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.

Communicating God's Word in a Complex World reaches out to the growing number of missionaries, pastors, Bible translators and teachers, mission and theological educators and students dealing with communicating the gospel. This is increasingly difficult in today's pluralist and global contexts. What was God's message, and how has spreading that message changed through the generations? The answer to that question requires a hermeneutical process that seeks to understand the biblical text and the context in which it was originally presented. R. Daniel Shaw and Charles Van Engen say that contemporary proclaimers of God's word can model their approach after that of the writers of scripture, who reinterpreted and restated their received texts for their audiences. Thus, Gospel communication is impacted by the way humans know God. This, in turn, is informed by contexts. Communicating God's Word in a Complex World draws lessons from the biblical authors themselves as a guide for how best to present God's message.