Global Kingdom, Global People

Melba Maggay has written an enthralling account of how the living, written word of God can be applied creatively to many of the most pressing problems confronting the modern world. She is sure in her grasp of the historical and linguistic background to the text, relating it constantly to its own context. Melba has a most engaging style of writing, with many arresting turns of phrase. The result is a book whose (often poetic) prose is a delight to read. Readers will find this a refreshingly novel, inventive and compelling demonstration of the art of communicating to a thoroughly perplexed generation, across cultures and nations, the biblical explanation of human reality.

Dr J. Andrew Kirk
Senior Research Fellow, International Baptist Theological Study Centre, Amsterdam

Global Kingdom, Global People is a brilliant book capturing well the author’s experience in a place of pain; this is tough research and honest reflection on a biblical theme and perspective. It draws the reader to seriously consider a personal and collective response to contemporary global missional challenges.

CB Samuel
Theological Advisor,
The Evangelical Fellowship of India Commission on Relief (EFICOR)

Global Kingdom, Global People is a sweeping, probing reflection on what it means to follow Christ in our day by a senior evangelical missiologist who reads very widely and writes brilliantly. Thoroughly immersed in her local setting in the Phillipines, Dr Maggay illuminates and critiques the way globalization works today, combining a creative analysis of a broad sweep of biblical texts with contemporary socio-economic analysis. An important voice.

Ronald J. Sider
Senior Distinguished Professor of Theology, Holistic Ministry, and Public Policy
Palmer Seminary at Eastern University, Pennsylvania, USA

Global Kingdom, Global People is a splendid little book full of insight into, and cogent refection on, Scripture and full of conviction and compassion. Countless works have been written on the themes of culture, globalization and mission; the most jaded literary palate will find something fresh and interesting or inspiring from this one and not least from the illuminating comments from Melba Maggay’s Philippine context.

Andrew F. Walls

University of Edinburgh, Liverpool Hope University
and Akrofi-Christaller Institute

Melba Maggay offers us a penetrating interweaving of the biblical text with key issues of our contemporary world. Academically rigorous, and authoritative in its sweep, the book offers us a cosmic grasp of history, while remaining contemporary and relevant in its application to our world today. Her breadth of scholarship peppers the text with insights, exposing cultural myths and inviting her readers into a more thoughtful Christian perspective. The result is a crucially important book, written through the experience and reflections of a very fine writer.

Elaine Storkey
Former President of Tearfund

As we have come to expect from Melba Maggay, she gives us not just political dreams or ready answers but her own journey of engaging the stark realities of the real world of human beings and her own honest grappling with real issues and struggles therein. Such issues would not just leave us alone to chart our own Christian course. Christ’s followers remain on earth not merely to build our own programme, structures, mission or institutions in self-isolation, but to do so in relevant and effective conversation and engagement with the rest of humanity. Today’s followers of Christ must not just live faithfully but to do so with understanding and informed consideration for a multicultural world.

GOH Keat Peng
Honorary Vice-President of IFES
Former Head of World Vision Malaysia
Activist and Campaigner

1. Foreword: Love Is Local
2. Introduction: The Way We Live Now
3. Part I: The Roots of Culture
1. 1 Revisiting the Cultural Mandate
2. 2 Dominion and Communion
3. 3 The Fallout of the Fall
4. 4 Culture and the Nations
5. 5 The Tower of Babel
4. Part II: The “Global Village”: Living in a Multicultural World
1. 6 Sojourners Together
2. 7 Living as God’s People in Alien Cities
3. 8 Remembering Zion: Longing for a Lost Homeland
4. 9 A Vision of a New Economy
5. Part III: Missions in Context: McWorld and the Gospel
1. 10 Jew to the Jew, Greek to the Greeks: The Jew-Gentile Social Crisis
2. 11 Communicating Cross-Culturally, or Why We Can Not McDonaldize the Gospel
3. 12 From Every Tribe and Tongue and Nation: On Being Global and Incarnational
6. Postscript: The “Prince of the Power of the Air,” or Why It Is Time to Put the Monsters at the Center
7. Bibliography