The Reluctant Evangelist: Moving from can't and don't to can and do

by Richard Coekin

Jonah is famous for being a reluctant evangelist. But God had other plans! If we're honest, we are also often very reluctant when it comes to telling others about Jesus. We can learn from God's dealings with Jonah about how to be effective for the Lord, whom we love and want to serve. We can move from can't and don't to can and do. Like Jonah we need learn to trust his awesome power (chapter 1), experience his sovereign grace (chapter 2), fear his coming judgment (chapter 3) and share his gut-wrenching compassion (chapter 4). All this is perfectly revealed in Jesus, the divine Evangelist, and as we look to him and as the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with his evangelistic compassion, our hearts will sing with the melodic line of Jonah, “Salvation comes from the LORD” (Jonah 2 v 11) and our lives will erupt with the evangelistic enterprise that our cities so desperately need.

Genres: Evangelism, Christian

147 pages, Kindle Edition

Published July 9, 2018

About the author

Richard Coekin is Director of the CoMission church network and Senior Pastor of Dundonald Church, sw London. A renowned Bible teacher and the author of several books including Our Father and Ephesians For You, Richard is also Chairman of the London Men's Convention. He is married to Sian and they have five children.

Reviews

[Danny Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonah is such a good book. I almost feel sheepish looking back at how much of my life that I didn't understand the book. Jonah is about the gospel and the heart of God for the people who can be saved by it. It is also about the sometimes unfortunate state of our heart as we share that gospel.

This is a short book with very readable chapters that reads a little like an extended commentary on Jonah and how that should affect our lives. This book is great, especially for a new Christian. Coekin is not afraid to go back to the basics, build on them, and challenge how we live with and share the grace of God.

[Imogen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is refreshingly blunt, not shying away from aspects of the gospel which can be uncomfortable. I loved how Coekin unpacked the Biblical definition of ‘compassion’, and that really stood out to me as something to focus on. I would recommend it to other reluctant evangelists like me.

The only things which I was unsure about were 1) what was said about prayer on page 113. This felt like it was veering into prosperity gospel language and 2) the constant references to co-mission and an assumption that the reader is from a more conservative evangelical background could potentially alienate readers from different evangelical backgrounds - ‘we can be better missionaries to our friends and colleagues than famous evangelists like Tim Keller or Rico Tice ... even our local church ministers can be more persuasive for our guests than great preachers like Kevin DeYoung or Vaughan Roberts on a video’ (p. 41). Tim Keller is pretty famous, but Rico Tice? (No offence, Rico) Kevin DeYoung? Vaughan Roberts? I know who they are because I’ve been in conservative evangelical churches in the South of England for all my life... but I doubt all British evangelicals consider these people to be famous preachers.


Apart from this, would recommend a read!

[Michael Shallvey · Rating 3 out of 5]

A wonderful main message, that God can work powerfully through even the reluctant 🙏 Some bits felt to me to be either a little overstated or oversimplified (such as the thoughts on prayer p113 that another reviewer helpfully noted) 🤔

[Ian Rees · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very challenging summary of the book of Jonah. Lots of application to evangelism, outreach and mission.

[Phil Butcher · Rating 4 out of 5]

At times he shoehorns his thoughts on contemporary evangelism onto the bible text, but overall an encouraging and challenging read.

[Tarrant Moss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really helpful book for looking at Jonah