September 6, 2026

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

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Book Reviews, Evangelism

Developing the Art of Conversational Evangelism

I found David and Norman Geisler’s book, Conversational Evangelism: Connecting with People to Share Jesus while doing some reading on contextualization.   I thought it would be interesting combining Norman Geisler’s expertise in apologetics and his son, David’s experience on college campuses and 7 years serving in Singapore. I was not disappointed. This is a very helpful book. Similar in some ways to Randy Newman’s book, Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did, the Geislers’ book has more emphasis on worldviews and apologetics. The first chapter, “The Need for Pre-Evangelism in a Postmodern World”, makes the point that evangelism is a process. Then chapter 2 introduces the model with four types of conversations: “Hearing Conversations, Illuminating Conversations, Uncovering Conversations, and Building Conversations”.  The Geislers relate these conversations to four roles we play:     Related Posts:Review of Dialogical ApologeticsTelling a Better Story - a book reviewReview of Paul Hiebert's… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley1 min read
Spiritual Formation, Training

What Melody Are You Making in Your Heart?

Experiencing God’s presence is essential for the Christian Life. This is especially true for cross-cultural workers. In a previous post I wrote about Puritan Meditation and would like to add to that the importance of music in our meditation. Recently I was reading Colossians 3:16 “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” (ESV) I also looked at the parallel passage in Ephesians 5:18 & 19 “…but be filled with the Spirit, addressing one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody to the Lord with all your heart.” (ESV) Now these verses are very rich but I want to focus on the place of music in being filled with the Spirit and letting the Word of Christ dwell in us (which, by… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley1 min read
Disciple-making, Theology, Book Reviews

Are Missionaries Public Theologians Too?

I recently finished reading the book The Pastor as A Public Theologian: Reclaiming a Lost Vision by Kevin J. Vanhoozer and Owen Strachan (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2015). The authors write, “Our task in this book is to argue, first, that pastors must be theologians; second, that every theologian is in some sense a public theologian; and third, that a public theologian is a very particular kind of generalist.” (p. 5) I am not going to review this excellent book but use it as a springboard to the question of missionaries as public theologians. First I would argue that missionaries, like pastors, must be theologians. The missionary task is fundamentally a theological task. Unfortunately, theology is often seen as impractical and esoteric. But theology is practical; “William Ames [a Puritan] says it is simply the teaching of ‘living to God’.”(Vanhoozer and Strachan, p. 16) “To be a Christian theologian is to… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley2 mins read
Stress Management, Training

Stress: Too Much and Too Little – Part Two

In a previous post, I talked about the importance of maintaining margin.    Too much stress for too long a period is unhelpful and destructive. But as I also demonstrated from the life of Paul, we must not avoid all stress at all costs.   I am afraid that far too often I have said “no” to an opportunity simply because it would have stretched me beyond my comfort zone.   But I need to be stretched if I am to grow. I see many parallels to physical training.   When I started running (again) in 2009 after knee surgery, I was not able to run more than a kilometer before being totally exhausted.  Over the period of a couple of months, I was able to extend that to almost 5 km, a distance with which I was quite satisfied.   After all, I was not a serious runner, and already in my late 40’s,… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Stress Management, Training

Stress: Too Much and Too Little – Part One

Is stress, even cross-cultural stress, always a bad thing? Too much stress is not good.   More than 4 years ago on this blog, I mentioned a book by Dr. Richard Swenson on the topic of “Margin” – Margin: Restoring Emotional, Physical, Financial and Time Reserves to Overloaded Lives.   I had read the book and was recommending it because I recognized that many of our missionaries were subject to overload and consequent burn-out.   (See another recommendation on our SEND U wiki.) Related Posts:Stress: Too Much and Too Little - Part TwoExploring Spiritual Formation: BurnoutTraining to Increase CapacityCan I stop asking “what’s wrong?”Questioning the Validity of “The 4 Stages of…Saul Was Not Ready… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
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