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Apatheism: How We Share When They Don't Care
How can you share the gospel with someone who doesn’t care? As Western culture becomes increasingly indifferent to questions of faith, diverted by secularism, comfort, and distraction, believers encounter many people who don’t so much doubt God as they are apathetic toward him. In Apatheism , Kyle Beshears urges us to recapture the joy of our salvation and demonstrates how to faithfully display the love of Christ to apatheist friends and neighbors.
140 pages, Paperback
Published March 15, 2021
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March 15, 2021
How do we share the gospel with people who don't care about God? People who aren't necessarily hostile to faith, but for various reasons are simply indifferent to it? This is the question Kyle Beshears sets out to answer in Apatheism. And it's a question that's been immensely important in my own personal experience, so I couldn't wait to read this book.
I totally get that for many people, the answer to the question is probably, "Don't!" If they're not interested, just leave them alone! But Beshears rightly points out that the more often we leave it alone, the more we risk drifting into our own apathy toward our neighbors' spiritual welfare. It would require that Christians downplay the part of their lives that's most meaningful to them, and it becomes more tempting to withdraw into our religious ghettos and become hostile to those outside. Plus, there are ways to engage people in conversation about our faith (something that should matter deeply to us and be a passion worth talking about) in ways that aren't belligerent or invasive. We just need to learn how. In this book Beshears shows believers a simple and insightful way forward that is built around developing authentic conversations with the religiously-disinterested and honoring them as people seeking fulfilment in life just like us.
The book divides into two parts, with the first half diagnosing the problem of apatheism and its causes, while the second half describes a path toward engaging "apatheists" in spiritual conversation. Beshears draws on some great research and writings about our modern Western cultural situation and the various trends that lead people to become apathetic toward religion. He highlights four main contributing factors: beliefs about God become contestable and diverse, and people's conditions of living become comfortable and distracted. The second and third chapters are a bit more on the technical and philosophical side, but nothing too academic, and it's needed to lay the conceptual groundwork for the second half.
When it comes to the practical applications, there is a lot of magnificent food for thought. Beshears balances the importance of knowing and sharing truth with the need to love people and gradually prompt them into curiosity about spiritual matters. He rightly points out that emotions and desires play just as much, if not more, important of a role when it comes to dialoging with apatheists, and offers some steps to striking up conversations that operate on that level (as opposed to older apologetic approaches that rely too much on intellectual argument and are easy to shrug off or get too heated to go anywhere). He also has much to say about believers diagnosing and dealing with our own apathy and making sure that we are actually experiencing a fulfilling life with God that is worth sharing.
For my own part, I know I have a lot of growing to do when it comes to practicing having meaningful conversations about spiritual matters with many of my neighbors and family who don't have as much of an interest in it (at least, not that they let show). Apatheism gave me many excellent ideas to work with. It was readable, practical, free of any unnecessary fluff, and didn't oversell its own effectiveness. I appreciated Beshears' humble, gracious tone and the detailed examples he offered of how to ask the right questions, spark people's curiosity, and point them toward the joy and meaning found in Christ.
Anyone looking to grow in their ability to evangelize in our modern, Western, heavily-secularized culture will benefit greatly from this book. I know I did. It would also make an excellent text for courses on evangelism or apologetics. There was a nice little recommended reading list at the back with books on dealing with intellectual objections to Christianity, to help supplement the discussion. All in all, this was one of the better, more focused, and more practical books on evangelism I've read. Highly recommended.
(I was provided a review copy of this book from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review.)
I totally get that for many people, the answer to the question is probably, "Don't!" If they're not interested, just leave them alone! But Beshears rightly points out that the more often we leave it alone, the more we risk drifting into our own apathy toward our neighbors' spiritual welfare. It would require that Christians downplay the part of their lives that's most meaningful to them, and it becomes more tempting to withdraw into our religious ghettos and become hostile to those outside. Plus, there are ways to engage people in conversation about our faith (something that should matter deeply to us and be a passion worth talking about) in ways that aren't belligerent or invasive. We just need to learn how. In this book Beshears shows believers a simple and insightful way forward that is built around developing authentic conversations with the religiously-disinterested and honoring them as people seeking fulfilment in life just like us.
