Books

Belonging Before Believing

Reimagining Evangelism for a millennial generation.

Brian McLaren’s A New Kind of Christian (2001) issued a strong, if controversial, wake-up call to proposition-minded evangelicals eager to reach the millennial generation with the gospel. For those who agreed with the basic tenor of McLaren’s book but felt he went too far in downplaying logic-based, creed-centered apologetics, Rick Richardson’s Reimagining Evangelism (which tellingly boasts a preface by McLaren) offers a healthy and appealing middle ground.

Richardson agrees with McLaren (and others in the emerging church) that postmoderns are more likely to join us on a spiritual journey than to respond to a one-time, high-pressure conversion sales pitch, that they are more eager to hear the Bible’s grand story than the dogmatic statements into which that story has been abstracted by theologians.

What Richardson adds is a powerful vision of a collaborative, Holy Spirit–led apologetics in which a community of believers pools together their diverse gifts.

In today’s world, he persuasively argues, seekers must feel they are part of such a community before they embrace Christ: “Belonging comes before believing.”

Richardson also helps evangelists to reimagine themselves as detectives “looking for clues of God’s Spirit at work in the lives of others.”

Copyright © 2007 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.

Related Elsewhere:

Reimagining Evangelism is available from ChristianBook.com and other retailers.

InterVarsity Press has more information, including an excerpt, from the book.

Also in this issue

The CT archives are a rich treasure of biblical wisdom and insight from our past. Some things we would say differently today, and some stances we've changed. But overall, we're amazed at how relevant so much of this content is. We trust that you'll find it a helpful resource.

Cover Story

Making Airwaves

The Wilberforce Strategy

News

Andrew Walls: Historian Ahead of His Time

The Town that Loves Refugees

The Early Church on Jesus

Compassionate Bedfellow

Review

Film: Modernity's Art Form

The Suburb of God

Three Models of Hell

News

Nepal's New Peacemakers

A Community of the Broken

Rigorous Joy

The Problem with Mere Christianity

Defining Business Success

News

Death-Defying Ministry

By Women, for Women

News

Shedding Light on <em>The Dark Tower</em>

The United Nations' Disarray

Can We Dialogue with Islam?

Praying the Psalms

Saints Gone Wild

Reflections: Winter

Impressively Invisible

Dollars and Sense

Striking Out the Liberals

News

A Boom for Missions

Editorial

The New Intolerance

News

Go Figure

News

My Ministry Space

News

News Briefs: February 01, 2007

News

Compassionate Conservatives

News

What Iraq's Christians Need

Five Streams of the Emerging Church

News

Quotation Marks

News

Equal-Opportunity Offender

News

Passages

News

Miracle Vote

Bottom-Up Discipline

Mega-Headache

Exit Interviews

Asbury Flap

News

Riding the Pope's Coattails

Modernity's Art Form

View issue

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Power Without Integrity Destroys Us

Evangelicals helped elect Trump. Can evangelicals also hold him accountable?

The Bulletin

Sultan of Swing

The Bulletin addresses the election of Donald Trump.

What Another Trump Presidency Means To Evangelicals Around the World

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God Is Faithful in Triumph and Despair

I voted for Kamala Harris and mourn her loss. But I want to keep politics in its proper place, subordinate to Jesus.

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