Overturning Tables: Freeing Missions from the Christian-Industrial Complex

Outreach Resource of the Year Recommendation

Best World Missions Book, from Byron Borger, Hearts and Minds Bookstore

We are more than the businesses we have become.

Much of Christian ministry has been shaped to operate not according to the witness of the Scriptures, but according to the values of the free market. We adopt metrics of success that have nothing to do with the state of people’s souls or the seeding of the earth with the kingdom of God. We have borrowed our paradigms uncritically from the for-profit corporate sector. The mission of the Church is being held back by the business container into which we have placed the gospel.

Every year Scott Bessenecker travels the world with thousands of college students, ministering to those in need and learning from the global church about what God is doing in the world. In Overturning Tables he shows, through stories and analysis, that the mission of God reaches well beyond the grasp of the free market, and if we are willing to reach as well, we will see God do amazing things, even as the world sees the gospel in its fullest sense.

Scott Bessenecker is associate director for missions for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and author of several books, including The New Friars: The Emerging Movement Serving the World’s Poor. He blogs at urbana.org and can be followed on Twitter at @Bessenecker.