For the Fame of His Name: Rethinking Church and Missions for the 21st Century by G. W. Steel. Xulon Press, 2022. 422 pages. ISBN-10: 1662850727; ISBN-13: 978-1662850721. Available from Press and Amazon.
In recent years, more and more Chinese seminaries have established programs in cross-cultural studies and missions, reflecting the growing emphasis that the global Chinese church places on cross-cultural mission. Yet launching a program or offering a course requires more than faculty and students; it also depends on essential textbooks and reading materials that articulate key concepts.
Due to teaching needs, I have recently collected and selected a number of Chinese-translated books and articles on missions as required reading for my students. When I came across the Chinese translation of G. W. Steel’s For the Fame of His Name: Rethinking Church and Missions for the 21st Century, I found it refreshingly different. While many English-language books and articles on missions are already available, relatively few are truly suitable for Chinese mission students. Some works are classics but present outdated strategies and field examples. Others introduce newer perspectives and strategies but lack balance in their arguments. Still others offer fresh and well-balanced insights but seem often shaped by Western contexts, which can feel less accessible to Chinese readers—even in translation. As for original Chinese-language works on missions by Chinese scholars and practitioners, they remain quite limited in number.
This book is clearly structured and can be divided into four main sections. The first section (Chapters 1–4) addresses the challenges of modern missions, offering an honest assessment of both the achievements and blind spots of the missionary movement over the past two hundred years. It highlights the tension ofsignificant investment of resources alongside ongoing questions about long-term fruit and calls for a paradigm shift. The second section (Chapters 5–12) returns to the biblical core, emphasizing that the focus of Jesus’ message was not the expansion of “religion,” but the arrival of the kingdom of God. The ultimate goal of missions is not merely to increase the number of believers, but to make faithful disciples among all peoples so that God’s name may be glorified. The third section (Chapters 13–18) explores issues such as contextualization, cultural worldviews, and syncretism, seeking a balance between faithfulness to the gospel and respect for culture. The fourth section (Chapters 19–25) turns to practice, offering concrete reflections and guidance on topics such as the selection and training of mission workers, business as mission, and the role of the local church.
Theologically grounded and rich in cross-cultural insight, this book effectively integrates theory and practice, avoiding empty abstraction. Moreover, the author’s clear and engaging writing style makes the book highly readable—one chapter naturally leads to the next—unlike some Western missions textbooks that can feel overly dense. Many of the field examples included in the book focus on communities with limited access to the gospel, including many Muslim-majority contexts, aligning well with current mission priorities. Most strikingly, the author incorporates case studies from several Chinese cross-cultural missionaries, which gives the book a sense of familiarity and resonance for Chinese readers. It is evident that the author’s years of experience in East Asia and in training indigenous mission workers have enabled him to understand the Chinese context more deeply and to identify key issues and challenges with notable accuracy and relevance.
One minor shortcoming is that some of these vivid field examples, possibly drawn from secondhand accounts or other sources, may contain occasional gaps or inaccuracies in detail. For example, in Chapter 14 (exploring contextualization and syncretism),1 the author mentions differences in prayer terminology between Christians and Muslims in Lebanon but does not specify the terms involved. Based on my understanding of Middle Eastern languages and cultures, the term used by local Christians for prayer, ṣalāt, would not typically be confused with Muslim terms for prayers for the dead (such as ṣalāt al-janāzah or du‘ā). In fact, ṣalāt is also the term used for one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Unless the Muslim group referenced belongs to a non-Arab ethnic minority using a different language, this distinction may require further clarification in the case study. That said, this is a minor issue and does not detract from the overall value of the book.
The author also introduces newer contextualization strategies, such as the Church Planting Movement,2 which has been widely discussed over the past two decades. Missiologists and mission organizations have not yet reached a consensus on such approaches, even though these movements of conversion have indeed occurred. In addressing these more controversial topics, the author demonstrates a rare ability to present a biblically grounded, balanced, and gracious perspective.
Having served in cross-cultural mission contexts for many years, my husband and I have personally witnessed how disagreements over strategy and methodology can lead to criticism, division, and even the departure of workers from teams or fields—losses that ultimately harm the kingdom of God. Therefore, when teaching courses on global mission strategy, I seek to instill in my Chinese students an attitude of humility, non-judgment, and mutual listening. I do not want these patterns of division to be passed on to the next generation of missionaries. This book will undoubtedly become one of the top textbook choices for Chinese mission training and courses. The author does more than propose new strategies or methods; he invites readers to reflect on whether the church remains faithful to the original mission and message entrusted by Jesus in a rapidly changing, post-Christian, and multicultural world.
As Chinese churches both within China and around the world increasingly embrace the call to cross-cultural mission and begin investing in the training and sending of mission workers, the publication of the Chinese edition of this book comes like timely rain, meeting a pressing need. I wholeheartedly recommend it to Chinese seminary professors, mission trainers, church leaders, mission practitioners, and any Chinese believers who feel called to engage in cross-cultural mission.
