Made for the Journey - By Elisabeth Elliot

Made for the Journey by Elizabeth Elliot is an account of her first year as a missionary to Ecuador.  I've read it before as it was previously published as These Strange Ashes. 

Elliot started her missionary full of excitement and triumphal expectation.  She was heading out the jungle to attempt to learn the Colorado Indian language in order to reduce it to writing and translate the Bible into that language. There is a note of underlying criticism throughout of the 'traditional' missionary way of doing things. Having started her work, she fights to have success in even figuring out the language.  She combats laziness in herself, but does start making some progress with the language.  Then everything falls apart.  People die, in tragic ways, including her main language informant.  She has difficulty continuing the study, but does have a good amount of language information to leave with those who would stay while she moved on to different work.  And then, after she leaves, the suitcase she entrusted to the missionary left behind with all (yes, ALL) of the language information is stolen and never recovered.  All of her work seemingly for nothing.

Elliot grappled with the thought, does God actually want these people saved? She came face to face with the sovereignty of God.  As she comments, "Faith's most severe tests come not when we see nothing but when we see a stunning array of evidence that seems to prove our faith vain." Now, I want to note here that though Elliot seems to believe in the overall sovereignty of God, she seems to have some trouble with the particular sovereignty of God, God's work inside of us. At the beginning of the book, in contemplating mankind she says, "Why did He give them in the first place freedom of will, power to choose, when surely He knew that their choices would be evil?...The power to exercise the will has been delegated to us and God will not usurp it."  But God does usurp our wills.  Changing someone into a completely new person is a very drastic act, a very personally invasive act. When we become Christians God changes our will, He makes us New Creations (2 Corinthians 5:17), we are taken out of slavery to sin and we become the slaves of God(Romans 6:22).  I think that Elliot unconsciously acknowledges this in her writings as she seems to contradict herself in places.

There are a few other things I had trouble with, for instance, she talks about the hard part of a missionary trying to figure out how to convert people to Christianity without changing their culture.  I don't completely understand this fear of changing the culture of those we witness to.  Yes, we don’t want to convert people to our ethnic culture, but the culture of those who convert to Christianity will inevitably change. For instance, If people have a culture where they do not wear clothes, they will find in the Bible that God is the One who instituted the wearing of clothing. They will realize that wearing clothing is an acknowledgement of humanity's fallenness. That after the Fall, public nakedness is presented in the Bible as a shameful thing.  Even after we become Christians, though our inner man is renewed, our outward flesh is not yet glorified (2 Cor 4:16, Rom 8:10-11,23).  Though, interestingly, it looks as though clothing will be worn even in the New Heaven and new earth (Rev 6:11, 7:9).  Any practice of any particular culture that is not in accordance with God's will, will disappear in the lives of people who grow in Christlikeness.  And that's not a bad thing.

That said, I still really liked this book.  I just needed to get those things out of my system.  Elliot writes very, very well and really pulls you into the account. You feel as though you are in the jungle with her, experiencing her excitement, exhaustion and confusion. You can "see" and "feel", as it were, the jungle around you and the strange sites and the different people she comes in contact with, her descriptions are so vivid. She portrays clearly her own bewilderment with the acts of God in her work as a missionary, but then pulls the perspective back to submission to God's sovereignty and rightness, whether or not one sees the "why" or the "rightness" of things, we believe in the righteousness of the God who allowed them and so submit. I'll end with a quote from the book, "Faith, prayer, and obedience are our requirements.  We are not offered in exchange immunity and exemption from the world's woes.  What we are offered has to do with another world altogether."

Many thanks to the folks at Revell Reads (A division of Baker Publishing Group) for sending me a free review copy of this book! (My review did not have to be favorable)

My Rating:  5 out of 5 Stars

*****

This book may be purchased at Christianbook.com and Amazon.com

The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church: And the Causes Which Hinder It - By Roland Allen

The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church by Roland Allen is a rather short but very thought provoking book.  In it, he somewhat implicitly asks the question, Who builds the Church? Leading to that thought, he critiques our method of Evangelization, are we doing it right? Do we need to organize the expansion of the church?  Do we need to establish mission stations, do we need missionaries who depend upon appeals for money for their support.  Will the Gospel spread if we don't purposefully come up with a plan to spread it?

