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Source: Navigators
Often, the fast-paced time and space to connect with God through prayer is difficult. Use these 12 powerful prayers for Christmas to hep you slow down and focus on the true meaning of this season—the celebration of Christ’s birth.
Share these with a friend or small group and spend time praying them together as you anticipate your Christmas celebration.
Read 12 Prayers for Christmas or download the one-page PDF. It’s great!
Looking for timely ways to pray for missionaries over the holidays? I made this list for Prayer Notes, a weekly publication from Pioneers. Feel free to re-purpose any of the content you find helpful.
Source: Catalyst Services
A growing number of churches are considering internships to be an important early step for young adults who express interest in missions. This trend is driven by at least two factors:
Read the article. It addresses components to consider, internship models, and specific opportunities that include service in the U.S. and abroad. Know someone who would benefit?
Sources: Various
Living in a world with many distractions, do you find it’s getting harder to read whole books from cover to cover? Even so, the publishing industry doesn’t seem to have waned in its production. Here are some I loved, and you might too—plus a list of books we’ve mentioned in 2024.
People Vision: Reimagining Mission to Least Reached Peoples, by Leonard N. Bartlotti. William Carey Publishing, 2024. 324 pages.
A few months ago I wrote about my struggle to call people to take the gospel to the places and populations with the greatest need and least opportunity, given all I know about the debates and divisions surrounding how we think and talk about people groups now. This book helped. It’s a compendium reflecting a wide variety of perspectives, expanded from a core first published in Evangelical Missions Quarterly (Fall 2020). It’s helped me and those I work with as we seek to harmonize theory, message and practice. The most significant work on this topic today.
Learn more or get the book from the publisher or elsewhere.
Not on Board: Jonah’s Plunge Into God’s Plan, by Steve Richardson. Pioneers, 2024. 104 pages.
Most Christians know the story of “Jonah and the whale,” but have we thought deeply about its global implications? Steve Richardson’s new book shows there’s a lot more going on under the surface than most people realize, as a surprising God sent an unlikely conscript on an unthinkable mission and got an extraordinary response—and what it means for us today.
Learn more or get the book. You can read it online for free or get the ebook for US$.99 if you don’t want to spring for a paperback.
Lead with Prayer: The Spiritual Habits of World-Changing Leaders, by Ryan Skoog, Peter Greer and Cameron Doolittle. FaithWords, 2024. 256 pages.
Is this a mission book? Not exactly. But take a look. The authors spent three years interviewing Christian leaders on six continents who collectively serve in more than 100 countries. In a winsome and inspiring way, they share what they learned from these leaders (and others) about the crucial role of prayer in their lives and work.
If you or a ministry you serve with has gotten to the point where you tend to rely on competence rather than desperately seeking God, you may need this book.
Learn more. The website also has practical tools to download.
And More Books About Mission
I won’t load you up with all the links, but here are other new or new-ish mission books I read this year. You might want to look up a few to put on your TBR (to be read) list.
Reviewed or excerpted in Missions Catalyst:
Read but not reviewed:
And here are a few I want to read but haven’t yet:
What books are on your list?
As a social media post reminded me, this could be your last week to buy books as Christmas gifts if you plan to read them before you wrap them!
Source: Beyond
In this thought-provoking video, a cross-cultural worker shares about a wedding he observed while prayer walking. Maybe you can guess where that’s going. But who could you share it with? Less than two minutes long.
Source: Missions Catalyst Calendar
Here’s what I have so far. What would you add?
January 2-4, CROSS Conference (Louisville, KY, USA). Help this generation make their lives count.
January 5, EXPLORE Gathering (Atlanta, GA, USA). One-day regional mission conference; new this year. Provided by Global Frontier Missions.
January 6 to May 11, Perspectives on the World Christian Movement (online). An additional class launches January 20 and others throughout the year.
January 6 to April 6, Encountering Muslims (online). Classes start several times a year, or you can sign up to do it as a cohort.
January 12-14, Sending Church Elements Cohort (Tempe, AZ, USA). Discover practical strategies that can multiply your church’s sending. A joint project of Upstream Collective and Frontiers.
January 13 to February 8, COMPASS (Palmer Lake, CO, USA). Language and culture acquisition provided by Missionary Training International.
January 17-18, MissionConnexion Northwest (Portland, OR, USA). A free, regional missions conference. Come early for Leadership Connexion or a MissionExcellence workshop on best practices for short-term missions, and sign up in advance for focused tracks focused on short-term missions and missionary care.
January 17-18, Agriculture Missions Summit (Manhattan, KS, USA). Hosted by Pioneer Bible Translators, Team Expansion, and Farming God’s Way.
January 22-26, Vision 5:9 MERGE Conference (Orlando, FL, USA). A gathering for all reaching out to the Muslim diaspora in North America. Organized by a network of organizations and churches. Registration closes December 20, so sign up now.
View the complete calendar. Submissions welcome.
Source: Mission Network News, November 29, 2024
Crises can happen in a moment, but they can also drag on beyond all expectations. Yet God has sustained his people in the Middle East to be his hands and feet during years of tumult.
Take Lebanon. It has endured decades of conflict and economic collapse. The current war no one wanted has displaced an estimated 1.3 million people.
“Crisis, wars, disruptions [are] nothing new to this region. We’re used to difficulties and hardships,” says Loulwa Maalouf with the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary.
“But at the same time, we are used to seeing God at work, and we are called to be here and be part of his work.”
Today [ABTS] not only provides biblical education to around 240 students, but it also shelters a couple hundred displaced people.
“With every crisis in Lebanon, we are used to taking a step and saying, ‘Okay, how does God want us to respond now?’” Maalouf says.
Also from Mission Network News, see New Approaches Needed for Growing Mongolian Church.
Source: Morning Star News, November 28, 2024
A judge in Pakistan has overturned a verdict that denied a Christian’s effort to correct his name and religion on his national identity card as he was a victim of fake conversion to Islam, his attorney said.
[On November 16], Ahmad Saeed, additional district judge of Pattoki Tehsil, Kasur District, Punjab Province, overturned the verdict of Pattoki Civil Judge Mian Usman Tariq, who had ruled that 24-year-old Sufyan Masih could not revert to Christianity after “converting” to Islam, said the Christian’s attorney, Sumera Shafique.
Masih had definitively affirmed his Christian faith and had reiterated that declaration in his statement to the district judge, she added. He told the judge that Asif Ali, the brick kiln owner where Masih worked, had registered his name in the NADRA record as Muhammad Sufyan and his religion as Islam in a bid to enslave him.
“Being an illiterate person, Masih failed to read the form filled by the data entry operator on the directives of his employer,” Shafique said, noting that Masih had put his thumbprint on the form in ignorance.
Also learn about a Baptist church in Uzbekistan that has been unable to use its building or meet publicly for worship since 2021. Other religious groups in the country are experiencing similar problems (Forum 18.)
Source: United Bible Society, November 25, 2024
Inspired by seeing the children’s Bibles available in English, Nami Kulyuru, a long-serving Pitjantjatjara Bible translator from Central Australia, had the vision to pass on the stories of the Bible to her descendants using traditional paintings.
After sharing her idea with friends and colleagues, Nami began the artistic work for this book in 2021. She was passionate about seeing the children in her community, including her children and grandchildren, have access to visual representations of Scriptures with which they could connect.
Following Nami’s passing in 2022, her family and community ensured that Nami’s legacy would live on through “Godaku Tjukurpa” (God’s Story)—the Pitjantjatjara Children’s Illustrated Bible—produced by Bible Society Australia.
Read the full story and see some of the pictures.
Check out these additional stories about Bible translation and distribution: