Why don’t you share some Christian songs in your language with me?” I asked some musicians on our way home from a worship event. As an ethnodoxologist, I thought the lack of enthusiasm during the event was due to the use of foreign songs. I naively assumed my friends would be thrilled to sing in their heart language. 

African-American Christians have a significant role in the global spread of the gospel for many reasons. One unique contribution was clearly illustrated as I was leading a few seminary students on a trip to a Southeast Asian country where I had previously lived. While we were there, I witnessed one of my students accomplish something in six minutes that I didn’t accomplish in six years.  

Many pastors and missionaries are crossing the globe, teaching, encouraging, and resourcing with good intentions, but questionable effectiveness. Other church-planting catalysts, especially those who work within a denominational framework, manage systems like assessment, church-planter boot camp, financial support, coaching, and others. They try to maintain some church-planting momentum, but rarely achieve movement.

It is obvious that the present contexts in India are different from that of a century, or even a few decades, ago. Despite the increasing magnitude of voluminous challenges, God’s mission continues to penetrate. The praxis of mission requires intelligent discernment of the signs of the times and a faithful reading of the contextual realities.