“As the Father has sent me, I am sending you.”
Some stories are well known and repeated so often that one storyteller can pick up where another has left off without missing a beat. While the voice changes, and some details may be enhanced or slightly modified, the underlying story remains the same. This is what we find in the biblical Gospels. Four distinct voices ring with a unified testimony about “That which was from the beginning [of the Christian faith], which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life” (1 John 1:1, ESV). The Gospels are faithful accounts of what the apostles saw and heard and touched and experienced. And they give us stories that can and should be told over and over and over again by many voices speaking in many languages.
This issue of Mission Round Table tells some stories about God’s work in his church that are so well known that readers could come in and take up the tale in their own words and style. Some stories told here are probably not as familiar as some might have imagined, and at least one will hardly be known at all.
- All
- Church Planting
- CIM-OMF Archives
- History
- Mission practice
- Mission theory
- Tribal
Do We Need Missionary Societies?
Synopsis: This article leads us through biblical and theological concerns that highlight the place of the church in God’s plan for world evangelism and points out historical evidence of men and women gathering into fellowships and moving out to share the good news. It includes recent examples and provides a practical perspective on how sending [...]
‘Making all things new’—or Did We?
Synopsis: This article recounts the “reluctant exodus” of the China Inland Mission from China and its re-formation into the Overseas Missionary Fellowship. The world was changing and the Mission was forced to change right along with it. Decisions were made that would shape the organization and its ministry as it began to work in new [...]
Beyond the Cambridge Seven: The Rev. Arthur Twistleton Polhill and the Dazhou Fú Yīn Táng
Synopsis: The article tells the story of Arthur Polhill, the youngest of the Cambridge Seven—the young men who joined CIM and left what could have been the good life in late nineteenth-century England to share the gospel in China. Even though we know that they became famous for what they gave up, the careers of [...]
God’s Mission to the Lisu
Synopsis: The article focuses on one of the most familiar stories in CIM/OMF history told in the biographies of J. O. Fraser and books by Leila Cooke and Isobel Kuhn. Is it possible to say anything new? Are we familiar with the other missionaries who labored among the Lisu? This article tells some things in [...]
