Gospel.com Blog

A few days ago, Out of Ur pointed to this video on the prosperity Gospel produced by The Global Conversation, which is a partnership between Christianity Today and the Lausanne Movement. The Global Conversation is a year-long project exploring global Christianity through videos and essays.

The video describes how the export of the distinctly American prosperity Gospel is affecting Africa:

The Prosperity Gospel from The Global Conversation on Vimeo.

seeJesus.net quietly launched a new blog on their site last month. They produce small group Bible Studies (like The Person of Jesus) and run small group training seminars.

Recently, Paul at the seeJesus.net blog posted about an article in the London Times concerning an atheist’s reaction to the effect of Christianity on Africa.

The author, an atheist, acknowledges not just that Christianity has helped Africa but that the inner change that comes from encountering God (who he does not believe exists!) produces the change.

I saw this first hand when I was Associate Director of World Harvest Mission (www.whm.org). We were keenly aware that change came from the inside out. One of our missionaries in western Uganda, Rick Gray, told me that after he had been discipling one of the Babwisi tribal leaders Rick asked him what he was going to do with what he’d been learning about the gospel. The tribal leader said, “I think I’m going to eat with my wife.” That is how the gospel works.

Read the rest of the article over at seeJesus.net.

Much of the culture and theology of modern Christianity has been shaped heavily by Western culture over the last centuries. That might seem quite natural to Western Christians—but does the “Westernization” of Christianity hinder efforts to share the Gospel message with non-Western cultures?

That’s the central question asked in the March issue of Lausanne World Pulse. The issue kicks off with an introduction to the topic, and continues with a thorough analysis of what “Westernization” means for Christianity, and why it’s so critically important that we break away from this trend.

There’s much more in the issue as well—articles cover topics ranging from cross-cultural missions in Africa to why “productivity” is not a good measure of mission work. The entire issue is available for free reading online, so if you’ve got an interest in current trends in missionary work, stop by and take a look!