The Art of Personal Evangelism: Sharing Jesus in a Changing Culture

by Will McRaney

Personal evangelism is the foundation for all church growth. As the culture and landscape of America shifts, people are looking for spiritual answers to life’s significant questions. However, in the increasingly crowded marketplace of spiritual ideas, people are looking to the church less and less. Will McRaney addresses this problem at the heart of the solution. If the Kingdom of God is to expand, individual Christians will have to learn to communicate their faith story in a way that is engaging, personal, and relevant to the listening culture today.

Genres: Evangelism, Christian, Theology, Discipleship, Nonfiction, Church, Christianity

208 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2003

Reviews

[Kent Kessler · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another of my top three picks. To be honest, this was one of my last books to review and I told others I had found “the” book I was searching for. It filled gaps other books didn’t. McRaney states how our approach to evangelism cannot be our fathers’ approach to it and lays out thirteen reasons for overhauling our approach (p4). The four appendices are great simplifications for moving forward in reaching people for Christ. It is hard for me to hold back and communicate everything in this book, but Chapter 5 “Communicating Inside Your Context” is worth the price of the whole book and filled gaps. I am still reflecting on the difference between modernity’s way of preaching loudly vs. postmodernity’s way of speaking softly when presenting the Gospel. Memorize the fifteen passages for sharing your faith!

[Perry Hancock · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent job of describing the modern-day context and how the church can reach the world today.

[Rachel Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awesome book on biblical evangelism

[Benjamin Thompson · Rating 2 out of 5]

In this book we have an excellent example as to why pop-Christian books should leave philosophy alone. I would seriously recommend pastors either do some serious work in philosophy, then introduce it to their preaching or only give limited, basic claims about philosophical ideas. Case and point; The treatment of postmodernism in this book. For one thing, McRaney confuses Postmodernity with Postmodernism. Postmodernity is simply the time period we are considered to be in. With modernity being focused on the scientific and industrial revolutions and postmodernity revolving more around revolutions in culture and societal institutions. Postmodernism, however, is a philosophy based on a radical existentialist critique of modernism. Moreover, McRaney's definition of postmodernism seems to be so vague that it could describe everything from pragmatism to individualism to collectivism to new age theology to liberation theology. To give an example McRaney writes, "Postmodernity arises out of the recognition that something was terribly wrong with living out of modernity. Therefore, it is a rejection of many components of modernity. Much that was thought to be absolute is now being debated and reexamined. Postmodernity highlights experience, subjective knowledge, community and preference." Whereas modernity highlights reason, facts, the individual and objectivity. It is this desire of McRaney and other to create a simple one to one contrast between ideologies that gets him in trouble. The fact is that neither Postmodernism nor postmodernity make any claims about emphasizing the community over the individual or even experience over reason. Indeed, he cites some authors who have done academic work on postmodernism such as William Grassie, but most of the time only quotes and cites other popular pastoral writers and thinkers who have not interacted with the most recent scholarship on postmodernism or postmodernity. This pattern I've found throughout the works of pastors from John MaCarthur to Chuck Swindoll. They all seem to really mostly be interested in the works of other pastors.

There seems to be a difficult dilemma here. On the one hand, if we demand that pastors get more education before taking on their duties, we may have an even greater shortage of pastors, or none of them will want to talk about deep intellectual issues. On the other hand if we simply say to pastors "jump in" when it comes to intellectual debates then it seems that they often only gain a cursory and crude understanding of very complex issues. In neither case are average Christians helped. So how do we resolve this dilemma?

I propose that we have a system where professors and experts in various theological and textual fields are trained more to communicate effectively with pastors. I propose also that churches be more receptive to scholars and experts who have done serious study in areas like postmodernism. This will by no means be easy, but I think the results would be fantastic. We need to get rid of this idea that pastors understand the Bible better than anyone... because they are pastors. Those in pastoral ministry have a great deal more to do then study scripture on an intellectual level. They can't all be expected to be experts, nor should they be given the authority of experts in fields they have never seriously studied.

[Brian Chilton · Rating 4 out of 5]

McRaney's book on evangelism is one of the best I have ever read on the topic. McRaney provides support for the evangelist in a way that does not advocate aggressive maneuvers, but rather an approach that is intellectual and relational. I highly recommend this book to anyone who seeks to share one's faith in an effective manner in an increasing secular society.

[Jeff Elliott · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quality & clarity

Read the first 3 chapters in someone else's copy then had to go buy my own!

Yes! Yes! Yes! This is what we have needed to understand. Simple, concise, understandable. I will be teaching this book at our church sometime in the near future.

[Tyrone Steele · Rating 4 out of 5]

Completely excellent book on shucking your fears.

[Ruth · Rating 3 out of 5]

More than a manual on sharing one's faith, this book documents America's cultural shift from Modern to Postmodern and recommends subsequent adaptions of evangelistic methods.

[Brent · Rating 1 out of 5]

Pelegian in their methodology due to a lack of a solid theological grounding.