The book divides into two parts, with the first half diagnosing the problem of apatheism and its causes, while the second half describes a path toward engaging "apatheists" in spiritual conversation. Beshears draws on some great research and writings about our modern Western cultural situation and the various trends that lead people to become apathetic toward religion. He highlights four main contributing factors: beliefs about God become contestable and diverse, and people's conditions of living become comfortable and distracted. The second and third chapters are a bit more on the technical and philosophical side, but nothing too academic, and it's needed to lay the conceptual groundwork for the second half.
When it comes to the practical applications, there is a lot of magnificent food for thought. Beshears balances the importance of knowing and sharing truth with the need to love people and gradually prompt them into curiosity about spiritual matters. He rightly points out that emotions and desires play just as much, if not more, important of a role when it comes to dialoging with apatheists, and offers some steps to striking up conversations that operate on that level (as opposed to older apologetic approaches that rely too much on intellectual argument and are easy to shrug off or get too heated to go anywhere). He also has much to say about believers diagnosing and dealing with our own apathy and making sure that we are actually experiencing a fulfilling life with God that is worth sharing.
For my own part, I know I have a lot of growing to do when it comes to practicing having meaningful conversations about spiritual matters with many of my neighbors and family who don't have as much of an interest in it (at least, not that they let show). Apatheism gave me many excellent ideas to work with. It was readable, practical, free of any unnecessary fluff, and didn't oversell its own effectiveness. I appreciated Beshears' humble, gracious tone and the detailed examples he offered of how to ask the right questions, spark people's curiosity, and point them toward the joy and meaning found in Christ.
Anyone looking to grow in their ability to evangelize in our modern, Western, heavily-secularized culture will benefit greatly from this book. I know I did. It would also make an excellent text for courses on evangelism or apologetics. There was a nice little recommended reading list at the back with books on dealing with intellectual objections to Christianity, to help supplement the discussion. All in all, this was one of the better, more focused, and more practical books on evangelism I've read. Highly recommended.
(I was provided a review copy of this book from the publisher. I was not required to write a positive review.)
August 10, 2022
“That’s when it hit me. The fruitlessness of so many spiritual conversations I’d had there finally made sense. It wasn’t that people were hostile to the gospel, which is what I had assumed. It wasn’t even that they were too busy to be bothered with conversations about Jesus. They simply didn’t care.”
In his book Apatheism, Kyle Beshears addresses the current epidemic of apathy towards things of God and the gospel. In our current day and age, belief in God is considered contestable and diverse, meanwhile our lives are more comfortable and full of distraction than ever before. Thus, people care about the things of God far less than ever before.
As a response to this, Beshears presents a way in which to show people their need for God, by first asking what it is that they find joy in, then challenging that source of joy for its lack of power and permanence, then sharing the source of everlasting and true joy.
He acknowledges the challenges in this and clarifies that it won’t always be this simple, while simultaneously challenging his audience to see peoples’ need for this joy and their hopelessness without it.
In his book Apatheism, Kyle Beshears addresses the current epidemic of apathy towards things of God and the gospel. In our current day and age, belief in God is considered contestable and diverse, meanwhile our lives are more comfortable and full of distraction than ever before. Thus, people care about the things of God far less than ever before.
As a response to this, Beshears presents a way in which to show people their need for God, by first asking what it is that they find joy in, then challenging that source of joy for its lack of power and permanence, then sharing the source of everlasting and true joy.
He acknowledges the challenges in this and clarifies that it won’t always be this simple, while simultaneously challenging his audience to see peoples’ need for this joy and their hopelessness without it.
April 11, 2021
When I became a pastor in 1990, seeker was the term of art for a nonbeliever. Churches such as Willow Creek and Saddleback had popularized the term as part of their attractional ministry model. Rather than emphasizing that a person lacked faith, the word emphasized that a person possessed spiritual curiosity.
