Jesus, Karma, and Reincarnation

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This is a guest post by Josh Howard. He works with Central Indian Christian Mission. I met him in grad school and he has a fire for the gospel. I was so impressed one day when he told me how they share the gospel with Hindu people I have wanted him to share this story for years with us! So here you go.

Christianese.

It gets us into trouble—especially in India.

“Let’s eat the body and blood of Jesus.”

“Jesus saves!”

“Hallelujah!”

What?

Have you ever thought about what this sounds like to people who aren’t familiar with the Christian culture?

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Ministry Idols: Individualism

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UntitledThis is a series of guest posts by Scott Bessenecker. He is the Associate Director of Mission for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Each year he helps to mobilize thousands of students to domestic and international mission. He is author of various books including his new release Overturning Tables: Freeing Missions from the Christian-Industrial Complex

[Check out post one on money, and post two on metrics.]

One of the very first words our kids learned was “MINE!” (spoken with all caps and followed by an exclamation point). One of the first sentences our kids learned was “I DO IT!” again with all capital letters and an exclamation point. Somehow the idea of private ownership and rugged individualism is picked up very early in life without an economics course or special classes in self-awareness. We appear to be born with a nasty strain of independence.

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Video: What A.P.E.s Can Learn From Wolves

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My friend Gibby passed this along to me and it’s a fascinating video about wolves and what happend to Yellowstone when they intruded them in 1995. It’s remarkable the change they brought on almost every level.

A great question to ask, “What if we we re-introduced apostles, prophets, evangelists back into our ministry?”

What could it do to the ecosystem of the church?

[tentblogger-youtube ysa5OBhXz-Q]

5 APOSTOLIC LESSONS FROM THE GLOBAL CHURCH

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By Linson Daniel

I have had the privilege of going overseas to partner with various churches and indigenous ministries – especially in India. Every time I interact with believers and leaders from the Global Church, I walk away feeling inspired, emboldened, and challenged. We have much to learn from the Global Church. I gained a refreshing lens on the apostolic. Below are five lessons:

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Ministry Idols: Metrics

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UntitledThis is a guest post by Scott Bessenecker. He is the Associate Director of Mission for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Each year he helps to mobilize thousands of students to domestic and international mission. He is author of various books including his new release Overturning Tables: Freeing Missions from the Christian-Industrial Complex

I’m not interested in growth, I’m interested in flourishing. And there’s a difference.

Growth has become the ministry altar upon which we have sacrificed seeking the flourishing of God’s kingdom and God’s justice. It is sometimes the only lens through which we understand ministry health, as if constant growth were the Holy Grail of ministry success. But in a living organism there is a word for unabated growth which does not contribute to flourishing, it’s called cancer.

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Evangelism: Who’s Job Is It Anyways?

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This week, in an effort to let people know about my evangelism book, Beyond Awkward, different people are posting blogs I have written taking you deeper into the content of the book.

If you buy the book by Friday night, you also receive 4 FREE bonus resources from me.

Beyond-Awkward-Facebook-from-template

Bob Roberts Jr. is one of those people and he has a blog post on his site from me about the confusion in knowing the role of Holy Spirit and our own role in evangelism.

If you are anything like me then you struggle with this tension too: Who is supposed to make things happen in evangelism, God or me?

When it comes to seeking conversion in our friend’s and families lives, we don’t want to be annoying and pushy, but we don’t want to sit back and wait forever either. Some of us are more temperamentally on the side of things that says, “I need to make something happen” while others of us are more the “If its going to happen then God is going to do it”.

But effective evangelism is more nuanced and partnered than this. Both statements above assume a black or white reality when God is inviting us into the blended.

Read the whole post here

HOW TO REACH “EXPERIENCED-BASED” PEOPLE WITH THE GOSPEL

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A few years back while sitting in a café with a student trying my best to persuade him of the reality of Jesus and that He is in fact God, I became incredibly frustrated as he said to me, “Beau, I don’t care if this is true or not, I want to know if Jesus works?”

This comment both perplexed and opened up a whole new way for me to see how to reach people that are more “experienced based”.

If you would like to see what God showed me about reaching experience – based people, then read the rest of my post over on Linson Daniel’s blog. He was gracious enough to host me this week and help spread the word about my book being released and the 4 FREE bonuses I am offering just this week.

Read the whole post

Evangelism: Awkwardly Silent or Awkwardly Zealous?

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If you buy Beyond Awkward this week, you get 4 FREE bonuses!

When it comes to sharing our faith most of us tend to be awkward – either awkwardly silent or awkwardly zealous.

When you say the word evangelism it doesn’t tend to bring up positive connotations and when you think of a person who is an evangelist, you can’t think of many if any that you’d like to have over to your house.

Evangelism and evangelists are awkward.

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Ministry Idols: Money

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UntitledThis is a guest post by Scott Bessenecker. He is the Associate Director of Mission for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship. Each year he helps to mobilize thousands of students to domestic and international mission. He is author of various books including his new release Overturning Tables: Freeing Missions from the Christian-Industrial Complex

Serving Two Masters

On any given day I think about and talk about money at least half a dozen times. I talk with my colleagues about fund development, I fill out an accounting report, I check to see how much of my travel budget I’ve spent, I begin working out how to pay for a new ministry idea. As a full-time Christian worker, I am steeped in the world of money.

Jesus warns a great deal more about the dangers surrounding money and possessions than he does about the dangers surrounding sexual infidelity. You could say that followers of Jesus are more apt to be led astray by our coins than by our loins. It is as if there is a highly corrosive quality to my regular obsession with getting and spending money, even in ministry What if the sliver of the Christian church I am part of, one that exists on an island of affluence in a sea of poverty, is straining out moral gnats while swallowing camels?

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