Global Humility: Attitudes for Mission

by Andy McCullough

The aspect that needs training, more than any other in cross-cultural workers, is humility. Pride and mission are polar opposites. Pride pollutes mission, but the mission of Christ is humble mission. How dare we turn up with all the answers when you don’t even know what questions people are asking? This book should be useful and provocative for cross-cultural Christian workers and candidates, for those involved in multicultural cities in their own nations, for sending pastors, and for anyone whose ministry or Christian walk takes them across cultural divides. The book is made up of six Moral Humility (Thinking About Sin), Public Humility (Thinking About the World), Semantic Humility (Thinking About Language), Intercultural Humility (Thinking About Differences), Incarnational Humility (Thinking about Mission), and Theological Humility (Thinking about Thinking).

250 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 26, 2018

Reviews

[Brittany · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a hard book for me to rate. I do think it was helpful in some ways, but I think the author was a little extreme. I also felt like some Scriptures were manipulated to make his points in a way that was off-putting to me. I asked myself constantly if the “issues” I had with the book were due to a lack of humility. Maybe some? But I don’t think all. I’m grateful I read this book in community as we had robust dialogue about it. I was able to glean some things, but threw out other things. I wouldn’t recommend this book to be read without solid Christian community reading along and discussing with you.

[Elza Tunala · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is wonderful! Rich in details and full of real stories that illustrate the concepts covered very well. It helped me a lot to better understand about other cultures and what my attitude should be when interacting with people from other countries. Ameino book and highly recommend :)

[Denise · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read. Inspiring, thought provoking, throwing a new & clear perspective on world mission. Very readable without dialling down on content .

[MR · Rating 5 out of 5]

The best book on Christian mission I have read.

Right from the start it is to the point and rammed full with Scripture.
It rebukes the Western-centric view we often have of mission which leads to an unacknowledged superior and judgemental mindset.
He takes you to familiar Bible stories but draws out implications for mission you have never noticed before e.g. the similarity between the Tower of Babel and the Day of Pentecost, God comes down to restore diversity.
So many books on this topic say roughly the same thing but in this book, each chapter addressed something specific, it discussed topics I hadn't even thought to ponder.

Just some of the great point from the book:
- God tends to raise up voices from the margins to save the centre e.g. Tamar
- Sin is the tyrant, humanity is the victim. For the powerless sin is often not a choice, they are victims of it e.g. Bathsheba
- God is at work all over the world not just in the church e.g. He made Nineveh grow
- Many cultures remember the distant history more tenderly than we do, we must work out how to take responsibility for what our people have done
- Language is an invisible power differential
- What is dear to us in the Gospel in the West is often our freedom from guilt, but in the East in an honour-shame culture, it is the freedom from shame which is precious.
- The problem of humanity is that we are guilty (Western), or vulnerable (tribal or African), or full of shame (Eastern). We cannot only preach the forgiveness of sins.

Overall, this book is deeply humbling.