Mission Movement

The Anglian Church in Egypt came out with this statement recently --

We responded positively to the call to declare the next ten years a Decade of Mission and Networking and urge our respective Provinces to take up the matter, especially in expanding mission sending capacity to enhance networking among Global South Provinces. We call upon our Churches to pay greater attention to the role of Christian professionals in the mission, ministry and witness of the Christian community. We also need to pay particular attention to the pastoral needs of the laity, especially women and young people, who are witnessing to their faith at the cutting edges of mission.
 

The four bases of the baseball diamond represent four stages of commitment in what Rick Warren calls the life development process. The first base represents leading people to faith in Christ and a commitment to church membership. Second base represents growing toward spiritual maturity. Third base represents equipping and mobilizing people for ministry. And home base represents a commitment to witnessing for Christ and sharing in his worldwide mission (Warren Purpose 144). Denominational leaders have adapted these basic stages as have many local congregations who are successfully reaching and assimilating unchurched people (Garlow Team 15; Gospel 3; Hornsby 4; Martin Issachar 125‐128; Wright 74‐78).

In all my reading outside the Bible over the past fifteen years, the greatest source of affirmation for my emerging Christian Hedonism has been from missionary literature, especially biographies. And those who have suffered most seem to state the truth most unashamedly.

With the close of the Great Century in 1914, we have entered once again upon one of those calamitous eras of retreat for the Christian movement in the world. And yet—and this is the incredible paradox, the best-kept secret which you will never hear on the evening news—it is not true. The truth is that despite these setbacks, despite the de-Christianization taking place at the state level, the twentieth century was an era of incredible advance for the Christian faith around the world.