Read stories from other organizations – especially Bible Study Magazine – as they write about how members of our fellowship are building the Global Church.
Langham Publishing recently published Havilah Dharamraj’s commentary on the Book of Ruth and featured her in an author spotlight. You can learn about her journey as a woman leader and Old Testament scholar in their story.
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The idyllic beaches that populate Costa Rican travel websites tantalize tourists with “pura vida”—the pure life of simple pleasures. But when Sofia Quintanilla came to Christ as a young girl, she remembers being taught to expect hardship. “The woman who prayed with me after church said, ‘This prayer doesn’t mean you’re not going to have troubles in life. But it does mean that Jesus is going to be with you through everything’.”
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Meron Gebreananaye’s first impression of Scripture was influenced by her mother’s large Orthodox Bible. Rare and expensive, it was wrapped in cloth and displayed in a prayer niche. It was never read. “In the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition,” she says, “Scripture is elevated to the extent that you are not expected to read it as a layperson.
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If an unqualified person offers to jump in and help, many organizations are just glad to have someone show up. They don’t always have the luxury of scrutinizing candidates’ resumes or analyzing their giftings. Yet Emmanuel Bellon, Vice President of the Vital SustainAbility Initiative, is convinced that when it comes to training leaders, Christians have an obligation to ask: “How can we do better?”
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Fifty years ago, millions of Red Guards—a ruthless cadre of radicalized students—waged war against tradition and religion, the twin threats to Maoism. This was modern China’s darkest decade: the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).
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Many corners of the world have seen their share of war and its aftermath, but few have experienced the depths of violence that have taken place over the past 20 years in the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2002, The Economist magazine called it “the most miserable place on earth.”
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Hong Kong is an iconic city bridging Western and Eastern culture. For 150 years it was under British rule, which sheltered it from the upheaval of China’s Communist revolution in the 1950s. In 1997, when the British ceded Hong Kong’s territory back to China, it was designated as a nearly autonomous region.
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All followers of Christ are called to forgive, but few are put to the test like Christians in war-torn countries. Ivan Rusyn, President of Ukranian Evangelical Theological Seminary, says his country’s prolonged conflict with Russia has given believers in Ukraine a new perspective.
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Evangelicals in Latin America have often been told that they have no tradition—that evangelicalism is a faith for missionaries and outsiders.”
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Lal Senanayake, president of Lanka Bible College in Kandy, Sri Lanka, grew up in a small Sri Lankan Buddhist village with 11 brothers and sisters.
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“I didn’t know anything about Christianity, except that I was a Christian,” says Ara Badalian, now pastor of a vibrant church in the heart of Baghdad.
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Overrun with gang violence, drug trade, poverty, and religious and political scandals, Guatemala might seem like a challenging context in which to spread the gospel. Yet Nelson Morales, professor of New Testament and Greek at the Theological Seminary of Central America (SETECA), says the most noticeable thing about the Central American country is its openness to spirituality.
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Few churches can trace their history directly to a passage of Scripture like Ethiopian Christians can.
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During high school, Jules Martinez, now a pastor and theology professor, sought answers about the spiritual world. Living on the north coast of Puerto Rico, the Martinez family were “cultural Catholics,” and some practiced Santeria, which Martinez describes as “a combination of Caribbean spiritism and Catholicism.”
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The South Asian peninsula (or Indian subcontinent) is one of the most religiously conflicted and densely populated parts of the world. Dominated by India, the peninsula also includes Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Myanmar, and parts of Pakistan.
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