Once you are able to identify when, where, or what makes you feel “small,” you can develop strategies to help you fight the lie that greatness comes from what the world hails, like fame and wealth or power and position.

My son recently asked me who my best friends are. I took a moment to think, then said, “My best friend in the U.S. is Reza and my best friend in Central Asia is Darius” (names changed for security). I smiled as I said it, realizing these two brothers from Muslim backgrounds—one a refugee and one a new pastor in his home city—really are two of my closest friends. Humanly speaking, we shouldn’t be friends at all. But the gospel has done something remarkable in us, such that we now love one another with a deep and happy loyalty. For this, I’m indebted to these brothers who’ve so often pursued the relationship. I’m also indebted to my parents who modeled a deep love and friendship for the local believers they served as missionaries in Melanesia. When I eventually became a missionary, I naturally followed in their footsteps. Yet when it comes to missions, few speak explicitly about the centrality of friendship. Of course, we might have close friends back home, our own Andrew Fullers who hold the ropes for us. Or we might value the close fellowship and camaraderie of teammates on the field. But we seldom consider how affectionate friendships of equality with locals are one of the primary goals and rewards of a life spent proclaiming the gospel among the nations. Friendship with God One way to describe the missionary’s goal is to see others become friends with the eternal God and his Son, Jesus Christ. This is the vertical side of friendship in missions. We shouldn’t lose sight of the scandal of this invitation. How can it be that rebellious sinners, lifelong enemies of God, are welcomed into friendship with the holy God they’ve so long spurned? Yet this is the language of the Bible. Abraham, the father of all who are saved by faith, is called a friend of God (James 2:23). Jesus was known as the friend of sinners (Matt. 11:19). He explicitly tells his disciples they’re no longer only servants but friends (John 15:13–15). As a missionary, I have the privilege of seeing Central Asians befriended by God. That’s my goal. It’s also my reward. Befriending Locals In faithful cross-cultural ministry, we invite the nations into friendship with God. However, by virtue of their new relationship with Christ, they should also become friends with us. This is the horizontal side of friendship in missions; not only does God gain new and eternal friends but so do we. At least we will if we follow in the footsteps of Paul, whose ministry overflowed with affectionate friendship toward those who believed the gospel. This is the horizontal side of friendship in missions; not only does God gain new and eternal friends but so do we. Paul didn’t only give the gospel to local believers; he shared his life with them (1 Thess. 2:8). He didn’t limit himself to ministry relationships or even task-focused partnerships. In addition to being their loving father in the faith, he became their devoted friend (Acts 24:23). We see this friendship through Paul’s constant, thankful, joyful prayers for local believers. We see it in his unembarrassed professions of affection and longing to spend time with them (Phil. 1:3–4, 8; 1 Thess. 3:6, 10). Paul truly held these believers in his heart, delighting in them in person while also doing his best to stay in touch with them from a distance (Phil. 1:7; 4:21–22; 1 Cor. 16:7). He lived sacrificially for them and allowed them to care for his needs (Phil. 2:17; 4:16). He treated them as equals, calling them brothers. He was proud of them, calling them his crown (4:1). Paul and his friends even wept with and for one another (Acts 20:37). Problem of Self-Protection But we must be honest about something. When you talk to local believers in many missions contexts, they’ll tell you missionaries seem hesitant to enter into this kind of close friendship with them. Many try to keep a safer relational distance from locals. Why is that? Maybe it’s because missionaries know they’re transient. This is perhaps an act of self-protection in a lifestyle given to so many costly goodbyes. Others may struggle to befriend locals out of confusion about what healthy boundaries are. Sadly, some may quietly despise the culture or even unconsciously look down on locals. Whatever the reason, missionaries should try to understand why they’re keeping locals at arm’s length—then repent. As one of my pastors in Central Asia recently told me, the diversity of our friendships is meant to display the gospel’s beauty. Wealthy local friends should marvel that you also befriend the street cleaner. And your fellow countrymen back home should be surprised by the depth of your friendships with local believers whose backgrounds are so different from your own. Worth the Risk Missionaries may be effective in many aspects of their ministry with locals. They may have solid partnerships, even a level of trust. But that’s not the same as risking the vulnerability and equality that characterizes true spiritual friendship. It’s not the same as the shared delight that missionaries have with those from their own culture. And locals can tell the difference. The diversity of our friendships is meant to display the gospel’s beauty. However, the most beloved (and hence effective) missionaries are genuine friends with the local believers. Yes, this will make missions more costly. Sin, betrayal, and abandonment will break your heart when you’ve entrusted it to local believers. I’ve gone through seasons when I dared not risk such friendships. Too many had left, had failed, had turned on us when we needed them most. Yet I’m so glad the Lord didn’t leave me in that place but gently brought my heart back to a posture of vulnerability—and I once again tasted the sweet rewards of affection. Some of my fondest moments as a missionary have been when my Central Asian friends and I dream together about the new heavens and earth. We talk about how much we look forward to being there together with Jesus, telling stories, and sipping New Jerusalem chai. If our friendship now with one another and with Jesus is such a kind gift—such an undeserved reward—then just imagine what it’ll be like in the resurrection. Go Make Friends The Scottish missionary John Paton knew the costs and rewards of friendship on the mission field. He also anticipated the joys of those friendships perfected in glory. Recounting the death of his friend Chief Kowia, he writes, Thus died a man who had been a cannibal Chief, but by the grace of God and the love of Jesus changed, transfigured into a character of light and beauty. I lost, in losing him, one of my best friends and most courageous helpers; but I knew that day, and I know now, that there is one soul at least from Tanna to sing the glories of Jesus in Heaven—and, oh, the rapture when I meet him there! Friendship is one of the primary goals and richest rewards of missions. I’m convinced faithful missionaries should exhibit a posture of humility and vulnerability, pursuing affectionate and mutual love with local believers. Because we don’t go to the ends of the earth only to make disciples. We also go to make friends.

