joseph fit on a Bible translation team...
How did the kind efforts of a group of Americans to build a meetinghouse end up destroying a poor Mexican church? What is so radically different about the church "Hamid" is part of in Southeast Asia, and the blessing they receive from America? How was a chronically impoverished community...
In this message from All-Nations Camp Week 2020, Ken Miller shares from a three-fold burden for Anabaptist people preparing to be involved in church planting today:
"Even though I speak the language fluently, and have perfectly prepared my presentation, and understand all there is to know about culture and worldview, and can discern the personal perspective of the person I am talking to, if I do not have love, I can do nothing." —I Corinthians 13:1 rendered...
A thriving church is simply “a body of disciples making disciples.”
—Ian Fallis
(from ETHNOS360 MAGAZINE)
"God does not carry out mission by commissioning a roster of individual contractors, instead, he adopts a family and incorporates them into his family business of blessing the world." —Michael Goheen
“When churches are dependent upon the care of foreign superintending missionaries any graces which the new Christian community shows can be ascribed to the influence of the foreigner and his direction. Only when the non-Christian population is face to face with a change in their neighbors and an...
by Aaron Crider, with a response by Steve Sanford
This writing was provoked by the book Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes, where former Bible translator Daniel Everett tells about his life and language work among the Pirahá people in the Amazonian...
"Bible translators quite rightly get excited about the Bible. However, we need to constantly remember that Jesus did not write a book, he called a community. The purpose of the Bible is to equip and shape that community to be the people that God wants them to be. The community is the purpose,...