Posts tagged mission
A great sermon-et about living incarnationally and taking the posture of a listener in regards to mission.
The church does a great job explaining how we are different, but we need to do a better job showing how we are the same.
A snapshot into what God is doing in and through the students of Foundry UMC.
Advent: If your God is so great, why doesn’t he speak my language?
As I ponder the greatest event in human history and antipate the culmination of that historic event, i cant help but think about how through the Advent of Christ, He really does “speak our language!” Through the Incarnation, Christ became human, He became one of us. As we ponder that and the 2nd coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, let us remember that we are not only called to remember, but we are called to embody the Advent of our Lord for a world that is desperate to know that God speaks their language. Here is a piece from a former professor of mine on his blog www.timothytennent.com:
There is a famous story in missions circles about the origin of the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Cameron Townsend was a missionary in Latin America distributing Spanish Bibles when he met an indigenous Cakchiquel man in Guatemala who, using broken Spanish, asked him if he had a Bible in his language. When Cam Townsend said “No” the man famously replied, “If your God is so great, why doesn’t he speak my language?” This was the haunting question which led Townsend to found the Wycliffe Bible Translators which has now put the Bible into thousands of indigenous languages around the world. Townsend spent the next fifteen years learning that man’s language and translating the Bible into that language. The ten Christians who live in Kwamadebe are there to say to these beloved families, “yes” God loves you and he speaks your language! The Day of Pentecost was not just a sociological event, it was a theological statement by God himself that all the nations of the world “would declare the wonders of God in their own tongues” (Acts 2:11). John the Apostle envisioned the day when men and women from every tribe, tongue and language would gather in the Eschaton to worship the Lamb of God. Yes, heaven would not be heaven without the Alagwesa there! I, for one, can’t wait until harvest time!
A people who sat in darkness have seen a great light! May we be the city on a hill bolding shining that light.
DIsgusted: Missions or Colonization?
I am co-leading a trip for high school students to the country of Haiti this coming June/July and i came across this fact regarding the colonization of Haiti in the 15th century:
“When Christopher Columbus landed on what he later named Hispaniola in 1492, the people greeted him with offerings, unaware that he was claiming their lands for Spain. By 1508, the Hispaniola’s native Arawak/Taíno population had fallen from about 400,000 to just 60,000 due to the devastating social, political, ecological, and immunological effects of Spain’s arrival. Ten years later, less than 3,000 Arawak/Taínos remained alive on Hispaniola.”
This bit of information literally makes me sick to my stomach. How can we (as Americans) move past the atrocities of our past and truly empower the Haitian people with the hope of the Gospel? How can we do better in regards to development and sustainability? I am hoping that our endeavors next year will be about Haiti and its people, not us.
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