Jonathan Edwards generates perennial interest among historians, pastors, theologians, and philosophers. Some consider him America’s most influential theologian. Others think of him as the most influential interpreter of revival. Still others know him as the pastor who preached the most famous sermon in American history, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Ongoing interest in Edwards transcends ecclesial tradition, as evidenced by Jonathan Edwards: A Reformed Arminian Engagement—a volume edited by Matthew Pinson, president of Welch College. Pinson and his collaborators are Free Will Baptists. They describe themselves as “Reformed Arminians” because they identify with the views of Jacobus Arminius and are critical of the Wesleyan tradition that dominates so much of modern Arminianism. Thus, the authors offer two cheers for Edwards. They have a critical appreciation of the Reformed tradition, embracing many of the same theological categories while demurring on the same points as the original Remonstrants. The result is a volume that illustrates Reformed Arminian distinctives through dialogue with Edwards’s thought. Solid Introduction The book lays a groundwork for those unfamiliar with Reformed Arminianism or Edwards. First, Pinson offers a survey of Reformed Arminian theological distinctives, which he’s previously written on in Arminian and Baptist and 40 Questions About Arminianism. He suggests Edwards’s “nuanced Calvinist brand of Reformed theology provides a wonderful way to show how Arminians and Calvinists can take part in fruitful dialogue” (xiv). Paul Harrison, a pastor, then offers a general and pastoral biographical introduction to Edwards. With these opening chapters, the book introduces those unfamiliar with either Reformed Arminianism or Edwards to this seemingly unlikely combination. Though it doesn’t presume expert knowledge, the book engages with particular aspects of Edwards’s theology. For example, in another chapter, Harrison addresses Edwards’s views of original sin and depravity. Following Arminius, Harrison agrees with Edwards on total depravity, but he rejects a total inability to choose salvation. He also rejects as illogical the Edwardean distinction between moral and natural ability. That distinction encouraged Baptist Edwardeans, in contrast with High Calvinists, to freely offer the gospel to nonbelievers. Similarly, Kevin Hester, a Welch College vice president, examines Edwards’s views of justification and atonement. He rightly notes that Edwards’s writings on justification were a critique of contemporary neonomianism (a form of salvation by works) that Edwards identified with Arminianism for polemical reasons. Edwards wasn’t critiquing classical Arminianism, which affirms sola fide. As Hester shows, Edwards’s view of the atonement was rooted in an Anselmian satisfaction model but also synthesized penal substitutionary and governmental motifs. Edwards’s approach led to a downplaying of substitutionary atonement among many second-generation Edwardeans. Hester urges contemporary evangelicals to follow Edwards in embracing a multifaceted understanding of the atonement wherein penal substitution is the facet that shines brightest. Balanced Critique Despite the theological distance between Edwards and Reformed Arminians, there are points of agreement. For example, Barry Raper, associate dean of Welch Divinity School, affirms Edwards’s distinction between true and false signs of awakening. He shows that Reformed Arminians agree with many Calvinists who distinguish between revival (which is good) and revivalism (which is problematic). Edwards wasn’t critiquing classical Arminianism, which affirms sola fide. Yet there’s still substantial disagreement, as we see in Pinson’s assessment of Edwards’s doctrine of grace. Edwards believed the Holy Spirit effectually calls the elect to saving faith and ineffectually calls the nonelect, because the latter’s calling isn’t accompanied by regenerating grace. This nuanced understanding of grace is rooted in Edwards’s views that God has two wills: a general will for all people to be saved and a secret will for the elect alone to be saved. Like all Arminians, Pinson rejects the two-wills paradigm. He advocates for what Reformed Arminians call enabling grace, “whereby the Holy Spirit calls and convicts and woos and awakens and influences sinners to come to him, a grace that God graciously grants them freedom to resist” (144). However, Pinson celebrates how Edwards’s views resulted in more evangelistic preaching focused on the free offer of the gospel to all. In the same vein, Matthew McAffee, provost and professor of Old Testament at Welch College, engages with Edwards’s view of perseverance. McAffee shows how Edwards’s understanding of the warning passages in Hebrews was more confusing than Calvin and the earlier Reformed tradition’s understanding because of how Edwards spoke of the Spirit’s work in the lives of the nonelect. McAffee’s response resists both Calvinists who affirm perseverance and Wesleyans who believe unrepentant sin can forfeit saving grace. It reflects the Reformed Arminian position that true believers can fall from grace and be damned eternally, though only by renouncing their faith. Together for the Gospel The chapters in this book originated in a Free Will Baptist theological conference. As is often the case with a collection of essays, the results are uneven in their degree of agreement with Edwards and with current scholarship. The upshot is a volume that offers praise for Edwards while remaining unwilling to follow him on all points—especially areas where his views overlap with Dortian assumptions. Pinson celebrates how Edwards’s views resulted in more evangelistic preaching focused on the free offer of the gospel to all. This book provides clear examples of Reformed Arminian thinking. The engagement with a beloved Calvinistic figure can sharpen a Reformed reader’s understanding of both Edwards and his theology. Furthermore, it reminds us that not all Arminians are Wesleyans. Like conservative Calvinists and other confessional evangelicals, many Reformed Arminians are committed to biblical inerrancy, penal substitutionary atonement, justification by faith alone, soteriological exclusivism, and biblical complementarianism. Jonathan Edwards: A Reformed Arminian Engagement is a helpful reminder that there are Arminians who appreciate Edwards, even if he isn’t necessarily their homeboy. Just as Reformed Arminians offer two cheers for Jonathan Edwards, those who resonate with Edwards’s thought should return the favor. We’ll likely never all fully agree on the finer points of the doctrines of grace, but by that same grace, we’re together for the gospel.

