Biblical Perspectives on the Role of Immigrants in God’s Mission

I believe that when we begin to fully understand the Bible’s missiological and instrumental perspectives with regard to the migrant and stranger, we may possibly gain a better grasp of, and live more fully in, the missionary vision expressed in 1 Peter 2. If the church of Jesus Christ truly saw itself as a pilgrim community whose land and nation are not of this earth, then the Christian church would begin to understand that it is itself a community of migrants—ambassadors, yes (2 Cor 5)—but even so, migrants. This perspective is not a purely managerial or activist viewpoint. Rather this presentation points us to the being, the essential nature of the People of God as a migrant community, pilgrims who know that this world is not their own. They are a migrant community of followers of Jesus on their way to a new reality, seeking the Kingdom of God

A Response to Dr. Litfin

A response to Duane Litfin\u27s (1995) Understanding Your Critics: An Outsider’s Analysis of a Core Criticism of the Church Growth Movement (in this issue)

Bridges of God: The Mission Legacy of Donald Anderson McGavran

This short essay is about Donald McGavran and his ground-breaking book, Bridges of God, that became the cornerstone of Church Growth theory and the foundation of what is now called the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Missiological thinking and missionary practice was transformed by the energy, vitality, insight, and stubborn tenacity of Donald McGavran. Whether they agreed with McGavran or not, after the publication of The Bridges of God, mission professors, mission executives, and mission practitioners could no longer do business as usual, nor their usual business

Perspectives on the Church and Church Growth Theory

Because we will be talking about the church and its nature during this conference, I thought it might be good for us to be reminded of some basic characteristics of the church and the various ways the church has seen itself. At the risk of oversimplification, I would like to briefly survey ten broad perspectives on the Church which one may derive from the Church’s history and relate them to Church Growth theory. The ten perspectives mentioned in this paper are in no way meant to be exhaustive of the multiple ways one may view the Church. I do not see these ten as mutually-exclusive. Neither am I assuming that in each age the church has exhibited only one of these perspectives, though at certain times one or two may have been stronger than the others. The ten perspectives are meant only to illustrate the breadth of viewpoints available to us in seeking to describe the mystery that is the Church: called forth by Jesus Christ, created by the Holy Spirit, sustained by the power of God, involving human persons and structures, shaped by its contexts, and incarnated in specific times and places

Why Multiply Healthy Churches?

This article examines biblical motivations to multiply new, healthy churches. Such motivations emerge from the following five biblical truths: a) God the Father seeks and finds the lost, b) The love of Christ obligates us, c) God sent the Holy Spirit for all human beings, d) The local congregation is the primary locus of the rule of the King, and e) Multiplying churches is for the glory of God. Our loving and compassionate triune God desires that all women and men become disciples of Jesus Christ, active participants in a local Christian church, and committed agents of the transformation of their context

Bridges of God: The Mission Legacy of Donald Anderson McGavran

This short essay is about Donald McGavran and his ground-breaking book, Bridges of God, that became the cornerstone of Church Growth theory and the foundation of what is now called the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California. Missiological thinking and missionary practice was transformed by the energy, vitality, insight, and stubborn tenacity of Donald McGavran. Whether they agreed with McGavran or not, after the publication of The Bridges of God, mission professors, mission executives, and mission practitioners could no longer do business as usual, nor their usual business

A Response to Dr. Litfin

A response to Duane Litfin\u27s (1995) Understanding Your Critics: An Outsider’s Analysis of a Core Criticism of the Church Growth Movement (in this issue)

Theology, News and Notes - Vol. 36, No. 02

Theology News & Notes was a theological journal published by Fuller Theological Seminary from 1954 through 2014.https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/tnn/1103/thumbnail.jp

Theology, News and Notes - Vol. 45, No. 02

Theology News & Notes was a theological journal published by Fuller Theological Seminary from 1954 through 2014.https://digitalcommons.fuller.edu/tnn/1132/thumbnail.jp

SKIM, a candidate satellite mission exploring global ocean currents and waves

The Sea surface KInematics Multiscale monitoring (SKIM) satellite mission is designed to explore ocean surface current and waves. This includes tropical currents, notably the poorly known patterns of divergence and their impact on the ocean heat budget, and monitoring of the emerging Arctic up to 82.5°N. SKIM will also make unprecedented direct measurements of strong currents, from boundary currents to the Antarctic circumpolar current, and their interaction with ocean waves with expected impacts on air-sea fluxes and extreme waves. For the first time, SKIM will directly measure the ocean surface current vector from space. The main instrument on SKIM is a Ka-band conically scanning, multi-beam Doppler radar altimeter/wave scatterometer that includes a state-of-the-art nadir beam comparable to the Poseidon-4 instrument on Sentinel 6. The well proven Doppler pulse-pair technique will give a surface drift velocity representative of the top meter of the ocean, after subtracting a large wave-induced contribution. Horizontal velocity components will be obtained with an accuracy better than 7 cm/s for horizontal wavelengths larger than 80 km and time resolutions larger than 15 days, with a mean revisit time of 4 days for of 99% of the global oceans. This will provide unique and innovative measurements that will further our understanding of the transports in the upper ocean layer, permanently distributing heat, carbon, plankton, and plastics. SKIM will also benefit from co-located measurements of water vapor, rain rate, sea ice concentration, and wind vectors provided by the European operational satellite MetOp-SG(B), allowing many joint analyses. SKIM is one of the two candidate satellite missions under development for ESA Earth Explorer 9. The other candidate is the Far infrared Radiation Understanding and Monitoring (FORUM). The final selection will be announced by September 2019, for a launch in the coming decade