Missions Catalyst 11.28.07 – Resource Reviews

In This Issue:  State of the Gospel, Ministry in Mongolia, and More

  • PRESENTATION MATERIALS – The State of the Gospel
  • DATA – Drawing Conclusions from the World Christian Database
  • TOOLS FOR ADVOCACY – Resources about AIDS from World Vision
  • BOOK – There’s a Sheep in my Bathtub
  • BOOK – Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret (New Edition)

Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!

Resource Reviews, edited by Marti Smith, are published once a month.

Dear Readers,

Looking for global statistics and analysis or thoughtful answers to complex problems? I know some of you are – because you call or write me, and sometimes I don’t know how to respond. But now it’s a bit easier – I have some new references and communication tools. I’ll use today’s edition of Missions Catalyst to introduce them.

Marti

PRESENTATION MATERIALS – The State of the Gospel

Jason Mandryk has taken Patrick Johnstone’s mantle as editor for Operation World. He sent us his 35-minute “State of the Gospel” presentation from the Lausanne Younger Leader’s Gathering 2006 in Malaysia. Great stuff: well-researched, God-focused, hopeful, compelling, and passionately presented!

You can have a copy, too. Discover how the kingdom is expanding today, be inspired, and get some pithy points and facts for your next newsletter, blog entry, or sermon. Show the DVD to your Sunday school class, Perspectives class, small group, or mission committee. It’s powerful. Incorporate maps or charts into your next presentation. Or slyly pass on the MP3 files to any iPod users you want to influence! Most of this is free: Get the MP3 audio files (11 Mb) or PowerPoint presentation (11 Mb) here. Get the PDF (4 Mb) of an article written for Momentum Magazine here.

To get the most out of it, though, you’ll want the DVD. It includes all of the above plus Jason’s detailed speaking notes and a high-quality video of the actual presentation in Malaysia, with graphics and photos interspersed. You can have a copy for a few dollars (or pounds) plus postage and send payment to your nearest WEC office. Make your request and work out the details with Jason, in the UK, here.

DATA – Drawing Conclusions from the World Christian Database

A while back a friend passed on the statistic that roughly 8 out of 10 Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists do not personally know any Christians. I tracked down the source of this simple, remarkable statistic, Todd Johnson. Todd was one of the editors of the World Christian Encyclopedia and told me this research would be explained in an article he’d submitted to Evangelical Missions Quarterly.

Personal Contact: The Sine Qua Non of Twenty-first Century Christian Mission, by Todd M. Johnson and Charles L. Tieszen, was published in Evangelical Missions Quarterly’s October 2007 issue.

To read the whole article you’ll need a subscription, but here’s the gist of it. Although the Bible shows us that from the beginning personal relationships have been crucial to God’s plan for evangelism, research done for the World Christian Encyclopedia and the World Christian Database suggests that today, less than 16 percent of the world’s non-Christians even know any Christians.

The article also looks at some of the possible reasons for this and what we can do about it, and breaks down the statistics by continent and religious block. For example, it shows that while there are more than 160 million non-Christians in Europe, 75 percent of them at least know anyone who identifies themselves as a Christian. Yet almost 40 million of the people who live in Europe are Muslim, and 81.5 percent of them do not know any Christians.

How can we communicate these things in everyday language that sticks with people and moves them to prayer and action? Try this out: “If I were to sum up what missions is about for me I guess I’d say that it’s making sure that everyone on the planet has a chance to know the love and peace that God offers us in Christ. The way it is now, more than 4 billion people don’t know God personally.

“What would it take to change that? Most people are never going to follow Jesus if they don’t know a real, flesh-and-blood person who can show them the way. In fact, the biggest reason most people ever come to know Christ is because a Christian loves them – because they have a Christian relative or friend.

“Well, in many places that’s just not happening. Researchers say that globally, more than 80 percent of all non-Christians do not personally know someone who is a Christian. If more people are going to hear about Christ, Christians need to be willing to cross barriers of culture, language, and religion to make friends with them, love them, and tell them about Jesus.”

See also: Perfect Strangers: Christians Living Among Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims, a related article written by Natalie Crowson and published in Lausanne World Pulse.

Let me know what you think.

TOOLS FOR ADVOCACY – Resources about AIDS from World Vision

Source: World Vision

Saturday, December 1 is World AIDS Day. Join the global prayer vigil, find ideas, events, and activities for churches and individuals on the web site of World Vision including a downloadable toolkit for pastors and churches, or read these books:

A Guide to Acting on AIDS: Understanding the Global AIDS Pandemic and Responding through Faith and Action, edited by Laura Barton, M. Dodd, Jyl Hall, and James Pedrick. Authentic Media/World Vision, 2006, 90 pages.

The guide is designed to equip Christian college students with a deeper awareness of the global AIDS pandemic, why their faith should inform their response, and how they can put their faith into action. It also includes discussion questions and proposed action items for readers.

Price US$7.99.Place an order or get more information here.

An African Awakening: My Journey into AIDS Activism, by Valerie Bell. Authentic Media/World Vision, 2007, 96 pages.

Enter the world of AIDS and be prepared to be bombarded by statistics, medical acronyms, and complex global inequalities. Valerie Bell crashes though the clutter as an earnest seeker bent on understanding the world’s greatest humanitarian disaster – and how one person can make a real difference.

Price US$7.99.Place an order or get more information here.

BOOK – There’s a Sheep in my Bathtub

There’s a Sheep in my Bathtub: Birth of a Mongolian Church Planting Movement, by Brian Hogan. Asteroidea Books, 2007, 252 pages.

There’s a Sheep in my Bathtub chronicles the adventures of the Hogan family as they followed God’s call to Mongolia in the mid-1990s, joining a team that left behind 400+ baptized believers and a growing, culturally appropriate church after just a few years of work. Amazing? Brian has been telling the story ever since, and he just documented it in detail in this unusual, very personal book put out by a new publishing company formed just for this purpose.

Especially if you’ve heard Brian teach – he’s popular with Perspectives classes – or prayed for or visited this part of the world, you’ll enjoy this look behind the scenes. I know I did.

George Patterson wrote the foreword, and a huge number of ministry leaders have glowingly endorsed the book. Price: US$15.95.

Find it on Amazon.

See also: Rick Leatherwood’s Glory in Mongolia.

BOOK – Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret (New Edition)

Source: East Asia Insight

Hudson Taylor’s Spiritual Secret, by Geraldine Taylor, newly revised by Gwen Hanna. OMF Books, 2007, 194 pages.

God is at work in our world. As in the days of Hudson Taylor a century and a half ago, we live in a time when discovering purposeful involvement in God’s affairs around the world requires us to engage intentionally. Hudson Taylor – husband, father, physician, evangelist, visionary, and founder of the China Inland Mission – lived his life for God with intention and purpose. In the process, God revealed to him the secret to joy and satisfaction, no matter what circumstances surrounded him.

Price: US$9.99. Place an order or get more information here. [link removed July 2009]

Questions? Problems? Submissions? Contact publisher/managing editor Marti Smith.

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