BOOKS: Three Tools for Your Toolbox

Source: GMI

Our friends at GMI have recently published three short, informative books that might be good tools for you as you seek out, mobilize, and equip tomorrow’s kingdom workers:

1. Searching to Serve: Recruiting Kingdom Workers Online, by James Nelson with Carla Foote. GMI Books, 2014. 78 pages.

Based on 2013 research previously published in GMI’s Agency Web Review report, Searching to Serve describes five kinds of people who look online for mission service opportunities and what they like and are looking for on mission agency websites. It provides many simple suggestions for tailoring your website (and social media activity) for various kinds of seekers in order to attract, engage, and retain the interest of the greatest number of the most qualified candidates. Very practical.

» Learn more or get the book from GMI for US$9.95; US$4.99 for the ebook edition.

2. Seeing Your World: 10 Key Global Shifts That Will Change the Way You Serve, by Andy Butcher. GMI Books, 2014. 70 pages.

Trends in migration, religion, education, technology, and more are transforming people, nations, and the ways the Great Commission is carried out. Butcher summarizes key points from GMI’s Global Briefing presentation and illustrates each trend with quotes and commentary from a different Christian leader, explaining how these shifts are forcing them to rethink the ways they serve. Illustrated with helpful charts and maps.

Seeing Your World is designed to be affordable and readable enough to give as a gift or use as a conversation starter, though readers may also want to also dig deeper into each subject.

» Learn more or get the book from GMI for US$9.99; $4.99 for the ebook edition.

3. Crossing Cultures with Ruth: Lessons on Thriving in Missions, by James Nelson. GMI Books, 2014. 177 pages.

What helps cross-cultural workers, those who launch out and say “your people shall be my people,” transition well and come to a place of effective ministry? Author James Nelson finds lessons for contemporary cross-cultural workers in the ancient book of Ruth, seeing in Ruth’s story many of the same strengths that make missionaries successful.

“The more I studied the book of Ruth,” says Nelson, “I began to see her as a teacher, mentor, and even companion in cross-cultural service. For interns and new missionaries, Ruth could be a memorable role model for the ministry techniques they were learning.”

Crossing Cultures with Ruth also includes insights from Nelson’s years of work researching “fruitful practices” of church planters working in the Muslim world (also documented in From Seed to Fruit and Where There Was No Church). I found this book winsome and intriguing and am already scheming ways to use the contents as I teach and write.

» Learn more or get the book from GMI for US$14.99; US$9.99 for the ebook edition.

Think you can use all three? Contact GMI about bulk discounts. “The idea is that all three of these resources together help an agency to recruit online better, engage new recruits with the global realities of mission, and help new missionaries prepare for cross-cultural service,” says president and CEO Jon Hirsh.

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