Allen warns that what we are trying to do in our methods is to organize the work of God, to dictate where people will get saved and a time period in which their salvation must happen.  But as Allen points out, "For spiritual work spiritual organization is necessary; but can we create a spiritual organization of spiritual forces?  Only a divine intelligence can do that.  But we attempt to do the work of that divine intelligence; by fixing our stations and immobilizing our men….But to be God's agents in spiritual movements we must follow, not lead.  We want to lead, and, in trying to lead, we are simply left behind.  We say:  'Here we will have our buildings,' but the spiritual movements may be growing unseen by us in another place and by other means….The organization is always too late.  For we can organize the external results of a spiritual movement, but we cannot organize a spiritual movement. "

 One of the main points of the book  is that we don't need professional missionaries or Christian organizations dedicated to evangelism in order to spread the Gospel. The Church is the only Christian organization promoted by the Bible and therefore we should assume that the Gospel will be spread by means of its members working within that organization rather than in a parachurch organization.  How will the Gospel be spread in other countries? Well, Allen points out that God can use any way He wants. He can use a member of a local church in Lansing, Michigan going on a business trip to Ethiopia to spread the Gospel to an Ethiopian he meets in the process of doing whatever work he does there.  Let's say he talks to Ethiopian about the Gospel, the Ethiopian believes, and the American Christian gives him a Bible and goes back to America, as his business is done. But even though that American Christian leaves, the Ethiopian studies the Bible given to him, and spreads the Gospel to his fellow Ethiopians and thus a church can springs up, without there being any money having ever been particularly dedicated to spreading the Gospel in that area of Ethiopia.  Christ will build His church.

Interestingly, Allen points out that the "great commission" is not repeated in the epistles, and the Apostles did not make evangelistic appeals to the churches, they didn't give out calls for people volunteer to go into far away countries to spread the Gospel.  They apparently assumed that the Holy Spirit would bring individual church members to the right people and to the right places without their needing to organize the work or plan it out.  This may sound absurd today, but we don't need "Professional Missionaries", all Christians are missionaries.  He points out that people "have been obsessed with the idea that a man to express his missionary zeal properly must be a member of some other body within the Church and that church membership is not sufficient." 

 Oh, and by the way, this guy was writing in the 1920s! It is still so applicable to today, perhaps more so than even in his day.

Another thing that Allen critiques that really seems to be prominent in our day is the "Social Gospel"; warning that feeding the poor and helping the sick is not the Gospel itself. You really can't preach the Gospel without "using words".  "'Seek ye first,' said Christ, 'the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.' Putting intellectual enlightenment and social reform first in time, we have, by deeds which speak louder than words, taught men to seek 'all these things' first, and some today justify their action by identifying intellectual enlightenment and social and political reform with the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness.  To identify the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness with social and political doctrines always has led, and always must lead, to disaster.  The Kingdom of God and His Righteousness are founded in Christ, but these doctrines and reforms can easily be divorced from Christ, and are pursued by many who won no allegiance to Christ." To apply this today, ending world slavery, creating democracies and republics, is not the Gospel of Christ.  Somewhere in the book Allen says something along the lines of: A person can become a vibrant Christian and remain a slave, a person can be a dedicated, enthusiastic Christian and live in a country ruled by a dictator, a Christian can be a joyful Christian and be malnourished.  A change of outward circumstances is not the Gospel.  Christ is All-Sufficient, no matter what circumstance we find ourselves in.  Point to Him first, and anything else that He thinks is needed for the convert will come after their acceptance of Him.

Lastly, Allen greatly laments Christian organizations reliance upon money.  He notices that anytime missionaries see an opportunity for the further spread of the Gospel they make it seem as though it cannot take place without money. Christian organizations unconsciously teach their converts that money is the power of God unto salvation. "They continually bemoan the fact that their greatest difficulty, their most serious anxiety, their most bitter disappointment, arises from the lack of support from home.", lacking the support either of money or of more paid recruits, they assume that the work of God won't get done, not considering that perhaps God doesn't want it to happen their way, perhaps God wants that particular organization to close. That's one of the questions he asks, would a Christian organization be willing to close in order to further its cause if that's what it would take?

