Mission Hits #64 (March 2025)
- From Every Nation (Chris Howles)
- Apr 1
- 10 min read
Welcome to Mission Hits, a monthly blog highlighting stimulating and significant recent resources related to world mission and world Christianity.
Welcome to Mission Hits # 64 (March 2025)
Thanks so much for reading and subscribing - I trust this monthly blog is a blessing for you.
From holding grudges to holding the ropes, from biblical justice to Bible translation, from Jonah’s Assyrian audience to Jesus’ global calling, from urban theology to unreached tribes, from spiritual battles to sending churches, and from Lausanne's legacy to Sudan’s struggles - this edition of Mission Hits has something to challenge, inform, encourage and equip everyone.
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Have a blessed and mission-minded month ahead, and I'll see you again soon for the next edition,
Chris (Howles)
Director of Cross-Cultural Training, Oak Hill College (UK)
Doctorate in Intercultural Theology, Fuller Theological Seminary (US)
ESSENTIALS (if you only have time for one...)
Essential for Missionaries
There are lots of angry and unforgiving mission workers out there. We all know it. It's perhaps one of the most common but least spoken-of aspects of cross-cultural Christian living. If you're an overseas mission worker, this is for you: "There are many opportunities on the mission field to hold a grudge or to build in resentment. But the good news is that for every opportunity to plant the seed of bitterness in our hearts, we also have a chance to plant the seeds of wonder, of awe, of hope, of love in our hearts and in the hearts of others. There is nothing that speaks to the goodness of God like the act of forgiveness."
Essential for Church Leaders
Are you part of a new (probably small) church, and assuming that this is simply not the time to think about involvement in global mission - after all, surely you need to be well-established before thinking about such things? Well, this might be for you! Gospel Coalition article by Ben Wright.
Essential for Mission Agency Workers
Hans Elgby tells the delightful, inspiring story of Archie and Grace McCaskell and their role as committed, faithful missionary 'rope holders'. May the Lord continue to raise up many more like them! I suspect this story will be helpful for those engaging with 'rope holders' in mission agencies.
Essential for Christians Partnering as Senders
Catalyst Services with 10 ideas for church mission committees and such like to think 'big picture' and move forward in your context. "Dream for a minute about what your missions team could accomplish if you were functioning at the max of your God-given capacity. Are you secretly disappointed with the lack of momentum but are not sure why? Or maybe there are one or two areas where you know you could do better but don’t know how to get unstuck."
GENERAL (well worth your time)
“[Asian leaders were] told that they were equal ‘partners’ with a Western-funded ministry until a difference of opinion arose, with the Western ‘partners’ then threatening to pull their money out if they didn’t get their way." Bruce Barron on the difference between partnership and paternalism in global north-south missional relationships.
The Great Commission Council is a group of over 60 missionaries who are coming towards the end of a three-year project of developing statements, definitions, and training materials to help churches, mission agencies, missionaries, and Christian institutions. It's oriented around the 9Marks part of the missiological spectrum if that's a familiar reference point to you.
Julie Jean Francis (US missionary in SE Asia) describes how she learnt to engage constructively and powerfully with, not merely dismiss, the spiritual warfare she was witnessing and experiencing in her mission frontier setting: "My last option was to dig deep and acknowledge that maybe Scripture had been there all along warning me about the spiritual battle that would happen when I carried my light into the world’s darkness." I suspect this will resonate with, and be useful for, many mission workers.
AUDIO/VISUAL (podcasts & videos)
The 'Missions on Point' team have done an 18 x (15 min) episode series on preaching on missions from the Old Testament. I haven't listened to them all yet, but have enjoyed and appreciated the ones I've dipped into.
To be honest, the AI bit is just the final apart. It's the first half that struck me more, including the discussion on whether or not all languages should have their own Bible translation.
I suspect many of you like me would be interested to hear what Billy Graham spoke about at the 1974 Lausanne Congress. It's fascinating how much it simultaneously sounds both missiologically dated and relevant
DIGGING DEEPER (challenging but rewarding)
That's probably not a title you would expect to find in Mission Hits. But this blog post from a US missionary in Central Asia lands with brilliant missiological insight that opens up a new vista on Jonah that I hadn't much considered or understood before. Hard to summarise here, but worth reading.
Australian missiologist Graham Joseph Hill writes about 12 essential qualities Christian spirituality and theology must embrace in (and for) a new urban world. This is 'big picture' missiology in light of radical and rapid changes taking place in our world today - one where by 20250, around 80% of the world's urban people will live in Africa or Asia.
This article is a book review, but in reality it's more like a description of the remarkable history of those early Chinese Christians following Alopen and the Church of the East missionary efforts along the silk road. If you've got a tiny bit of pre-existing knowledge of early Chinese Christianity I suspect you'll enjoy this review and the book itself.
BOOKS (recent releases)
Links are to Amazon for best info/reviews. Other outlets are available...
Mariam Kamell Kovalishyn (Editor)
"Even when we share a grammatical-historical approach with others, our interpretation of biblical texts is invariably affected by social location and cultural context, which influence the questions we ask of the text and how we apply it. [In this volume] each contributor writes on a biblical book or group of books, and together they cover the whole New Testament. These authors expose students and pastors in the West to new questions and ways of reading familiar texts. The result is an eye-opening, spiritually enriching experience that will supplement and strengthen our own biblical interpretation."
Nik Ripken & Ruth Ripken
"How can a church truly care for missionaries serving in the hardest places? The answer might surprise you. Nik and Ruth Ripken spent decades walking alongside believers in the toughest regions. They discovered that caring for missionaries starts long before they are sent—it begins before they are even born. A church committed to missions weaves a sending culture into its very DNA, shaping every generation to fulfill Jesus’ command. This little book shows how missions isn’t just a program—it’s who you are as a church."
