Gospel.com Blog

Who is Jesus, exactly? Jesus has been portrayed as everything from a political rabble-rouser to a gentle peacemaker; even within the family of Christianity you’ll find disagreement about Jesus and his mission.

One idea of Jesus, put forward by Deepak Chopra in his book The Third Jesus, depicts Jesus as a model of perfect spirituality that we can all achieve if we can just connect to the divinity within us. What are we to make of this version of Jesus—and how does it mesh with what the Gospels tell us? In a new series of radio talks, apologist Ravi Zacharias looks at this idea of Jesus and examines it in the light of scripture. Part 1 of Ravi’s talk is online now, with more to come, at the Let My People Think audio site.

Ask any missionary the best way to support them and they’ll most likely answer with one thing: prayer (well, that and finances, depending how giving is going that year).

Praying for missionaries is a wonderful way to connect with what God is doing in distant parts of the world—or in the case of Village Missions, the not-so-distant parts of the world. Village Missions is a ministry devoted to reaching out to the rural places of North America by not only sending pastors to small towns, but asking them to become part of the community. These are definitely not short-term positions.

One such couple is the Semenynas, who serve in Wasa Lake, BC. They were recently highlighted in Village Missions Prayer Spotlight:

Wasa Lake is a resort area nestled between the Purcell and Rocky Mountain ranges, 40 kms north of Cranbrook, BC and about 100 kms south of Radium Hot Springs. There is no shortage of skiing, golfing, hiking, fishing, and whatever else people like to do in the summer and winter months. We are experiencing the economic downturn like everyone else, as the forestry industry is one of the main employers for the area…

Read more over at their Prayer Spotlight and consider praying for Gary and Patsy.

Village Missions has been going for over sixty years and are serving all across the United States. You can check out a map of where they’re currently serving here.

When’s the last time you prayed for a missionary? Who are some of the missionaries you pray for regularly?

Short-term service trips are a common feature of youth groups in churches around the country. But do they accomplish the goals they set out to accomplish—helping others while giving students a chance to grow spiritually?

Kara Powell of the Fuller Youth Institute is promoting a new type of short-term missions curriculum meant to avoid the common problem of mission trips that have little or no impact on the participants’ lives:

In describing the new curriculum, Kara highlights some of the negative aspects of short-term mission trips as they’re commonly carried out: most of the advance preparation for the trip is focused on obtaining funds and parental permission; and whatever they experience on the mission trip itself, few kids seem to experience any long-term, meaningful spiritual growth afterward.

I’ve seen this topic circulating on blogs more frequently over the last year—see a Washington Post article on the challenge of creating short-term missions projects that actually do good, and very good ensuing commentary on the Tall Skinny Kiwi blog. See also an article at the Center for Student Missions about why most short-term missions trip isn’t a waste of time.

What has been your experience with short-term missions trips—positive or negative? The Youth Specialties blog is inviting comments on the topic, so head over there to discuss it, or share your thoughts below.

Fifty years ago, media ministry was a humble affair. In those days, media ministries didn’t have to debate about whether or not to invest in HDTV equipment, because good old standard-definition TV was still a relatively new thing. They didn’t have to have slick-looking websites or Twitter accounts or Facebook pages, because the internet didn’t exist.

Back then, if you wanted to reach the your part of the world you did it through radio:

From his dining room in Marrakesh, Morocco in 1959, Don Harris recorded an Arabic radio programme of uneven quality that was beamed over ELWA in Liberia. 50 years later, that amateurish beginning – to present Christ to all of North Africa – involves 55 adults working in four centers

This year, Arab World Ministries celebrates 50 years of media ministry. While it’s an exciting milestone, the orgainzation as a whole has been working faithfully to reach Arab Muslims throughout the world since 1881! Their vision is to “see mature multiplying churches among all Muslim peoples of the Arab world.”

Over on their site they’ve listed out some of theirmedia highlights over the last fifty years:

1962: Bible Correspondence Course (BCC) work is started in Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria. By 2006, over 250,000 people have studied these BCCs in Arabic and French.

