Arthur Sido Review of God’s Desire for the Nations

Arthur Sido has written a pretty thorough review of God's Desire for the Nations: The Missionary Theology of John Piper.

Some key takeaways:

What this book really excels at is showing how Piper's overall theology impacts and forms his understanding of missions. Missiology cannot be put in a silo and dealt with as an unrelated issue. Missiology and how we view our role as ambassadors for Christ in God's great mission is integral to our understanding of salvation, of the church, pretty much everything we deal with as the church. If you have a poorly formed theology of missions, your entire theological foundation is going to be flawed and there are plenty of people, me included, who have a partially formed theology of missions that impacts our own doctrinal thinking.

And …

This is a great book for both the Calvinist who appreciates the teaching of John Piper and is looking for a comprehensive look at Piper's theology of missions as well as for those who are not Calvinists and are under the mistaken impression that Calvinists by and large are disinterested in missions and missionary work.

I must also note that I agree that the book is often more like reading an academic paper, but I'd add that you can ignore the notes (nearly 850 of them) and just read the 112 pages of text. The notes provide a way to do follow-up study.