My brother, who attended a Bible College during a smart-alecky phase in his life, enjoyed shocking groups of believers by sharing his “life verse.” After listening to others quote pious phrases from P...
Context This week’s reading from Acts recounts the call to Paul on his second missionary journey to go to Macedonia and his encounter with Lydia in Philippi. Textual Context The structure of the B...
2 Kings 5:1-14, Joshua 12:1-3, Joshua 12:1-3, Luke 4:27
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. Th...
John 4:7-26, John 6:1-15, Galatians 4:21-31, Psalm 42:7, Psalm 121:null
New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains. There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously. Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...
John 4:7-26, 1 Corinthians 2:12, 1 Peter 12:12-23, John 6:1-15, Galatians 4:21-31, Psalm 42:7, Psalm 121:null
New Testament Mountains Like the Old Testament, the New Testament has plenty of references to mountains. There’s the Sermon on the Mount, obviously. Jesus often went onto hills or mountains to pray...
Context This week’s reading from Acts recounts the call to Paul on his second missionary journey to go to Macedonia and his encounter with Lydia in Philippi. Textual Context The structure of the B...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The poin...
Mark 1:16-28, Acts 8:26-40, Acts 16:11-15, Joshua 21:32
For purposes of practicality and relatability, this series considers the Sea of Galilee to be a lake and classifies other fresh or mostly fresh water locations together under the same banner. The poin...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Missing the point? In the days when the tourist business was good in Israel, some entrepreneurial chap set up a tent between Jerusalem ...
Ancient Lens What can we learn from the historical context? Missing the point? In the days when the tourist business was good in Israel, some entrepreneurial chap set up a tent between Jerusalem ...
In 1988, I (Randy) moved with my wife and two sons (ages two and eight weeks) from Texas to Sulawesi, an island north of Australia and south of the Philippines. We served as missionaries to a cluster ...
James Brownson describes what he calls a “missional hermeneutic” as observed throughout the New Testament: I call the model I am developing a missional hermeneutic because it springs from a basic obs...
The development of different cultures didn’t take God by surprise! This is what the triune God intended from the beginning. Cultural difference and diversity was always a part of God’s original plan f...
God’s vision for his people is not for the elimination of ethnicity to form a colorblind uniformity of sanctified blandness. Instead God sees the creation of a community of different cultures united b...
If we do not accept as good, God’s shaping of our person and life in our own culture, we will never be able to accept his work in the lives of others who are culturally different from us.
In their excellent book Misreading Scripture with Western Eyes, E. Randolph Richards and Brandon J. O’Brien share the importance of recognizing the lens through which see the world: We speak as insi...
God’s grace is present in all people and cultures. As we submit ourselves to learning from other cultures, we catch glimpses of God’s grace that would be unavailable in our own culture.
Matthew 28:18-20, Acts 1:8, Acts 10:34-35, Galatians 3:28, Romans 1:16, John 4:21-24, Psalm 22:27-28
[Speaking of the early church] A cosmopolitan spirit grew, particularly in the cities, that transcended national barriers. Old tribal distinctions and identities were breaking down, leaving people rip...
A classic mission dilemma: The chief of a village in a remote area, whose people practice a tribal religion, becomes a believer and declares the whole village is now Christian. Most of the leading m...
John 14:27, Matthew 2:2, Revelation 19:16, John 18:36-37, Revelation 17:14, Zechariah 9:9, Isaiah 9:6, Psalm 24:7-10, Colossians 1:15-20, Matthew 21:1-11, Mark 11:1-11, Luke 19:28-40, John 12:12-16
In a culture, the most important things usually go without being said. We Westerners don’t talk all the time about being individualists or about the importance of efficiency or why we prefer youth ove...
Across all barriers of land and language, wealth and poverty, knowledge and ignorance, we are one, created from the same dust, subject to the same laws, and destined for the same end. With this compas...
It was the reception of the Holy Spirit that first offered the church hope of a social and spiritual community composed of people from “every tribe and nation” and unified by the centrality of Christ.
I once heard the missionary author Elisabeth Elliot tell of accompanying the Auca woman Dayuma from her jungle home in Ecuador to New York City. As they walked the streets, Elliot explained cars, fire...
Titus 2:7-8, Jeremiah 2:4-9, Romans 12:21, Matthew 5:13-16, Genesis 41:
While there is a place for condemning, critiquing, consuming and copying culture, the primary posture Christ followers are to have in the world is as culture makers. In regard to history, the word cul...
Luke 18:14, Proverbs 29:23, Isaiah 2:11, 1 Peter 5:5, Romans 12:3, James 4:6, Proverbs 16:18
Up until the twentieth century, traditional cultures (and this is still true of most cultures in the world) always believed that too high a view of yourself was the root cause of all the evil in the w...