1964: The ministry relocates to France and is renamed Radio School of the Bible with radio broadcasts aired regularly on Trans World Radio from 1965.

1965: An old cheese factory is purchased in Marseille and soon develops a multi-faceted ministry involving 23 people from eight countries.

1970s: The ministry explodes with such things as Theological Education by Extension, and the printing and distribution of hundreds of thousands of pieces of evangelistic literature.

Head over to their site to read more!

Does “creation care” have a place in the Christian life? Evangelical Christians in particular have a reputation for neglecting environmental stewardship—a stereotype that has some truth to it, traceable perhaps to Christians’ belief that the Earth will pass away when the Lord returns. But today is Earth Day, and Mart De Haan has written a blog post specifically about this question of Christians and creation care:

I’ll admit that I used to argue that this earth is timed to self-destruct and that followers of Christ need to be far more concerned with things that last than those that will pass away.

I’d talk about what Paul said about worshiping the creation more than the Creator.

But Dean would quote the first part of the chapter where Paul talks about the way God uses the natural world to point to the wonder of his own existence and character.Then he’d talk about Psalm 19 that describes how God not only speaks to us through his written word, but through creation itself.

He’s referring to the Wonder of Creation blog, where Dean Ohlman writes diligently about how Christians can and should better understand the place of Creation in our spiritual lives. His post “Earth Day confessions” sums up much of his approach, and challenges the church to understand its general failure to promote Earth stewardship as a sin and a deviation from a Biblical worldview.

What’s your reaction to these posts? Have you or your church thought through the question of how environmental stewardship does (or doesn’t) fit into Christian theology? How might the church best approach this issue?

Ten years ago today, America reeled at the news of a massacre at Columbine High School. Much has been written since then about the issue of school violence and the best ways to prevent it. Here are a few articles on the topic that I think make for worthwhile reading a decade later:

• Why Teenagers Turn to Violence is a good overview of the many different responses to the oft-repeated question of “How could this happen?”
• Michael Spencer has an insightful post about the “Christian myths” that sprang up in the wake of Columbine, and challenging us to be more honest and careful before co-opting tragedies to fit a “culture war” narrative.
• Ron Hutchcraft has written a moving devotional encouraging us all to be aware of and reach out to the “outsiders” all around us—people who, for whatever reason, don’t fit in and are in desperate need of real human relationships.

What would you do if Jesus asked you to follow him?

It’s the question that every apostle dealt with: “Should I stay or should I go?” For the apostle John, the one whom Christ loved, the answer was an immediate “Yes!” We read of how he joined Jesus’ ranks in Mark chapter 1:16-20:

As Jesus walked beside the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and his brother Andrew casting a net into the lake, for they were fishermen. “Come, follow me,” Jesus said, “and I will make you fishers of men.” At once they left their nets and followed him.

When he had gone a little farther, he saw James son of Zebedee and his brother John in a boat, preparing their nets. Without delay he called them, and they left their father Zebedee in the boat with the hired men and followed him.

John is most famous for writing the Gospel of John, which overflows with Jesus’ message of love for all people.

What followed from that moment on was a relationship with Jesus that transformed John’s life. We read that John found himself among Jesus’ inner circle of apostles along with James and Peter. He had the privilege of seeing Jairus’ daughter raised, of witnessing the Transfiguration and of going to the Garden of Gethesame before Jesus was betrayed by Judas.

Later on in life, John wrote his gospel and included that most famous of verses, John 3:16: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” It’s a verse that everyone who’s been in Sunday school knows, and many who have attended NFL games have wondered about.

For me, John is the gospel that shows us what the emotional side of a life following Jesus entails: it is a faith not built only on the intellect, but on the heart’s devotion.

Here are the books of the Bible traditionally attributed to John, via BibleGateway.com:

• John
• 1 John
• 2 John
• 3 John
• Revelation

More on John:

• John’s entry from wikipedia.
• Answers.com

Do you have any favorite passages from John’s works?

