Category: Christian Missions

As we have toured America talking about missions we hear various objections. We have tried to cover some of those objections in our FAQ Page. But I ran across a blog on thegospelcoalition.org by Ben Stevens that answers these 7 common objections to long-term missions: “It (long-term missions) destroys foreign cultures.” “It’s based on outdated theology.” “It’s unnecessarily offensive.” “Short-term teams can do the same thing but more efficiently.” “It’s much more effective to just fund foreign nationals.” “It distracts from the needs of our own nation.” “Because people have immigrated to America’s cities, it would be more cost-effective and…

You may have heard of Jim Elliot, Nate Saint, Ed McCully, Peter Fleming, and Roger Youderian. They are the American missionaries that were killed while seeking to bring the Gospel to Huaorani tribe in Ecuador. These men went out to a tribe in the rain forest that was known for violence because they loved them and wanted them to know the Gospel. Due to a lie that was told about them, the tribe came to their makeshift camp and speared them to death in 1956. At the time, these murders were so big that the magazine Life did a spread…

I recently read an article by National Geographic entitled Vanishing Languages. It begins with these words: “One language dies every 14 days. By the next century nearly half of the roughly 7,000 languages spoken on Earth will likely disappear, as communities abandon native tongues in favor of English, Mandarin, or Spanish.” The internet, cell phones, and air travel have changed the world in many amazing ways. It really is a small world these days, and is getting smaller. There is a prayer meeting that takes place at our church in Louisville, KY where they try to Skype with a different…

“The vision Peter had at Joppa did not consist of a sheet from heaven filled with unclean DVDs, with Peter being told to arise and watch.” –Douglas Wilson Douglas Wilson’s quote gets to the heart of an extraordinary sermon on Christian liberty by our Kentucky pastor Ryan Fullerton.  In listening to this sermon, we could not help but to see how we tend to think of Christian Liberty as being mainly for our own gratification.  However, it is surprising to realize that God gave us this liberty so that we can use it to enslave ourselves to others.  In the words…

On more than one occasion an unbeliever has responded to our life story by saying: “So, you’ve adopted four kids and you’re moving to Africa…you’re definitely going to Heaven.”  Typically, people either love us or despise us for who we are and what we are pursuing.  We are not surprised when we are hated, but what turns our stomachs is when people mistakenly assume that we are good enough, on our own, to be approved by God.  The line of reasoning seems to be, “Well if you’re willing to sacrifice that much, God will have to let you into Heaven.” …

OK all you theologians, politicians, missionaries, pastors, and moral theorists out there I need your help. Stacey and I are in the process of moving to Cameroon, Africa and have recently been confronted with a reality that we will have to face. According to the World Corruption Index, Cameroon ranked 146 out of 178 countries in regards to its freedom from corruption. The nation has actually improved quite a bit in the last 20 years, but there is still corruption, some that we even experienced while we were there. So here is one scenario that we faced: We were driving…

Sub-Saharan Africa is argued to be the poorest region in the world which means that there are few to no jobs available. Since we will be living in a rural village, our options would be: to farm, weave baskets, or other agricultural type work. Generally speaking these types of jobs require long hours of back-breaking work. Without working another job, Bible translation generally takes 20-30 years, let alone if we were farming the land as well. Therefore, since our goal is to serve the people of Cameroon, it best serves them for us to not seek employment in Cameroon but…