If there is one book you are going to read to understand the deep currents affecting Christian life and witness today, this is it. Paradigm Shifts in Christian Witness enlists the world's foremost observers of global Christianity in the task of discerning in short, incisive essays the most important patterns and paradigm shifts as the Christian movement matures beyond both colonialism and post-colonialism as a world faith translated into every culture on earth. It also celebrates the life and work of Charles A. kraft, one of the foremost cultural anthropologists, a man whose insights have helped a generation of cross-cultural missioners and church workers understand the processes involved in mission and the growth of world Christianity.

The Diaconal Church presents a highly topical debate about an innovative model of church described in David Clark's book Breaking the Mould of Christendom. Thirteen scholars from different denominations discuss the themes which underpin the model of the diaconal church. In the final chapter, Clark argues that the diaconal church has a contribution of paramount importance to make to sacred and secular institutions alike.

Gallagher and Hertig have collected a range of seminal articles and papers that offer students insight into thinking by the makers of modern mission and world Christian studies. This is a priceless book for the classroom, bringing between two covers the most important reflections on these issues in our age.

This marvelous book answers the prayers of teachers who have struggled for a generation with the problem of providing their students a resource that will offer an entre into the best thinking on the nature of mission and the emergence of world Christianity.

In a world in which resources are unjustly distributed, identities are under threat and solidarity is fragile, the toughest task facing humanity is the quest for community. Yet the contribution of the church to that task is undermined because its message and organization remain stuck in the past. Christians fail to grasp that in the gifts of the kingdom community - life, liberation, love and learning - they hold the key to what the search for community is all about. This book describes those gifts and how a servant church, through the creation of its diaconate as an order of mission, might offer a fragmented world new hope.The Methodist Church in Britain is taken as a model of what could be achieved.

Mission in the world of work has been neglected by the churches within the UK for decades. The Kingdom at Work Project addresses this crippling failure. It sets out a new and comprehensive model of mission for the transformation of the workplace. The model is founded on a radical theology of community and related spirituality which guide and empower an innovative process of discernment and intervention. The last covers individual and collective action, dialogue, the use of symbols, prayer and worship. Mentoring, the role of chaplains and ministers in secular employment, and the responsibilities of the gathered church are key issues covered in depth. This book is the most thorough and imaginative exploration of mission in the world of work to appear for many years.

The Provocative Church offers a liberating understanding of evangelism as a corporate activity, in which all the gifts needed to enact the life of the Kingdom - to stir people into asking, 'What does this mean?' - are spread throughout the whole Church. It encourages the development of a theology of conversion.

Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, feted by politicians, the Church and the world's media, Mother Teresa of Calcutta appears to be on the fast track to sainthood. But what makes Mother Teresa so divine? In this frank and damning expose of the Teresa cult, Hitchens details the nature and limits of one woman's mission to help the world's poor. He probes the source of the heroic status bestowed upon an Albanian nun whose only declared wish was to serve God. He asks whether Mother Teresa's good works answered any higher purpose than the need of the world's privileged to see someone, somewhere, doing something for the Third World. He unmasks pseudo-miracles, questions Mother Teresa's fitness to adjudicate on matters of sex and reproduction, and reports on a version of saintly ubiquity which affords genial relations with dictators, corrupt tycoons and convicted frauds. Is Mother Teresa merely an essential salve to the conscience of the rich West, or an expert PR machine for the Catholic Church? In its caustic iconoclasm and unsparing wit, The Missionary Position showcases the devastating effect of Hitchens' writing at its polemical best. A dirty job but someone had to do it. By the end of this elegantly written, brilliantly argued piece of polemic, it is not looking good for Mother Teresa. - Sunday Times

This book is more than family history. It will open your eyes to how the British subjugated their colonies and Christian missions were used to promote British trade. It also deals with the fallouts from the clash between Christianity and local (Igbo) customs. It derives from the handwritten personal account of one of the early Nigerian Christian missionaries and explains some of these and more. Feed your curiosity!

"What are Christians to make of their mission in an pluralistic world?" asks Paul F. Knitter, author of the landmark work in interfaith dialogue No Other Name? As a recognized scholar and participant in interfaith dialogue, Knitter is in a unique position to explore the key concept of what Christian mission must entail in a world that will remain a world of many religious faiths for the foreseeable future. From the first chapter of Jesus and the Other Names, which recounts his own theological and dialogical odyssey, Knitter constructs what he calls a "correlational, globally-responsible theology of religions" as a necessary correction to traditional pluralist and exclusivist approaches. By anticipating and addressing his critics - both conservative and liberal - Knitter makes a powerful argument for a reconstruction of mission faithful to the Christian imperative and dynamically attuned to the plurality of the world. Jesus and the Other Names will give pause to those who believe Christian mission can be carried on as it was in the modern era. Sure to inspire debate as well as dialogue it offers a more humble, but perhaps more "Christic", postmodern approach to mission in the new millennium that has little to do with earthly glory and nothing to do with the sense of cultural superiority that has so often - and often so tragicallyaccompanied modern missionary movements. Theologians, missiologists, Christian historians, can all benefit from its thoughtful and timely message.