THE BISHOP THEY UNMADE
Samuel Ajayi Crowther | Osogun, Sierra Leone, the Niger | 1809–1891 “I have FOUGHT A GOOD FIGHT, I have FINISHED MY COURSE, I have KEPT THE FAITH.” 2 Timothy 4:7 He was around twelve years old when the raiders came for his village, Osogun, during the Yoruba wars. He was sold, chained, and put on […]
THE DAY THEY BROKE THE HOUSES
“They have cast fire into thy sanctuary, they have defiled by casting down the dwelling place of thy name to the ground.” Psalm 74:7 Twenty-four years. That is how long Henry Townsend had given to Abeokuta by 1867. He arrived in 1843 to a warm reception from Sodeke, the Egba war commander, who told him […]
THE WHITE MOTHER HAS COME!
“I am ready not to be bound only, but also to die at Jerusalem for the name of the Lord Jesus.” Acts 21:13 There was no Ibadan waiting to receive them. There was a war-hardened city of over fifty thousand people, built by refugees from a fallen empire, ruled by warlords who had never seen […]
WHAT COMFORT IS COSTING US
“Comfort is expensive. It costs the Church her MISSION and the world its only HOPE.” Peter Jerry We tend to think of comfort as a quiet, harmless backdrop to our lives that simply exists, costing nothing, demanding nothing, and asking nothing of us in return but I want also to challenge that assumption directly, because […]
THE ARITHMETIC OF ETERNITY
We are remarkably skilled at calculating return on investment in almost every area of life except the one that matters most for eternity. A businessman will spend hours analyzing the projected returns of a venture before committing capital, the farmer understands precisely how many seasons it takes for a seed to become profitable, and plants […]
YOUR MONEY WAS NEVER REALLY YOURS
“Your money was never really yours. It passed through your hands on its way to the nations.” Peter Jerry Listen to how we talk about money, even within the Church, and you will hear a language of ownership that has quietly shaped how we think about giving, long even before we ever sit down to decide […]
LIGHT DOES NOT HOARD ITSELF
This ministry carries a name, and I have never for once ever treated that name as decoration. The name is LIGHTBEARERS. Not “light-keepers.” Not “light-admirers.” Not “light-discussers,” gathered in comfortable rooms talking about how beautiful the light is while the dark world outside remains dark. Lightbearers. The name itself is a theological claim, and if […]
WHAT DOES IT COST TO REACH A VILLAGE?
We ask a lot of questions in the Church about missions. We ask whether someone is called, whether a field is open or closed, whether a strategy is contextually appropriate, whether a translation is theologically sound and we even ask whether a Church plant is following healthy models of discipleship. These are good and necessary […]
THE GREAT COMMISSION WAS NOT OPTIONAL
“The Great Commission was not given to the willing few. It was given to the whole Church – to PRAY, to GIVE, to GO, and to SEND.” Somewhere along the way, the Church made a quiet decision which nobody announced, no council voted on and no theologian wrote a paper defending it. It just settled […]
THEY HAVE NEVER HEARD — NOT EVEN ONCE
There is a word that gets used so casually in missions circles that most people have unfortunately stopped feeling it and that word is UNREACHED. We say it in prayer meetings, print it in brochures, include it in the statistics we share on Sunday mornings during worship services and then we just move on, because […]