Author: Shari Wagner
Shari Wagner takes us with her to the far pasture, that borderland where at dusk the known meets the unknown, where details are at once familiar and mysterious. This landscape is both personal and mythological, evoking those invisible connections that Wagner sensed from her extended Mennonite family and acquaintances.
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A Mission Doctor's Sojourn & Murder Trial in Somalia
Author: Gerald Miller
Here is the account of a Mennonite mission doctor tried for a patient's murder. As this suspenseful, true-life drama unfolds, readers are given access to an ancient, clan-based culture few Americans have experienced in a country recently declared by the United Nations as a humanitarian crisis "worse than Darfur."
When Dr. Gerald L. Miller left his Markle, Indiana, family practice to respond to an urgent need for a doctor at the Jamama Hospital, he faced the challenge of understanding an Islamic culture much different from his own and of dealing with medical situations unlike any he had encountered: village children attacked by a mad dog, a psychotic woman chained to a stake, infants dead from malaria, banana workers bitten by venomous snakes. Not only did Miller respond readily and with compassion, he also acted with ingenuity, discovering, for example, that the malaria organism was crossing the placental barrier.
Throughout a year of challenges, Dr. Miller had his Mennonite faith and the abiding support of Somali hospital staff and mission personnel to sustain him. Readers will be moved by the climax of this drama, a surprising outcome involving the actions of a single Somali family.
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Jesus as a Model for Prophetic Preaching
Author: Ryan Ahlgrim
The Gospels tell us that when Jesus preached, the people were "astounded at his teaching, for he taught hem as one having authority, and not as the scribes" (Mark 1:22). Unlike the scribes, Jesus spoke like a prophet, announcing what God is doing and saying now, and facilitating an encounter with the reign of God.
Most preaching today resembles the teaching of the scribes: explaining the meaning and application of Scripture. But Ahlgrim boldly suggests that pastors and preachers today should speak as Jesus spoke: as prophets speaking for God instead of as scribes talking about God. Using Jesus’ own astonishing preaching methods and themes as a model, Ahlgrim attempts to recover for our time the transforming power of prophetic preaching.
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