My new book, The Global Christian Adventure, is back from the printer. It tells some of my story, and it aims to give an overview of some important and often-overlooked aspects of following Jesus in the 21st Century. There are chapters on different cultures, how the gospel spreads, poverty, Islam, atheism, understanding and influencing our own culture, and the new global rules of engagement.
It seems to me that, in spite of the ready availability of virtually limitless information on the Internet, Christians who live in the West typically fail to understand and appreciate how the rest of the world lives. Ironically, as people become wealthier and more powerful, with more access to information, they tend to become more insular and more ignorant of the realities of the world.
The book is an attempt to address some of these blind spots, and to encourage followers of Jesus to seek radically different goals for their lives. The message of Jesus is hard to discover in a world of cheeseburgers and non-stop television. It’s much easier to discover when you understand that the vast majority of people in the world are very different from yourself, and that Jesus calls you to a dangerous life serving and befriending some of those people.