While in high school Chuck felt God's call to be a field missionary in Africa, expecting to spend his life there. But God only allowed him three years in the "bush." He had other things in mind for him. These years working cross-culturally laid a solid foundation for his future accomplishments.

Through a series of unplanned events, God made him a teacher of missionaries and a missiologist--teaching and writing to improve missionary principles and practices. In this book Kraft reflects on how he was shaped as a missiologist and why/how he felt the need for writing his many books and articles.

"Culture-positive" is the term he has coined for his approach. It's an approach that honors a people's way of life and helps them to express their faith in Christ within that way of life without converting to another culture. He taught that God loves and accepts them as they are--plus faith--and seeks to work with them to develop their own Christianity based on their own understanding of Scripture. Chuck sees a missionary as a coach, not as a director. This approach has shown its effectiveness both among the people Chuck worked with (the Kamwe of northern Nigeria) and in the field ministries of his students.