Book Club Questions for The Insanity of God

1.Nik opens the book by raising the question of whether faith can survive in places of brutal persecution. Before reading any further, how would you have answered that question from your own experience and assumptions?

2.The title, *The Insanity of God*, is deliberately provocative. What do you think Nik means by it — and what does it suggest about how the world views the way God works?

3.Nik describes himself and his wife Ruth as ordinary people who simply said yes to an extraordinary calling. How do you think ordinary faith can be the starting point for something that looks, from the outside, like insanity?

1.Nik describes how he and Ruth responded to what they felt was a clear call to serve in one of the most dangerous, least-reached places on earth. What does their willingness to go reveal about how they understood the call of God at that stage in their lives?

2.Somalia in the early 1990s was a landscape of starvation, civil war, and collapsed infrastructure. Nik and Ruth quickly found that the problems they faced were far larger than anything their training had prepared them for. When has a situation in your own life turned out to be far harder than you anticipated — and how did that affect your faith?

3.Nik describes watching people die in enormous numbers despite every effort to help, and beginning to wonder whether their presence was making any real difference. Have you ever felt that your efforts for God were futile? What did you do with that feeling?

1.Nik and Ruth lose their son Andrew to an illness that, in almost any other setting, would have been treatable. How does the location of Andrew's death — on the mission field, in obedience to God's call — make the grief more complicated, not less?

2.Nik is honest that Andrew's death did not simply deepen his faith — it broke it, at least for a time. Why is it important that he tells the story this way, rather than offering a tidier narrative of faith triumphing over grief?

3.Psalm 22 opens with the cry, 'My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?' — words Jesus himself quoted from the cross. How does knowing that Scripture makes room for this kind of anguished prayer change the way you think about your own moments of spiritual darkness?

1.Nik makes a deliberate choice to *go and listen* rather than simply reading about persecution from a distance. What does this posture of listening — especially across cultural, linguistic, and experiential chasms — require of a person?

2.Hebrews 11 catalogs the 'heroes of faith' — and notably includes those who 'were tortured,' 'went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated.' Why do you think Western Christianity tends to read Hebrews 11 as a chapter about triumph rather than suffering?

3.Nik enters these conversations as a broken man, not as a confident expert. How does his own vulnerability actually equip him to hear stories of persecution in a way that a more 'together' researcher might not?

1.Dmitri was imprisoned for his faith for seventeen years, during which time he sang a hymn of praise to God each morning in his cell. How does this single image confront your assumptions about what sustains a person in prolonged suffering?

2.Nik describes the moment when Dmitri's fellow prisoners and even his guards stood to honor him — a spontaneous act that seemed to acknowledge something supernatural in this man. What do you think they were responding to?

3.The three men in Daniel 3 tell Nebuchadnezzar, 'Our God is able to deliver us — but even if He does not, we will not bow.' Dmitri's story is a living echo of this declaration. What does 'even if He does not' faith look like in practical terms in your own life?

1.Nik discovers that the Chinese house church, which was brutally suppressed for decades, grew to tens of millions of believers during the very years of its persecution. How does this reality reshape the typical Western narrative about what the church needs in order to grow?

2.Chinese believers Nik interviews often describe persecution not as an obstacle to their faith but as the *context* in which their faith became real and deep. How does pressure — spiritual, relational, or physical — function in your own faith formation?

3.John 12:24 uses the image of a grain of wheat that must fall into the ground and 'die' before it bears much fruit. How do the stories of Chinese martyrs and imprisoned believers embody this principle — and what does it mean for you personally?

1.Many of the Muslim-background believers Nik interviews came to faith through dreams and visions of Jesus — without any missionary contact. How does this challenge or expand your understanding of how God pursues people He wants to save?

2.Nik encounters believers who knew, at the moment of their conversion, that following Jesus would likely cost them their family, their community, and possibly their life — and chose to follow anyway. How does a faith born at that kind of cost compare to one that has never been tested?

3.Stephen in Acts 7 is stoned to death while asking God to forgive his killers — and sees Jesus standing at the right hand of God as he dies. Several of the Muslim-background believers Nik meets describe similarly supernatural experiences in their moments of greatest suffering. What do these accounts suggest about the presence of God in extremity?

