EMQ » July–September 2022 » Volume 58 Issue 3
The Life & Impact of Phil Parshall: Connecting with Muslims
Edited by Kenneth Nehrbass and Mark Williams
William Carey Publishing, 2021
126 pages
US$11.99
Reviewed by David R. Dunaetz, Associate Professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology, Azusa Pacific University, and former church planter in France.
Phil Parshall is a missionary and missiologist who has influenced several generations of missionaries with his insights into Muslim evangelism. This festschrift honors him and his contributions with reflections on his life, his writing, and contemporary thought on evangelism in Muslim contexts, presented in seven chapters written by various missiologists, edited first by Phil’s colleague Mark S. Williams, and then, after Mark’s tragic death, by Ken Nehrbass.
The chapters by Gary Corwin and Kevin Higgins focus on Phil Parshall’s life. Corwin has prepared an insightful biography covering Parshall’s life to the present, a summary of the books and articles he has authored, and a reflection on his legacy to missionaries and the Islamic world. Higgins explains some of what he learned from his friendship with Phil, lessons that apply to all ministry settings. These include distinguishing between form (which should be indigenous) and function (which should be biblical), the importance of listening to others (especially listening to Muslims within their own cultural context), and what it means to walk humbly. This last lesson is especially important because it is a central theme of the New Testament that is often forgotten in an age of entitlement, self-promotion, and grandiosity. Humility may hinder leadership emergence, but it contributes to leadership success, in whatever position God may place a person.
Miriam Adeney and John Jay Travis reflect on major themes in Parshall’s writing. Adeney focuses on cultural immersion, the importance of missionaries adapting to their host culture so completely that the only thing in their life that offends others is the message of the gospel. Travis presents several themes which reoccur in Parshall’s writings: friendship, cultural bonding, hospitality, diet, dress, language (including religious vocabulary), Bible translations, and the spiritual life of the missionary (both from the perspectives of God and the Muslim, who is trying to make sense of the missionary).
The chapters by Enoch Jinsik Kim, Joseph Williams, and Harley Talman present contemporary reflections on major themes related to Muslim evangelism. Kim describes the multiple group memberships that urban Muslims experience and their implication for evangelism. Williams presents recent thoughts on the C1-C6 contextualization scale. Talman describes three broad barriers to the gospel which non-Christians may face and how missionaries can help them overcome these barriers. All of these essays are written in the spirit of Parshall’s most famous work, New Paths in Muslim Evangelism (1980).
This short book would make an excellent supplementary textbook for an introduction to religions class. It would also be a convenient way to cover Parshall’s school of thought in a class focused on Muslim evangelism, either as an upper-division or graduate course. It also serves as an excellent refresher for missionaries and missiologists who might not be as up to date as they would like in their understanding of effective evangelism in the Muslim world.
For Further Reading
New Paths in Muslim Evangelism by Phil Parshall (Baker, 1980)
“Danger! New Directions in Contextualization,” Evangelical Missions Quarterly 34, no. 4 (1988), by Phil Parshall
EMQ, Volume 58, Issue 3. Copyright © 2022 by Missio Nexus. All rights reserved. Not to be reproduced or copied in any form without written permission from Missio Nexus. Email: EMQ@MissioNexus.org.
