Articles for tag: Independent Congregations

November 10, 2015

By Mark A. Taylor Every missions leader and missionary watcher will tell you missions is different these days. A generation or two ago, missionaries departed for a foreign field with the intent to spend their lives there. Now “long-term missionaries” stay for maybe two or three years. Those days, and in the generations before, missionaries went from the West to the rest of the world, and most American church members assumed “we” had the solution to the problems suffered by “them.” Now missionaries from Asia, Africa, and South America are going all over the world with the gospel. And some

November 8, 2012

Christian Standard

Mission & Evangelism

Very Good Indeed

By Mark A. Taylor Not every missionary expert posting at this site this month agrees with every other posting here. Readers need not find this discouraging. The point is that more missions work is happening among Christian churches and churches of Christ than ever before, and that”s good. New churches are being planted cross-culturally. Independent congregations in areas once served only by U.S.-supported missionaries are starting new churches that then send out their own missionaries. Thousands of children are receiving nourishment of body and soul because members of Christian churches are sponsoring them with monthly donations. All this is good.

February 20, 2008

Christian Standard

Conferences & Gatherings Organizations & Events

The Possibilities”“and the Purposes”“of Staying Connected

By Mark A. Taylor CHRISTIAN STANDARD”s contributing editors met in January during the same week our staff finished this issue on the World Convention. Two quotes from that meeting stick in my memory as I write this column. “¢ “In 1995, the poorest 20 percent of the world shared just 1.4 percent of global income. The richest 20 percent of the world shared 85 percent of global income.” Those statistics came from Doug Priest, executive director of Christian Missionary Fellowship, and one of CHRISTIAN STANDARD”s contributing editors. He spoke during the first session of our retreat. His paper presented a