If you moved to a new country and found yourself faced with unfamiliar customs, religions, and politics, where would you turn for information? Would you turn to local media (TV, movies, newspapers) for help understanding day-to-day life in your new home? Where would you begin?

That’s a challenge faced by millions of Muslims in America, many of whom have moved to the United States without a clear understanding of Christianity and without anyone to help them get connected to local culture. Many have never interacted meaningfully with Christians, just as many Christians have never done so with Muslims.

Mission Network News reports on The Crescent project, which is devoted to building bridges between Muslims and Christians in the West:

Misunderstanding and misinformation. These are the problems affecting relationships between Muslims and Christians. One organization is trying to change that, while equipping Christians to help Muslims better understand Jesus.

President and CEO of Crescent Project Fouad Masri says, “Our goal is to equip and enable Christians to reach out to the millions of Muslims in America with the claims of Jesus and give them a chance to respond.”

Masri says there’s a reason he started the ministry. “I discovered that a lot of Muslims moving to the West do not have any Christian friends. The majority of Muslims today have never been to a Christian’s home. So they come to America, and their view of our values and our religion is what they see on television and in movies. Muslims are not hearing the claims of Christ.”

Read the rest of the article or visit The Crescent Project’s homepage.

There’s nothing quite like moving from the spiritual high of Easter right into… the April 15 tax deadline! If you live in the U.S., today is the dreaded deadline for submitting your taxes. And if, like me, you put off your taxes until the last minute, chances are that money and finances have been weighing heavily on your mind for the last few days.

Tax season has a way of reminded us that we probably haven’t been as careful, or stewardly, with our money and possessions as we should. With that in mind, here are a few articles that explore the subject of personal finances through the lens of faith:

• A Christian View of Personal Finance—extensive study of what the Bible teaches us about money and stewardship.
• A massive list of Bible verses about money—a nice way to see at a glance what and where the Bible talks about wealth and finances.
• * ACTS International has a short devotional that asks: have you mastered your money, or has it mastered you?
• …and of course, no tax day would be complete without reading Jesus’ response to a trick question about taxes.

Looking back at the way you handled your finances in 2008, how did you do? What will you be doing differently this year?

Christians talk a lot about “shaping culture” and “having an impact on society.” What springs to mind when you hear those phrases? I tend to think of Christians trying to spread evangelistic or moral messages through entertainment or politics. Those are certainly major places where Christians can live out their values—but there’s a more mundane, perhaps even more important, place where we are called to live out our faith: the business world.

From the Enron scandal a decade ago to the recent economic crisis, it’s clear that Christlike values are as needed in the business community as they are in any other aspect of life. At the Lausanne World Pulse site, John Terrill addresses this in A Revolution of Vocation, which argues that the church should do a better job of equipping and supporting Christians who are called into business:

We desperately need to recover the sacredness of a calling to business. The Church must continue to renounce the sacred/secular divide that has beleaguered Christian communities for too long. As A.W. Tozer rightly notes in The Pursuit of God, far too many Christians get snared in this trap: “They cannot get a satisfactory adjustment between the claims of the two worlds…. Their strength is reduced, their outlook confused and their joy taken from them.” And I might add that their impact in the world is severely constrained.

Christ followers serving in business, law, healthcare, the arts, media, government, and every other profession need to experience in tangible ways the Church’s blessing of their Christ-honoring work in companies, law firms, clinics, studios, press rooms, and congressional chambers.

Terrill thinks the church has much to say about the role of business within a community, and that in today’s globally interconnected economy, business is a means of doing Christ’s work in the world.

It’s a challenging and helpful read, especially if you or someone you know is a professional trying to figure out how their profession relates to their Christian faith. Terrill’s is a fairly high-level approach; for more ground-level articles about living out your faith in your day-to-day job, see this collection of essays about Christianity in the workplace from Discipleship Tools.

How about you? Do you feel your church supports you in your career? Do you feel called to your profession? Do you have a sense of how your job fits into the big picture of your Christian life?