• Our hope-filled future is bound up in sharing the story of Jesus, in discipling others, in bringing those disciples together into communities of believers, and in developing and releasing those believers to create other communities... till Jesus the King comes again!

An online meal together

Posted on June 17, 2025 by wtdavid

A fellow church planter, from another culture, once said: “I have yet to participate in an American Thanksgiving online.”  His point was well taken. The Internet is great for communicating across the time zones of the world. But, when it comes to experiencing incarnationally an event, another culture, or another person, it is woefully lacking.  

One of our guiding principles as a WT community is “incarnational” or “incarnational living”. That is where we surrender “our rights to our home culture, language, and ways and embrace those of the host culture.” To do this online is near nigh impossible, because you will miss a certain number of “cultural cues” that could help you understand and embrace this new culture. That’s probably why at the start talking on the phone is one of the more difficult aspects of cross-cultural living. Without facial expressions and other gestures, you only have the voice to go on. And you often miss what the other is actually trying to say.

I’m grateful to a member of our local French church who recently wrote an article on the challenges youth workers could face with the next generation: Generation Alpha.  This will be the first generation raised primarily on the Internet. There will be strengths and weaknesses from this context. One of the challenges though will be the non-incarnational, non-interactive nature of their spiritual development. They will be trying to “share a Thanksgiving meal without being physically in the same room.”

Now I’m not picking on the next generation as we still don’t know how they will “enter” the global missions movement.  I’m just trying to underscore how the coming generation, as well as ourselves, may be pulled, without even realizing it, into a world of strictly online relationships and virtual cultural experiences.

Zoom, Teams, and other platforms are good. However, to really understand the culture and viewpoint of another, you need to “see” and experience their world with them in person, incarnationally.

Filed under: Cultural intelligence, Incarnational living, WT Ministry Framework | 2 Comments »

Learning to adapt

Posted on June 10, 2025 by wtdavid

A most pressing struggle when one “crosses into” or enters a culture different from one’s passport culture is learning to adapt.  What was natural, “normal” or innate for us in our own culture, now stands out as very different in another culture. For example, in North American culture, we are taught, when at the table, to hold the fork in our right hand and the knife in our left hand.  In France (and perhaps other European contexts), it is the opposite.  Changing what is “normal” from one’s own culture and adapting to one’s new adopted culture is not easy. And with this example, we are just scratching the surface of the kind of adaptation one is called upon to make when crossing cultures.

As more and more workers are launched and sent from the Global South – places such as Cameroon, Guatemala, Senegal and Indonesia , for example – the work of learning to adapt to one another will significantly increase. How do others, with whom we are called to work, make decisions, hold crucial conversations, or express agreement to mutually shared guiding principles?

Having crossed from one culture to another certainly gives tools for learning to adapt. However, that does not mean working from one’s home or passport culture excludes one from being able to learn to adapt. Either way, it will take time, effort, and gospel humility to learn.

And there is the key word for all of us: taking the stance of a “learner”. Rather than being a teller or a doer, we must work with others from a learning posture. Taking the stance of a “learner” will go against the grain of our nature.  We would prefer to be the one helping others rather than asking for help from others. In our heart of hearts, we often think we just know better what to do.

There is a good deal of difference between saying: “This is what we should do and the decision that needs to be made. What do you think?” And saying: “What would the decision-making process look like in your context?  And what will we need to do to best adapt to that process?”

Taking the stance of a “learner” is to be willing to ask others for help. It sounds so simple, but it takes humility infused by the Gospel to allow us to honestly ask and listen to help from others.

Filed under: Crossing cultures, Humility, Lifelong learning, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Poly what?

Posted on May 20, 2025 by wtdavid

I’m sure if you are like me, when you heard the expression: “polycentric mission”, you said to yourself: “poly what?”  I mean, what idea or thought is this expression meant to convey?

Polycentric simply means, “having more than one centre”. In other words, in our global missions context there are now many poles or centres from which mission is being launched. In the 20th century, mission was primarily from the Western world. However, in the 21st century, mission is being launched from Ethiopia Chile, Brazil and Indonesia. This is what is called the Global South.

There are several practical implications or effects from this shift. In this blog post, let’s focus on just two of the many implications. 

For one, responsibility for the task of global missions is now a shared work.  This is always easy to say, but difficult to practice.  For many of us, we are used to directing, leading, or running global mission outreach from our perspective, our centre of gravity.  This shift causes us to recognize the importance of active listening to others, as well as gospel humility, by which we will understand more and more our need for others more than their need us perhaps. This shared work of global missions may take more “time” and “energy” than in the past. However, joining hands in this shared task is a tangible mark of God’s universal church.

Another practical effect or outcome is seeing the need of cross-cultural intelligence.  It will be difficult to effectively work with others from the Global South if we from the West do not seek to understand the cultural background, cues and dynamics at play with those who share the global missions task with us. For cultures that thrive in getting things done fast, there will be the need for patience and a willingness to “slow down a bit” in the process. For those cultures where time and planning are not priorities, there will need to be more “fluid organisation” allowing all partners to know their part in the task. And the only way all this will happen will be through His grace, through a deepening understanding of the Gospel, and by adding new cross-cultural skills to our toolbox.