There are other things Allen addresses that are quite interesting and intriguing thoughts.  But, to sum up Allen's book:

He warns us that we are trying to make people into New Creations ourselves, essentially taking the job of the Holy Spirit into our own hands.  We don't need to make people moral before they can come to Christ, that will come afterward, we don't need to change people's surrounding  circumstances before they can be a vibrant Christian.  We don't need money to spread the Gospel. We don't need professional missionaries and Christian organizations to spread the Gospel. We don't need money to create a church.  Christ will build His church. 

 I highly recommend this book.

Many thanks to Wipf and Stock Publishers for sending me a free review copy of this book! (My review did not have to be favorable)

This book may be purchased at Amazon.com

My Rating:  5 out of 5 Stars

*****

God's Smuggler - Young Reader's Edition

God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew with John and Elizabeth Sherrill: Young Reader's Edition is quite an interesting read.

It gives you an overview of the life of 'Brother Andrew, as he later became known, he was a Bible smuggler.

Andrew, like everyone, did not start out life as a Christian, he was struggling with life-purpose into his early adulthood.  He became a Christian and had a growing desire for knowledge of the Word of God and an eagerness to put into practice what he learned and to share the Gospel with others.

After becoming a Christian, Andrew became aware of, and concerned with the peril of churches in countries that were under communist rule.  He found that the Bible, in many of those countries, was scarce and hard to obtain, despite the idea being touted by the communists that they promoted freedom of religion.  In some countries there were no Bibles being printed, in others there were plenty of Bibles available but hardly anyone was interested in owning one, and in one country the communists advertised that they were printing their own translation of the Bible, but they delayed its publication and did not allow any other publication of Bibles.  Andrew sees a ministry opportunity in this need for Bibles and starts smuggling Bibles into those countries.  This book details many of the ways that God protected Andrew and his co-workers in their getting the Bibles past the various country borders.

 I do need to mention a couple of things that I didn't feel comfortable with the prophetic 'impressions' that Andrew and other people had about certain things: Feeling positive that God would give a car, or getting a confident thought that God would not let authorities harm them on a certain day.  How does one know that one's confidence is in God at those moments and not merely in one's own feelings/desires? Perhaps this may be considered a drastic example, but what if I am locked up in jail for being a Christian and I'm not given any food.  I will  think that I need food, I may even have an impression that God will supply it, but what if it turns out that God wants me to starve, die and be with Him?  That was my problem, and the fact that Andrew never seemed to believe that God would ever say "no" to anything he asked (like getting a helpmeet for instance).  I know that they didn't mean it this way but it could come across to a kid as if God will give you any material, earth-based thing for which you ask. 

But other than those things I really liked the book.  One of my favorite parts to read was of a time before Andrew became a Bible smuggler.  He went to a missionary training school, and quite a unique one!  The school actually sounded like a real mission school based on faith in God and His provision rather than teaching potential missionaries to solicit people for funds and help.  "The real purpose of this training….is to teach our students that they can trust God to do what He said.  He would do……They cannot be effective if they are afraid or if they doubt that God really means what He says in His Word."   On their practice Evangelistic trips they would be sent out with only one pound, and would rely upon God to supply their needs and His supplying did not merely take the form of money, it also took the form of food and clothes being given at just the right time.  That seems to be a more biblical form of missionary activity than what one sees nowadays, and more faith-based.  I know that all missionaries are not like this, but many come across as if they focus on money  and the help of people   If they really are called to the mission field, God will give the needed supplies even without them going to people for help.   So I was very refreshed to see the perspective of the people in this book in regards to their trust in God to supply all their needs.

 I believe that I would have liked this account a lot as a kid and a teenager.  It was very well written, intriguing and it left me wanting more.  It is quite fascinating to see what God has done in the lives of other Christians and to see the various circumstances God put them in in order to conform them to the image of Christ and to bring the Gospel to other people.   I think that this was an abridgment of the original work and so one can probably find an unabridged copy of this account if one wants to learn more (which I will probably end up doing).

Many thanks to the folks at Cross Focused Reviews for the free review copy! 

A couple of the websites where one may purchase this book are Amazon.com and Christian Book Distributors