Our family has lived in Japan now for 6 months. After spending our first month adjusting and getting our house and life set up, for the past several months I’ve been ensconced in Japanese language school, studying what has been rated the most difficult language in the world for English speakers to learn. By God’s […]
Read More The Labor and Benefits of Language LearningAs the time comes for us to move to Japan (flying out March 1!), we thought we’d share some photos of our new home with you. This house has been a huge provision; it’s only 3 blocks from our language school and 3 blocks from Lydia’s kindergarten. We are very excited about being able to […]
Read More Our new home in JapanWe in the Newkirk clan are nearing our departure for Japan, and as we stand here toward the end of this preparation journey, I thought I’d say a word about missions and (grand)parents. I say (grand)parents here to refer to the parents of missionaries and, more significantly, the grandparents of missionary kids. As we have […]
Read More Missions and (Grand)ParentsIn my last post I mentioned that we were at 50% of our monthly budget, and I reflected on some of the things I’ve learned during the first half of support raising. The first thing I listed there was how unbelieving I have been that our budget will be met. Today, only four weeks later, […]
Read More Learning to put doubt where it belongsAs of this week we are (unofficially) at 50% of the monthly partnerships that we need in order to serve in Japan! A big THANK YOU to those who have discerned God’s leading and have pledged to partner with us. We are so grateful for your generosity and your desire to invest in the spread […]
Read More Halfway There!… And What I’ve Learned Along the WayIt was most poignantly on a flimsy folding chair in the middle of a dirt “field” in Juarez, Mexico that I (Caroline) began to grasp the concept that the church is far more than a building. It was a Sunday morning, and I was 18, on a short-term mission trip. As our church’s mission team […]
Read More Do you take the church for granted?I recently read an article on The Gospel Coalition website by David Sills entitled, “Missions Doesn’t Stop When a Group Has Been Reached.” Sills begins by noting the standard definition of unreached peoples as “those ethnolinguistic people groups whose population is less than 2 percent evangelical, or those groups without a sufficiently strong presence of […]
Read More Does Missions Stop When a Group Has Been Reached?Last time we saw how Jesus reinstates God’s mission by commissioning the church to go out on a geographically-expanding mission, which is described in the same terms as God’s creation mandate to Adam (Acts 6:7; 12:24). Here in this final segment we will see how God’s mission, which is for his kingship to be represented […]
Read More Fill the Earth 8: Mission FulfilledLast segment we saw how Jesus fulfills the roles of both Adam and Israel. Whereas the disobedience of the prior two had invalidated their roles as God’s representatives on the earth, because of Jesus’ obedience, as we’ll see in this segment, He reinstates God’s mission by commissioning the church to go out on mission and […]
Read More Fill the Earth 7: Mission ReinstatedTo recap where we’ve been so far, the thesis that we’re trying to substantiate throughout this series is this: God’s mission in the world is for His kingship to be represented to the ends of the earth. In creation God commissioned humanity to “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen 1:28) and thereby […]
Read More Fill the Earth 6: Mission Redeemed
