Sources: Kregel Publications, B&H Publishing<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat do you think about missionary hero stories?\u201d I asked you in July, and many of you acknowledged their limits but defended the value of missionary biographies as a whole, at least, you know, \u201cthe good ones.\u201d Here are two I read in August and am happy to put in that category. Interestingly, Katharine was born in 1938 and Greg in 1940, so these two mission pioneers lived through many of the same events.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You\u2019ve Got Libya: A Life Serving in the Muslims World<\/a>, by Greg Livingstone. Monarch Books, 2014 (later republished by Kregel, 2018). 320 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As we mentioned in a previous edition, Frontiers founder and mobilizer extraordinaire Greg Livingstone passed away in July. But more than a decade before, he wrote an autobiography. I\u2019d always meant to read it. After I shared the sad news of his death with a fellow Livingstone fan, he sent me a copy of the book (after re-reading it, of course!) What a great read. Don Richardson called it \u201can utterly real, high-impact, sham-free life story\u201d and Phil Parshall called it \u201cA hard book to put down!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is anything but a hero story, as the author is well aware of his limitations and failures and shares them freely. Many memoirs falter by including too many unrelated anecdotes and dropping too many names. Here, I thought the stories and relationships added to its charm and brought it to life. Let me know if you agree.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Katharine Barnwell: How One Woman Revolutionized Modern Missions<\/a>, by Jordan K. Monson. B&H Publishing, 2025. 304 pages.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unless you\u2019re a Bible translator yourself, you\u2019ve probably never heard of a British mission leader named Katy Barnwell. But her influence has been tremendous, and her strategies for translation, rooted in her experiences as a translator in Nigeria, have brought the Bible to millions of people in thousands of languages. This book is both the story of one remarkable woman and the story of Bible translation, with an emphasis on the essential hand-off of the job to groups of local Christians rather than highly trained outsiders. So, it provides a refreshing contrast to some of the missionary-as-hero stories that make me squirm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A few caveats: The author\u2019s awe for his subject and his overuse of footnotes and personal asides make this book less focused and readable than it might have been, but perhaps a better resource for anyone who wants to dig deeper. And it\u2019s still a good read, especially to those interested in modern mission trends and why things are the way they are. I learned a great deal. Listen to Monson talk about Barnwell on the Working for the Word podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sources: Kregel Publications, B&H Publishing \u201cWhat do you think about missionary hero stories?\u201d I asked you in July, and many of you acknowledged their limits but defended the value of missionary biographies as a whole, at least, you know, \u201cthe good ones.\u201d Here are two I read in August and am happy to put in … Continue reading Mission Biographies: Greg Livingstone and Katharine Barnwell<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resource-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14105"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14114,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14105\/revisions\/14114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}