Using seeker this way made sense at that time. The share of Americans who self-identified as evangelical Christians hit its high watermark in 1993. According to the General Social Survey, the evangelical share of the population grew 76%, from 17% of the population in 1972 to 29.9% in 1993. No wonder evangelicals thought nonbelievers were seekers! A lot of them were.
They aren’t any longer, though. Since 1993, the evangelical share of the U.S. population has declined more than a quarter, from 29.9% in 1993 to 21.6% in 2018. Nones — people who claim no religious affiliation — are now more numerous than evangelicals. Their share of the population has grown 465%, from 5.1% in 1972 to 23.7% in 2018.
Just as evangelicals were wrong to attribute spiritual curiosity to all nonbelievers in 1993, we would be wrong to attribute spiritual hostility to all nonbelievers today. Nonbelievers are not necessarily would-be theists, but they’re not necessarily ticked-off atheists either. Instead, they’re what Kyle Beshears calls apatheists. They’re “cognitively indifferent and emotionally apathetic” about God. They don’t know, and they don’t care.
According to Beshears, apatheism’s “dual aspect” springs from four sources. Cognitively, apatheism becomes widespread when belief in God is “contestable” and “diverse.” Emotionally, it happens when status in life is “comfortable” and “distracted.” Let’s take a brief look at each of these four sources.
1. Contestable. The statistics cited above indicate that American society is becoming less religious, more secular, and more skeptical. In that sense, secularism is a story of subtraction. People believe less than they used to. They’ve taken away the super from supernaturalism.
2. Diverse. However, secularism isn’t just a subtraction story. It’s also an addition story. Think of the quotation (wrongly) attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they then become capable of believing in anything.” Secularism doesn’t present a binary choice between belief and nonbelief. It adds — even multiplies! — intellectual options.
Because belief is now contestable and diverse, Beshears argues, “some people lack the reason to care about God.”
Now let’s consider the emotional sources:
3. Comfortable. Psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Will Gervais argue, “Where life is safe and predictable, people are less motivated to turn to gods for succor.” Apatheism grows in “conditions of existential security,” they write. We need God only when we get into trouble, in other words. This is bad theology, of course, but nevertheless a good description of how many Americans operate, spiritually speaking.
4. Distracted. Not only are secular people safe, but their faces are also aglow in screens that glitter 24/7/365. Today, we have access through our cellphones to more information than all previous generations combined, but social media keeps notifying us that more info has arrived and demands our immediate attention. Consequently, Beshears argues, “It feels nearly impossible to meditate on any one thing at a time. This includes the most worthy object of our meditation — God.
The upshot of these two additional forces is that “people lack the motivation to care about God because of affluence and technology,” writes Beshears.
So, how do we evangelize apatheists? It’s one thing to share the gospel with people deeply invested in spiritual matters, even if they’re on the other side (such as atheists or adherents of non-Christian religions). But what do you do with people who don’t know and don’t care?
According to Beshears, you lean into joy.
The first way you lean into joy is by being authentically joyful yourself. “Apatheists need a credible witness of God’s person and work,” he writes. “If apathy is the opposite of affection, and a faithful affection is where we want to help apatheists go, then we need first to show them what they’re missing out on.” In other words, first show nonbelievers that faith in Christ is desirable.
Then show them it’s true. All people desire to be happy, to live joyfully. Biblical joy is paradoxical, however. “We rejoice because of God and his redemptive action,” Beshears writes, “and we rejoice in spite of circumstances that bring grief and sorrow.”
This because of/in spite of paradox applies to apatheists, too. The crucial question is whether the sources of their happiness (their because ofs) can sustain them through difficult times (their in spite ofs). Beshears argues that they can’t, because our creaturely circumstances inevitably disappoint.
Instead, we must look outside ourselves, our relationships, and our things to a more transcendent, permanent source of joy. This is God. As Augustine prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you.”
I highly recommend Apatheism to Christian leaders struggling to figure out how to bring the joy of the gospel to bear on a culture that doesn’t know and doesn’t care. May we, like the angel of the Lord in Luke 2:10, bring our culture “good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”
Book Reviewed
Kyle Beshears, Apatheism: How We Share When They Don’t Care (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2021).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
P.P.S. I wrote this review for InfluenceMagazine.com. It is posted here by permission.