Poly-centric, in other words, means learning to play as a team with a whole new group of players who may be different from one another.

Filed under: Mission, Partnership, Polycentric focus | 4 Comments »

Gospel calls forth commitment

Posted on December 18, 2024 by wtdavid

D.A. Carson, in his work Basics for Believers, wrote: “The heart of true fellowship is self-sacrificing conformity to a shared vision … Christian fellowship, then, is self-sacrificing conformity to the gospel … the heart of the matter is this shared vision of what is of transcendent importance, a vision that calls forth our commitment.”

The vision that D.A. Carson was talking about finds expression in this Advent season. From before the foundation of the world, God set forth His plan to bring a people to Himself. Despite the many struggles and failures of His creation, He continued to prepare the way of salvation and by His prophets announced the coming of the “One who would save us from our sins”.  Jesus came into the world that He had created in order to offer Himself as a sacrifice to deliver us from this present evil age (Galatians 1:4)

The vision that we share is not based on our collective wisdom, but on God’s amazing grace demonstrated to us in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And our fellowship is centred around a call to each and everyone one of us to conform our hearts and lives to the wonder of the gospel: that we should be called children of the most High God.

That “self-sacrificing conformity to the gospel” will free us to …

  • Be quicker to admit our failures and the pain we may have caused others
  • Be quicker to ask for and offer forgiveness
  • Remind one another more regularly of the truth that the steadfast love of the Lord endures forever
  • Take one another’s hand to work together to see our vision become reality: that disciples and communities of believers would be multiplied among the lost peoples of this world!

May your celebration of Jesus’ coming into this world be a filled with joy and wonder at His boundless love for His people!

Filed under: Advent, Fellowship, Gospel | 3 Comments »

Reset 2025

Posted on December 11, 2024 by wtdavid

If we were to take a quick glance at what is happening in global missions, we would have to observe the growing presence of many more players, coming from everywhere and desiring to serve anywhere in the world.  

Rather than resources, initiatives, and missional ingenuity coming primarily from only one sector of the world, we can now identify numerous majority world and non-majority world agencies and organisations seeking to multiply disciples and communities of believers.

Lausanne 2024 organisers call this dynamic: a polycentric focus.

So, we would do well to push the ”reset’ button concerning our approach and engagement in what God is doing in the world.

Perhaps we might say that as a tangible demonstration of this polycentric focus, we (the WT community wherever we might be serving around the globe) pledge to serve as a “collective”.

In other words, we would commit ourselves to sharing more widely to learn of what God is doing in different places around the globe through multiple possible partners; to communicating more deeply the “we” of our community rather than the “me” so as to express the unity of Christ; to cooperating and collaborating more with one another and like-minded partners for greater expansion; and working together to provide all the resources needed around each initiative we would jointly hold as a collective.

That is our challenge for 2025! 

Filed under: Collaboration, Communication, Community, Polycentric focus | 4 Comments »

Starting Again

Posted on September 24, 2024 by wtdavid

It’s that time of year when you are either in the rush of a new academic and ministry year (Northern hemisphere) or moving to the end of your school & ministry year. Either way, it’s a time to step back and remember how God has shown grace to you as His child and how He has used you in His greater missional plan for this world.

Again and again, the Bible calls us to remember: “I will remember the deeds of the Lord; yes, I will remember your wonder of old. I will ponder all your work, and meditate on your mighty deeds.”  (Psalm 77:11-12). The work of remembering has an active rather than a passive sense.  In the Hebrew Bible, the word is: zakar. It means to call to mind, to recall or to recount. It speaks of bringing something to the forefront of one’s mind. One writer put it this way: “to zakar is to employ your hands and feet and lips to engage in whatever action that remembrance requires.”

When we think of the good news that we share, it is so important to remember how this good news is good news for us. We need to “recount” it again to ourselves (and others) today and each day.

This new start or end to our year is also a time to refocus our hearts and minds on what is our calling, our dream as mission community: to multiply disciples and communities of believers among the lost.

It’s easy for us to lose sight of that larger dream and vision in the rush of the new year or at the end of that year. However, we need to remind one another of our calling as a community.

“Multiplying” is not something that occurs in a moment. It is an investment in others. It calls for time spent sharing, talking, training, and platforming others. However, the result is that multiplying disciples (and leaders) and communities of believers bears fruit exponentially. Exponentially in the sense that there are more and more and more workers engaging in God’s project to bring the message of Jesus to this world which is in such great need.

Both remembering and multiplying require energy and investment. But the fruit is well worth the energy and investment.

If interested, I recently wrote a book review of the book: Multiplying Leaders in Intercultural Contexts for the journal SEEDBED: https://www.seedbedjournal.com/. The book will give you some tools as to how to remember and invest in others.

Filed under: Gospel, Leader development, Multiplication | 4 Comments »

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