The Best Books on Missions I Read in 2022

No Shortcut to Success and Holding the Rope are the two best books on missions I read in 2022.

In case you're a regular reader of Field Notes, let me first apologize that I haven't posted a new Field Note in so long. I had hoped that I could continue the habit of making two posts a month during our furlough, but it appears that I was overly optimistic. I hope to return to my regular pace of posting in February 2023.

Today, however, I wanted to take the time to tell you about two of the best books on missions that I read in 2022. I'd like to note that this is not an objective evaluation since I have not broadly read books published in the field this year. These two books are only the two that stood out among the books that I did read. Nevertheless, these are two fantastic books that I commend to you.

No Shortcut to Success: A Manifesto for Modern Missions by Matt Rhodes

I've found myself recommending No Shortcut to Success again and again and again since I first read it back in August. While I've been recommending it primarily to young people who are starting their journey toward the missionary call, it is an important read for pastors and even those who want to give to missions wisely.

Matt Rhodes, which I believe is a pen name to protect his identity, skillfully critiques the "need for speed" mentality that has captured the missiological world for at least three decades now. Two manifestations of this need for speed is the lowering of expectations for missionary qualifications — less seminary, less language learning, less training — as well as a shift toward a short-term, get-in and get-out mentality. Rhodes calls on missionaries, churches, and sending agencies to reclaim missionary professionalism — the expectation that missionaries should be highly trained and qualified people, adequately prepared for the complex task that is cross-cultural missions.

But the bigger issue that Rhodes confronts is the flawed strategy of rapid multiplication. When I studied missions in Bible college (ages and ages ago), we were taught the then prominent methodology called Church Planting Movements (CPM). At the time, CPM was the guiding strategy of the International Mission Board (IMB). While most evangelical missionaries (myself included) believe in planting churches that will multiply by planting other churches, CPM taught that such planting should happen as a rapidly multiplying movement. CPM dismissed and, at times, denigrated the importance of theological education and pastor training. It promoted a short-term view of discipleship that would end with the missionary just giving new believers a Bible (or maybe just memorized stories from the Bible) and leaving the Spirit to guide them to all truth after only a few weeks or less.

For a time, CPM was thought to fall into disrepute among those involved in Baptist missions. In reality, devotees to CPM remained at their posts, even experienced promotions to the highest levels of leadership, and rebranded CPM in various ways, like the Training 4 Trainers methodology (T4T). 

The conflict between a CPM-like methodology and a methodology that emphasizes responsible church planting, deeper discipleship, and theological education is a live issue in the Baptist missiological world today, and this is why No Shortcut to Success is such an important book. Rhodes carefully confronts the errors of CPM methodology with biblical wisdom, exposing it for the folly that it is.

For those of you who are preparing to apply with a missions agency or for pastors and church leaders who are seeking to send members through agencies, you absolutely must read this book. Missions agencies tend to speak a strange dialect of English filled with buzzwords and impenetrable insider-lingo, but if you learn the vocabulary, the language used by agencies, missionaries, and teams will expose their philosophy of ministry quite clearly. Educate yourself before you go. Educate yourself before you send.

Everywhere you go in the missions world, people talk about the impact of When Helping Hurts. My hope is the No Shortcut to Success will become equally as ubiquitous.

Holding the Rope: How the Local Church Can Care for Its Sent Ones by Ryan Martin

My second favorite of the year is a short 100-page book about missionary care titled Holding the Rope. In his introduction, Ryan Martin cites data demonstrating that half of long-term missionaries leave the field within their first five years of service, and when surveyed, over 70% of their reasons for leaving were preventable (pp.17–18).

From my perspective on the field and my friendships with numerous current and former missionaries, I think this data is absolutely correct. In our own town, for example, so many fellow missionaries have left during this post-pandemic period that we, who have served for only 4.5 years, are quickly becoming the veterans of the missionary community.

While certainly each of our colleagues have unique and legitimate reasons for leaving the field, it is also true that we all have suffered from the distinctive stresses of doing ministry cross-culturally. As the subtitle indicates, Martin's argument is that the local church is God's chosen instrument to take the lead in caring for those that the local church sends out. While sending agencies can play a helpful role, at the end of the day, it is the local church's responsibility to give missionary care.

The first thing that I loved about Martin's book is that he begins by demonstrating his argument biblically. It isn't simply the need for missionary care that calls for the church to give it. It is the biblical example of early churches in Acts, Philippians, and 3 John. 

A second aspect of Martin's book that I found very helpful is that he gives examples of missionary care from local churches of varying sizes from small to mega. You don't need a mega-church to adequately care for the needs of the missionaries you send out. All it takes is an advocacy team of a few people, expressing their spiritual gifts.

I read this one in less than two hours. You have no excuse for not reading this book and guiding your local church to care for those you send.