Using seeker this way made sense at that time. The share of Americans who self-identified as evangelical Christians hit its high watermark in 1993. According to the General Social Survey, the evangelical share of the population grew 76%, from 17% of the population in 1972 to 29.9% in 1993. No wonder evangelicals thought nonbelievers were seekers! A lot of them were.
They aren’t any longer, though. Since 1993, the evangelical share of the U.S. population has declined more than a quarter, from 29.9% in 1993 to 21.6% in 2018. Nones — people who claim no religious affiliation — are now more numerous than evangelicals. Their share of the population has grown 465%, from 5.1% in 1972 to 23.7% in 2018.
Just as evangelicals were wrong to attribute spiritual curiosity to all nonbelievers in 1993, we would be wrong to attribute spiritual hostility to all nonbelievers today. Nonbelievers are not necessarily would-be theists, but they’re not necessarily ticked-off atheists either. Instead, they’re what Kyle Beshears calls apatheists. They’re “cognitively indifferent and emotionally apathetic” about God. They don’t know, and they don’t care.
According to Beshears, apatheism’s “dual aspect” springs from four sources. Cognitively, apatheism becomes widespread when belief in God is “contestable” and “diverse.” Emotionally, it happens when status in life is “comfortable” and “distracted.” Let’s take a brief look at each of these four sources.
1. Contestable. The statistics cited above indicate that American society is becoming less religious, more secular, and more skeptical. In that sense, secularism is a story of subtraction. People believe less than they used to. They’ve taken away the super from supernaturalism.
2. Diverse. However, secularism isn’t just a subtraction story. It’s also an addition story. Think of the quotation (wrongly) attributed to G.K. Chesterton: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing; they then become capable of believing in anything.” Secularism doesn’t present a binary choice between belief and nonbelief. It adds — even multiplies! — intellectual options.
Because belief is now contestable and diverse, Beshears argues, “some people lack the reason to care about God.”
Now let’s consider the emotional sources:
3. Comfortable. Psychologists Ara Norenzayan and Will Gervais argue, “Where life is safe and predictable, people are less motivated to turn to gods for succor.” Apatheism grows in “conditions of existential security,” they write. We need God only when we get into trouble, in other words. This is bad theology, of course, but nevertheless a good description of how many Americans operate, spiritually speaking.
4. Distracted. Not only are secular people safe, but their faces are also aglow in screens that glitter 24/7/365. Today, we have access through our cellphones to more information than all previous generations combined, but social media keeps notifying us that more info has arrived and demands our immediate attention. Consequently, Beshears argues, “It feels nearly impossible to meditate on any one thing at a time. This includes the most worthy object of our meditation — God.
The upshot of these two additional forces is that “people lack the motivation to care about God because of affluence and technology,” writes Beshears.
So, how do we evangelize apatheists? It’s one thing to share the gospel with people deeply invested in spiritual matters, even if they’re on the other side (such as atheists or adherents of non-Christian religions). But what do you do with people who don’t know and don’t care?
According to Beshears, you lean into joy.
The first way you lean into joy is by being authentically joyful yourself. “Apatheists need a credible witness of God’s person and work,” he writes. “If apathy is the opposite of affection, and a faithful affection is where we want to help apatheists go, then we need first to show them what they’re missing out on.” In other words, first show nonbelievers that faith in Christ is desirable.
Then show them it’s true. All people desire to be happy, to live joyfully. Biblical joy is paradoxical, however. “We rejoice because of God and his redemptive action,” Beshears writes, “and we rejoice in spite of circumstances that bring grief and sorrow.”
This because of/in spite of paradox applies to apatheists, too. The crucial question is whether the sources of their happiness (their because ofs) can sustain them through difficult times (their in spite ofs). Beshears argues that they can’t, because our creaturely circumstances inevitably disappoint.
Instead, we must look outside ourselves, our relationships, and our things to a more transcendent, permanent source of joy. This is God. As Augustine prayed, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you.”
