The Unexpected Journey
Bibliographical Entry
Rainer, Thom S. The Unexpected Journey. Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005.
Author Information
Thom S. Rainer has a PhD from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary and is the founding dean of the Billy Graham School of Missions. He has pastored ten churches and currently serves as the president of his own consulting group. Rainer and his wife Nellie Jo spent one year traveling from Utah to the East Coast, interviewing thirteen extraordinary Christians who all came from different religious backgrounds. Rainer shares their stories of salvation, and in turn begins an Unexpected Journey that changed his life forever. He is a well- known author who also wrote The Unchurched Next Door and Breakout Churches. Rainer and his family reside in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Content Summary
Rainer’s overriding theme is that Jesus saves and lost people from all belief systems can change their lives by receiving the redeeming love of Christ. The front cover displays a man walking down the edge of a grain field that is ready for harvest, which symbolically portrays Rainer’s unstated desire to increase the harvest of lost souls. Thirteen people from twelve different non-Christian belief systems are asked to share their testimony on how they came to know Jesus Christ. Their stories reveal how they broke the strongholds of Satan’s rein in their lives and recovered from thoughts of suicide, bitterness and hate. A sub theme of each interview reveals that there is a cost when choosing to follow Jesus, such as excommunication, rejection, and abandonment from those who were family or friends in those belief systems.
Rainer and his wife began their unexpected journey in Salt Lake City, Utah and finished their last interview almost a year later in Augusta, Georgia (11). His evangelism research protocol was uncomplicated and straightforward; go find believers who have come to faith in Jesus from other non-Christian belief systems and ask them to tell their...
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