Downward Discipleship: How Amy Carmichael Gave Me Courage to Serve in a Slum
Ebook
Moving to the Margins with Amy Carmichael
Follow in the footsteps of Amy Carmichael, whose defiance against injustice shined a light in India’s darkest corners. Her extraordinary journey reveals the profound impact of unwavering faith when pitted against social wrongs. What fierce conviction drove this fiery Irishwoman to forsake the familiar for the forsaken, trading comfort for conflict and compassion?
Downward Discipleship beckons you to learn from Amy's life—a beacon that questions the cost of true discipleship in our world of pain and injustice. In these pages, Amy's fifty-year mission to rescue temple-bound girls becomes a canvas for seven invitations of discipleship. Rahma weaves in her own stirring narrative from Jakarta's slums, presenting a model of discipleship that is demanding as it is rewarding, challenging as it is inspiring.
This book calls to all who yearn for a faith that is lovingly courageous and radically sacrificial. Rahma points us to a life of downward discipleship. While many in the world clamor to climb the ladders of success and financial security, she invites the reader on a different journey: to follow our savior to unlikely places, meet him among the world’s poor, and experience the joy of abundant life.
Prologue
Invitation 1: From Fear to Friendship
1.1 Asking Amy: How do we sing in the night?
1.2 Seeing Fears Transformed by Friendships
1.3 Encountering Jesus in Places of Addiction
1.4 Room to Reflect
Invitation 2: From Self to Surrender
2.1 Asking Amy: How can we find peace?
2.2 Surrendering to God’s Timing
2.3 Surrendering to a Lifetime of Learning
2.4 Room to Reflect
Invitation 3: From Guilt to Gratitude
3.1 Asking Amy: How can our lives overflow with gratitude?
3.2 Living in Paradox
3.3 Finding Jesus in Surprising Places
3.4 Room to Reflect
Invitation 4: From Control to Compassion
4.1 Asking Amy: What can we do when we feel helpless and out of control?
4.2 Trusting God When We Cannot See
4.3 Bringing Our Laments to the Lord
4.4 Room to Reflect
Invitation 5: From Mammon to Manna
5.1 Asking Amy: How will the Lord provide?
5.2 Giving More than Money
5.3 Trusting God in Times of Scarcity and Plenty
5.4 Room to Reflect
Invitation 6: From Poverty to Praise
6.1 Asking Amy: How can we be sustained through seasons of suffering?
6.2 Clinging to Christ’s Hope in Times of Disappointment
6.3 Discerning the Sacred Task of the Doula
6.4 Room to Reflect
Invitation 7: From Asking Why? To Welcoming the Word
7.1 Asking Amy: What can we do with our questions?
7.2 Recognizing We Need a Savior
7.3 Rooting Ourselves in God’s Word
7.4 Room to Reflect
Conclusion
Epilogue
Appendix A: Journal Entry
Appendix B: Songs
Acknowledgments
Bibliography
Anita Rahma’s book Downward Discipleship invites us to the lived reality of following Jesus by serving the poor and oppressed. The story is interwoven with that of Amy Carmichael who saved girls from prostitution in India last century. Anita has drawn from Amy’s writing and woven it into her own journey of living in the slums of Jakarta, providing schooling for children, and grappling with suffering and poverty. She gives us glimpses of her own life with her responses of songs and personal reflection in the nitty gritty of life on the margins.
Irene Alexander, PhD
Asian Theological Seminary, Stillpoint, Brisbane, Trinity College Queensland Honorary Research Fellow
Author, Practicing the Presence of Jesus and How Relationships Work
Planted deep inside the wounds of our world, Anita Rahma offers a testimony of hope and healing. Looking through the lens of nineteenth-century missionary Amy Carmichael, we are afforded a perspective on the many “whys” that surround the lives of those who are suffering. In the end, we shift our focus from the why, and turn our attention to the Who that walks among the marginalized.
