Garenganze

Frederich Stanley Arnot was among the first of the Plymouth Brethren to take the gospel to Africa in the late 19th-century missionary expansion across the Kalahari desert, opening Protestant missions in Barotseland, Angola and Katanga in the 1880s.

Frederich Stanley Arnot was among the first of the Plymouth Brethren to take the gospel to Africa in the late 19th-century missionary expansion across the Kalahari desert, opening Protestant missions in Barotseland, Angola and Katanga in the 1880s.

It's sometimes difficult for those of us steeped in the comforts and ease of today’s modern world to grasp what a life of radical faith can look like. What was ministry like for missionaries living a hundred years ago? What happened "back in the day" when brave missionary pioneers forsook all to follow the calling of God into completely unknown territories? How did God’s faithfulness sustain them? This collection of 24 short stories of missionary adventures from around the globe is a cold shower for a sleeping Church. It reminds us of the hefty price missionaries must be willing to pay to prepare previously untilled soil for the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It also drives home this astounding truth: that God provides for those whom He calls — even when things don’t go as planned. Filled with incredible front-line stories, including both victories and defeats, this book will leave you with a newfound respect and gratitude for kingdom forerunners whom God used to open doors to previously unreached people groups. It will also leave you to grapple with a piercing question: How big is your God?

The Last Missionary is a bicycle adventure story set in remote districts in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bob Walters travels with a team of Congolese colleagues discovering the state of the villages run over by the Pan-African war that devastated the region’s people through the terror of rape and the killing of millions. Along the way, Bob offers the reader a number of short tutorials and reflections on missiology, the study of mission systems. He ponders patronage and cargo cults, and asks the question, “Is Jesus the answer?” But this is not an answer book, it is a book in search of better questions. The Last Missionary is a challenge to both evangelicals and progressives in the church, missionaries and mission volunteers, and even non-religious aid workers.

Why did some central African peoples embrace gun technology in the nineteenth century, and others turn their backs on it? In answering this question, The Gun in Central Africa offers a thorough reassessment of the history of firearms in central Africa. Marrying the insights of Africanist historiography with those of consumption and science and technology studies, Giacomo Macola approaches the subject from a culturally sensitive perspective that encompasses both the practical and the symbolic attributes of firearms. Informed by the view that the power of objects extends beyond their immediate service functions, The Gun in Central Africa presents Africans as agents of technological re-innovation who understood guns in terms of their changing social structures and political interests. By placing firearms at the heart of the analysis, this volume casts new light on processes of state formation and military revolution in the era of the long-distance trade, the workings of central African gender identities and honor cultures, and the politics of the colonial encounter.