Sunday Funday October 4

Prayers and Praises

Interweb Reads

1. Please don’t make me “Win Souls”: ““Millennials are giving themselves permission to wrestle with things and giving themselves permission to ask the hard questions,” said Savannah Kimberlin, director of published research at Barna. “Their religious practice is not just tied to a way of life that you were told that you needed to adopt.” And those characteristics likely won’t go away when they get older. “This is a generational thing, not a life stage,” she said. “What we’re seeing in the data is that there are certain environmental factors that really do impact generations and change them in a way that’s not just a life stage factor but is having a large impact.” (A Life Overseas)

2. What’s wrong with missions…and why it’s still right: “The Barna research shows that: 

   • 34 percent of young Christians (aged 18 to 34 years) agree with the statement “in the past, mission work has been unethical.” Just 22 percent of older Christians believe that.

   • 42 percent of young Christians (aged 18 to 35 years)  agree that “Christian mission is tainted by its association with colonialism.” Just 29 percent of older adults agree with that. 

   • Young African Americans, Hispanics and other minorities are particularly concerned about both statements.” (A Life Overseas)

3. The Demons of Miscommunication: “Abuse in Christian settings — and the habit of silencing those who speak up — is a symptom of a bigger problem: it is a symptom of an addiction to power and status. To ignore an addiction to power is to approve of it. To ignore such abuse is to nourish it.

   You cannot be committed to power and also be committed to human flourishing. In the end you will have to choose. And whatever you chose, you will end up exporting to the world around you, in a multitude of ways.” (Medium)

4. A New Generation Redefines what it means to be a Missionary: “Meanwhile, missionary life looks very different for people coming from outside the West. “To a surprising degree, third-world Christians, or ‘majority-world’ Christians in the language of political correctness, are not burdened by a Western guilt complex, and so they have embraced the vocation of mission as a concomitant of the gospel they have embraced: The faith they received they must in turn share,” said Lamin Sanneh, a professor of Missions and World Christianity at Yale Divinity School. “Their context is radically different from that of cradle Christians in the West. Christianity came to them while they had other equally plausible religious options. Choice rather than force defined their adoption of Christianity; often discrimination and persecution accompanied and followed that choice.” (The Atlantic)