Ryan Kuja's From the Inside Out: Reimagining Mission, Recreating the World is a passionately critical exploration of much of the accepted wisdom about Christian mission.
It's a powerful criticism that shouldn't be overlooked.
First, Kuja does a masterful job of providing a concise analysis of colonialistic missions. In the first three chapters, Kuja explores how history and theology have intertwined to create problematic missional endeavors. While it is not groundbreaking or new, it's a highly readable and compact survey which should be helpful to readers who are beginning to ask questions about evangelism and missions.
Secondly, I found Kuja's exploration of psychology and mission particularly important. Kuja admits to being a broken person, and he wants readers to recognize their own brokenness. Part of the issue with the way we do missions, the author contends, is that we in the West use it as a way of correcting issues within our own egos. These issues might be diverse: We want to be needed, to feel like we have given something back, or we want to make ourselves feel more important. In Kuja's own example, his missional work was a way of avoiding a prior psychologically scarring event. Whatever the psychological motivation, our inability to deal with these issues ends up harming both us and the people we seek to serve.
This is one of those books on missions that will occasionally cross my desk that make me reexamine and rethink the Church's theology of mission in new and exciting ways.
_____________________
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.
It's a powerful criticism that shouldn't be overlooked.
First, Kuja does a masterful job of providing a concise analysis of colonialistic missions. In the first three chapters, Kuja explores how history and theology have intertwined to create problematic missional endeavors. While it is not groundbreaking or new, it's a highly readable and compact survey which should be helpful to readers who are beginning to ask questions about evangelism and missions.
Secondly, I found Kuja's exploration of psychology and mission particularly important. Kuja admits to being a broken person, and he wants readers to recognize their own brokenness. Part of the issue with the way we do missions, the author contends, is that we in the West use it as a way of correcting issues within our own egos. These issues might be diverse: We want to be needed, to feel like we have given something back, or we want to make ourselves feel more important. In Kuja's own example, his missional work was a way of avoiding a prior psychologically scarring event. Whatever the psychological motivation, our inability to deal with these issues ends up harming both us and the people we seek to serve.
This is one of those books on missions that will occasionally cross my desk that make me reexamine and rethink the Church's theology of mission in new and exciting ways.
_____________________
I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for my honest review here.
