“It will Change Their Lives”
The book I recently read, Serving with Eyes Wide Open, discusses at length some of the shortcomings of short term missions (no pun intended), one of which is the false premise that our missions work will change the lives of the people we go to serve. The book highlights a lot of typical comments of short-termer’s expounding on the lofty benefits their work will be on the recipients. The comments consistently give the impression that without the help and service of the short-termer’s the people would …

This is a quote from Serving with Eyes Wide Open:
Read the letters and listen to the reports before and after mission trips, and those who go on trips tend to emphasize the so-called spiritual things: the number of souls saved, the lessons learned about prayer and materialism, and the impact made up the church visited. However, sit down for coffee with a friend who has just returned from a trip or eavesdrop on the picture party from a returning group, and the adventure of life in a new place seems …

They worshiped together at the Temple each day, met in homes for the Lord’s Supper, and shared their meals with great joy and generosity. (Acts 2:44-46)
I was reading Derek’s post on Josh’s blog about the Consumptive Church and it got me interested and longing to find a house church group to meet with in my area.
We’ve currently gotten connected with a large church nearby and plan on staying connected to it, attending events, small groups, helping out, but I don’t know that I see that as ‘church.’ Large churches definitely …

I’ve probably mentioned this before, and if you haven’t heard it from me, hopefully you’ve had someone in your life who was crazy enough to say it. In most cities (every one that I’ve actually seen the statistics compared), there are more abandoned housing units then there are homeless. That is to say specifically, there is enough housing for everyone. Of course, the red tape of our society usually prevents this solution from becoming a reality.
Also, in most cities, even if we are extremely conservative with our statistics, there appears …

I was spurred on to post this because of a recent conversation with my wife. I’ll start by just saying, guys, who are automatically given the upper hand in our current power structures, need to be intentional about relinquishing that authority and opening opportunity for women to be included.
There’s a great post by Heather at Emerging Women that has tips for encouraging women leadership (ht. Mark):
1. Include women’s voices and perspectives from the beginning. Don’t plan the event, outline the book, organize the tour, and THEN try to find a …

I figured rather then write, I wanted to ask some questions. I’ve had a discussion recently concerning short term missions and I wanted to hear some of my readers opinions. I’m curious what everyones take is on the issue of short term missions, global missions, western missionaries, etc. So, here are my questions:1. What do you think about short term missions? Do they do more harm then good, or vice versa?
2. Have you heard of indigenous missionaries? If so, what do you think of them?
3. On a Biblical level, what …

Thanks for all the feedback on the last couple house posts everybody! I’m realizing there are quite a few more interested parties then I originally realized. I mentioned earlier that one of the reasons we are excited about doing this, and taking seriously paying off our debt, is that we want to have an opportunity to serve as an example to others of taking debt seriously and paying things off. The ultimate goal for us, is to live on only what we need (more discussion here later) and to continue …

Dear Greg (or Gary, sorry I can’t remember) and others,
I met you briefly at Peavey Park in South Minneapolis last Wednesday. I was hanging out with some punk-rocker anarchist folk, eating dinner with homeless and having an all-around good time. You came by and politely offered us flyers to an event for youth you were having in October. You were kind and cordial and I appreciated listening to the conversation between some church-goers and anarchist, two groups I thoroughly enjoy hanging out with that tend to have some nearly polar …