Ken Anderson
Dr. Ken Anderson serves as board chair for ChinaReach, an indigenous missiological training effort intended to help China move from a mission field to a mission force.
Dr. Anderson holds DMiss and MAGL degrees from Fuller Theological Seminary. From 2011–2021 he served as an itinerant extension biblical training missionary in China and Nepal. He is currently leading missiological training in Mark’s Gospel for an indigenous church planting movement in southern Nepal and serves on boards including a Russian video seminary, a Nepali aftercare home, an indigenous ministry effort in Mexico, and as an elder in his local church.
Ken and his wife Nancy live in Northern California. They have been married since 1977 and are blessed with four married children and nine grandchildren. Ken is a retired rice farmer who planted and harvested around 75,000 acres of rice in his 35-year career—a seed sower and watcher, not a grower: God does the growing (Mark 4.26–29).
Sharing the Gospel: Franchise or Indigenization?
Nothing succeeds like success, and many Christian ministries have adopted a franchise-like pattern based on a founder’s compelling vision facilitated by a highly structured and quality-controlled delivery system…[But] can the gospel be franchised? I think not.
Crossing Cultures: Capacity and Insight
Expectations for new missionaries as well as for their sending bodies should include a long-term developmental perspective that recognizes on-field difficulties as expected and as the normative shaping events God intentionally uses to develop cross-cultural ministry capacity.
Crossing Cultures: Ethnocentric Conversion
The Apostle Peter’s ethnocentric conversion exploded into fullness through an unanticipated personal interaction with Cornelius, a gentile military officer who lived out his fear of God in household leadership, generosity, and constant prayer (Acts 10:1–2).
Crossing Cultures: Table Manners
Ministering cross-culturally is critical for fruitful missionary engagement. As the Chinese missionary movement matures and expands and goes where no man or woman of the gospel has gone before, cross-cultural ministry praxis will become increasingly critical.