
Ara Badalian
“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.
read more“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.
read moreOverrun 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.
read moreFew churches can trace their history directly to a passage of Scripture like Ethiopian Christians can.
read moreDuring 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.”
read moreThe 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.
read moreFew people would consider opening a university in the middle of a war zone—and David Kasali, a Congolese pastor and academic, was an unlikely candidate to undertake such an effort. Kasali’s father was one of the first people to accept the gospel in their area of Congo, but the young Kasali rejected his father’s urging to become a minister, telling him, “I love the Lord, but he doesn’t pay very well.” Instead, Kasali studied education at the University of Congo and began networking in the business world.
read moreAndrey Kravtsev, like many who grew up in the Soviet Union in the 80s, was educated in atheism and nationalism. At age 19, he witnessed the decline of the Soviet Union and the revelation of government crimes against the people, many of which were exposed by Mikhail Gorbachev’s policy of glasnost, or “openness.”
read moreDecisive Leadership In 2016, Emiola Nihinlola gathered the staff of Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary (NBTS) in Ogbomosho, Nigeria. They had just finished months of planning alongside the ScholarLeaders Vital SustainAbility team to create a strategy for strengthening NBTS. Just one facet of that strategy – a solar energy project – would take over two years to …
read moreOn Easter Sunday, 21 April 2019, Muslim suicide bombers killed 258 people in my country, Sri Lanka. Afterward, some Christians were terrified, asking, “How do we plan future services?” Others called for retaliation. In fact, in mid-May, mobs attacked mosques. My first prayer was that, even in fear and anger, the Church would be a community …
read moreFifteen years ago, Athena Gorospe gave a devotional in which she called her audience – wealthy American Christians – to be downwardly mobile. That morning in Pasadena, she argued that we should recover “Jesus’s concern for the marginalized, the invisible people.” Athena has dedicated herself to this plea – and to practicing what she preaches …
read moreLast month, Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited Silence opened in theaters, invoking difficult questions among Christians regarding what it means to have faith. It spurs me to reflect on how Japanese Christians have perceived suffering, and how we as believers are called to respond to this inevitability. In many cultures, suffering and weakness are rarely discussed. When people do …
read moreBut then I recall all you have done, O LORD; I remember your wonderful deeds of long ago. Psalm 77:11 (NLT) When I returned to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia two years ago, I could barely recognize my hometown. Between my doctoral studies and work in Nairobi, Kenya, I had been away for almost ten years. So …
read moreMy service has been in the area of missions and transformation, as well as missions in pluralistic religious contexts (Christianity, Islam, and traditional religions). In my 16 years of missions experience in Ghana, I have observed a phenomenal response to the gospel, as is common in some other sub-Saharan African countries. Operation World reports that “from 1900 to 2010, [African] Christian numbers grew from 9.1% of the population to 48.8%, and from 7.5 million to 504 million.”
read moreFor me, pray for God’s wisdom in my new role as Bishop of the Mwanza Diocese, good health, and networking with different people worldwide to enhance the ministry in the Mwanza Diocese. I need partners for working together on church leadership empowerment, evangelism and outreach ministries, youth ministry, women’s and children’s ministries, retired pastors’ ministry, etc. Even though my diocese has 550 churches, only 200 pastors have been fully trained in Bible schools. Over 300 pastors have not received training due to the inability to pay school fees.
read moreThe Evangelical Theological College (ETC) is preparing to launch its MA program in Christian-Muslim Relations in August 2020. This will be the first and only graduate program, in the Horn of Africa, that focuses on Islamic Studies. Please pray for the provision of necessary resources, and wisdom for us during the student recruitment process and as we identify adjunct lecturers for the program.
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