by K.P. Yohannan

This can be claimed as a free book if you click on the advertisement on our home page.
Addressed predominantly to the American market this book is still very applicable to the UK. Originally published in 1986 it has been updated and reprinted many times since making it as relevant to the present day as it was all those years ago.
The purpose of the book is to attract financial support for the national missionaries of Asia rather than supporting Western agencies who require so much more money and are relatively ineffectual. K.P.Yohannan spells out his vision of evangelism within his own country of India and in the other countries of Asia who so desperately need to hear about Jesus and the love of our God. He then tells us about some of these men, who with their wives and families live in very humble circumstances alongside the people they are working to evangelise. He is not decrying the work of Western missionaries who have been instrumental in setting up churches in so many places, he is just saying that it is now time for native missionaries to take the work forward and that can only be done with financial support from the West. Understandably he has found the affluence and the profligate ways of westerners hard to live with, their propensity for wanting financial control beyond what is reasonable and yet cannot move his God given vision foreward without Western involvement.
A very readable plea from the heart that has done and will in the future touch many lives.

Review by Mary Bartholomew (24/01/12)

Paperback
Publisher: Gospel for Asia
Published: 1986
ISBN: 978-1-595-89061-0

View this book on its own page >>

Read this book?

Review it! >>

Safely Home

- 10th Anniversary Edition

by Randy Alcorn

Originally published 2001
Ben Fielding and Li Quan meet at Harvard when Quan manages to get to America to attend the University. They become room mates and firm friends, and Ben reintroduces Quan to Christianity, Quan having been raised a Christian but having turned from the faith through feelings of inadequacy. As the years go by they lose contact, but the company with which Ben is a senior manager wishes to increase its production output and sales in China, so Ben offers to go to China to stay with his old friend and to research the local market. They meet again but Quan's role in life is not as Ben expected, and Quan is disappointed that Ben has lost his faith. Not just a fast paced, almost thriller style story, but also an examination of the ups and downs of belief, evangelism, the social and political situation in modern China, and the horrifying persecution of Chinese Christians not known about by the majority in the West. A timely new edition when the world frequently hears about the ‘rise of China’ and how it out performs Western economies.

Review by Carole Burrows (09/01/12)

Paperback
Price: £9.99
Publisher: Tyndale House Publishers
Published: August 2011
ISBN: 978-1-414-34855-1

View this book on its own page >>

Read this book?

Review it! >>

Change(d) Agents

- Nine Years in Nepal

by Nick and Ros Henwood

The price includes post and packing when ordered in the UK from their website
Nick, who trained as a doctor, and Ros, a language graduate, take turns describing how they arrived in Nepal to serve the people and the journey they made in their lives before arriving in Kathmandu and their first impressions of the country that was to become their home for nine years. Originally they were linked to an ‘Umbrella Organisation’ comprising several Christian agencies. With them they spent the first few months learning the language and coming to realise how much they had got to learn about the lives and culture of the Nepalese they would be working with and for.
First one, then the other, describe their day to day lives, their trials and tribulations, the friends they made and the places they lived while at the same time bringing up two young daughters.
This is a very readable book of life in the mission field, of the changing political scenes as Nick tried to promote community healthcare in a land where bureaucracy is taken to frustrating extremes, bribery is expected but despite all there is a thirst for Christ. As Dr Andrew Fergusson says on the back of the book, they were expecting to be ‘change agents’ but found themselves changed.

Visit the author's website >>

Review by Mary Bartholomew (29/11/11)

Paperback
Price: £7.99
Publisher: Grosvenor House Publishing dist. Gardners Books
Published: 2011
ISBN: 978-1-908-44756-2

View this book on its own page >>

Read this book?

Review it! >>

My Seventh Monsoon

- A Himalayan Journey of Faith & Mission

by Naomi Reed

This book is the word equivalent of a picture scrapbook looking back and charting the highs and lows of living in mission. It is beautifully written with some wonderful and honest sections on the differing seasons that the author lives through, seasons of joy and hardship, the seasons of new growth and rainy seasons. It charts also the intense focus of spirituality that can be fostered in these times and in the act of living in a foreign land and in mission. There are beautiful snapshots in it of people encountered, of children born, of illnesses faced, of landscapes witnessed, or rainy blurred scenery and intense backlit moments of joy – and these snapshots are not the ones in the wonderful pictures section of the book but rather in the words on the page.
If you want a quick but keen glimpse into living a foreign mission – In this case in the Himalayas - then this book is certainly one not to miss. Indeed if you just want a book to read that tells a story of choosing and living a life of mission and growing a family then this book isn’t at all a bad one for that either.

Review by Melanie Carroll (26/11/11)

Paperback
Price: £8.99
Publisher: Authentic Media
Published: 08 April 2011
ISBN: 978-1-860-24828-3

View this book on its own page >>

Read this book?