I highly recommend Apatheism to Christian leaders struggling to figure out how to bring the joy of the gospel to bear on a culture that doesn’t know and doesn’t care. May we, like the angel of the Lord in Luke 2:10, bring our culture “good news that will cause great joy for all the people.”
Book Reviewed
Kyle Beshears, Apatheism: How We Share When They Don’t Care (Nashville, TN: B&H Academic, 2021).
P.S. If you liked my review, please click “Helpful” on my Amazon review page.
P.P.S. I wrote this review for InfluenceMagazine.com. It is posted here by permission.
March 23, 2021
So, so helpful, concise, focused, and extremely practical. A necessary book on evangelism in our present culture. Convicting and challenging and so beneficial. Cannot recommend enough.
March 23, 2021
Kyle Beshears’ book tackles an extremely problematic question that is often overlooked in discussions on evangelism: How do you share your faith with those who simply don’t care about God? Even if you share your faith, how do you get the person to care enough to consider what you said?
When you get down to it, it's actually easy to get into conversations with ardent atheists. Ardent atheists have strong beliefs and they want to talk—or at least debate—about those beliefs. In the same way, it’s easy to get into a spiritual conversation with a religious non-Christian because they care about spiritual things. But how do we engage the “apatheist”—someone who believes God is irrelevant?
Beshears lays out the symptoms in a society that lead to apatheism: secular, comfortable, and distracted—all aspects of American culture. Further, radical individualism feeds it, where it’s believed we can create our own meaning to life. Additionally, mix in pluralism and the internet age of too many options. Not that exposure to other beliefs is bad within itself, but too many options leads to many experiencing a mental fatigue, so they don’t hold to any belief all that strongly or simply don’t wish to engage with anyone about them. Keep in mind, even a professed Christian can still be an apatheist. This is the “practical atheist” (or what I often call a “functional atheist”) in your pews whose Christian identity has no impact on their lives.
Since the “apatheist” is one who both “believes God is irrelevant and feels apathetic towards him,” Beshears proposes that we have to hit them first emotionally to wake them up. How do we do this? We go after their idols. We make them aware that anything other than God that they find their happiness in can be taken away; it will ultimately let them down. Then, once we jolt them enough to listen, we point them to Christ as the only lasting source of joy. Augustine wrote of God, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you.”
Beshears points out another important point many would overlook: Before doing this effectively, we can’t be apatheists ourselves! We have to ask ourselves, Have I lost my joy in Christ? What must I do to recapture it? Does my life display the joy and hope I have in Christ? After all, we don’t just want them to know Christianity is true, but we want them to want it to be true. Anselm once stated that an emotional desire for Christianity to be true is a necessary step before someone could be intellectually convinced of the gospel.
At barely 100 pages, Apatheism: How We Share When They Don’t Care is certainly worth the read. Whenever I read a book like this, I always end by wishing it had more practical advice and real-world examples, but Beshears has written a book with both those things that is a great help to anyone hoping to share their faith. Beshears has written a much-needed book that is a welcomed gift to the church. I hope this book will start a conversation and lead to more Christian thinkers tackling this topic.
*B & H provided me with a free copy for review.
When you get down to it, it's actually easy to get into conversations with ardent atheists. Ardent atheists have strong beliefs and they want to talk—or at least debate—about those beliefs. In the same way, it’s easy to get into a spiritual conversation with a religious non-Christian because they care about spiritual things. But how do we engage the “apatheist”—someone who believes God is irrelevant?
Beshears lays out the symptoms in a society that lead to apatheism: secular, comfortable, and distracted—all aspects of American culture. Further, radical individualism feeds it, where it’s believed we can create our own meaning to life. Additionally, mix in pluralism and the internet age of too many options. Not that exposure to other beliefs is bad within itself, but too many options leads to many experiencing a mental fatigue, so they don’t hold to any belief all that strongly or simply don’t wish to engage with anyone about them. Keep in mind, even a professed Christian can still be an apatheist. This is the “practical atheist” (or what I often call a “functional atheist”) in your pews whose Christian identity has no impact on their lives.
