Robert Dann, Authentic Media, 606 pages, 5 of 5 stars | Full Summary HERE.

Father of Faith Missions is the story of Anthony Norris Groves and his life as missionary in Persia and India.

What makes the book so spectacular is the way Dann unpacks dozens of themes around the life of Groves: suffering, apologetics, the life of George Muller, child raising, money, church planting, language study, Islam and so forth.

Groves was a man ahead of his time. He never served under a church denomination, never was promised a salary and never received a formal theological education. He lacked much. What he did have, as he liked to say, was the promises of God.

Groves was born in 1795 in the south of England. He married at age twenty-one and soon opened a surgery as a qualified dentist. Converted just before age 30, Groves wrote a little 28-page booklet just one year later. Christian Devotedness would prove to be one of the most influential Christian books of the 19th century.

He seemed to have everything–a devoted wife, a successful practice, and three children. But God had other plans for Groves. He became convinced the foreign mission field was his family’s lot and soon they were rumbling on a 5,000-mile, six-month trek on German bone shaker wagons. Their final destination was one of the hardest mission field’s on earth–Baghdad, Iraq, the “City of a Hundred Mosques.”

After four years of unimaginable suffering, Groves and his team closed up shop in Baghdad and tried afresh in India. He left behind the graves of his wife and infant daughter.

After 14 months touring India, he returned to England to recruit teachers for schools, supervisors for orphanages, craftsmen for commercial projects, evangelists for street preaching and tutors for his sons. He then returned to India where he spent the majority of his final years ministering and preaching, while becoming one of the pioneers of the Brethren Movement. He died of stomach cancer at age 58 on 20 May 1853. Dann records Groves’s death on page 263. The book has 606 pages, meaning over half the book fleshes out his missions philosophy and influences.

Recently I wrote a post entitled “The Greatest Missionary Biography.” In it I lay out ten reasons why I believe Dann’s bio of Groves supersedes all others.

Two-hundred years after the dawn of the great missions movement, today’s church enjoys scores of great missionary biographies. I’ve recommended my Top Twelve. But the life of Groves stands on top.

You could say it’s really a book on missions philosophy under the guise of a biography. The author obviously researched well. The hundreds of end notes contain some of best gems in the book. I’ve read portions of this paperback over and over again to my family. It inspires and informs as all great biographies do.

It’s a shame I only heard about this book at mid-life and that was only because a missionary family to Tanzania gifted it to my wife. It should be required reading for anyone that loves missions.

Quotables:

• “By keeping a man at home who ought to be seeking his Lord’s glory abroad, you as much weaken the Church at home, as by sending abroad one who ought to stay.” (98)
• “Sometimes we hear a gifted speaker–sound eloquent, brilliant, a master of his art–yet to our surprise his words leave our heart and soul untouched; we receive little help form him. I twill take a comprehensive failure, a profound tragedy, a devastating loss, before a clever man become a minister of life. Only then will he have power to speak the words of God into hearts of men. This is not natural ability; it is a divine gift; and it almost always comes through suffering. Norris Groves, after his months in Baghdad, was never the same again.” (428)
• “Unlike some more recent missiologists, he actually learned a foreign language, spend most of his adult life in an alien culture, recruited missionaries, established them in pioneer situations and personally led people from other races to faith and to maturity in Christ.” (450)
• “The man who digs the well may not be the one who draws the water.” (530)