In This Issue: 100 Years in Vietnam
- BOOK: 100 Years in Vietnam
- WEBSITE: The Long View on Current Events and Trends Affecting Missions
- ARTICLES: Encouraging Stories of Church Planting Movements
- BOOKS: New Hudson Taylor Biography and Others
- WEBSITE: MisLinks Web Directory
- EVENTS: Upcoming Webinars
Missions Catalyst is a free, weekly electronic digest of mission news and resources designed to inspire and equip Christians worldwide for global ministry. Use it to fuel your prayers, find tips and opportunities, and stay in touch with how God is building his kingdom all over the world. Please forward it freely!
Resource Reviews, edited by Marti Smith, are published once a month.
BOOK: 100 Years in Vietnam
Source: William Carey Library
Vietnam’s Christians: A Century of Growth in Adversity, by Reg Reimer. Pasadena, CA: William Carey Library, 2011. 144 pages.
In 1975, Vietnam, united under Communism, fell behind a bamboo curtain. Many feared the worst for churches there. But fifteen years later, churches, especially among Vietnam’s ethnic minority mountain peoples, suddenly exploded in number and vitality.
“Nobody is more qualified than Reg Reimer to write this seminal book on the history of the church in Vietnam,” says Bill Taylor of the World Evangelical Alliance. “Conceived out of history, birthed in his own years of ministry on-site, and followed by decades as a watcher and advocate, Reg will move you to gratitude, to worship, to mission.”
Miriam Adeney, author of Kingdom without Borders: The Untold Story of Global Christianity, endorses Reimer’s book with these words: “I have been waiting for this book. What a tantalizing mystery Vietnam is. The long heritage of the people. The trauma of war. Today’s hot economy. The continuing legacy of Marxist persecution. And, through it all, the church of Jesus Christ. What does it mean to be a Christian in this land? How have believers inside and outside the country offered wise witness, service, and advocacy? This book tells the story in solid context. Details never before revealed come to light.”
>> Learn more or purchase from William Carey Library for US$10.39. Other recent WCL titles include Translating Christ: The Memoirs of Herman Peter Aschmann, Wycliffe Bible Translator, by Hugh Steven.
>> Live in Southern California? Join an all-day celebration of the centennial of the Protestant Church in Vietnam planned for July 2 in Garden Grove. See also Big Crowd Celebrates 100 Years of Protestantism and Protestant Church Group Fetes 100th Anniversary (Viet Nam News).
WEBSITE: The Long View on Current Events and Trends Affecting Missions
Source: The Long View
Want a brief sketch of what’s going on in West Africa that might influence how we pray, think, give, and serve? Or maybe East Asia’s on your mind. Mobilizer and information curator Justin Long recently updated his helpful regional overview pages. Here are the direct links:
>> From the same site: I Want to Talk about Being a Missionary is an online application form that allows you to communicate basic information to a multiple mission agencies.
ARTICLES: Encouraging Stories of Church Planting Movements
Source: Mission Frontiers
Did you see the March-April edition of Mission Frontiers? You can read these interesting and encouraging articles (and others) online:
Someone Has to Be First: The Power of Precedent and Promise, by Steve Smith
Church Planting Movements among Hindu Peoples, by B.D.B. Moses
Church Planting Movements among Muslim Peoples, by Kevin Greeson
A Church Planting Movement in Cuba, by Kurt Nelson and Bob Garrett
An American Adaptation of Church Planting Movement Principles, by Jeff Sundell
A Church Planting Movement Unfolding in Uganda, by David Garrison and Bill Smith
>> Learn the story behind the world’s fastest growing church-planting movement and how it can happen in your community in Steve Smith and Ying Kai’s book T4T: A Discipleship Re-revolution and its companion website. With so much effort put into posting extra materials, it’s hard to find a simple description of the book, but I have it on good authority that it’s worth the read! See a pre-release excerpt here.
BOOKS: New Hudson Taylor Biography and Others
Sources: P&R Publishing and others
Hudson Taylor: Gospel Pioneer to China, by Vance Christie. Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R Publishing, 208 pages.
This faithful and readable biography, first published in 1999, explores Taylor’s life from his parents’ dedication of their unborn son to be a missionary in China to his death at the CIM mission house in Changsha.
It should be acknowledged that similar treatments of this material exist, as well as more thorough ones. Many are available from OMF Books. My favorite remains John Pollock’s more extensive Hudson Taylor and Maria. Pollock is also the author of The Cambridge Seven, which explores the early lives and calling of a group of young men who would follow in Taylor’s footsteps.
Vance Christie has also written biographies of David Brainerd and John and Betty Stam. His book Women of Faith and Courage, to be released in September, profiles Susanna Wesley, Fanny Crosby, Catherine Booth, Mary Slessor, and Corrie ten Boom.
>> Purchase Hudson Taylor: Gospel Pioneer to China for US$9.99 from Christian Book Distributors (or elsewhere).
>> Readers, what are your favorite missionary biographies, and why? Feel free to leave a comment on our website.
WEBSITE: MisLinks Web Directory
Source: MisLinks
MisLinks is a web-based directory focused on offering helpful links to web-based resources for missionaries, mission pastors, teachers, researchers, students of mission, and mission agencies. Begun in 1997, MisLinks is developed and maintained by Scott Moreau of Wheaton College and Mike O’Rear of Global Mapping International (GMI).
It’s easier than it used to be to find things on your own, and hard to keep something like this up to date. Yet MisLinks recently had some TLC from our friends at GMI and is more useful than ever. Find ministries, publishers, maps, videos, statistics, data-mining tools, articles, a specialized search engine, and lots more.
>> Visit MisLinks.
EVENTS: Upcoming Webinars
Source: Missions Catalyst Events Calendar
July 12 – Webinar: Islamic “Insider” Movements – Appreciation and Concern (online). LeaderLink seminar from CrossGlobal Link, featuring L.D. Waterman of Pioneers.
August 18 – Webinar: Reset Dialogue Feed-Forward Report (online). Sponsored by The Mission Exchange, reporting on regional meetings to explore “deep change” in mission. All this is in preparation for the 2011 North American Mission Leaders Conference (September 29 to October 1).
August 25 – Webinar: Mission Strategy and Evaluation: Formulas and Faith – Submitting Metrics to the Light of Christ (online). Sponsored by The Mission Exchange and featuring Pete Holzmann of the International Christian Technologists Association.
>> Take a look at the Missions Catalyst Events Calendar and help us populate it.
Marti Smith is a writer, speaker, and project manager for Pioneers. Since the mid-90′s she has helped prepare cultural research teams and sent them out to explore unreached communities and mobilize efforts to serve these groups. Marti manages and publishes Missions Catalyst and is the author of Through Her Eyes, a book about the lives of missionary women in the Muslim world.
