Window to the World

This ebook by Andrew Knight* is a short, punchy little text designed to psych up Christians for world mission. Bookended by some powerful chapters on the urgency and simplicity of the church's global task of evangelism, the bulk of the book is a series of statistical overviews giving a birds-eye big-picture view of the state of the world today - in terms of missional reach, need, and socioeconomic factors that real and effective Christian work should be pervading and changing. These include global economies, poverty, missionary force, urbanisation, refugees, world religions, people groups, Christians and money, and world evanglism: the statistics appear well-sourced and build up a striking outline of large trends in the world, many of which are somewhat disheartening but just as many show signs of encouraging promise in slow aggregate change. The discussion sections relate it all with biblically-centred grounding to the calls of all Jesus' followers to personal faith, mission and service, and overall the book reads well as a wholesome exhortation to the church to continue and ramp up its work.
   It's very readable, and given that it's free to download for Kindle I'd recommend giving it a look and sharing around church circles if you think your missional community could benefit from a shot-in-the-arm of evangelical hype - and which one ever doesn't?

* He used to be student worker at my church; Andrew is humble and passionate, a natural gospel-sharer, and he and his family have been the source of good friendship and much inspiration to me in the years I've known them.