Scott Bessenecker
Global Engagement & Justice, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship
Author, The New Friars and How to Inherit the Earth
Across the global pain of two billion urban poor, there are multiplying movements inspired by Christ, the suffering servant, to live among them. Anita dearly represents the multiple levels of the struggles to find an understanding of the depths of spirituality amidst such struggles. Her authorship is unique in its ability to integrate the complexities yet identify the singularities of action. Some books drive you deeper towards the living God!! Read them! Read this one!
Viv Grigg, PhD
Author, Companion to the Poor, Cry of the Urban Poor, Spirit of Christ and the Postmodern City, Kiwinomics, SlumDwellers’ Pedagogy
In Anita Rahma’s Downward Discipleship, one reads many Biblical insights as she focuses on the importance of a deeper relationship with God. The reader finds theology not from the desk but from the kitchen table. Working for so many years for those at the edge of society, Anita sees with the eyes as Jesus saw the needy and the broken-hearted. I share with Anita the ongoing inspiration from the work of Amy Carmichael in Dohnavur in India. Triggered by the deep insights from this God-fearing woman who started her work in the outgoing Victorian era, the author found beautiful gems to implement these in her work in the slums of Jakarta. Spiritually charged throughout, this book is written with passion and compassion. Vigorous reflections thoughtfully drawn from Amy Carmichael’s writings and skillfully presented, underline Rahma’s thoughts about doing missionary work amongst very vulnerable people. This book gives the reader insights into the practical challenges which missionary work encounters in areas away from mainstream city life. In the grim reality of the Jakarta slums, we meet Christian devotedness and personal faith in God.
J. Kommers, PhD
North-West University (NWU), Potchefstroom, South Africa
Author, Triumphant Love: The Contextual, Creative and Strategic Missionary Work of Amy Beatrice Carmichael in South India
Inspiring. Chock-full of wisdom. And potentially life-changing. In Downward Discipleship, Anita Rahma calls her readers to set aside their comfort and follow Jesus on his long, purposeful descent to the bottom of society. Woven throughout this book, Rahma shares personal stories from her mission work among the urban poor while also introducing us to one of her spiritual heroes—an early twentieth-century missionary to India named Amy Carmichael. For nearly fifty years, Carmichael worked tirelessly to rescue temple children from forced prostitution and slave-like conditions. Her life and writings have deeply impacted Rahma’s own sense of call, as I pray Rahma’s life and writings will now do for you.
Jason Porterfield
Author, Fight Like Jesus
Why did Amy Carmichael do what she did? If you are one who wants to deeply understand and emulate her model of selfless service, this is the book. Amy’s unshakeable faith in both the transcendent and Immanent nature of God is clearly evident in acknowledging due reverence and also constant presence of the divine in every aspect of her life. Rahma found writings and stories from Amy’s life and connected it to her own life to learn to face fear and overcome guilt, slowly giving up control and surrender to God--shunning worldly temptations and drawing comfort and strength in her own struggles. Her quotes from Amy in the beginning of each chapter are perfect and real, and it showed how much she’s been deeply affected and touched by Amy’s life and writings. It is very comforting to know that everything that Amy wrote as her own questions and struggles has found deep meaning in the life of another woman living in a different culture, place, and time. This is a practical manual on serving others filled by divine love.
Jeremiah Rajanesan
CEO, The Dohnavur Fellowship, South India
By interweaving the story of legendary missionary, Amy Carmichael, with her own journey to the slums of Indonesia, Rahma offers us a front row seat to a life lived with purpose. But the goal is not to place yet another hero on yet another pedestal. Instead, this is an invitation for all of us to be deeply transformed. These are lessons that can only be learned on the margins of society, among the poor. Read and be challenged.
Craig Greenfield
Founder, Alongsiders International
Author, Subversive Mission
Reading Downward Discipleship is like joining author Anita Rahma and legendary missionary Amy Carmichael to share stories over a cup of tea! In the book, Rahma gently but firmly invites the reader to embrace seven different paradigm shifts. In the process, Rahma outlines a vision for Christian discipleship that follows Jesus to the cultural and social margins. Whether you are serving in or with a disadvantaged community or not, Downward Discipleship will help you live a life of joyful and purposeful surrender in your life of faith.
