The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Category: Books Page 11 of 19

Book Review: Introducing Story-Strategic Methods

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On July 11, 2018

In Training, Book Reviews

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Introducing Story-Strategic Methods: Twelve Steps toward Effective Engagement by Robert Strauss is part of a four-book series written by the consultants from Worldview Resource Group. I reviewed A Novel Approach in a December 14, 2017 blog post.

Tom Steffen’s book in this series, Worldview-based Storying, was published May 8, 2018. The fourth book in the series by John Cosby and Elena Steiner is coming out soon. I look forward to reviewing both of these in future posts. I’ve started reading Steffen’s book and it is looking really good.

The series advocates an approach to storytelling that recognizes that there is always “more to the story.” That “more” is the worldview of both the teller and the hearer of the story.

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Book Review: Well Sent

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On June 12, 2018

In Training, Book Reviews, Pre-field Training, Church, Books, Resources

51xanlIajuL._SY344_BO1,204,203,200_QL70_I have frequently been asked about resources for local church missions programs. In 2015, Steve Beirn, Global Ministries Pastor at Calvary Church in Lancaster, PA, published Well Sent: Reimaging the Church’s Missionary-Sending Process. Steve served at our sending church in Holland, Michigan before going to Calvary so I know him well. He writes with passion and experience. In the introduction he writes:

 

 

 

 

 

 

This book seeks to elevate the role of the local church in the sending effort. The trend in missions today is to place the individual at the center of the sending process. Sometimes the agency is placed at the center. This book places the local church at the center of the sending process. – Well Sent, p. 17.

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Book review: Stubborn Perseverance

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On May 14, 2018

In Books, Church Planting, DMM, Hardship, Islam, Training, Book Reviews

Stubborn Perseverance: How to launch multiplying movements of disciples and churches among Muslims and others (a story based on real events) by James Nyman with Robby Butler.

How-to manuals are generally difficult to read, and those who purchase them are not often motivated to read them from start to finish. Stubborn Perseverance is a different sort of how-to manual. Now in a second edition, the book explains a step-by-step process of starting a church planting movement among an unreached Muslim people group. But it is presented as a story, a novel that walks through the experience of a small group of Indonesian believers who work together to start such a movement among their own people group. The story is based on real events.  The characters and their experiences were created by combining various people and their situations, both to protect their identity and to better illustrate a number of principles in one short book.

The author is telling a story that probably reflects his own experiences and the stories of many of his own friends. James Nyman (a pseudonym?), serves as a cross-cultural missionary in Indonesia. He and his wife have been actively seeking to start a church planting movement among an unreached people since 2009, and in the past few years, have been coaching various missionary teams and training workers in the skills and strategy outlined in the novel. So this novel is real-to-life, and its principles have been tried and refined in practice.

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The Vine Project: A review

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On March 20, 2018

In Books, Disciple-making, Book Reviews, Pre-field Training, Church

Jesus told us to go and disciple all nations. That means that those of us who have been called and sent are to be disciplemakers who equip others to be disciplemakers as well. The question that I have been asking myself recently is, “Are the sending and training structures that we have established to help get people to the nations effective in equipping them to be disciplemakers?”  We train people to raise their support, learn and adjust to a new culture, learn to speak a new language, prepare for various security risks, educate their children, and get along with their teammates – but are they learning to become disciplemakers?

I read The Trellis and the Vine a number of years ago. This short book differentiated between the work of actually discipling people from the work of creating and maintaining the structures and programs that support this disciplemaking.  The former was called “vine work” and the latter “trellis work”.  The authors, Colin Marshall and Tony Payne, made the sobering and accurate observation that often trellis work has taken over most of the church’s time and energy, so that very little actual disciplemaking is happening. The book called for a radical mindshift that would prioritize disciplemaking over programs and building organizations.

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Learning to Work Deep: A review

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On March 6, 2018

In Books, Book Reviews

We live in an inter-connected world, filled with collaborative tools and awash with information.  But we also live in a deeply-distracted world and this is the serious downside to the interconnectivity we enjoy. We live in a world where few people seem to have retained the ability to concentrate deeply on a single project. This is no less true of missionaries, or at least all missionaries that are connected to the Internet through their phones and computers on a fairly consistent basis.

In Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World, Cal Newport seeks to Deep Workconvince us of the importance of learning once again the skills of focused concentration and shows us some simple rules that he has learned to help him overcome this constant allure of distraction.

Newport is a professor of computer science (Georgetown) as well as a profilic author who writes about the impact of the technologies of the digital age on our life and work. The guidelines that he promotes in the book are ones that he has consistently practiced in his own life and work.  He gives multiple examples of how they have changed his own approach to work. One of the most attractive selling points of his approach is Newport’s testimony almost never works past 5:30 pm, nor does he work on weekends – while still teaching regularly in a prestigious university, writing multiple peer-reviewed articles each year, and publishing five books. Learning to do deep work is radically different that “drowning” in our work.

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