Since the “apatheist” is one who both “believes God is irrelevant and feels apathetic towards him,” Beshears proposes that we have to hit them first emotionally to wake them up. How do we do this? We go after their idols. We make them aware that anything other than God that they find their happiness in can be taken away; it will ultimately let them down. Then, once we jolt them enough to listen, we point them to Christ as the only lasting source of joy. Augustine wrote of God, “You have made us for yourself, and our heart is restless until it comes to rest in you.”
Beshears points out another important point many would overlook: Before doing this effectively, we can’t be apatheists ourselves! We have to ask ourselves, Have I lost my joy in Christ? What must I do to recapture it? Does my life display the joy and hope I have in Christ? After all, we don’t just want them to know Christianity is true, but we want them to want it to be true. Anselm once stated that an emotional desire for Christianity to be true is a necessary step before someone could be intellectually convinced of the gospel.
At barely 100 pages, Apatheism: How We Share When They Don’t Care is certainly worth the read. Whenever I read a book like this, I always end by wishing it had more practical advice and real-world examples, but Beshears has written a book with both those things that is a great help to anyone hoping to share their faith. Beshears has written a much-needed book that is a welcomed gift to the church. I hope this book will start a conversation and lead to more Christian thinkers tackling this topic.
*B & H provided me with a free copy for review.
May 27, 2022
So so good!!
Beshears begins by introducing the modern apatheistic phenomenon as an academic concept, dissecting its origins and reasoning and comparing it with Christianity from the third person. He concludes that apatheism is an indifference and apathy towards God brought on by the diversity and contestability of beliefs within secularism and the comfort and distraction of our modern lifestyles. And its dangerous! "At its core," Beshears writes, "apatheism is not merely disinterest in the person of God but also in his love and good actions toward us. It is a holistic dismissal of God without consideration of who he is and what he does" (59). In order to share with apatheists, we must first convince them of the importance of God's existence. "For an apatheist, the gospel isn't necessarily an invitation to shift toward theism on the spectrum of belief; it's an invitation to rise from indifference towards affection for Love itself" (57)
The solution is joy! I was so excited to read this. Shifting to a first-person, Christian perspective, Beshears notes that "we rejoice because of God and his redemptive action, and we rejoice in spite of circumstances that bring grief and sorrow" (77). Because of the great Joy Project of the gospel, Joy has us! It is inescapable. Out hope is in someone who cannot and will not fail. So nothing is able to take our joy away! Beshears says the best way to engage apatheists in conversation is to ask questions that cause them to doubt their source of joy as powerful and permanent, then tell the story of God's great gospel and my testimony as an eternal source of joy.
Beshears' writing is intelligent and thought out, yet compassionate, practical and accessible in a way theologians often miss. And he answered the question of his book very well. I believe I now understand (at least on a basic level) why an apatheist my rationally come to their beliefs, and how to fulfill our duty and desire to bring the gospel even to them. Yes, we may live in an Athens without a statue to the unknown God, but Christ's kingdom knows no boundaries nor borders (114 - 115). So we shall not stop!
Beshears begins by introducing the modern apatheistic phenomenon as an academic concept, dissecting its origins and reasoning and comparing it with Christianity from the third person. He concludes that apatheism is an indifference and apathy towards God brought on by the diversity and contestability of beliefs within secularism and the comfort and distraction of our modern lifestyles. And its dangerous! "At its core," Beshears writes, "apatheism is not merely disinterest in the person of God but also in his love and good actions toward us. It is a holistic dismissal of God without consideration of who he is and what he does" (59). In order to share with apatheists, we must first convince them of the importance of God's existence. "For an apatheist, the gospel isn't necessarily an invitation to shift toward theism on the spectrum of belief; it's an invitation to rise from indifference towards affection for Love itself" (57)
The solution is joy! I was so excited to read this. Shifting to a first-person, Christian perspective, Beshears notes that "we rejoice because of God and his redemptive action, and we rejoice in spite of circumstances that bring grief and sorrow" (77). Because of the great Joy Project of the gospel, Joy has us! It is inescapable. Out hope is in someone who cannot and will not fail. So nothing is able to take our joy away! Beshears says the best way to engage apatheists in conversation is to ask questions that cause them to doubt their source of joy as powerful and permanent, then tell the story of God's great gospel and my testimony as an eternal source of joy.
