Ida Scudder was the granddaughter of the first medical missionary sent by the American church. John Scudder, her grandfather, went to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) in 1819, and later to India, as a missionary doctor. Ida was born in 1870Read more…
A 21st Century Reformation: Back to First Principles
The sixteenth-century Protestant Reformation left a profound mark not only on the church of Jesus Christ but also on the history of the Western world and, as a sequel, on the history of the whole world. Today, the state ofRead more…
A 21st Century Reformation of the Church: A Wider Welcome
During my last visit to Ethiopia I joined students at Addis Ababa University for a meeting of the Evangelical Students’ and Graduates’ Union of Ethiopia (EvaSUE). They are part of a remarkably courageous Ethiopian church that survived the repressive regimeRead more…
21st Century Reformation? A Modest Plea
Reformation is a large concept, a work of God so broad, deep and historic that it is beyond my scope, and probably that of The Third Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization. I opt for something more modest: a ’reformation ofRead more…
A Small Version of the Grand Narrative
A response to Ajith Fernando’s ’Embracing Suffering in Service’ Editor’s note: Shortly after Libby Little wrote this response to Ajith Fernando’s article on suffering, she received news that her husband had been brutally murdered while returning from a medical mission inRead more…
A 21st Century Reformation: Recovering the Supernatural
One of the big surprises of the 20th century was the dramatic growth of the churches in the non-western world. A bigger surprise was that, as Philip Jenkins asserts, those churches growing fastest are all strongly supernaturally oriented. ’In thisRead more…
The Devil’s Mask on the Face of God
A response to Ajith Fernando’s ’Embracing Suffering In Servicer’ ’Thus God wears the mask of the Devil, and the Devil wears the mask of God; God wants to be recognized under the mask of the Devil, and he wants theRead more…
Rejecting the Cross
A response to Ajith Fernando’s ’Embracing Suffering In Service’ In his insightful article, Fernando laments a contemporary idea of vocational fulfilment in ministry that has removed the cross from its core while adopting efficiency as its measuring standard. He pointsRead more…
Suffering and Prosperity: Equal Challenges to Faith
A response to Ajith Fernando’s ’Embracing Suffering in Service’ As a Westerner I wholeheartedly agree with Fernando’s conclusions. For centuries large parts of the Middle East were lost to church and mission because of Islam. The same can become trueRead more…
Embracing Suffering In Service
I felt humbled as I returned from teaching pastors in the deep south of Sri Lanka. In these pastors’ experience, it often takes ten to fifteen years pioneering in unreached areas before they see significant fruit and reduced hostility. ManyRead more…