BiblioFile - Christianity Today

A new wave of books on evangelism is being published. It could be that interest is rising and new ideas are flowing. Or perhaps authors are seeing a dearth of evangelistic activity and need to stir the pot.

Either way, we need good books on the subject. Here are six of my favorites.

How to Reach Secular People

by George G. Hunter III (Abingdon, 1992)

This book, along with Hunter’s The Celtic Way of Evangelism (Abingdon, 2000), helped me understand and articulate what I was already experiencing in my evangelistic work as a pastor: old approaches seldom work.

After introducing readers to the rise of secularism (“How the West Was Lost”), Hunter profiles contemporary secular people, acknowledging that they are often deeply spiritual, though not in the Christian sense of the word. His insight that people are now more conscious of doubt than guilt forced me to search for ways to help seekers find a faith in Christ that allows them to wrestle with doubt. In his Celtic Way of Evangelism, Hunter similarly challenges us to imagine an approach to evangelism where belonging precedes believing.

Lost in America: How You and Your Church Can Impact the World Next Door

by Tom Clegg and Warren Bird (Group, 2001)

Clegg and Bird zero in on trends that Hunter sensed in the early ’90s, trends that have become full-blown realities in every evangelist’s back yard. They address how to do postmodern evangelism by asking the right questions and offering helpful answers. This book deserves the “punchy, well-formatted, and creatively designed” award, and the authors connect to today’s people by glossing their text with references to popular movies.

The Master’s Plan for Making Disciples

by Win Arn and Charles Arn (1982, 2nd Ed., Baker, 1998)

This older book has virtues that make it a classic. It’s short and clear. It’s based on the “web of relationships” concept, which matches how most evangelism actually happens. And wisely parallelling Christ’s words, it suggests that we need to make disciples rather than merely do evangelism.

Building a Contagious Church: Revolutionizing the Way We View and Do Evangelism

by Mark Mittelberg (Zondervan, 2000)

Mark Mittelberg’s work may be less sensitive to the postmodern issues raised by Clegg and Bird, but he is wise to anchor evangelism in the local church. This magnum opus reviews his previous thinking (Becoming a Contagious Christian, Zondervan, 1996) and expands it into a church-revolutionizing plan. I can only imagine what would happen if thousands of church leader teams devoted a year to studying and applying this book.

(For an expanded review, see Growing Edge, page 103.)

The Message in the Bottle: How Queer Man Is, How Queer Language Is, and What One Has to Do with the Other

Walker Percy (Farrar Straus and Giroux, 1954)

This collection of essays isn’t a book about evangelism per se. But it, along with Soren Kierkegaard’s The Point of View for My Work as an Author: A Report to History (which is hard to find), challenged my thinking about evangelism as no other book has. Beneath evangelism lies the question of communication, and Percy’s essays—especially “Notes for a Novel About the End of the World” and “The Message in the Bottle”—profoundly explore how meanings (including the gospel) flow from person to person in what Percy calls today’s “strange times.”

Evangelism Outside the Box: New Ways to Help People Experience the Good News

by Rick Richardson (InterVarsity, 2000)

Richardson, an evangelism director with Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship and a former pastor of evangelism, reflects sensitivity to people and awareness of contemporary evangelistic obstacles. He grapples as vigorously as Clegg and Bird with postmodern issues (including a courageous chapter that challenges us to re-think how we define the gospel), and offers a way of diagramming the gospel that goes beyond the popular “bridge” illustration. His pages are so full of practical ideas that you almost get the feeling he expects you to do them.

Brian McLaren pastors Cedar Ridge Community Church in Spencerville, Maryland, and is the author of several books on evangelism.

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