In 2023, David Tarus, the executive director of ACTEA, assigned me (Joshua) to the task of “writing coordinator” for a working group on “Faith and Public Witness.”  This one of three parts of the ReThinking Church in the 21st Century project, led project led by Riad Kassis of Langham Publishing and now-former President Mark Labberton (retired) of Fuller Theological Seminary, reflecting on the state and mission of the global church today.  The other two groups were on “Theology and Identity” and “Persecution and Suffering.”  Group members were ministry practitioners and theological educators from around the world; Africa was well-represented.  Long story short, my work for the Public Witness group quickly grew and I served as Series Editor for the resulting three volumes.  The Theology and Identity book is titled Metaphors the Church Lives By and the Faith and Public Witness book is titled Faith and Public Life. By convention, my name isn’t listed on the covers, but is listed on the interior title pages.  Suffering and Persecution was published at the end of 2024 and the other two books were published 2025.  Ruth has an excellent chapter in Faith and Public Life and Ruth and I have a co-written chapter in Suffering and Persecution.

This was a huge amount of work that involved a good deal of mentoring of some of the contributors who were writing in English as their second or fourth language.  Today (Wednesday 26 November 2025) I stopped by the post office and was delighted to find that our author copies had arrived.

You can order copies of the books (disclosure:  we do not receive any royalties) from the publisher at https://langhamliterature.org/books?series_id=4513, or from wherever you prefer to buy books; digital versions (including Kindle) are available.