It doesn’t take more than a trip to the grocery store to recognize that we live in a time of profound cultural change. Even our smallest hometowns are no longer mono-cultural. Instead, they are mixtures of people from a varietyRead more…
The Church as Glocal
We are living in a global world—the young generation, especially. We have a global culture. Most of us know Facebook, Michael Jackson, iPhone, Avatar, Nike. Brands are global. Movies are global. Artists are global. But still, the place where weRead more…
Glocalization, Diaspora Missiology, and Friendship
In five months, Lausanne Cape Town 2010 (CT2010) will be a fresh opportunity to think about creative approaches for relational forms of evangelism. One new paradigm to consider is glocalized evangelism at the intersection between global people movements and localRead more…
Orthodox diaspora and mission
MISSION AND EMIGRATION — THE DIASPORA Orthodox diaspora has been established in Southern Africa by immigrant communities, and this is true of many other parts of the world as well, particularly Australia and the eastern parts of North America. WhereRead more…
The Ends of the Earth: Two Isolated Communities
If you have been following my two previous posts: The Flying Community (March 15, 2010), and The Floating Communities (April 27, 2010), I have another scenario for you. I learned from my first geography class that there wereRead more…
Diaspora Churches Mushrooming Everywhere
The amazing work of God in the last two years in seeing millions of diaspora people get to know our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through church planting is unprecedented in history. I am a witness in the planting ofRead more…
The Prophetic Migrant
A response to Samuel Escobar’s ’Migration & Ethnic Conflict’ Samuel Escobar offers three challenges to the church in his essay on migration: the challenge to show compassion toward migrants, the need to take a prophetic stance against unjust treatment ofRead more…
The Blessings Of The Other
A response to Samuel Escobar’s ’Migration & Ethnic Conflict’ Samuel Escobar raised one of the main challenges of migration, which is the acceptance of the ’other’—the one different from us. Migrants, as the ’other,’ are often regarded as threatsRead more…
The Heart Of The Gospel
A response to Samuel Escobar’s ’Migration & Ethnic Conflict’ I first read Samuel Escobar’s timely article aboard a flight from Toronto, Ontario, bound for Edmonton, Alberta. Flying across Canada, a nation touted for its ’vigorous immigration policy’ and official MulticulturalismRead more…
Migration & Ethnic Conflict
In 50 years as missionaries, my wife and I have become familiar with immigration laws and offices in the countries where we served: Argentina, Brazil, Canada, the United States and now Spain. As recently as 2007, in Valencia, weRead more…