Rob Dixon, DIS
Author, Together in Ministry: Women and Men in Flourishing Partnerships
The author combines her personal journey downward with quotes and insights from Amy Carmichael who, over a century earlier, had served among the poor of India for over fifty years of her life. This book is a powerful invitation to spread beauty through the world. In poetry and prose, in accounts of personal struggle and freedom from control, fear, and self-gratification, reading the Bible in a garbage dump gives Rahma the perspective of a downward disciple, who like Jesus, descended to live with those below the lines of poverty, injustice, and thoughtless privilege and easy abundance. At once prophetic and inspiring, Downward Discipleship is a refreshing cross-centered, cross-cultural, counter-cultural example of two women who embody the good news of Jesus authentically. The story of Amy and Rahma will change your perspective, and potentially, your life.
Linford Stutzman, PhD
Emeritus Professor of Culture, Religion and Mission, Eastern Mennonite University
Author, Sailing Acts and With Paul at Sea
The unique approach in Anita Rahma’s second book is to learn from and then engage the reader with the life of Amy Carmichael, a missionary in India one hundred years before Anita was called to downward discipleship. Building on her first book, Beyond Our Walls: Finding Jesus in the Slums of Jakarta, Anita Rahma takes her readers deeper into an exploration of the ever-present challenges and accompanying joy and contentment that comes with following Jesus into the suffering of the world. Anita points out that Jesus sought out the lowest in his culture and did not live as one with privilege even though he was Lord of all creation. We are all called to downward discipleship rather than upward mobility, though not all may be called to the same locations and lifestyles. Some readers will be challenged to leave comfort behind and to find the courage, as Anita has, through giants of faith who have gone before to live an incarnational life of chosen poverty. Perhaps others will be confronted with the need to live more thoughtfully and be used by God to support the Anita’s and Amy’s in the world. Each chapter introduces the downward discipleship topic such as “from control to compassion,” asks a related question of Amy’s life and shares a situation in Anita’s own life. Bringing Amy Carmichael’s life to the reader deepens our connection with those who, through the ages, have lived for God by serving others.
In every age there are those who hear and respond to the call to love and serve in the world’s hardest places. May we read this book with an open heart and prayerful spirit, ready to respond to God’s call for us, and comforted by God’s faithful care and leading along that path.
Ann Graber Hershberger, PhD
Emeritus Professor of Nursing, Eastern Mennonite University
Executive Director, Mennonite Central Committee
In Anita Rahma's usual fashion, Downward Discipleship delivers truth from unexpected angles. Her thoughtful reflections on blessing and privilege and the way Western workers often feel guilt over their own privilege spoke deeply to me. Her stories of walking with God and walking with the poor inspired me to be more of a spiritual doula with the people in my life—patiently walking with them and allowing God, not me, to do the transforming.
Elizabeth Trotter
Editor-in-chief, A Life Overseas (missions website)
Co-author, Serving Well
- Title: Downward Discipleship: How Amy Carmichael Gave Me Courage to Serve in a Slum
- Author: Anita Rahma
- Publisher: William Carey Publishing
- Print Publication Date: 2024
- Logos Release Date: 2024
- Language: English
- Resources: 1
- Format: Digital › Ebook
- ISBNs: 9781645085546, 9781645085522, 164508552X, 1645085546
- Resource ID: LLS:9781645085546
- Resource Type: Monograph
- Metadata Last Updated: 2024-05-31T19:02:36Z
Anita Rahma grew up in a family that loves Jesus and cares deeply about global social justice issues. Her high-school years were spent in the Philippines, where God captured her heart and began calling her to a life of ministry. After graduating from university with a degree in Culture, Religion, and Missions, Rahma joined Servants to Asia’s Urban Poor, in partnership with Virginia Mennonite Missions. For the past thirteen years, she has lived and served in a slum community in Jakarta, Indonesia, now with her husband and two sons. Rahma and her husband are founders of House of Hope, a free kindergarten and afterschool program in their slum community.