Opinion

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  • Middle East

    I have seen the raw footage of the October 7 attack - this is what I pray for

    By Opinion Contributor

    I recently attended a screening of raw footage of the October 7th, 2023, attacks in Israel. It was a spontaneous decision – the queue to get in was long, and I quietly prayed that if I got in, God would help me use it to potentially contribute a meaningful voice to the highly polarized and emotionally charged global debates – including among Christians – on what could possibly bring an end to the war and suffering in the Holy Land.

  • Europe

    How Long, O Lord?

    By Jeff Fountain

    Few of us imagined that the Ukrainian resistance would last long against the feared might of the Russian army. Memories were stirred of the German invasion of the Netherlands in 1940 when the vastly outnumbered Dutch army resisted for four days before surrendering on May 14, immediately after Hitler’s ruthless blitzkrieg destroyed the historic heart of Rotterdam.

  • Europe

    The sledgehammer of truth

    By Jeff Fountain

    While praying for Ukraine this week in a zoom connection with YWAM colleagues, I remembered a story once told by the late Argentinian-born evangelist Luis Palau. 

  • Oceania

    Nil by force: a word on militaristic tropes in missions

    By Jay Mātenga

    I think missions influencers resort to militaristic tropes because, when it comes to the sharing of our faith, whether local or cross-cultural, we have a motivational problem. To get more believers ‘committed’ to evangelism, ministry, and missions, influencers too easily twist Scripture to promote a militant activism, casting the ‘great unwashed’, ‘pagan’, or ‘heathen’ as ignorant slaves of our enemy (sin, the powers of darkness, and the Devil) needing to be rescued (by force, if necessary, e.g.

  • Africa

    Language: a barrier or a bridge to people flourishing

    By Michel Kenmogne

    Irrespective of its status or prestige, each language represents somebody’s mother tongue. By this, I mean the first language through which they have been exposed to the world. It informs their sense of identity and provides them with the cultural categories by which they view the world and engage in it.

  • Europe

    Bound together

    By Jeff Fountain

    A giant three-metre-high replica of an ordinary torsion spring clothespeg arrested my wife and me while walking through a sculpture garden in New Zealand some time ago. 

  • Africa

    Africa’s election year 2024: Twenty principles and truths for Christian political engagement

    By Craig Bailie

    Africa is a deeply religious continent. So how African individuals and communities understand and express their religions and protect their religious spaces and doctrines from misuse or abuse has implications for wider African society, including the spheres of politics and civil governance. These significantly affect human well-being across the continent.