Beshears' writing is intelligent and thought out, yet compassionate, practical and accessible in a way theologians often miss. And he answered the question of his book very well. I believe I now understand (at least on a basic level) why an apatheist my rationally come to their beliefs, and how to fulfill our duty and desire to bring the gospel even to them. Yes, we may live in an Athens without a statue to the unknown God, but Christ's kingdom knows no boundaries nor borders (114 - 115). So we shall not stop!
October 23, 2022
I read this short book in a day at L'Abri (St. Louis) and it provided me with great conversation fodder for the rest of my stay. Kyle Beshears is a bit too much of a fanboy of Alan Noble (or at least one of his books) but there's a lot of good to take from this work and it will be helping me in the future. I very much appreciated the "how-to" chapter near the end of the book as well as stressing the importance of distinguishing between an apatheist and a practical atheist. I wish it was longer and a bit more in-depth, but this is great for the everyday Christian evangelist reader as it is, which I believe is what Beshears was going for - accessibility.
December 10, 2022
This is one of the best books I have read on evangelism. It is especially relevant to 21st century, American society inside and outside the church. I think the most distinguishing feature of this book is the time the author spends focusing on Christian joy. Having joy in Christ is essential to effective evangelism and many books miss this important aspect. Why would somebody else want what you yourself don’t have passion and joy over? The author also does an excellent job explaining the reasons why apathy towards God is so prevalent in our society at this period of time. Cannot recommend this book highly enough!
March 24, 2021
This is a needed and helpful resource for those of us involved in disciple-making and preaching. If we primarily approach skeptics and non-believers with reasonable arguments for God, we will be frustrated. Instead, Beshears tell us to lead with the human pursuit of joy. So good.
May 30, 2021
(Audible audiobook)
A good Kellerian model of evangelism in post-Christian America. A lot of the book is anecdotal which has its pros and cons. A lot of it was not original material, but parroting what the author has read in preparation to writing the book. Which is always kind of annoying to me.
A good Kellerian model of evangelism in post-Christian America. A lot of the book is anecdotal which has its pros and cons. A lot of it was not original material, but parroting what the author has read in preparation to writing the book. Which is always kind of annoying to me.
February 14, 2024
Really helpful - gives a good understanding of why people don’t care about God, then some practical guidance about how to engage.
I would have liked the book to be longer and give more practical guidance.
As is, the book is mostly philosophical with one conversation outline.
I would have liked the book to be longer and give more practical guidance.
As is, the book is mostly philosophical with one conversation outline.
December 1, 2025
Awesome book written by one of the pastors at my church. Loved all the personal stories. Great insight into how to share the Gospel in an age where people just don’t care about religion or about whether or not God is even real.
December 2, 2025
An excellent look at the challenge of presenting the Gospel to a culture that doesn't care about God. Beshears' insights on this issue were very helpful to me as this is a topic with which I have wrestled.
December 30, 2025
Definitely a good read, convicted me about how I allow apathy to creep into my walk with the Lord and pushed me to question whether I allow the joy of the Lord to define my life. Not the most page turning writing style, but definitely a sound read.
April 25, 2021
Timely and helpful. Probably longer than it needed to be, given its core message and proposed means of engagement. Well worth the read!
August 10, 2021
Good book
This books gives a great definition and strategy for how to witness to an apathetic world. It is a good practical strategy.
This books gives a great definition and strategy for how to witness to an apathetic world. It is a good practical strategy.
January 7, 2022
This is a very good book about a very challenging topic - apathy about God. Good cultural analysis and a challenge to root out our own apathy before speak to others about theirs.
March 12, 2022
Realistic description of what Christians encounter today in efforts to evangelize. It also provides suggestions to interest those who just don't care about God.
July 11, 2021
A book we should all read at least once a year as a reminder and a warning.
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