afflictions

Hamu Lujonza Kaddu Mukasa and the Early Church in Uganda In 1882, twelve-year-old Hamu Lujonza Kaddu Mukasa, son of a chief in the Buganda Kingdom, was sent to the court of King Mutesa I to serve as a page. There, his life began to take a course he had never imagined. From Mukasa to Hamu At court,...

The dangers facing the church today are subtle. They are like those facing the family. Imagine a young man sits his parents down at the kitchen table for a talk. He then outs himself as gay or perhaps transgendered. The danger facing that family at that moment is very real. Traditionally they have...

François and Christine Coillard – A Love Story When François Coillard first introduced himself as a teacher to the people of Leribé, in today’s Lesotho, they looked at him in disbelief. “The Teacher!” one of them said. “And what should he teach? He is a young man. He has neither wife nor beard.” [1...

Waiting is hard. Whether it is sitting at a traffic light or standing in a checkout line, we have no choice but to wait and watch the seconds tick slowly by, often with gritted teeth. We wait because we are dependent on things outside of ourselves – the timing of the lights and the number of cars,...

“But the fruit of the Spirit is… joy.” Joy, that ultimate of teleological pursuits. It is the reason we exist. What is the chief end of man? It is to glorify God and to enjoy Him forever. [1] More than mere happiness, though not less than, joy is the deep culmination and end of all we were created...

Wang Mingdao – Against the Christless Christianity of the Authorized Church After the Chinese Civil War and the victory of Mao Tse-Tung over General Chiang-Kai Shek, the Chinese government re-evaluated the role of Christian churches in the country. They allowed their existence, with restrictions...

We may not always realise it, but the Bible has a theology of conflict. Indeed, when we stop and think about it, we are literally no further than 57 verses into Genesis before we find ourselves in the conflict zone that changed the course of history. And the conflict that emerges there in the...

Onesimos Nesib, Aster Ganno, and the Oromo Translating Team In my last post, I wrote about Pauline Fathme, Christian Rufo, and their efforts to bring the gospel to Ethiopia. Rufo worked with the German Johann Ludwig Krapf to translate portions of the Bible into the language of the Oromo, which at...

In the book of Judges the men of Ephraim provide the church a vivid lesson in the ugly sin of discord. Having loved themselves so much, they could not hate discord and so be like the Lord their God (Proverbs 6:19). After Jephthah the Gileadite defeated the Ammonites (Judges 11:32), he was...

Pauline Fathme, Christian Rufo and the Early Missions to the Oromo When we think of Ethiopia, we often think of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, with its impressive buildings and its ancient, unique, and colorful traditions. The religious complex of Lalibela, for example, with its monolithic churches...