Unsolved Crimes and Gospel in Asia

Great Unsolved Crimes by Louis Solomon is a collection of six crimes, none of which involve drugs (read: white people-on-white people crimes). These took place before 1976, so there are black and white sketches and drawings as exhibits. And for the most part, they are boring save the first one. Summary:
= hijacking then badass freefall out of a plane
= reputable banker bound and murdered in own home
= 10 stolen paintings from New York museum
= America's first kidnapping (I guess for ransom)
= disappearance of neanderthal bones in China
= warmhearted daughter suspected murderer of parents

Revolution in World Missions by Dr. K.P. Yohannan was given to me for free as a subscriber to John Piper's blog. Secular take-away message: it's more practical and ridiculously cheaper to use natives as missionaries than Westerners. The book recalls to mind Jaeson Ma's speculation of how God will use East Asians to reach out to the Middle East (my honest opinion is that brown people will speak better to brown people). Funny how things connect. TIME recently wrote on the lack of religious freedom in the Islamic states of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt among others. Reasons for hostility against Christian practitioners vary, but Western churches make it hard to sympathize for the Great Commission.

I found myself agreeing with many of Yohannan's points on the worldliness and spiritual darkness present among American churches. A lot of business, not a lot of potential-filling. Constructing churches here can easily cost in the millions, and millions more for sustaining programs, where for the same price decent churches all over the Indian subcontinent could be built so that all may hear the Gospel.

One thing I came to understand after reading: humility is the place where all Christian service begins. It's a word that describes the persecuted missionary that serves time in a dirt cell as big as my cat's litter box (oh, but is miraculously sustained by the Word of which he has long since memorized). It's a word neglected by foolish Western outreach projects that use Western means to reach to the lost while perpetuating longtime associations of Christianity with British colonialism (let the Holy Spirit do what it wills). It's a word that commands loving those in your village and city, to consider serving and discipling them as your burden (Jesus says "as my Father hath sent me, even so send I you").

Among the book's testimonies was one from a woman who lived in Towson. I pretty much grew up there for elementary school.