The Missionary Letters of Vincent Donovan: 1957-1973 Paperback – January 1, 2011

The Missionary Letters of Vincent Donovan is a treasure trove; a collection of discovered valuables. In the letters, Father Vince both challenges the institutionalization of religion while he enlightens us about what it means to a Christian and apostle of Jesus Christ. In the Forward, Brian McLaren aptly captures several themes of Donovan's work including the following, "Donovan displays a profoundly evangelical instinct - in the sense that for him the essence of Christianity is not a static, inflexible institution but a dynamic gospel, not a set of untranslatable doctrines but an ever incarnating message and mission of hope." Thank you, John Bowen, for your efforts in sharing the personal and some may say prophetic writings of this missionary pioneer.

Donovan shows how stripping the message of the Gospel to its bare essentials: the birth, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus helps an isolated village deal with those essentials. And the essential is how do we deal with this message of God's extraordinary love for us? Not with the establishment of schools, clinics, businesses, buildings, securing land, but by facing up to the reality that God has come to us and seeks our response. Donovan's letters reveal his struggles with his own methodology and with the church hierarchy. Great reading.