January - February 2010

Editorial Rick Wood, Editor

Suffering: it’s awful. We hate it. We run from it like a gazelle fleeing from a hungry lion. We will do almost anything to avoid it. But suffering is an inescapable part of living in this world. God does not spare even His most faithful servants from it. download pdf of this story

"Unless a kernel of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains a single seed. But if it dies, it brings forth much fruit." John 12:24

The testimony of believers living in the midst of persecution challenges the church in the West, and its emissaries, to recapture a biblical missiology—a missiology that is mature enough to embrace suffering, persecution, and even martyrdom. Believers in settings of persecution, through numerous interviews, suggest that the church in the West has lost its missiological edge and that it has grown soft in the face of overt persecution. download pdf of this story

Jesus is Worthy: A Case Study from Mongolia Brian Hogan

The sun defied all my expectations and came up that Christmas morning. Just 24 hours earlier we had awakened to a horror that Christmas Eve and Christmas Day never broke. I got out of bed and went straight to the desk, knowing somehow I had to communicate what was happening to friends and family back home. download pdf of this story

More and more I am persuaded from Scripture and from the history of missions that God’s design for the evangelization of the world and the consummation of his purposes includes the suffering of his ministers and missionaries. To put it more plainly and specifically, God designs that the suffering of his ambassadors is one essential means in the triumphant spread of the Good News among all the peoples of the world. download pdf of this story

A contemporary worship song includes these lines for the believer to voice to Christ: "Like a rose, trampled on the ground, you took the fall and thought of me, above all."

Excuse me? Did Christ think of me “above all” while he was on the cross? The Scriptures don’t point us in that direction. Did he think of us on the cross? Yes. Above all? No. Let’s get this straight!

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What I’m about to talk about does not normally "count" as suffering, but I’m going to include it anyway. While this issue of MF provides clarity to the realities and dimensions of physical suffering, I want to draw attention to another type of suffering usually not considered worthy enough to warrant serious consideration. Yet I feel it is the type of suffering much more common to the experience of the average MF reader. I refer to the suffering inflicted on believers not by an intolerant environment but by a merely disbelieving one. Really.

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Although it is difficult to pinpoint exact moments or fixed dates when historical movements begin, it is probably roughly accurate to say that the modern “frontier mission movement” began to gather significant momentum around 40 years ago, in the early 1970s. It is around this time that the first lists of unreached peoples began to be compiled, building on the research conducted by Wycliffe Bible Translators in their pursuit of identifying the world’s “Bibleless” peoples. David Barrett’s comprehensive study of church growth among all the peoples in Africa (introduced at the world’s first frontier mission consultation held in 1972) became a model for research around the world. He later expanded his research to include a global list of 13,000 “ethno-linguistic” peoples, which became the foundation for many people group databases over the next two decades. download pdf of this story

What happens when you bring 350 global mission strategists from around the world to collaborate on matters relating to reaching the world’s least-reached people groups? The Holy Spirit begins to move! With such a group, you hardly need an agenda. Just get them in a room together and watch the sovereign hand of God at work, as He supernaturally networks the Body of Christ together for action. download pdf of this story

From May 2008 to June 2009 I had the privilege of working with the international team that produced the Atlas of Global Christianity. Editors Todd Johnson and Kenneth Ross assembled his team and did a remarkable job of shepherding the Atlas to completion by the autumn of 2009. As this issue of Mission Frontiers goes to press, the Atlas is in the hands of a printer in Edinburgh and should be available to the public by January 2010. But why should you—and your church or mission agency—sit up and take notice of this 400-page collection of maps, tables and essays? download pdf of this story

About a year ago I was asked to speak in a small church in Kampala, Uganda. I had been there for other meetings and was asked to preach on a Sunday morning. Normally I decline such invitations, believing that it is the privilege of a pastor to preach to his own people. But this pastor prevailed upon me, so I prepared a simple message challenging the congregation to be all they can be for God. I reminded them that there is a big world out there waiting for their witness. This was a congregation of forty people meeting in a very modest building big enough for perhaps thirty. download pdf of this story

The long-anticipated global mission gatherings of 2010 are at our doorstep: Tokyo, South Africa, Edinburgh, Boston. Together they promise a big year for coalescing evangelical mission. History attests to the role of such gatherings in revising how evangelical missions understand their priorities. Small seeds planted on a world stage can reap monumental reorientation. download pdf of this story

A basic premise in effective communication is that the intended message makes sense to the hearer. When it comes to areas of theology, we tend to focus on what we say more than what will be heard. One of the biggest problems is when a messenger does not realize how major cultural differences are creating distance between him and those who hear. download pdf of this story