EMQ » July–September 2020 » Volume 56 Issue 3
By Roy Oksnevad
William Carey Publishing, 2019
190 pages
USD $14.99
Reviewed by Don Little who serves as Pioneers’ Missiologist-at-Large, the Director of the Lilias Trotter Center, and as an adjunct professor at Wesley Biblical Seminary and Houghton College.
Roy writes with evident love for, and deep insight into, Iranian Christians and the Iranian church in diaspora. In this aptly titled book, Roy explores key challenges that Christians and churches from Persian-Muslim cultures work through in their endeavors to become healthy and mature. Based on Roy’s PhD research at Trinity International University (2013), The Burden of Baggage is packed full of insights into and analysis of the often-chaotic experience of people who become Christians from one particular non-Christian culture.
Roy has been ministering among and with Iranian believers in diaspora for decades. After recounting the unprecedented and remarkable work of God among Iranians today, Roy sketches the characteristic struggles encountered in Persian churches and the reasons for them. As the book unfolds, Roy describes failings in Iranian fellowships in sometimes painful detail, repeatedly quoting his very frank Iranian informants. It is as if Iranian believers have submitted themselves to a diagnosis of their broken condition, and Roy hasn’t held back from showing them their condition and its causes. Yet, as Roy says, his desire is that the book will “give hope to the struggling church that God’s divine power can transform his bride into a mighty people of God” (xvii).
In the first chapter Roy proposes key historical factors that have led to the typical challenges that Iranians face living in diaspora today and then he summarizes the resulting challenges that Iranian Christians from Muslim backgrounds encounter. Roy gives textured and perceptive portrayals of how Iranian believers experience church (chapter 2), deal with their cultural baggage (chapter 3), and struggle with relationships and interpersonal conflict in their churches (chapter 4) and in their families (chapter 5). He describes toxic expressions of leadership (chapter 6) and how conversion is often traumatic for both individuals and families (chapter 7). In the last chapter, Roy offers promising proposals for ways forward for our Iranian brothers and sisters as they deal with these almost overwhelming challenges.
If one were to summarize the core of the challenge that Iranian believers face, I believe it is that their cultural and religious heritage does not give them adequate resources to enable them to succeed in becoming mature godly men and women in healthy Christian communities. All the necessary biblical principles need to be learned from scratch following their conversion.
Who can benefit from reading this insightful book? Anyone coming to Christ from non-Christian cultures, and all those ministering to and among them. I warmly recommend Roy’s loving diagnosis of the problems plaguing Iranian Christians to both Iranian Christians and to everyone ministering to diaspora peoples, especially to those working among Muslims. May God use this labor of love to strengthen all first-generation Christians and their churches in diaspora and in their homelands. The Burden of Baggage sheds much-needed light on first-generation Christian experience, regardless of the believer’s background.
For Further Reading
Little, Don. Effective Discipling in Muslim Communities: Scripture, History and Seasoned Practices. IVP Academic, 2015.
Hibbert, Evelyn and Richard. Walking Together on The Jesus Road: Intercultural Discipling. William Carey Publishing, 2018.