1.Paul writes in Philippians 3:10 that he wants to know 'the fellowship of sharing in [Christ's] sufferings.' Nik's journey suggests that the persecuted church may understand this phrase in a way that comfortable Christians simply cannot. What do you think 'fellowship with Christ' in suffering actually means — experientially, not just theologically?

2.Nik observes that persecuted believers consistently describe their suffering as a *gift* — not because they enjoyed it, but because of what it produced in them and around them. How does this reframe the way you think about the hard things God allows in your life?

3.2 Corinthians 1:8-10 records Paul describing a situation so severe that he 'despaired even of life' — and then saying that this was *so that* he would not rely on himself but on God. What is the connection between being pushed past our limits and learning genuine dependence on God?

1.Jesus' letter to the church at Laodicea in Revelation 3 is addressed to a congregation that is 'rich, wealthy, and in need of nothing' — and yet Jesus describes them as 'wretched, pitiful, poor, blind and naked.' How does this ancient letter speak to the state of the Western church today?

2.Nik observes that the Western church often exports a version of Christianity to persecuted contexts that is fundamentally incompatible with suffering — a gospel of health, wealth, and earthly blessing. What damage can that kind of message do to believers who are about to face a prison cell?

3.Luke 12:48 records Jesus saying, 'From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.' How does the extraordinary privilege and freedom of Western Christians translate into extraordinary responsibility — and how well do you think we are meeting it?

1.Nik's central question — 'Can faith survive in the worst places on earth?' — has now been answered by hundreds of testimonies. In your own words, what answer does the evidence of the persecuted church give to that question?

2.Romans 8:35-39 asks, 'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' and proceeds to list the worst things imaginable — tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, peril, sword. Paul's answer is an emphatic 'nothing.' How has reading the stories in this book changed what it means to you when you read that passage?

3.Jesus tells His disciples in John 16:33, 'In this world you will have trouble. But take heart! I have overcome the world.' He does not promise the absence of trouble — He promises His overcoming *within* it. How does this distinction reshape your prayers and expectations?

1.1 Corinthians 12:26 says that 'if one part suffers, every part suffers with it.' Hebrews 13:3 urges believers to 'remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners.' How well do you think the Western church currently embodies these commands — and what would it look like to take them more seriously?

2.Nik reports that persecuted believers overwhelmingly asked him to tell the Western church: *please do not take our suffering away, but pray for our faithfulness within it.* What does this request reveal about their understanding of suffering's role in their witness and growth?

3.Many of the believers Nik interviewed expressed a fear that Western Christianity's comfort and compromise would ultimately prove more dangerous to the global church than external persecution. Do you think they are right? Why or why not?

1.Isaiah 55:10-11 promises that God's Word 'will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.' How does the Ripkens' story in Somalia embody this promise — even when visible fruit was agonizingly slow to appear?

2.Nik's return to the world that broke him is itself an act of faith. Is there a place, relationship, or calling in your life that you have fled from because of the pain associated with it — and to which God might be calling you back?

3.1 Corinthians 15:58 closes with Paul's exhortation to 'always give yourselves fully to the work of the Lord, because you know that your labor in the Lord is not in vain.' How does the arc of Nik's story serve as a lived-out commentary on the phrase 'not in vain'?

1.The title of the epilogue, *The Insanity of Obedience*, carries forward the book's central theme. In what sense is obedience to the Great Commission genuinely 'insane' by the world's standards — and in what sense is it the only truly rational response to the gospel?

2.Revelation 7:9-10 describes the final gathering of people 'from every nation, tribe, people, and language' worshiping before the throne. How does that eschatological vision reframe the cost of mission — including the costs Nik, Ruth, Andrew, Dmitri, and countless unnamed believers paid?

3.Matthew 28:18-20 is the Great Commission — a command given to all disciples, not just missionaries. Having read this book, how do you hear that command differently than you did before? What does it ask of you, specifically, in your context?

1.Looking back across the entire book, which single story, person, or moment was most personally impactful for you — and why do you think that particular image or testimony landed where it did?

2.How has your understanding of God changed — or been deepened, challenged, or reconstructed — by reading *The Insanity of God*? Be specific: what did you believe before that you no longer believe, or what do you now believe that you did not before?

3.Nik's central question was: 'Is God sufficient in the worst places on earth?' How would you answer that question now — not in theory, but in a way that is connected to your own life and circumstances?