On January 22, 1999, in a remote hill tribal village in the Indian state of Orissa, Australian missionary Graham Staines and his two young sons, Philip and Timothy, settled to sleep overnight in their station wagon.Soon after midnight, the Staines’ vehicle was set upon by an enraged mob. They beat and stabbed the father and his two little boys with tridents before lighting a fire beneath their vehicle, incinerating them.

No evangelism program has enjoyed the success of Alpha with one in six British churches and thousands more worldwide adopting the program. In 1998 it carried its own near-saturation advertising campaign on British television. Alpha is now a highly commercialized international industry providing products from videotapes to cookbooks. Some have heralded it as God's instrument for revival. It has been the subject of numerous articles, doctorates and books, including "Anyone for Alpha? Evangelism in a post-Christian Society" by sociologist Stephen Hunt.

I read this book fresh from my involvement in making the MU quilt for Pam Goodhew. For months, dozens of godly women met weekly for an old fashioned quilting bee around a communal frame in my lounge room, stitching this gift of love and sharing their own life stories.

Paul Barnett, Bishop of North Sydney and Visiting Fellow in History at Macquarie University, Sydney, and Research Professor at Regent College, Vancouver, has contributed this volume, a commentary on 1 Corinthians, to the Christian Focus series. The series is intended to provide ‘biblically accurate’ popular works for Christian adults and includes commentaries (like this one) as well as biographies, and books on doctrine and Christian living.