Dispatches from the Front - A Review

If you watch the news, listen to the radio, and read the usual blogs it is easy to forget a simple fact: God is on the move and the gospel will be triumphant.

Tim Keesee’s 2014 book, Dispatches from the Front, is a reminder that the light of life has the power to penetrate the darkness in a million places in the world. The power of salvation, which is made plain in the story of Christ’s life, death, burial and resurrection, is not dependent upon the perfect political conditions, but upon the message going forth and the sovereign choice of an omnipotent God.

Dispatches from the Front bears the subtitle, “stories of gospel advance in the world’s difficult places.” Though some readers might think that the subtitle refers to progress in suburban homes in the US, it actually refers to the advance of the gospel in the places where Christianity makes believers social and political outsiders. The good news about the good news is that God is on the move.

Keesee gives the reader snippets from his travels with Frontline Missions International, which was formed to get the gospel to hard-to-reach places in the world. We don’t see the months and years of plowing and tilling that went into some of the conversions, but we get to read about the baptisms, the equipping of pastors, and the growth of the gospel. There may be, for some, a danger of romanticism about getting on a plane, handing out a few tracts, and seeing communities flock to Christ. That can happen, but that is not the story behind most of these stories.

The stories Keesee presents are vitally important as an encouragement because it is a reminder that the Church will not stand or fall based on the party in power or the irrational laws that are enacted.

The book is arranged geographically. It begins in the former Soviet Bloc, then moves to the Balkans. In the next chapter Keesee travels through China with the following one detailing God’s work in Southeast Asia. Chapter Five presents the gospel advance in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan, with the sixth chapter detailing some events from Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Guinea. The final two chapters offer the hopeful signs of renewal in the horn of Africa and Egypt, closing with Afghanistan and Iraq.

Each of these dispatches—quick vignettes of the gospel bearing fruit and increasing—reminds readers that we have a supernatural God who works in mighty ways to accomplish his vital work in the world. For the pastor weighed down by the constant bickering about pandemic protocols, selfishness of congregations, and mundane arrangements of life in the US, this book offers a vitamin shot of encouragement about the way God can work in hard places. For the average Christian whose vision of the faith is limited to a service that can be squeezed in between travel league games and vacations, this will reveal Christian faith that energizes all of life.

Dispatches from the Front: Stories of Gospel Advance in the World's Difficult Places

By Keesee, Tim

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The Greatest Missionary Generation - A Review

Sometimes it seems there is a chasm between biography missionary and the average missionary from the trenches.

Growing up in a church that supported individual missionaries, rather than a mission board, there was a regular stream of faithful missionaries through the church with their slide shows, occasional ethnic dress, and stacks of prayer counters left by the world map with the pushpins.

But there was always a difference in my mind between the missionaries with biographies like Jim Elliot, Adoniram Judson, C.T. Studd, and Gladys Aylward.

As I’ve met more missionaries (many now labeled cross-cultural workers), read more books, and heard more stories from missionaries, I’ve realized that the differences between the missionaries with biographies and those only prayer cards are relatively small and largely circumstantial. Pioneers tend to get more credit than those that came after, better speakers or letter writers will be better remembered, and those who drew the interest of skilled writers or significant church leaders will often be more celebrated.

Make no mistake, there are unique people who do amazing things for Christ whose biographies can inspire a generation to come. Yet I’ve never met a missionary who does not have a story of trusting God that should motivate greater service in one’s present location. Most missionaries have several.

Larry Sharp’s recent book, The Greatest Missionary Generation: Inspiring Stories from Around the World, picks up stories from lesser know missionaries, most of whom will never be featured in an entire volume from a major publisher. But the anecdotes Sharp shares demonstrate clearly that the major difference between those that give their lives in service to God through international missions and those that don’t is a willingness to go.

Sharp himself served as a missionary in Brazil with his family for several decades. He then spent several decades working with Crossworld, a parachurch organization that emphasizes getting people of all professions into the world with the gospel message, and he has been a leader in the Business as Mission (BAM) movement, which has similar aims. His experience as an administrator put him into contact with a large number of missionaries whose stories he has curated into this volume.

There are several dozen missionaries featured in The Greatest Missionary Generation sorted by general topic in the thirteen chapters of the book. The common thread among them is being born at a time to have experienced World War II, thus coinciding with the generation that Tom Brokaw has famously labeled the Greatest Generation, and that they all seem to have come from seemingly insignificant backgrounds.

The pattern may not be universal in this volume, but many of the mini-biographies Sharp records begin with a summary of the individual’s background. Usually from Nowhere, USA. Most of the stories about people from the hills of Appalachia, small mid-West towns, or unknown areas of Canada. The educational background of these saints is also scant, with many of them going to Bible institutes to get just enough training to be approved by the mission board. Not that they didn’t seem to value training, but that they were chomping at the bit to get onto the field.

Each of these stories is about regular people who made a decision to live as vocational workers for the kingdom of God. That’s the main difference between them and the average person in your local church. And that is a powerful reminder that the key qualification for faithful service is willingness.

Generational analysis has been overdone and is often exceedingly uncharitable. However, the formative experiences of the so-called Greatest Generation unquestionably shaped their view of life. My own grandfather, having served in the US Navy and witnessed the invasion of Iwo Jima (something I did not find out about until his funeral), gave his life in service of the kingdom as a church planter in the mid-Atlantic region. Doing analysis after the fact, I have little doubt that the experience of witnessing the horrors of WWII and experiencing the borderline societal collapse did a great deal to diminish the importance of a profitable career for him. The same seems true of so many of the subjects of Sharp’s biographies.

