July 26, 2026

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Category: Book Reviews

Church Planting, Disciple-making, Training, Book Reviews, Leadership Training

Reaching and Teaching in Animistic Oral Cultures

A review of M. David Sills’ book Reaching and Teaching the Highland Quichuas: Ministry in Animistic Oral Contexts In my last post we looked at Sills’ book Reaching and Teaching: A Call to Great Commission Obedience. This book is clearly a follow up to this work. It is in essence an application in practice of the principles in the earlier book. “This book explores how the Lord led missionaries to minister effectively among a specific people whom he called to himself: the Highland Quichua people of Andean Ecuador.”(pp. 2, 3).The book highlights the challenges of reaching and teaching an oral people group with a long history of syncretism:… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley1 min read
Church Planting, Disciple-making, Book Reviews, Leadership Training

Are We Reading All of Matthew 28:18-20?

A review of M. David Sills, Reaching and Teaching: a Call to Great Commission Obedience, Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2010. This book has sought to bring awareness to those who have been lulled into thinking that God wants us to simply reach them. He doesn’t. He wants us to reach and teach – reaching them with the saving gospel message and teaching them to observe everything that He has commanded. (220). So ends Sills’ book.… Read the whole post
Gary Ridley1 min read
Book Reviews, Spiritual Formation

Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People So That You Experience “The Life You’ve Always Wanted”

As a SEND missionary, do you ever feel lagging in spiritual power or genuine transformation? How about those you have the privilege of leading to Christ or discipling – do you observe them experiencing consistent growth into Christ-likeness? If you’re feeling discouraged in either of these areas, I encourage you to read John Ortberg’s book The Life You’ve Always Wanted: Spiritual Disciplines for Ordinary People. It provides a fresh, practical, and biblical challenge towards growing in Christ-likeness through the practice of spiritual disciplines. A sad commentary on the state of today’s church is that “by and large we do not expect people to experience ongoing transformation.” Ortberg however believes that genuine transformation — being changed into Christ-likeness — should be the norm for Christian life. A problem often occurs, though, in that believers who desire transformation try harder and harder until they are exhausted but still not experiencing the transformation… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
Mission Leadership, Book Reviews, Multicultural Teams, Team Leadership

Leading multicultural teams

Just a few years ago, we could find very little that had been written about multicultural mission teams.  The subject has been of great interest in our mission organization, since our membership is becoming increasingly international, and many, if not the majority of our teams, already include members from countries other than the USA or Canada.   But very few resources for guiding the team leaders of such teams were readily available. A few would know of Lianne Roembke’s work, Building Credible Multicultural Teams.. Unfortunately, Roembke’s book has still not been released in digital form, and I cannot seem to find anyone who has written a review of it.  Then in 2011, Sheryl Silzer of SIL published her book, Biblical Multicultural Teams: Applying Biblical Truth to Cultural Differences. Silzer’s work focused on the formative nature of one’s childhood home and how that experience has impacted one’s view of what is right… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther1 min read
Church Planting, Islam, Book Reviews, Covenant Community, Evangelism

Critical Issues for the Cross-Cultural Church Planter

This summer I read The Messenger, The Message and the Community: Three Critical Issues for the Cross-cultural Church Planter by Roland Muller.  It was a read that was long overdue.  You see, the author is a friend of mine, and I have followed his ministry closely for about 25 years. About 14 years ago, as the first edition of some parts of this book was being written, Roland Muller asked me to read it and give some feedback.  To my regret, and with some degree of embarrassment now, I admit that I did not finish reading the manuscript, although I did give some thoughts on the part of the book that I did read.   As a result, the author used some of my graduate study research to support one of his arguments and somewhat undeservedly, included my name in the acknowledgments. About seven years later, Roland combined three books he… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
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