The Missionary Lives

This book is a survey of the life writings by and about Canadian missionaries at home and abroad, over the last one hundred and thirty years. A general missionary history of Canada appears first, to introduce separate chapters on the forms and themes of this body of literature. The critical problems presented by writing that has resisted modern and post-modern developments are discussed. Partial and fictional life writing, as well as marginal forms, are also explored. The book concludes with general statements about the whole of this literature and its effects. The first attempt at a comprehensive bibliography of Canadian missionary life writing is appended.

KEY BENEFIT The great missionary figures were crucial to their own time and to posterity. They brought Christian belief and culture to the pagan societies of Dark Age Europe. Tribal and nomadic societies were propelled out of the forest and the plain into a 'civilized' world that carried the genes of the Roman imperial past. The missionaries were crucial too, because of the record they and their correspondents left of the cultures they transformed. The work of St Augustine in England is just one example. The missionaries were not only agents of change, they were also some of Europe's first historians. Anyone who has read Ian Wood's equally ambitious and compelling survey The Merovingian Kingdoms, 451-1050 , will rediscover his ability to bring a remote age to life. Here, the unreliable history of the missionary life is disentangled by Ian Wood to produce a uniquely wide-ranging account - giving a sense of the individual experience and collective ethos of the mission, the missionaries' influence on communities and their links to the rest of Christendom. In the Missionary Life the roles and aims of the missionaries, provide a starting point for the history of early medieval Europe. While spiritualism is examined Ian Wood also focuses on the darker side of missionary life - flagellation, starvation, torture - as well as sanctity. Contemporary willing and unwilling evangelism relates to some of these first Christian pioneers. For reader interested in medieval and/or church history. Also available in hardcover, 0-582-31212-4, $ 69.95Y.

This new volume in the award-winning Encountering Mission series is for current and future missionaries. It provides practical guidance regarding getting ready for the mission field and the realities of life on the field. The authors are well qualified to write such a manual, each having served as a missionary for more than twenty years and each having taught missions in seminary. The authors begin by examining the contemporary context for missions, including the recognition that the world's mission fields are in constant and often rapid change. They then discuss aspects of preparing oneself for the mission field, beginning with home-front preparations and moving to on-the-field preparations. The final section deals with practical issues and challenges of missionary life.

Are you frustrated by your ineffectiveness in sharing the gospel and winning people to Jesus Christ? You have tried new approaches to witnessing--which work for a short time but then become stale. You need a lifestyle adjustment--not a clever new method--that will connect you with spiritual power for witnessing and meaningful relationships through which your witness can flow. Live Like a Missionary challenges readers to adjust their lifestyles to implement missionary principles in everyday settings, thus increasing their effectiveness at reaching people for Jesus Christ. You live on a missions field. It's time you started living like a missionary!

"The Missionary Lives" is the first comprehensive literary examination of the biographies and autobiographies of Canadian missionaries at home and abroad.

Many of us want more from God instead of more of God. Matthew 5:6 says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.” This is a promise. No one needs to tell you if the water you drank when you were thirsty made you feel better. So too with experiencing God. When it happens, you will know it for yourself. More of God is about moving beyond faith. It is about getting more of God. Experiencing more of God. Every book in the Bible, especially the books of the New Testament, are written for this purpose. Take the letters; those who are addressed were already saved. But the writers wanted their hearers to experience not just more knowledge about God but more of God. Everything in this book is designed to make you hungry. Thirsty. As you read, keep in mind that the ever-increasing hunger for more of God is from God. Kendall’s advice: “Don’t settle for more mere information about God. Or more theological knowledge. Give yourself no rest until you cross over that crucial line from secondhand knowledge about God to firsthand knowledge of God. There is nothing more exciting than when you see for yourself that God is real, Jesus is real, the Holy Spirit is real, and the Bible is true!”

DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Book of Missionary Heroes" by Basil Mathews. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.