All Christians are to be missionaries. Living "a life of mission" means doing the things God has called you to do...your "mission". A "mission field" is simply where you accomplish that mission.
We're all activists, and we all take sides. We celebrate everyone or our own lives are meaningless. We face the fact that life can be difficult or we run from trouble and live lives of insignificance.
Christians should agree that God IS good...but I wonder sometimes what some people think when they say it. You see, Christians usually utter such things after a prayer request has been answered in the way the pray-er wanted.
Sometimes, Christians can be dumb.
No, not YOU...those OTHER Christians. They say things like "Take Jesus with you into 2010". What could be dumber than that? Yeah, I know...it's like I'm all nitpicky about words. However: what we say is a pretty good indicator of what we mean.
I'm not a Christian in spite of the evidence around me. I'm a Christian because of the evidence around me. I love it when people think things through. I love it when people see things for what they are, too...and Greg usually does.
The Great Commission is the foundation of the spread of historic Christianity. There's no question that Christianity's rise to prominence is one of the great success stories of history, and that success comes directly from Jesus' final instructions to His disciples:
I recently had an interesting conversation with a friend about illegal immigration. She drew a parallel between East Germans escaping tyranny through Checkpoint Charlie and illegal immigrants from Mexico escaping the tyranny of poverty.
One of the main conversation points seems to go like this: should Ted Haggard, who left his ministry amid allegations of homosexuality, drug abuse, and dishonesty, be allowed back into ministry?
My friend asked: "Would I be very far off the path in thinking that the writer of Proverbs was in fact referring to the Christ years before he appeared on earth? John used the word The Word and Proverbs uses the word Wisdom."
Bible skeptics sometimes like to point out the fact that the fulfillment of a prophecy always comes after the prophecy itself, giving 'true believers' plenty of opportunity to make the prophecies come true. There are a couple of problems with this kind of reasoning:
Some have erroneously asserted that God is dead. Many who believe that have also lumped apologetics and theology into the same category. They might be surprised that there's a resurgence of both in the Western world.
Every once in a while I hear a Christian say that they're "not into theology". They say that they "just love Jesus". Even one of my pastors told me that he took theology classes only so that he could be ordained. Sometimes these kinds of statements depress me.
