Category: Missions and History

Review of Richard Fletcher’s *The Barbarian Conversion*

The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity by Richard Fletcher

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

A truly extraordinary book. Working from very patchy and ambiguous documents and archeological remains, Fletcher goes region by region speaking to us of the conversion of Europe to Christianity. We meet noble missionaries and conniving bishops and reckless monks and much more.

The strength of the book is the author’s acceptance of complexity in the reality of conversion. The factors were many (economic, cultural, marital, military, spiritual, philosophical) but he resists the temptation to boil it all down to one simple answer. A must-read for anyone who wants to understand what we are able to know about the conversion of the barbarians and the slow creation of European Christendom.

View all my reviews

Interview with Tat Stewart on *No Stranger*, his new book on life and ministry in Iran

The Reverend Ashton “Tat” Stewart has just published his memoir on his childhood growing up in Iran, his move back to the USA, and then God’s call for him and his wife to return to Iran. Get the book at Amazon in paperback or kindle format. The full title is: No Stranger: to Iran, its People, and its Church. Observations about how to work with Muslims and people in the Middle East.

Introduction to Early Church History

Some time ago, I gave six introductory lectures on the history of the early Christian Church. The topics ranged from the selection of the New Testament canon to the rise of monasticism, from the triumph of the monarchial episcopal ecclesiology to the incorporation of Jews and Gentiles into one religious community.

Please leave any questions on my YouTube channel and I will answer them all.

How the whole thing started
Origins of the Christian Church
Of elders and bishops
Council of Nicaea
Choosing the books in the New Testament
The rise of monasticism

My chapter on Christianity in what is today Saudi Arabia

Have finally manage to scan and share this chapter of mine.

Read it all at my Academia page: https://www.academia.edu/96254288/Chapter_on_Christianity_in_Saudi_Arabia

If you find this chapter helpful, please consider asking your university/seminary library to procure a copy. The link is HERE.

Mission and Disintegration in Global Anglicanism from the 1960s through 2022: An Update to Stephen Neill’s Anglicanism

Here is the abstract:

Stephen Neill’s masterpiece Anglicanism, published in 1965, still has fans and sponsors. This is especially true in the hispanophone world where well-researched resources on Anglicanism are hard to find. The purpose of this article is to provide a summary of some important events that have deeply formed and influenced what is today global Anglicanism. Anglicanism is less centralized-not that it has ever been very centralized-than in 1960, and it is also much more heterogeneous and varied than it was then. This article briefly recounts developments in four key areas: theology, jurisdictions, Lambeth Conferences, and demography.

Read it all HERE (Academia) or HERE (Global Missiology).

Interview w/ Dr Matthew Hoskin on his book about Pope Leo the Great

Dr Matthew Hoskin of the Davenant Institute has released a new book that includes biographical material on Pope Leo the Great as well as new translations of his corpus of writings.

Here is the audio. I’m sorry for the ocasional lapses, but they don’t last long. It’s what happens when one person is in Spain and the other in Canada.

And here is where you can buy his book. (Or ask your local library to buy it.)

“Creyentes procedentes de un trasfondo musulmán: Un censo global”—nuevo artículo en Revista Evangélica de Teología

Resumen:

Desde los años sesenta, se ha incrementado sustancialmente el número de conversiones conocidas del islam al cristianismo. Muchas de estas conversiones se han dado en el ámbito del cristianismo evangélico o pentecostal, pero también se han  producido conversiones al cristianismo católico romano o al ortodoxo. También hay conversos que aseguran que, de alguna manera, son seguidores de Jesús sin dejar de ser musulmanes.

Este artículo expone cómo hemos obtenido una estimación del número de conversos, la complejidad que plantea esta labor y una lista de países, distribuidos por continentes, con el número estimado de creyentes en Cristo que  provienen de un trasfondo musulmán. Se incluyen gráficos con estimaciones del máximo, el mínimo y la media de este segmento de la población, desde 1960 hasta la actualidad.

Para leer todo el artículo haga clic aquí (academia.edu).

Address to AGWM on helping Christians from a Muslim background mature in their faith

Here I share the audio of a talk I gave to AGWM on my book on pastoral care for ex-Muslim Christians.

I had the pleasure of speaking with a group of ministers associated with the Assemblies of God (USA) regarding my new book, I will Give them an Everlasting Name: Pastoral Care for Christ’s Converts from Islam (Regnum, 2020).

Enjoy the audio here:

To learn more about the AGWM and their outstanding work throughout the world to reveal the Kingdom of God, click here.

Christian Mission in the Middle Ages

In March of 2021 I gave some lectures on the history of Christian missionary work in the Middle Ages here in Madrid. The topics are:

  1. The mission of St Patrick to Ireland
  2. The demise of the North African Church under Islam
  3. The mission of St Boniface to the peoples of Germany
  4. The context of the First Crusade
  5. The life and thought of Blessed Ramon Llull (Raymond Lully)
  6. The ministry of the Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon

The six talks are available here, in this Youtube playlist.

Christian Mission in the Middle Ages