Read the story of a life lived safely within the lines, that God turned upside down. From social star of 1930's Chicago to a Wycliffe missionary in South America and the USSR, Elaine Townsend's life was far from boring. Meet the woman who became Cameron Townsend's wife, and discover how a life can be filled with adventure, by simply saying 'yes' to God.

Through each stage of Elaine's life her trust and dependence on her Saviour shines as an example to believers everywhere, yet there are also weaknesses with which we can all identify. This account of her struggles and successes is filled with stories gathered from those who knew Elaine best, as well as insights into the mission work that renewed a generation's passion for Bible translation.

Both encouraging and challenging, this thorough biography leads the reader to rightly recognise Elaine Townsend as one of the great Christian women of the 20th century - a demonstration of what God can do with a willing heart.

Harold Schofield, a brilliant Oxford doctor who had laboured as a missionary in China for many years, was on his knees praying, 'Lord, give me missionaries from British Universities to help in China'.
The day he died, D. E. Hoste applied to Hudson Taylor for mission work in the China Inland Mission (Now Overseas Missionary Fellowship). Schofield's prayer was answered as seven Cambridge students volunteered to leave behind cosy lives of wealth and privilege to serve God in whatever way they were led.
These seven inspired thousands of others to think seriously of missionary service. Included among them was C.T. Studd, captain of England and the finest cricketer of his day - if he could give all that up, then so could anyone!
The story of these seven are an inspiration that God can take people and use them in incredible ways - if they are willing to serve.
As Pollock says in his book 'Theirs is the story of ordinary men, and thus may be repeated'. Will it be repeated in your life?

How did one of the twentieth century's most celebrated liberals have such a dramatic change of heart? After growing up in the heart of rural Methodism in Oklahoma, Thomas Oden found Marx, Nietzsche and Freud storming into his imagination. He joined the post-World War II pacifist movement and became enamored with every aspect of the 1950s' ecumenical Student Christian Movement. Ten years before America's entry into the Vietnam war he admired Ho Chi Min as an agrarian patriot. For Oden, every turn was a left turn. At Yale he earned his PhD under H. Richard Niebuhr and later met with some of the most formidable minds of the era--enjoying conversations with Gadamer, Bultmann and Pannenberg as well as a lengthy discussion with Karl Barth at a makeshift office in his hospital room. While traveling with his family through Turkey, Syria and Israel, he attended Vatican II as an observer and got his first taste of ancient Christianity. And slowly, he stopped making left turns. Oden's enthusiasms for pacifism, ecumenism and the interface between theology and psychotherapy were ambushed by varied shapes of reality. Yet it was a challenge from a Jewish scholar, his friend and mentor Will Herberg, that precipitated his most dramatic turn--back to the great minds of ancient Christianity. Later a meeting with then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI) planted the seeds for what became Oden's highly influential Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. This fascinating memoir walks us through not only his personal history but some of the most memorable chapters in twentieth-century theology.

British missionaries David and Shirley Donovan were running a health centre in Nigeria when a pounding on their bedroom door tipped their lives upside down. Threatened at gunpoint, held hostage and ransomed for a billion naira, they tell of the grace that allowed them to witness to their kidnappers in the midst of the chilling and disturbing realisation of what man is capable of.