In an ever-changing world, how can we learn from the past to discern the shape of mission today?

If you care about the future of the church, read this book. In Mission is the Shape of Water, Michael masterfully unpacks the historical journey of mission and evangelism which helps us to understand how we got here and offers a compelling vision for the future. This book is for those who are passionate about mission, and for those who've given up on the whole idea of evangelism. It is inspiring and thought provoking, confronting, and captivating, and a call to imagine mission in the future unlike anything we have seen in the past.

Frost has done it again! Compelling, intriguing, educating and inspiring! A book that shapes us as we consider mission then and now and how we can respond to the flow of Holy Spirit.

In this distinctive book, Michael Frost skilfully combines considerable storytelling abilities with his expertise as a leading missiologist to deliver an enlightening account of the profound testimony to Jesus that spans across history. By exploring the lives of various historical saints, heroes, and causes, Frost inspires us to glean valuable insights on how to remain faithful to the movement of the gospel passed on to us by our Lord and Savior. An inspiring read!

In his winsome scholarly way, Mike Frost expands our imagination for the various shapes mission takes down through history. With a steady hand, he astutely guides us through the history of mission, filling us with hope for what mission can be in our lives, our churches, our neighborhoods, our cities. I truly loved reading Mission is the Shape of Water. It made me want to sell everything, follow Jesus, and serve His mission all over again.

One of Christianity’s greatest strengths is also one of its key vulnerabilities: it is a highly transportable faith. It can find a home in 21st-century China just as easily as it did in 6th-century Gaul. And this mission-flexibility can make it vulnerable to compromise. With these thoughts in mind, Michael Frost has written a remarkable book examining ten historical paradigms of Christian mission, showing how the Church has succeeded—and sometimes failed—to reach radically diverse cultures with the unchanging gospel of Christ’s life, teaching, death, and resurrection. Mission is the Shape of Water often inspired me, sometimes made me uncomfortable, and taught me things in every chapter. That’s how I like my Christian books. I can see this being used as a mission textbook, a small group study, or simply a source of personal Christian inspiration. I hope it is widely read.

Reading this book felt like a Spring walk (a meandering even) through the garden of missional history. We are introduced to people and ideas that are at once somehow strange, beautiful, and compelling. Frost is a wonderful guide, curating stories from Christian history that seem distant but somehow close, ancient but somehow current, connecting all of us to all of them. A delightful writer, Frost's affection for his subjects is surpassed only by his obvious love for the kingdom of God that they portend. So even though it is mostly a look back, you hear a yearning on every page. And you begin to see, in the long thread of our history, the shape of mission.