Thankfully, The Greatest Missionary Generation, does not imply that they are the best generation or the only generation doing missions faithfully. Rather, it highlights the ordinariness of the missionaries and seeks to inspire a greater number of regular people to step out from their comfortable first culture lives to take the gospel to the nations. If these people with unexceptional backgrounds can do such unexceptional things, then there is hope for everyone. The biographies of the workers in The Greatest Missionary Generation are timely because these saints have either gone home to glory or will do so in the very near future. Their races have largely been run, so this is a good time to honor their work and tell their stories. The danger of getting too much praise and attention is, for most of these faithful servants, already gone.

I read this book in an afternoon. It was an excellent way to spend a Sunday, reflecting on God’s faithfulness and the response of regular people in taking the gospel to the ends of the earth. This is a book that would likely be better digested more slowly, perhaps shared a chapter at a time with kids toward the end of the day. There are enough short stories in this book to recharge a pastor’s supply of missionary illustrations or move the local Sunday School missions moment past the same dozen or so big names.

Like a lot of books on modern missions sifting through the history of the movement, there is a chapter on the faithful service of women in varying roles. Like a lot of books from interdenominational perspectives there are a few potshots thrown at those who remain faithful to the Pauline teaching on gender roles related to the pastorate. Sharp sweeps aside theological questions related to preaching and baptizing as unimportant, without grappling with the meaningful questions of the text and theological tradition. His comments on this subject largely incidental to the main content, but they do reflect a basic pragmatic approach that sits at the edge of many modern interdenominational movements: whatever gets the job done. This sounds commendable until we recognize where it has led churches with regard to their adoption of worldly cultural practices like “seeker models” that use entertainment over substance to build a crowd. It’s worth considering that the way we practice Christianity is important to the clarity and consistency of the message of Christianity. This is a minor point in Sharp’s book, but it reflects a broader trend of failing to take meaningful objections seriously when they conflict with cultural norms, or, perhaps, the adoption of a results-oriented pragmatism that conquers navel-gazing but can lead to the dismissal of important doctrinal questions.

In sum, this is an excellent book. It is well worth the time to read it. It should be part of a local church library, could be an inspiring book to read with a group, and would do well to find its way into the hands of teenagers who are considering what they want to be when they grow up. One of the most attractive aspects of the book is the celebration of some “no name” missionaries. May we get more volumes like this that demonstrate the significant impact that ordinary people being ordinary Christians in cross cultural situations can have for the advance of the gospel. The task of reaching every tribe, tongue, and nation will be completed by faithful people like these, not by big names doing extraordinary things.

Greatest Missionary Generation, The

By Larry W. Sharp

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NOTE: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the author with no expectation of a positive review.

Something Needs to Change - A Review

David Platt wrote Radical in 2010. The subtitle of that book was Taking Back Your Faith from the American Dream. That compelling book was a call to resist the materialism and superfluous comforts of the idealized American existence and pursue a missional alternative that included frugal living, generous giving, and the willingness to go to all the nations with the gospel.

In the years since I’ve met many people who have read the book, who studied it in a small group or as a church, or who have heard its core message summarized. Most of them continue to live a typical American middle-class lifestyle, with a comfy house, fun vacations, and a great hope in retirement. Many of the accounts of studying the book include Christians meeting in the expansive homes of the American suburbs enjoying rich desserts. The irony is often lost on those who recount it.

For Platt, who spent four years at the helm of the Southern Baptist Convention’s International Mission Board, the irony still seems to be too much. He has recently published a volume, Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need, that reissues the call of Radical and seeks to make it more personal.

Something Needs to Change is a memoir or sorts that recounts a seven-day trip Platt took through the Himalayas just before he accepted the call to the International Mission Board. He outlines the devastating poverty he encountered, the horrific lostness, and the depths of human depravity that were evidenced in the communities Platt encountered.

This book is nuanced. It is not merely a 200-page guilt trip. It is an extended meditation about real needs by someone who does not have all of the answers. Platt seeks to uncover the desperate needs of the world, while still wrestling with our call to live in the place God has given us. By the end of the book, it should be clear to the reader that Platt is not proposing a one-size-fits-all solution, but rather calling for an unfettered reconsideration of our priorities and actions.

Platt is likely to face criticism from both political poles about this volume. He recognizes the deep humanitarian needs of those living in abject poverty and sees that as humans we cannot ignore them. At the same time, he cannot fail to note the even deeper need to meet to alleviate the spiritual poverty of those living apart from Christ. His proposal is to develop a both-and solution, but by all means to do something.

To often good theory dies on the pages of the book and never makes it to the hands of the reader. In Western culture we talk about the needs of the poor, but try to pay off the government to deal with their problems while hoping to keep their hands (and lives) free of the concerns of the dirty poor. In the same way, some groups claim earnest concern for the environment, but continue to drive excessively large vehicles excessively long distances while consuming excessively large quantities of beverages shipped and excessively long distance and presented in excessively wasteful packaging.

As Platt notes, something has to change. His book is a call for people to consider what that change will look like in their lives. For the business person, it may be to expand their company into a lesser served area of the world to provide jobs and resources to those who need it. For some, it may be to take marketable skills they have acquired and apply them to humanitarian solutions for areas reached neither by the gospel nor the material abundance of Western culture. There are no firm prescriptions because for each of us the task is different and our ability to contribute is uniquely shaped by God’s gifts to us.

Above all, however, we need to stop doing nothing and do something.

Platt’s book in another reminder that many of us live lives of self-satisfaction, oblivious to the great needs of the world. We will be accountable for how we have used our time and resources one day when we stand before a holy God. On that day some of our accounts of purchased comforts and wasted days will be a source of sorrow. Something Needs to Change is a reminder that day is coming. We should live like we expect it.

Something Needs to Change: A Call to Make Your Life Count in a World of Urgent Need

By David Platt

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Note: I received a gratis copy of this volume from the publisher with no expectation of a positive review.