Review of Good Guestwork: Christians and Muslims as Guests and Hosts by Peter M. Sensenig

Peter M. Sensenig, Good Guestwork: Christians and Muslims as Guests and Hosts, Santos Books, 2025. 239 pp. $24.99 USD. ISBN-13: 979-8218821432.

After a year of living in Zanzibar with his family as Christian missionaries, Peter Sensenig hesitantly accepted his Muslim friends’ invitation to pray at the mosque. The result? “I felt closer to Jesus in the mosque than I did anywhere else in Zanzibar,” concluded Sensenig. “I hope that my Muslim friends receive the same warm hospitality when they cross the threshold of a church building” (38, ch. 3, “Strangers Say Yes”).¹

Examples like these abound in Sensenig’s book, which is a powerful plea, in a time of travel bans and fear of terrorist attacks, for Western Christians to embrace a radically new understanding of their missional calling by learning to be both hosts and guests of Muslims—and encountering Jesus in new ways in the process. His book overflows with vivid and moving stories of surprising encounters with Muslim believers—and, through them, with Jesus—in Chad, Iran, Somalia, and elsewhere. Sensenig weaves these personal stories seamlessly together with biblical analysis and theological exhortation. In this engaging way, he develops a provocative call to radical hospitality that challenges preconceived religious categories and redefines “mission” as the kind of “good guestwork” that helps us to “hear and see Jesus in the vulnerable other” (53, ch. 5, “Noticing Jesus as the First Task”).

If Sensenig’s book defies easy categorization, it is because it is itself an effort to cross divides within the Western church. This is a nontraditional missionary story that is informed by recent biblical scholarship and mission theology and an up-to-date understanding of geopolitical context. It is grounded in a radical commitment to nonviolence while also being rooted in a commitment to spiritual renewal through an encounter with Jesus.

North American Mennonites wary of “mission” but committed to “peace” might find this book challenging; so will those committed to evangelizing Muslims by getting them to assent to Christian doctrines. But both need to hear and heed Sensenig’s plea to stop following “half gospels” that artificially separate mission from peace theology, or personal from social understandings of salvation, and to open ourselves to the radical renewal that comes from embracing a posture of vulnerability, exile, and friendship (82, ch. 7, “Why Pacifism Must Be Missional”). As we follow this call, we can begin to participate in “peace cells” together with our religious siblings, who “offer Christians . . . a chance to encounter Jesus like never before.” The stakes, according to Sensenig, are nothing less than the “spiritual vitality of the church” and “world peace” (3–4, “Introduction”)!

Anicka R. Fast is a specialist in church history and missiology with Mennonite Mission Network, a visiting researcher at the Center for Global Christianity and Mission at Boston University, and Secretary of the Faith and Life Commission of Mennonite World Conference. She is currently editing Global Anabaptist Forebears, a new Mennonite World Conference history series based on biographies.