Sample Chapter

About

For Christians everywhere, life is a mission trip: God sends us into our corners of the world to live for his glory. For U.S. Christians, life’s mission trip presents many complex challenges, including an unrelenting pull toward affluence, our fervent religious-nationalism, and our deeply embedded individualism. 

Within today’s multifaceted context, God the Real Superpower navigates the potent undertow of our inherited assumptions about missions, pointing U.S. Christians toward constructive perspectives about God, ourselves, and others.

Endorsements

“Someone once said, ‘I know two things: there is a God, and I am not him.’ Dr. Jennings has done a wonderful job of reminding us that missions belongs to God. He is the Redeemer and he is allowing us to be part of it. But it is his work and not ours. We as Americans are a ‘can-do’ people, and we have accomplished many things because of it. But one does not have to be involved in missions very long to realize that when it comes to redeeming the world, we ‘can’t do,’ and that is okay. We can relax in the thought that he is in charge and that because of that, missions will not fail.”

—John Rollo, international director for Sub-Saharan Africa, Mission to the World

“For North Americans to participate in God’s mission for the twenty-first century, we must learn not only to see the world as Christ does but to see ourselves as Christ and the world see us. Sharing Christ’s sight requires that we share his heart—a heart formed out of humility, compassion, and suffering. Nelson Jennings explores these themes with passion, with hope and, most of all, with a profound love for the gospel of the Lord Jesus. The themes are stretching, transforming, and ultimately empowering for the new work of God’s mission.”

—Bryan Chapell, president, Covenant Theological Seminary

The Author

J. Nelson Jennings

J. Nelson Jennings (MDiv, Covenant Seminary; PhD, Centre for the Study of Christianity in the Non-Western World, University of Edinburgh) is global engagement director at GMI (Global Mapping International) as well as mission pastor and consultant at Onnuri Community Church in Seoul.

More by J. Nelson Jennings