Description: How can we be the salt, light and yeast that Scripture exhorts us to be when faced with despair? How can we live as active heroes when others expect us to be passive victims? The expert contributors of this book delve into these issues to give churches direction in these disorienting times.
Brief description: JONATHAN ANDREWS has been researching and writing about issues that underlie the day-to-day lives of Middle Eastern Christian communities since 2003.
Review Quotes:
In this volume are found some of the most profound reflections you will ever read on the situation of Christians in the "disorienting times" of the Middle East today. The diversity of prophetic voices, mainly from the region itself, reflects the rich experience of those who attended the 2017 annual Middle East Consultation in Beirut. Here is brought together the very best in biblically and theologically informed reflection on the challenges and opportunities of Christian witness in this troubled region. As key themes are explored - persecution, emigration and minoritization - we are confronted with the raw reality of suffering and despair; and there are also some necessary correctives to prevailing perceptions of the situation. But overall there are grounds for hope and even joy in the continuing calling to followers of Christ to be his agents of transformation in the Middle East.
Anthony Peck
General Secretary, European Baptist Federation
The Church in Disorienting Times offers unique regional dialogue on the problems of suffering, emigration, hopelessness and being a religious minority. Personal stories are combined with contextual conversations to offer the global church rare insights into discipleship, faith and mission in difficult contexts of the Middle East. Highly recommended not only for Christians in persecuted countries, but also for those living in contexts of religious freedom such as in the West.
Kang-San Tan
General Director, BMS World Mission
One reason the gospel seems strange to so many people in the west - including Christians - is that its original hearers were mostly sore afflicted: politically oppressed, economically marginalized, physically spent. The gospel was - and is - good news to people who need more than merely good advice: investment advice, marriage advice, advice on how to vote or choose consumer products or decide which exotic locale to vacation in. To get a sense of how the gospel actually rocks peoples' worlds - their conflicted, shattered, dangerous, hungry worlds - take a read here. Jonathan Andrews has beautifully captured in these pages the shape and texture and many voices of a remarkable conference that took place in Lebanon in the summer of 2017. Here men and women speak candidly and wisely about the cost, sometimes fatal, of discipleship, and about the risks, often brutal, of speaking good news. They wrestle with questions of faithfulness in the face of torture and imprisonment. They talk about a joy and peace in Christ that defies earthly explanation. They speak of a hope worth suffering and even dying for. Buy a copy, and listen in. But be warned: it will mess with you. It will shatter all versions of the gospel that reduce it to merely good advice. Prepare yourself to meet the real thing.
Mark Buchanan
Associate Professor, Pastoral Theology, Ambrose University, Calgary, Canada
Author of Your Church Is Too Safe