Review it! >>

God is Red

- The Secret Story of How Christianity Survived and Flourished in Communist China

by Liao Yiwu

‘Liao Yiwu is the most censored contemporary writer in China today.’ (page v)
Yiwu writes about the church in China as a ‘non-believer’, and in this sense his perspective is that of an outsider, giving him an unique perspective on it. The book’s eighteen chapters span the time between 2002 and 2010, though they also reflect on the past experiences of those concerned. The style of writing is that of reflective essays based on interviews with those mentioned in the pages.
These are interviews with real people and their life stories are presented concisely and movingly - their steadfast loyalty to Christ is set alongside their fears and failures. Liao Yiwu opens a window onto the resurgence of Christianity, exploring it in the context of the brutal repression of the past, the continuing persecution of the church in the present and the countries move toward modernisation and consumerism.
It is in many ways a roll call of every day heroes, people like Wang Zhiming who was executed in 1973. He is one of the ten twentieth century martyrs honoured with statues in Westminster Abbey. Wang’s story is told by his son, himself a church leader in China.
This is a book that will move, challenge and encourage the reader.

Review by John Macaulay (24/11/11)

Hardback
Price: £18.99
Publisher: Harper One from Gardners Books
Published: September 2011
ISBN: 978-0-062-07846-9

View this book on its own page >>

Read this book?

Review it! >>

The Power to Save

- A History of the Gospel in China

by Bob Davey

China sometimes appears mysterious and even threatening to those of us in the West. Few are aware of the unabated growth of the Christian Church in almost every Chinese province. Bob Davey traces the exciting and complex history of Chinese Christianity from the arrival of the first missionary to the present day. Here are Robert Morrison and Hudson Taylor. Here are Chinese leaders such as Wang Mingdao and Marcus Cheng, Watchman Nee, Li Tianen and many others, names known and unknown in the West. These were the leaders who worked tirelessly to evangelise and who, in spite of opposition, persecution, prison and labour camps, saw the unconquerable power of the Gospel change millions of lives. Davey has provided a well-researched and comprehensive description of events, movements and key people in the development of China and the Chinese Church over the past 150 years. His easy to read style made this reviewer want to keep on reading. Here is the exciting story of what God can do in the most difficult and unpromising circumstances. Highly recommended.

Review by Graham Wise (24/11/11)

Paperback
Price: £9.99
Publisher: EP (Evangelical Press)
Published: 2011
ISBN: 978-0-852-34743-0

View this book on its own page >>

Read this book?

Review it! >>

Mugabe and the White African by Ben Freeth
ISBN: 978-0-745-95546-9 Price: £8.99	Published: 17 June 2011
More Information about this book >>

Finding Oasis - Powerful Stories From the Slums of Mumbai by Clare Nonhebel
ISBN: 978-1-850-78859-1 Price: £8.99	Published: August 2010
More Information about this book >>

Our Witch Doctors Are Too Weak - The Rebirth of an Amazon Tribe by Davey & Marie Jank
ISBN: 978-0-857-21008-1 Price: £8.99	Published: 10 October 2010
More Information about this book >>

Tainted Legacy - Islam, Colonialism and Slavery in Northern Nigeria by Yusufu Turaki
ISBN: 978-0-982-52180-9 Price: £9.99	Published: October 2010
More Information about this book >>

Africa Theology on the Way - Current Conversations Edited by Diane B. Stinton
ISBN: 978-0-281-06251-5 Price: £12.99	Published: 15 July 2010
More Information about this book >>

In Japan the Crickets Cry - How Could Steve Metcalf Forgive the Japanese by Ronald Clements & Steve Metcalf
ISBN: 978-1-854-24970-8 Price: £8.99	Published: August 2010
More Information about this book >>

The Compact Guide to World Religions by Sean O’Callaghan
ISBN: 978-0-745-95318-2 Price: £10.99	Published: 20 August 2010
More Information about this book >>

Killing Fields, Living Fields - Faith in Cambodia by Don Cormack
ISBN: 978-1-845-50511-0 Price: £8.99	Published: 2009
More Information about this book >>

Song of the Nightingale by Helen Berhane with Emma Newrick
ISBN: 978-1-850-78864-5 Price: £7.99	Published: 2009
More Information about this book >>

Merchant to Romania - Business in Post-Communist Eastern Europe by Jeri Little
ISBN: 978-1-846-25171-9 Price: £8.00	Published: 2009
More Information about this book >>

Look What God Is Doing! - True Stories of People Around the World Changed by the Gospel by Dick Eastman
ISBN: 978-0-800-79474-3 Price: £8.99	Published: 2009
More Information about this book >>

In Strength Not Our Own - A Maasai Medical Miracle by Georgie Orme & Irene Howat
ISBN: 978-1-845-50334-5 Price: £7.99	Published: March 2010
More Information about this book >>

My Father, Maker of the Trees - How I Survived the Rwandan Genocide by Eric Irivuzumugabe
ISBN: 978-0-801-01320-1 Price: £9.99	Published: 2009
More Information about this book >>

Ashram Diary - In India With Bede Griffiths by Thomas Matus
ISBN: 978-1-846-94161-0 Price: £11.99	Published: Autumn 2009
More Information about this book >>

Browse the archive:-

All books reviewed in this section, indexed by title:-
A B C D F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W 4