CollegePress
The Call
The Call
Overview
This is a collection of the specific stories of how 42 Christian missionaries and leaders were called to serve God in the world of missions. Each brief and yet personal account details how they came to decide to go and to give themselves to Christian ministry, often in a faraway location.
In the world of mission service, there are many stories of how God ‘set the table’ so to speak for workers to go to the field. Here are the particular situations and factors that each person found themselves dealing with. These accounts are written by a large variety of mission workers. There are women and men, young and old, single, married, all with fascinating insights into their answer to the question, “what was the ‘call of God’ for you?” Some speak of having highly specific affirmation of what they came to understand to be God’s will, while others will tell you that it was more of a conviction in their hearts concerning a lost world and what they should do about it.
These are encouraging and straight from the heart stories of Christian brothers and sisters simply asking God what He wanted them to do. You will see emotion, personal drama as well as a deep-seated belief that the nations must hear the Good News of the Gospel of our Lord.
ISBN 9780899005454
Book Features
- The 42 chapters are brief, averaging four pages each
- Stories easily usable for class or sermon illustrations
- Indexed alphabetically by the last name of the contributor
- Some ‘pen-names’ are used due to security issues where missionaries are serving
- Chapters conclude with simple biographical information about the contributor
- Most of these stories are from recent history but a few, such as Leslie and Carrie Wolfe are taken from historic records by Dr. Rick Cherok who has a Ph.D. in history.
Excerpts
“I walked in our front door and said, “Guess what? We’re going to Brazil!” Though that front door opened easily, there were four more “doors” that, not so easily, would have to open…”
–from the story of Neil Pirolo
“Suddenly she remembered the prayer the night before as I slept quietly beside her. She had a decision to make! “Do I tell him or do I not?” Unable to contain the moment, she began to whisper my name, “DAVID, DAVID, DAVID…. WAKE UP! LOOK AT THE CLOCK!”
–from the story of Dave and Donna Linn
“There never was a verbal, or even non-verbal, direct call from God revealing to me that His plan was for me to be a missionary. My eyes were simply opened to the reality that there were people all over the world who could be born, live and die without ever having a chance to hear and understand the Gospel!”
–from the story of Andy Rodriguez
About the Authors
Most of the stories in this book were written by the contributors themselves. Even so, four editors worked to bring the entire project together. The editors are: David Empson, Director of the International Conference on Mission (ICOM); Chris DeWelt, President of College Press Publishing and Professor of Missions at Ozark Christian College; Emily Drayne, Director of Operations for ICOM and Rick Cherok, Editor with College Press Publishing and Professor of Church History at Ozark Christian College.