What Really Happened to JD Vance in Erie

A rare double portrait of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck stolen in 1979 has returned to Chatsworth House, the stately home of the dukes of Devonshire. It suffered some damage during its long ordeal — minor paint loss, nicotine staining, panel separation. After cleaning and conservation, the portrait is now back on display at Chatsworth. The oil-on-panel painting by Flemish artist Erasmus Quellinus II is an unusual grisaille painting featuring two medallion busts of Peter Paul Rubens and Anthony Van Dyck. Each portrait is set in an elaborate frame surrounded by symbolic figures with the artists’ coat of arms underneath their busts. The rare double portrait is all the more rare for having been made specifically as a preparatory study for a print by Flemish engraver Paulus Pontius (Paulus Du Pont). It was never meant to be hung on a wall in its own right. Pontius had been the principle engraver in the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, making meticulously detailed reproductions of the master’s designs with a particular focus on portraits of the monarchs and officials of the Spanish Netherlands. Rubens died in 1640, and Pontius continued to make print reproductions of works by other luminaries of the era, most notably Anthony Van Dyck. This combination of portraits of his most popular artists was destined to become one of his most beloved prints. Surviving examples today are in the collections of top museums including London’s National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago and the Rijksmuseum. The painting was stolen on May 26, 1970, in a smash-and-grab when it was on loan to the Towner Gallery in Eastbourne for an exhibition dedicated to Anthony Van Dyck. It was the only thing stolen, which was an odd choice, to say the least, given that original drawings by Van Dyck were on display in the exhibition and they are worth literal millions. I guess the master’s oeuvre must have looked less impressive to untutored smash-and-grabbers. Police investigated but found nothing. It disappeared without a trace until December of 2020 when it was spotted by Dr Bert Schepers, a Belgian specialist in Flemish art, at a small auction house in Toulon, France. He recognized it as the stolen piece and reported it to the Trustees of Chatsworth House. They in turn reached out to the Art Loss Register for help in recovering the work. The auction house withdrew the lot and the sellers had no idea of its history. They had found the painting in their deceased parents’ home in Eastbourne which had been occupied by squatters around the time of the theft. They kept the painting for sentimental reasons, thinking it had belonged to their late parents, finally deciding to sell it 40 years later. The sellers agreed to return it to Chatsworth, receiving only a small finder’s fee which they donated to charity. This video recounts the story of the theft, recovery and conservation.

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