Here are a few titles worth your time.

A little book with a big message. Most Christians know the biblical story of “Jonah and the whale,” but how many of us have thought deeply about its life-changing message and global implications? There’s a lot more going on under the surface than most people realize.

Jonah’s themes reverberate through the rest of Scripture: God is sovereign, just, and loving. He calls His people to align our hearts with His and to join Him in His compassionate pursuit of a world under condemnation. God has a beautiful, unnerving, exhilarating, and sometimes frustrating way of surprising us with His superior (but often uncomfortable) plan.

Same mission. Same God. Different everything else. Many missionary biographies tell the stories of men and women who persevered for decades in a single context. Today, though, God seems to be moving His workforce around the globe with growing frequency.

Items May Have Shifted is a collection of stories of missionaries who left everything and moved across the world to serve among the unreached—and then were rerouted, often without much warning or explanation.

Their experiences illustrate an inherent tension missionaries must maintain in our chaotic world: the commitment to go deep in difficult contexts as if it’s forever and the openhandedness to accept that plans may change at any time.

You (or missionaries you care about) may be on the move by necessity or by choice. Either way, these stories remind us all that God's people are called to a flexible, responsive faithfulness, tenaciously clinging to the God of the unexpected.

Googling Jesus features our best or favorite stories about media outreach. Each chapter tells the story of someone sharing the gospel with people who turn to the internet looking for what can only be found in a relationship with their Creator. See how God, through His Word and the loving witness of His people, reveals Himself to those who seek Him.

When newlyweds Steve and Arlene Richardson arrived in Southeast Asia, they were full of hopes and dreams of befriending their neighbors and sharing the gospel in a Muslim-majority country of nearly 175 million and very few believers.

From learning a new language to making a home in a crowded city neighborhood, the cultural barriers seemed enormous. The Richardsons were often overwhelmed with the economic needs of their new neighbors, as they observed their friends struggling to provide for their families in the face of crushing poverty. Even greater were the spiritual strongholds that held them in the grip of religious tradition.

‍How could they even begin to help?

‍The unexpected answer came in the form of a cardboard box of quilts from North Carolina and a tiny village woman who became a treasured member of the family. Arlene, who had never sewed a quilt in her life, launched a business venture that brought Muslim and Christian employees under one roof, designing, cutting and sewing quilts for beds 7,000 miles away in America.

‍Threads recounts the Richardsons’ journey—the sorrow, joy and unbelievable answers to prayer that sustained them in their labors and drew their family into a story that only God could write.

This is a story about a man who had achieved success, but wasn’t content. Ted had a vision for the world, a vision for all people to have an opportunity to learn about Jesus. Ted reasoned, “Why should some hear the life-giving message many times before some had the chance to hear it once?” Ted and his wife, Peggy, applied to become missionaries, but were declined. They were too old, had too many kids and did not have the right education. All avenues for personal involvement in world evangelization seemed closed, so the Fletchers founded their own organization. Drawing on Ted’s experience as a Marine and as a corporate executive, they stepped out in faith to send others to places in the world where missionaries were not welcome. Despite the odds, the mission grew beyond any of their expectations.