Bible and Mission

 The best approach for churches supporting missionaries is to support missionaries , not projects, places, peoples, etc.  Such a statement seems obvious at one level, and yet it is quite challenging at other levels.  So many churches get excited about particular projects, like reaching unreached people, or feeding the hungry, or Bible translation.  This is, of course, exactly what missionary efforts entail, so why not make this the object of missions?  The answer is in Acts 13.2. Now, we cannot build a theology of mission support around a single verse.  Yet I do want to challenge what many churches think of about mission support with this verse.  Acts 13.2 reads: 'Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.'  We have here a word from the Holy Spirit after a time of worshipping the Lord and fasting--a time of seeking God.  Drawing near to God, God responds with a call to mission. Yet the clarity of this call is...

  With the election of Zohran Mamdani as New York’s new and first communist mayor, we might well wonder what this could involve.   Bearing in mind that his powers are not absolute and that he will have considerable challenges, we can nevertheless expect that he will do what he can to accomplish some of the aims of communism.   In his inaugural speech as mayor on 1 January, 2025, he stated, ‘We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism’.   In The Communist Manifesto , Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels discuss what is necessary to establish communism and what changes communism intends to instigate.   I will summarise what it hopes to change (in my own enumeration of ten characteristics of communism) and then simply quote from the Manifesto how it plans to achieve the change (also ten points).   This essay looks at chapter II of the Manifesto. First, communism intends to abolish class distinctions by abolishing the bou...