Loving the Church, Blessing the Nations is a special book. The overall theme of the book is to explore how missionary activity can be accomplished in concert with local churches. Historically there has often been conflict between foreign missionaries parachuting into a country with goals and methods that harm, rather than helping, local churches in that country. George Miley draws from his experience on the missions ships Logos and Doulos to describe how they strove to honor local congregations and partner with them, when pulling into a new port somewhere in the world. His stories are wonderful examples of reconciliation and unity at work in the real world, and illustrate Jesus’ genius in connecting world evangelization to church unity in his prayer for us in John 17.
But wait! There’s more!
Hidden in the heart of the book is a stretch of five chapters that stand on their own and have greatly influenced Christ the Reconciler. George introduces the idea of an “apostolically-gifted leader” and addresses these topics:
From the Table of Contents
When Thomas and Amy reconnected with the Mileys in 2008, and they came to Austin in 2009. George began to speak to them about Thomas’ role as an apostolically-gifted leader, and the need for him not to be the “head of the organization”, but one piece of a mutually-submitted apostolic team structure. This counsel was pivotal in the development of Wittenberg 2017, and is still at work 15 years later in the formation of CTR leadership.
Buy this book, if only for Chapters 9-13! (The rest is really good, too …)