Our Books

Pastors, Chiefs, and Warlords: The Ministry of being With 
Written as of series of reflections, this book is a conversation-shifting exploration of how the church understands the role of missionaries and their work. On bicycle and riverboat journeys totaling more than 2,000 kilometers, Bob's team visits pastors, chiefs, and warlords in remote towns, including Rev. Jacky Mwayuma, who was appointed to serve a community that had been ravaged by the recent war. As readers are pulled deeper into this voyage, they are invited to wrestle with increasingly challenging questions about the mission of the church, the global economy, neocolonialism, savior complexes, racism, war, and justice. This book follows The Last Missionary, but it also stands on its own as a complete work.

Copies can be ordered via Wipf and Stock or your local bookseller. A Kindle version is also available via Amazon. 

Praise for this book: 
"I urge all members of Christ's body to engage in dialogue with Bob's personal accounts to deepen their understanding of God's mission, especially when called to serve in challenging areas such as the North Katanga area in the Democratic Republic of the Congo."
-MANDE MUYOMBO, resident bishop, North Katanga Area of the United Methodist Church, Democratic Republic of the Congo
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"People like Bob Walters are the reason I remain a Christian. His thoughtfulness, his love for the powerless end poor, his enduring wisdom, are still very much present even after his passing. This book, like Bob, is a rich treasure."
-PHILIP GULLEY, author of If the Church Were Christian 

"Bob Walters's singular understanding of the changing dynamics of Christian missions and the inherent self-sufficiency of local communities should be read and studied by missiologists and Christian leaders the world over. His use of reflective observations told through the narrative of his engagements with the people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo carry the reader along on the 'adventure' while helping us see the missteps of the past and the potential for the future."
-J. RICHARD ELLIS, John Brown University, emeritus

"This post-humorous publication of Bob Walters gives a disturbing and yet
hope-giving picture of village life and the entanglement between mission, war, development, and dependency. It reveals careful observation, deep listening, and an honest (self) critique of coloniality and white racism. It shows a way beyond stereotypes about Africans, missionaries, and Christianity, stimulating a serious rethinking of mission, development, and church leadership."
-JNJ KRITZINGER, University of South Africa, emeritus

Decolonizing Mission Partnerships: Evolving Collaboration between United Methodists in North Katanga and the United States of America
In 2019, the doctoral thesis of FPM's head of missiological training, the Rev. Dr. Taylor Denyer, was selected for publication in the American Society of Missiology's monograph series. This work, Decolonizing Mission Partnerships,  looks deeply at the evolving relational dynamics between United Methodists in North Katanga and the USA and sets up a multifaceted conceptual framework through which one can analyze other missional collaborations in postcolonial contexts.   

The Rev. Dr. Mande Muyombo, United Methodist Bishop over the North Katanga Episcopal Area, writes "Decolonizing Mission Partnerships  is a book that should lead us into redefining what it means to be a church engaged in God's mission. Structures and systems that support mission are called to reevaluate themselves through the lenses of the perspective and experiences that Rev. Denyer presents to us. I appeal local churches to reflect on the book."

Printed copies can be ordered directly via Wipf and Stock (for the publisher's discounted price) or from your local bookseller. For those on a budget, there is a Kindle version for just $10. 

The Last Missionary
The Last Missionary is a bicycle adventure story set in remote districts in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Bob Walters travels with a team of Congolese colleagues discovering the state of the villages run over by the Pan-African war that devastated the region’s people through the terror of rape and the killing of millions.

Along the way, Bob offers the reader a number of short tutorials and reflections on missiology, the study of mission systems. He ponders patronage and cargo cults, and asks the question, “Is Jesus the answer?” But this is not an answer book, it is a book in search of better questions.

The Last Missionary is a challenge to both evangelicals and progressives in the church, missionaries and mission volunteers, and even non-religious aid workers.

In 2018, the director of the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University added The Last Missionary to Boston's Intro to Mission curriculum. Since then, the book has been assigned in a number of seminaries and mission courses. Copies can be ordered directly through Wipf and Stock  or through your local bookseller. There is also a Kindle version.