Missiologists such as the late Dr. Tom Brewster make a distinction between students and learners. The words are synonymous to most, but we at BBTI stress the difference. A student enrolls in a school and is dependent on a teacher. A learner takes responsibility for his own learning and finds ways to get the information he needs. A learner mindset is quite an asset in mission work.
From kindergarten through college, we are students. We sit […]
Were we to survey a group of serious adults and ask them what is the greatest book ever written, I would expect the answer to be “the Bible.” However, there is really no such thing as “the Bible” except the one settled in Heaven (Psalm 119:89). So, we must clarify which Bible. Which Bible has touched and changed more lives over the centuries than the Authorized King James Version, given to the English-speaking world in […]
Periodically, every missionary needs a furlough from their field of service. Normally, they spend four years on the field and then one year in the home country. Some today take six month furloughs every two years. As the missionary prepares to leave his field of service, the neighbors and new believers wonder why he is going to take a year-long vacation. They also wonder if their missionary will return. Even a supporting pastor might not […]
Jesus and the disciples saw a man who was born blind, and Jesus made this a learning experience for His twelve missionary candidates. Throughout their lives, the disciples had been locked in one culture. To succeed as missionaries, they needed to expand their thinking. This is true of missionaries today. Actually, a missionary must consider three cultures: his culture, the native culture, and most importantly, God’s culture. He knows his culture well. But his culture […]
Throughout the history of Christian missions, women have played a very important role. Some have been single, but most have gone to the foreign field with their husbands. We would all agree that a married woman’s first responsibility on the mission field, or anywhere else, is to her husband and children. However, if her ministry stops there, the missionary husband is missing half of his team. In many cases the wives have been overlooked, and […]
There are nearly 7.5 billion souls alive today but only a few thousand missionaries on foreign fields to tell them of Christ. If ten thousand Bible-believing missionaries were evenly spaced throughout the world, each missionary would need to reach nearly a million people. This would be like one preacher trying to reach the entire population of Ft. Worth, Texas. We simply need more laborers, thousands more! Unless some terrible world-wide catastrophe occurs, the population is […]
Our Lord Jesus made it very clear that He wants every person on earth to hear His gospel (Mark 16:15). It is humanly impossible for a few missionaries, or many, to speak to over seven billion people. But Jesus also gave us a strategy to reach this goal and obey His mandate. It is “Go ye therefore, and teach all nations…” (Matthew 28:19). If a few people from each nation are won to Christ and […]
When the need for Bible translation is presented, well-meaning Christians sometimes ask, “Why not just teach people English and give them an English Bible?” After all, we have a perfect copy of the scriptures. It works for us; shouldn’t it work for the rest of the world, too? But the teach-them-English method is inconsistent with Christ’s mandate. Jesus said to teach the Gospel and to teach them to observe all things. He did not tell […]
Someone once said, “The water is free, but someone has to pay for the plumbing.” The water of life is absolutely free, but the “pipeline” to deliver it to the entire world as Jesus has commanded is very expensive. Would Jesus leave us an unfunded mandate? No, God pays for what He orders—and He has ordered world evangelism!
World evangelism is expensive! A missionary has the same expenses that we have here in the U.S.A. plus […]
Barnabas and Saul were sent from the church at Antioch and took with them John Mark as their “minister.” They had not gone far when John decided, for whatever reason, to return to Jerusalem. The Bible does not give the reason for his premature departure; no doubt it was justified in his mind. Maybe John felt that he was not really needed. Perhaps he was homesick. He was probably unprepared for the fierce spiritual warfare […]