One of the courses I teach at Beeson Divinity School is Contemporary Issues and Strategies in Missions. It is usually offered as a January class and began again today. After twenty years of training pastors and church planters, I have noticed that many struggle in the area of strategic planning. […]
Innovation
Roland Allen was born on this date in 1868. He turned the world of missions upside down. Allen (1868-1947) was an Anglican, priest, missionary, author, and provocateur. While his influence was felt in the latter twentieth and twenty-first centuries, his views were often disregarded during his lifetime. Books such as Missionary […]
Roland Allen’s Birthday
Last week, I drove past the first KFC. I grew up in the small Southeastern Kentucky town of Corbin. Here is where the Colonel started frying it decades ago. My mother’s house is about two miles from the restaurant. As we visited for the holiday, she mentioned the place had […]
Christmas, Japan, and KFC
The Church has been told to go into all the world and make disciples. The world is a big place. Where should she begin her apostolic work? How does the apostolic imagination relate to the Great Commission and geography? Most mission work occurs among reached people groups. But with 7000 […]
Apostolic Imagination: Rethinking Location
I completed the draft of my fifteenth book (The Apostolic Imagination: Rethinking Contemporary Missions) yesterday. Stay tuned. It is now off to Baker Academic for the editing process. I am a strong believer in writing and publishing. I attribute this value to what was modeled before me as a graduate […]
Doing Missiological Writing
“What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun” (Ecc 1:9). When I was a graduate and doctoral student, I was exposed to a great deal of Donald McGavran’s writings. One of the things […]