The Craziest Statistic You’ll Read About North American Missions
It’s new research in Gordon-Conwell’s Center for the Study of Global Christianity’s Christianity in its Global Context, 1970-2020. Missiologist Todd M. Johnson and his team found that 20 percent of non-Christians in North America really do not “personally know” any Christians.
That’s 13,447,000 people—about the population of metropolitan Los Angeles or Istanbul—most of them in the United States
After Military Kills 500 Protesters, Islamists Take Out Anger on Egyptian Christians
The New York Times notes how “the steady drumbeat of sectarian incidents since Mr. Mubarak’s downfall appears to have been eclipsed by the explosion of anti-Christian attacks over the last three days.”
The NYT highlights two efforts to document reprisal attacks on Christian targets, currently estimated to be 37 churches and 14 schools. USA Today offers an interactive map of such attacks in nine provinces.
While there is some truth to that description, we’ve also selectively forgotten a lot about the immigrants who passed through Ellis Island. They didn’t all learn English the day that they stepped off the boat: like today’s immigrants, most learned over time, but they started with enough “survival English” to get by. They (or their children) eventually did integrate into American society, but many initially lived in ethnic-specific tenements, isolated from the larger society not only because they felt more comfortable amongst those who could understand their languages but also because there were many American citizens that did not want them in their neighborhoods.
What People Quote vs. What They Read
The Bible is not just one text — a large, user-unfriendly quotebook. The Bible contains many texts that have been edited, combined, and arranged in particular ways. Understanding the place of Micah 6:8 within the whole book of Micah, indeed within the larger prophetic proclamation, is the only way to make sense of that (highly quotable) statement. I would suggest that if you do not know what leads up to and follows Micah 6:8, you do not understand that verse.
The Millennial Traits of Jesus
It can be easy to point out the weaknesses of a generation while overlooking the strengths. But, as William Strauss and Neil Howe pointed out in their book Millennials Go to College, Gen Y has many positive characteristics. And just like any individual or generation, there are aspects of Millennial’s generational stereotypes that, in a small part, reflect characteristics of Jesus. Here are four reasons I think Jesus would be proud to roll with Millennials.
It seems our culture loves to watch mayhem and destruction unfold on the big screen. The sheer amount of death and destruction in Hollywood led comic author Mark Waid to note that even in the newest Superman movie, we don’t get “a win so much as a stop-loss.” Our heroes don’t save the day anymore, they simply limit the death toll.
Born in the Fire of Contemplative Prayer: Richard Peace on “Contemplative Evangelism”
I’ve never really thought of it as “evangelism” no doubt because like many folks who grew up in the American south, I saw the concept of evangelism abused so much that I’ve grown rather allergic to the word, let alone the concept. But if we can shake off the baggage and simply see evangelism (or, as Catholics prefer to say, evangelization) as a vulnerable sharing of joy and yearning for God, rather than a manipulative attempt to control another’s religious behavior — then, I think, this idea of contemplative evangelism makes all sorts of sense.
Conn. police: Cable outage not 911-worthy
Fairfield police say they received numerous 911 calls about a cable outage that hit parts of southwestern Connecticut on Sunday night.
The message on the department’s Facebook page says the outage is “neither an emergency or a police related concern.”
The post warns that 911 should be used for life-threatening emergencies only and misuse of the 911 system may result in an arrest.