When I left my house Sunday morning to go pick up a fella for our church service I found that my four way flashers were on. Upon closer examination I found that my rear passenger side window had been busted out and the car ransacked. Seemed the thief was looking for valuables. All he got was the face to my car radio. Thank God nothing was in there. 

I hope you will be praying for a project we are doing in Tamazighit this week. We have translated a half hour presentation of the gospel called “The Good News” in a mountain berber dialect. This week we are recording it and then Lord willing distributing hundreds of these cd’s in the mountains in the coming weeks. Please pray for the Spirit of God to move in this evangelization.

I was sent this article and am in full agreement with this brother about the dangerous heresy pushed by the Insider Movement! Go get ‘em Jay!

AN ASSESSMENT OF THE INSIDER’S PRINCIPLE PARADIGMS (Jay Smith)

Towards the end of January 2009 I was asked by my mission board, the Brethren In Christ World Mission (BICWM) to attend the ‘Common Ground’ Conference in Atlanta, a group promoting and teaching the ‘Insider’ methodological model of evangelism to Islam. I was asked to assess its viability as a model for our mission work to Muslims living in a Middle Eastern country.

I knew something about the ‘model’, which some have based on the C-5 category of the contextualization scale, due to my studies at Fuller Seminary in the 1980s. Later on my colleagues and I tried a nascent form of contextualization in the late 1980s and early 1990s in a largely Muslim dominated West African country. We realized, however, that it caused a good bit of confusion, as some of our African Muslim friends felt we were being deceitful and dishonest, and trivialized what for them were time-honoured Islamic ‘identity codes’ of practice and belief.

Since then, we have now moved to London, where, for the past 17 years, I have engaged in a highly public confrontational and polemical ministry engaging with the more radical elements within Islam, a methodology which is probably as far removed from that of the Insider Movement as one could imagine (possibly a negative C-5 on the contextual scale). Ironically, ‘Believers from a Muslim Background’ (BMB) tell me that my model of evangelism is actually a truer form of contextualization, since, my forthright and public style is closer to the paradigm of what a religious man should be; one who is as willing to publicly go ‘toe to toe’ with the best, and just as willing to die for what he believes…as are they.

The assessment below, therefore, needs to be read with that history in mind. I make no apologies. After working for over 27 years with Muslims, on three continents, and having taught others to minister with Muslims in over 20 countries, I come to the table with a good bit of experience, both contextual and irenical, yet also confrontational and controversial, much of the latter in an hostile environment. I say this all up-front so that you know where I stand, and so you can better understand why I take the positions I do; and unapologetically.

Concerning the Common Ground Conference itself; I was not invited, so I had myself invited; to which they finally relented, with the proviso that I was not permitted to say anything about the teachers nor the countries they represented. I can say, however, that they were all eloquent, seemed mostly my age (40-50s), all white, American, and all well groomed.

Security was tight, with only delegates were permitted to enter the sanctuary. I was not sure why they felt it necessary, since

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Ralph Winter, the founder of William Carrey University, passed away two days ago. He had a great impact on the modern evangelical strategies for missions. His emphasis on Unreached People Groups has motivated thousands of missionaries and churches to actively pursue those who have never heard the gospel. It’s application has been varied and sometimes misguided but the shift of focus has been instrumental in that millions of the farthest from the kingdom having been preached too and saved. A few years ago I was sitting in Chile with my friend Jason Holt just killing time reading a book called “Perspectives”. My heart broke for those farthest from the gospel. That book started my family on a journey to come to North Africa where we are currently laboring. Wether you agree with him or not, his love for Christ and the lost ought to be imitated.

An extremely important part of what I consider my job is to motivate young Christians around the world to get involved in planting churches in the Muslim world. Last week 8 students arrived from Kansas, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and North Carolina to do outreach with us here for six weeks. Please pray for them. Pray that God will use them and that light will spring up in the hearts of university students here where before was only darkness.

Husbands are allowed to slap their wives if they spend lavishly, a Saudi judge said recently during a seminar on domestic violence, Saudi media reported Sunday.

It is OK to slap Saudi women who spend too much, a judge has told an audience.

Arab News, a Saudi English-language daily newspaper based in Riyadh, reported that Judge Hamad Al-Razine said that “if a person gives SR 1,200 [$320] to his wife and she spends 900 riyals [$240] to purchase an abaya [the black cover that women in Saudi Arabia must wear] from a brand shop and if her husband slaps her on the face as a reaction to her action, she deserves that punishment.”

Women in the audience immediately and loudly protested Al-Razine’s statement, and were shocked to learn the remarks came from a judge, the newspaper reported.

Arab News reported that Al-Razine made his remark as he was attempting to explain why incidents of domestic violence had increased inSaudi Arabia. He said that women and men shared responsibility, but added that “nobody puts even a fraction of blame” on women, the newspaper said.

Al-Razine “also pointed out that women’s indecent behavior and use of offensive words against their husbands were some of the reasons for domestic violence in the country,” it added.

Domestic violence, which used to be a taboo subject in the conservative kingdom, has become a hot topic in recent years. Groups like the National Family Safety Program have campaigned to educate the public about the problem and help prevent domestic abuse.

Saudi women’s rights activist Wajeha Al-Huwaider told CNN that Saudi women routinely face such attitudes.

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