Major Trends in the World and the Church

Churches and missions faced with the challenge of destructive, deceptive cults must take, effective action to expose the cult’s teachings, inform the public, and mobilize the community. The danger of cults is too serious to meet it with worried prayers and feeble knees.

The ethnic and cultural face of North America has changed drastically over the few years. Although that’s been happening steadily ever since the first Europeans steeped ashore, the change has been particularly dramatic in the last two decades.

The subject of territorial spirits and world missions is surfacing on the agendas of many church, seminary, and mission leaders.

In the early church, witnessing to the resurrection of Christ and meeting needs by the power of the Holy Spirit were just part of living a normal Christian life.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini befuddled the West once again early this year, when he offered millions to anyone who would kill Salman Rushdie, author of The Satanic Verses. While diplomats, publishers, and writers fumed about the outrageous murder contract, no doubt the public’s vision of Islam — and that of many Christians as well — was further blurred.

I had been in West Africa only three months when the worst thing I could imagine happened — an African worker was killed in a horrible accident in the front yard of our home. A band of armed policemen broke through the angry mob that quickly surrounded our house and arrested me, declaring that I was a criminal and would go directly to prison.

Much is being said about contextualizing our material in theological education. Scholars tell us to “Africanize” or “Asianize” our courses. We readily admit that our courses should be contextualized within the constraint of biblical absolutes, of course.

In this time of increasing concern about the welfare of the children of missionaries (MKs), we have to look at al of the significant factors, even if our search uncovers some unpleasantries.