Basil Grafas
All Content by Basil Grafas
Missionary Christians as Warriors
Christian missionaries are witnesses, warriors, and ambassadors in exile. It is common to view missions in terms of tasks such as proclaiming the gospel or, with modern trends, incarnating it. (1) There are problems we encounter when we limit ourselves to these words. Proclamation is something we send out, but with global work not all […]
The Quran with Christian Commentary: A Guide to Understanding the Scripture of Islam, by Gordon D. Nickel
This is a major new work and an important aid to Christians, particularly those who minister in Muslim contexts. It is structured as a reference book, a translation of the Quran, along with a useful introduction that is geared for general readers, not only scholars, footnotes that follow the flow of the Quran, a concise […]
Martyr Witnesses, No Matter What
In Evangelism in the Early Church, Michael Green highlights three Greek words used with the expansion of Christianity: martureo (and related words meaning “witness”), euaggelizomai (“telling good news”), and kerusso (“proclamation”).1 Of the three words, Green spends the least amount of time and attention on “witness.” This is understandable since the other words are used […]
Restoring the Church’s Role in Missions: Missionaries as Ambassadors
If you have been fed a steady diet of missions literature and conferences, describing missionary identities as martyr/witnesses, warriors, and ambassadors might seem jarring. Yet, they supply the critical ingredients necessary to promoting global missions by the visible church of Jesus Christ. My bold claim is that embracing them will help erase the barriers that […]
The Shaping of Missions
Forgive the pretentious title. It encapsulates thoughts that are broad, but they may or may not be deep. You decide. Perhaps I am scattered, but I hope to share a wide range of thoughts I think must go together. I am a missionary, but there are men and women who have been missionaries longer. Twenty-something […]
