Actor Joe Hamm (star of the show Mad Men) did a stint in rehab for an alcohol addiction. Hamm confessed in an interview, "I'm certainly damaged—there's no denying it. When your mom dies when you're nine, and your dad dies when you're 20, and then you live on couches in other people's basements … We live in a world where to admit anything negative about yourself is seen as weakness … It's not weak to say, 'I need help.'"
Most evangelism books are riddled with gimmicks. Ask this question. Say this prayer. Give this speech. Maybe that’s why Organic Outreach for Ordinary People: Sharing the Good News Naturally (Zondervan) by Kevin G. Harney is so refreshing. Harney urges readers to toss the scripts and concentrate on fostering red-hot excitement for the gospel in their own lives, and then to share the faith in natural language with the people around them.
Harney stresses that evangelism isn’t the exclusive domain of the “superspiritual, the velvet-tongued, and the hyperextroverted.” Rather it’s for average Christians willing to incorporate biblical practices into their daily lives. To illustrate his thesis, Harney mines his ministry and the lives of regular folks for stories of ordinary outreach. And at the end of each chapter, he provides “organic activities” (practical evangelism ideas), individual and group reflections, and a prayer designed to focus and stir passion for outreach.
But the book’s best insight is that evangelism has less to do with methodology and more to do with the spiritual state of the evangelist. Harney challenges readers to determine their “outreach temperature,” on a scale of one to 10, with one being “ice cold” and 10 being “sizzling hot.” Harney then suggests spiritual practices (such as praying, telling stories, contemplating eternity, etc.) to raise their temperature to reach non-Christians one degree per day. OK, that’s a little gimmicky, but it’s an evangelism book. What did you expect?
