Most Canadians know about fresh-air-in-the-car day. It is that glorious day in the Spring when you can drive with the car windows open again. It is a relief from months where all the breathable oxygen comes through stale heat vents and your own foggy breath frosts up the windshield. Our vehicle has a sun roof. So …
World Christian Consciousness
The majority of the world's Christians are Africans, Asians and Latin Americans. It is immediately obvious that this matters but it takes more work to pin down exactly how. What does it mean for us that the church is bigger and broader than we often think? One of the most helpful voices in answering this …
To Pray Longer…Pray Shorter
A consistent factor in the Christian biographies that I have read is a habit of regular, extended times of prayer. But this does not come easily. Most of us wish we lived closer to this ideal but more often find ourselves falling short of lofty goals. In The Christian in Complete Armour, William Gurnall (1616-1679) …
Sing to God, For my Sake
I spent of lot of Sundays in 2019 preaching from Colossians 3:16: “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (ESV) Christiane and I were visiting churches with the Global Church workshop …
Why the Septuagint Matters for Missions
“Don’t you think, Dr. McGilvary, that you spoke too directly or inflexibly to your audience? But again, your audience might not have been listening to your words, but watching your magnificent long white beard!” These words are from a letter from a living to a dead missionary. Kosuke Koyama had been in Northern Thailand for six years …
Recommended Resource: Global Transmission, Global Mission (Booklet)
Jason Mandryk of Operation World just published a 53 page booklet exploring the Impact and Implications of the CoVid-19 Pandemic. You can download it for free here and I think it is well worth your time. Here I give three reasons why I think you should take the time to read it, introduce the material, …
Continue reading Recommended Resource: Global Transmission, Global Mission (Booklet)
You Are Not Erased
At the beginning of Willa Cather’s wonderful novel My Antonia, the young Jim Burden is pulled away from the life he has always known. His parents have both died and we join him on a train from Virginia to live with his grandparents in Nebraska. As Jim watches out the window, he finds that the “only …
Up and Rolling
When we landed in Cambridge last August, Samuel had never ridden a bike without training wheels. It wasn’t a matter of ability, it was just opportunity. As far as I know there is no hereditary issue of bad balance in the family, still, this was going to be tough. We had no budget for a …
Bringing Life & Mission Into Line
...let us be aware of the need to place our lives and activities continually under the judgment of the Word of God. We cannot simply assume that we have the truth and that everything else, including our evangelization and our ethics, will just fall in line with that truth. The purpose of theology is not …
The Language of Dependence
The man, then, who refuses, or neglects to pray, who regards prayer not as a privilege, but as a wearisome and needless task, practically says, in the most unequivocal manner, I am not dependent on God; I want nothing that he can give; and therefore I will not come to him, nor ask any favor …
To Live is Christ?
What does “to live is Christ” mean? In the first-century Greco-Roman world, life was built on the concept of honour and shame. Seneca the Younger, who lived at the same time as the apostle Paul, highlights the importance of honour: “The one firm conviction from which we move to the proof of other points is …
