Understanding honour and shame through Coronavirus
Posted on: 1st December 2021
CMS missionaries Dave and Leoni Painter teach at Phnom Penh Bible College in Cambodia. Here they explain how COVID works in a culture of honour and shame. Different responses to COVID Like most places in the world, mask wearing in Phnom Penh is now ubiquitous, well almost. In early March, masks became compulsory along with a heavy […]
When human delays are God’s timing
Posted on: 26th November 2021
CMS missionaries Wim and Maaike Prins have served in Cambodia since 2004. Much of Wim’s work has involved the translation of Bible commentaries, Christian books and the New Bible Dictionary into Khmer. Earlier this year the Prins family were due to return to Australia for final Home Assignment, however border closures and flight cancellations forced […]
New hope for a new year
Posted on: 24th November 2021
CMS missionaries Daniel and Kate Morris work with the GBU (GroupesBibliquesUniversitaires de France), a group that evangelises, trains and disciples university students. They share how the new academic year has started for GBU in their region and the need for more workers to serve in France. A new beginning with new hope It’s the beginning of a new academic year in France, and […]
Pray without ceasing
Posted on: 18th November 2021
In the Middle East, a number of CMS workers serve in various projects and programs—caring for refugees, sharing life with Muslim families and reading the Bible with local people. These are ministries suffused with prayer. One worker shares a story about her relationship with a refugee family and how the prayers of CMS supporters have […]
Checkpoint Summer 2021: Communicating grace
Posted on: 15th November 2021
CMS worker B serves in the Middle East, teaching English and learning about her adopted culture. Here she speaks of the challenges in communicating grace to Muslims. My lecturer drew her chair closer to mine. It was the last class for my course in formal Arabic at university, and she was conducting a conversational review […]
Checkpoint Summer 2021: From reciprocity to reconciliation
Posted on: 13th November 2021
How does ‘grace’ work in a place where the rule for maintaining good relations is not grace but reciprocity? CMS missionary Joel Atwood, working with students in Vanuatu, explains. Vanuatu is an intensely relational country. Even though it’s a little unfair to treat over 115 language groups across 96 islands as a single entity, a […]
Checkpoint Summer 2021: Grace that frees
Posted on: 13th November 2021
CMS missionaries Chris and Karen Webb serve at Broome Peoples Church in the Anglican Diocese of North West Australia. In this article Chris shares how grace lifts the burden of self-condemnation. Over a cuppa, Jenny*, an Aboriginal woman from the East Kimberley, tells us that one of her nieces is now a Christian. “How long […]
Checkpoint Summer 2021: With God all things are possible
Posted on: 11th November 2021
CMS missionaries Peter and Terry Blowes have been ministering in Argentina for many years. Frequently in their university work they encounter the challenge of students who believe in God’s sternness and judgement, but not in his mercy and grace. Terry gives a recent example. I was sitting in the loft area of the Economics Faculty […]
Checkpoint Summer 2021: What Jesus has done for me
Posted on: 11th November 2021
CMS missionaries Simon and Jess Cowell are serving in Bari, Italy, discipling university students. Simon and Jess reflect on witnessing to the revolutionary truth of what Jesus has done in meeting both religious and secular thinking with the gospel of grace. The threat of legalism Italy is steeped in spiritual legalism. Almost all Italians, even […]
Checkpoint Summer 2021: Knowing God
Posted on: 9th November 2021
CMS missionaries Dave and Leoni Painter serve in Cambodia, where the dominant Buddhist religion values ‘acquiring knowledge’ as a good work. How to help students of the gospel understand grace? The lesson was proceeding well. I followed the Khmer language textbook on this subject that I had been developing over the last few years. The […]
