A Vision For Missions: A Book Review

This review will be based on Tom Well's A Vision for Missions. You can find this book here on amazon.

I checked this book out of my church library at the advice of my pastors, Bill Glenn and Jerry Dill. I was surprised to see how small a book it was (only 157pp).

The book is based around three things:
1) Tom's first thesis: "God is worthy to be known and proclaimed for who He is, and that fact is an important part of the missionary motive and message." (p 9)

2) Tom's second thesis: "Those who know the most about God are the most responsible and best equipped to tell of Him." (p 9)

3) A quote from Williams Carey: "It's taken from a talk Carey had with a Brahman in 1797. At that time Carey had not yet baptized his first convert. The Brahman was defending the worship of idols. Carey cited Acts 14:16 and 17:30.
       God formerly 'suffered all nations to walk in their own ways,' said Carey, 'but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent.'
       'Indeed,' said the [Brahman], 'I think God ought to repent for not sending the gospel sooner to us... If what you say is true, why  have I not heard of it before?'
     In brief, Carey says two things: 1) At one time it pleased God to keep back gospel from India. 2) God has His reasons for doing so." (p 12-13) 

After laying these three things before the reader, Tom goes on to explore the character of God in the two-thirds of the book. This was probably the most beneficial and wonderful part of the book for me. Some of the characteristics he talks about are The Graciousness of God (ch 7), God, Self-sufficient (ch 3), and God's Sovereign Power (ch 4). Tom makes it clear that God is God. We do not have to apologize for who our God is. All of these things are tied into God's heart for His created peoples. I had never thought about God being a missional God and what that truly and practically meant.

The last third of the book is about how William Carey, David Brainerd, and Henry Martyn specifically were influenced by the character of God in their missions and their attitudes about God.

I highly encourage you to read this book. Tom is to the point and blunt. His message is clear, strong, and he backs everything up with Scripture. I found it particularly encouraging and refreshing. If you want to understand the heart of God and learn more about His heart for the nations, this book is for you.

Our Witchdoctors Are Too Weak: A Book Review

For me, biographies are usually hit 'n' miss. I purchased a little biography of Eric Liddell for a few dollars at the missions conference I went to in St. Louis. It's probably the worst written bio I've ever read. Now, I love learning about missionaries and hearing about their work, but it was very poorly written. So poorly written I gave up reading the book about a third of the way into it.

When I was in high school, I read one called "Peace Child" by Don Richardson that I found amazing. I also remember my mom reading missionary biographies about William Carrey and George Mueller that made us cry or laugh at some points.

Our Witchdoctors Are Too Weak was fantastic. Davey Jank is a missionary/linguist with New Tribes in the Amazon working with the Wilo people.

I found the preface misleading, but the purpose of the book is revealing day to day struggles that Davey had. Things like trying to learn a culture nobody else had studied. Things like trying to figure out how the language's counting system worked. The struggles of a missionary and a linguist (yay!). He presents his linguistic struggles in non-linguist (for the most part) terms but still keeps it interesting and amusing for the trained linguist (or so I thought).

Davey is very witty in his presentation of some of his struggles. For instance, he has an entire chapter about his trouble with a particular suffix. But he presents it metaphorically. I laughed so hard during that particular chapter that I forced my brother to listen while I reread it.

I've never read a missionary biography quite like this one.
By far, the last couple chapters were my favorite. Davey is very honest about his feelings of inadequacy and, well, fear of sharing the Gospel with the Wilo people for the first time. I found it really encouraging. I'm not the only one who's gonna feel like they're in over their head.

2 Corinthians comes to mind: "Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life" (3:4-6).

It's not about us. It's about God. He chooses us for His own reasons. I also think He purposely chooses us because we are inadequate. He uses us to bring knowledge and His Spirit totally takes over from there.


You can purchase this book by following this link.