The Life and Impact of Phil Parshall: Connecting with Muslims - Paperback

by Kenneth Nehrbass (Editor), Mark Williams (Editor)

Mission Begins with Love

Being a witness for Jesus in Muslim contexts is often difficult, complicated, and even discouraging. Over the past forty years, Phil Parshall, a leading authority on Muslim outreach, has demonstrated that making friends with Muslims--whether in the West or abroad--is where our witness usually begins.
"Brother Phil" and his wife, Julie, were missionaries in Bangladesh for more than twenty years and later worked among Muslims in the Philippines. During his tenure as a missionary leader, Parshall authored a dozen books that helped shape current missiological perspectives about Muslim outreach. In this volume, the only edited work dedicated to exploring Phil Parshall's legacy, seven respected missiologists interact with those ideas.
While all the contributors to this book have been inspired by Parshall's life and work, some of them believe that Parshall's methods of contextualization could have been taken even further. They ponder: How can we further remove obstacles to following Jesus? How do we navigate the fine lines between Muslim cultures and Muslim religious ideas? What cultural and social aspects of Muslim life could cross-cultural workers adopt when living among Muslims? Here they share some of their victories and challenges, encouraging Christian workers to press ahead on paths of outreach to Muslims that are fitting for the twenty-first century context.

Author Biography

Kenneth Nehrbass, PhD (Biola University), is an anthropology and translation consultant with the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Vanuatu. He and his wife, Mendy, worked with a team of ni-Vanuatu church leaders to translate the New Testament into Nivhaar, the language of Southwest Tanna.

Mark S. Williams (PhD, Ateneo de Davao University, Philippines) served in ministry to Muslims for twenty years (1990-2010) with SIM in the Philippines. He published articles in the Journal of Asian Mission and Missiology and was a contributing author in Missionary Methods: Research, Reflections, and Realities (William Carey Library).