William D. Taylor
"What does it mean to lead from a position of humility, calling, and service? In [this book] Bill Taylor shares insights learned from six decades of cross-cultural ministry. He reflects on his Third Culture Kid life, grapples with the slippery slogans of missions, encounters the Holy Spirit in new dimensions of presence and power, and seeks to make sense of the many mistakes he made." You can read excerpts from the introduction and the entire afterword from Jay Mātenga here.
MISCELLANEOUS (varied but valuable)
Many of you will be familiar with this, but I suspect many won't. It's not a new resource, but it is continually updated: The Joshua Project's 'Global Interactive world map' shows the location/size/religious makeup of each people group worldwide. I could easily imagine this being something to share/demonstrate in a church teaching session or mission agency training context.
British missiologist Eddie Arthur has stopped his many years of brilliant daily missions blogging on his website (the archives of these blogs, edited and organised, are still available here and HIGHLY recommended) but is now doing some longer Substack posts on issues of politics, culture, theology and mission. In this post he argues that the 'immigration is ruining our Christian country' narrative is historically misguided and theologically illiterate: "Weaponising Christianity against immigrants denies reality and the meaning of the gospel". It's about the UK, but relevant to many contexts beyond the UK.
This feels too unusual to put under the normal 'books' section, so I'm putting it here instead. A missions novel! "In the foothills of northwest Laos, an unreached tribal group lives unaware of the gospel - until an American army medic is captured and brought to their village. Set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, [this book] imagines a mountain tribe’s encounter with Jesus and how it transforms their lives forever." By Marvin J. Newell (MissioNexus)
QUOTES (wise one-liners)
(1) "God doesn't just want a successful mission, he wants a sanctified missionary."
Dale Ralph Davis
(2) "We cannot effectively carry out mission in a foreign language. We have to sing the Gospel in our tunes, set to our music, played on our instruments."
John Mbiti
(3) "The gift of the Spirit is the gift of becoming involved in mission, for mission is the direct consequence of the outpouring of the Spirit"
David Bosch
GLOBAL INSIGHT (critical news & trends)
Really interesting interview with Brent Fulton (ChinaSource) by Bruce Barron about Sinicization and is effects on Chinese Christianity: "This is a time of pressure and increased restrictions for the church, perhaps the worst in the last 40 years. But it’s also an important time of maturation. With foreigners leaving, the church has had to rely on its own resources and on the Holy Spirit."
There have been some developments these recent weeks in the dreadful ongoing Sudanese civil war - potential significant ones. This article in 'The Conversation' is a good summary of how this conflict began, what's happened recently, and what it might mean for the future.
"After many years of steady decline, the share of Americans who identify as Christians shows signs of leveling off – at least temporarily – at slightly above six-in-ten, according to a massive new Pew Research Center survey of 36,908 U.S. adults."
TWEETS (short but significant)
STATS (noteworthy numbers)
(1) At 350m people, were the global diaspora a country it would be the third largest in the world after India and China. SOURCE
(2) In 1900, just 228 groups had the New Testament in their language. Today, with a 2.07% annual rate of growth, around 2,500 languages have the New Testament. SOURCE
(3) Christianity in Syria has been nearly eradicated, with the country’s Christian population dropping from 10 percent (1975) to 2 percent (2025) SOURCE
ONLINE EVENTS (Zoom seminars & conferences)
"Women make up the majority of church attenders worldwide, and likely the majority of missionaries, yet they are chronically missing from key leadership positions in churches and mission organizations. This seminar will discuss gender gaps in World Christianity and what we can do to bring more attention to women’s contributions to the global church." Thursday April 10th and Friday April 11th, 9.30-11.30am over 2 mornings. Hosted by the Overseas Ministries Study Center at Princeton Theological Seminary, Free.
"The Patmos Survey is the most ambitious and pioneering Bible Engagement research project ever conducted due to its scale, methodology and reach. Conducted in partnership with Gallup, [it] analyses the missiological context of 150 countries, exploring the religious attitudes and beliefs of 90,000 people in 85 countries, providing world class data, and establishing a new understanding of how people relate to the Bible. On 30 April 2025, The Patmos World Bible Attitudes Survey will launch at an online event repeated over three time zones." (8am, 1pm, and 7pm GMT - suitable for all time zones worldwide. Free, from The British and Foreign Bible Society, in partnership with United Bible Societies.
Author's privilege! Oak Hill College is putting on a day conference considering the relationships between migration, mission, and ministry in the UK today. Plenaries from Sam George, Israel Olofinjana, and myself, and seminars looking at particular contemporary diaspora communities. I know I'm biased, but this really does look excellent. Tuesday 10th June 10am-4pm, £15 online tickets.
HIGHLIGHTS (Most popular from last month's Mission Hits…)
JUST FOR FUN (unrelated but interesting!)
Geoguessr is where you get dropped anywhere on Google Maps Streetview, and you have to look for clues to work out where you are. There's a whole championship for it, with big crowds. Fascinating. And impressive!
Spin the globe, choose a country, and watch tv channels from there. Bizarrely random, and addictive.
I thought I knew the extraordinary story of Earnest Shackleton and his expedition well enough, but this 70-min retelling by British Historian Dan Snow is so exciting. I was captivated and enthralled all over again. It truly is a stupendous story.
Full searchable archives of all Mission Hits resources from edition #1
Questions, comments, or suggestions for the next edition?
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