EDITORIAL: FACETS OF MISSIONS

Much has been written about missions on our pages. Every quarter the Asian Missions Advance brings to you several issues and topics in missions that challenge, clarify and some other times make us discover issues or bring new ideas for your ministries.
Our 63rd issue is not different! Once again, we offer to you articles that can stir your minds in order to see that doing missions is complicated and have many facets yet clear in one thing, i.e. to bring the love of Christ to the doorsteps of the locales.
Dr. Jaewoo Jeong wrote about how Christian conversions of overseas Chinese in Malaysia bring changes to their worldview by using the tradition of ancestor worship. Reading on, Dr. J. Hun Kim talked about in his article diaspora missiology and the Lausanne Diaspora Evangelical Movement using Korean diaspora missions in Eurasia as his case study. It is important to take note on their findings since they got their facts from the mission fields themselves. Their materials are good for further studies.
As we move to the next pages, we are fortunate to feature Dr. Theresa Chai’s Book Review on Julie Ma’s ‘When the Spirit Meets the Spirits”. The book covers the ethnological and anthropological analyses of the “Kankana-ey” people of the Cordillera mountains found in the Philippines. Dr. Chai gave us a short sneak peek of what is life and ministry in the tribal area.
In his paper “Creating Harmony Amid Discord” Dr, Hoyt Lovelace wrote about the church planters’ experiences regarding evangelism, denominations, church planting, and the gospel. We will discover as we read his message on how do we create harmony amid chaos and discord in the mission fields.
We saved the last pages for Dr. Azaki Nashon who tried to look for means to authentic Christianity in Africa in his paper, Indigenization as Means to Authentic Christianity in Africa. Let us find out from him whether a true indigenous Christian church for Africa will be possible.
In all these papers, you may find different facets of missions. But the true twist that will make us accomplish our mission and bring people to our Master is to bring love to the mission fields. 1 Cor.13: 13 says… but the greatest of these is LOVE!