Wednesday, April 20, 2011

MINISTRY LESSONS FROM A MUSLIM

Eboo Patel has a message for evangelical leaders.

'While holding firmly to his belief in Islam, he also affirmed church leaders. "Even though it is not my tradition and my community," Patel wrote after the conference, "I believe deeply that this type of evangelical Christianity is one of the most positive forces on Earth." '


Intrigued? Read the Christianity Today article at:

http://www.ctlibrary.com/le/2009/spring/ministrylessonsfromamuslim.html

Thursday, April 14, 2011

PROSELYTIZING IN MULTI-FAITH ENVIRONMENTS

Church consultant and trend-watcher Ed Stetzer wrote this insightful article in Christianity Today.

If you are wondering where you fit into today's religious realities, consider this quote from the article and then jump to the link to explore some good insights into multi-faith relationships.

If anything, "God is dead" has been replaced with "God is back." Economists John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, an atheist and a Roman Catholic, wrote a fascinating book in 2008 with that title. In it they noted that while statistics about religious observance are notoriously untrustworthy, most surveys seem to indicate that the global drift toward secularism has halted. Quite a few surveys show religious belief to be on the rise. They reference one source that says that "the proportion of people attached to the world's four largest religions—Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism—rose from 67 percent in 1900 to 73 percent in 2005, and may reach 80 percent by 2025."

Full article here at http://www.ctlibrary.com/ct/2011/april/proselytizingmultifaith.html