Mission Legacies was inspired by the popular series of biographies from the International Bullentin of Missionary Research (IBMR). Seventy-eight of these legacies have been edited and gathered in this major reference and resource for church, libraries, students, and scholars. Mission Legacies tells the story of the missionary movement both in its classical achievements and in its time-bound weaknesses. These biographies are solid, critical assessments of their subjects. Their authors are a "who's who" of church historians, carefully chosen for their mastery of the life and significance of the leaders featured and the context in which they worked.

Greg Livingstone has spent a lifetime planting churches in Muslim communities and can testify to the life-changing power of the gospel in even the most unpromising circumstances. This is his autobiography. Unwanted at birth and born out of wedlock no-one would have considered that Greg Livingstone would become a pioneer in missions to unreached Muslim peoples. You've Got Libya charts his journey and his adventures. This first-hand narrative is full of compelling humor and self-depreciating honesty as Livingstone travels all over the world proclaiming the Gospel. The result is a page turning tour de force that urges the reader to pursue God unreservedly and to join with Him in the adventure of pursuing the lost. Greg's burden for the millions of Muslims who had no gospel witness amongst them led to the launching of Frontiers, a mission agency focusing exclusively on church planting amongst Muslim communities. Today, Frontiers is a movement of more than 1,000 field workers in nearly 50 countries.

A total of 57 lectures of George Whitefield, one of the most celebrated preachers of England and the American colonies in the 18th century, are presented here. Together, these lectures offer a profound insight into an innovative and often controversial preacher. A man of immense gifts for expression, George Whitefield would commonly drive an audience to tears with his sincere expressions of faith. Pushing the boundaries of his era, Whitefield rebelled against church authority and claimed that God himself permitted that he preach itinerant indoors and in the open air. Whitefield rose from humble beginnings to become one of the most pivotal Christians of his era. Too poor to afford tutelage, the young Whitefield managed to avoid tuition by acting as a servant to other students; assisting them to wash; cleaning their quarters; and carrying their books and satchels. Such menial work appeared to fire George Whitefield's spirit; he converted to Christianity and fervently attended to his studies thereafter.

Although many refer to the American South as the "Bible Belt," the region was not always characterized by a powerful religious culture. In the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, religion-in terms both of church membership and personal piety-was virtually absent from southern culture. The late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, however, witnessed the astonishingly rapid rise of evangelical religion in the Upper South. Within just a few years, evangelicals had spread their beliefs and their fervor, gaining converts and building churches throughout Virginia and North Carolina and into the western regions. But what was it that made evangelicalism so attractive to a region previously uninterested in religion?
Monica Najar argues that early evangelicals successfully negotiated the various challenges of the eighteenth-century landscape by creating churches that functioned as civil as well as religious bodies. The evangelical church of the late eighteenth century was the cornerstone of its community, regulating marriages, monitoring prices, arbitrating business, and settling disputes. As the era experienced substantial rifts in the relationship between church and state, the disestablishment of colonial churches paved the way for new formulations of church-state relations. The evangelical churches were well-positioned to provide guidance in uncertain times, and their multiple functions allowed them to reshape many of the central elements of authority in southern society. They assisted in reformulating the lines between the "religious" and "secular" realms, with significant consequences for both religion and the emerging nation-state.
Touching on the creationof a distinctive southern culture, the position of women in the private and public arenas, family life in the Old South, the relationship between religion and slavery, and the political culture of the early republic, Najar reveals the history behind a religious heritage that remains a distinguishing mark of American society.