<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Evangelism v. Discipleship
Review: I picked up this book because I was looking for a "front end" to a disciple-making program for my local church. I found a few things I can use. While Barna's passion is well-founded, he chooses to make the same arguments that has lead to a spiritual dichotomy: 84% of American's claiming a "Christian" faith while our society and culture crumble. It seems we have the evangelism part down, but we lack the proof that what we preach works in our own lives. (Barna briefly hits on "disciple-making" in this book and goes on to write a great book on the subject, "Growing True Disciples"). If the energy and resources put into evangelism were put into disciple-making, Christianity would have a profound impact on ourselves, our families, churches, neighborhoods, and world. Barna doesn't make this argument, so I my opinion, this book falls short in identifying "Evangelism that Works".
Rating:
Summary: Evangelism v. Discipleship
Review: I picked up this book because I was looking for a "front end" to a disciple-making program for my local church. I found a few things I can use. While Barna's passion is well-founded, he chooses to make the same arguments that has lead to a spiritual dichotomy: 84% of American's claiming a "Christian" faith while our society and culture crumble. It seems we have the evangelism part down, but we lack the proof that what we preach works in our own lives. (Barna briefly hits on "disciple-making" in this book and goes on to write a great book on the subject, "Growing True Disciples"). If the energy and resources put into evangelism were put into disciple-making, Christianity would have a profound impact on ourselves, our families, churches, neighborhoods, and world. Barna doesn't make this argument, so I my opinion, this book falls short in identifying "Evangelism that Works".
Rating:
Summary: Evangelism -- The Door to Disciple-Making
Review: This book is written by a popular, prolific, contemporary, for-profit pollster whose clients are primarily Christian agencies. The main thrust of this book is to distribute theolographic data pertinent to evangelism, which the author has obtained through his company, Barna Research Groups, Ltd., and then to synthesize these data to reveal potentially better ways for churches and individuals to evangelize non-believers in the United States of America. Published in 1995, this book contains much information that remains of interest to evangelizers today. For the most part, his methodology is based on telephone polling of people assigned to various faith categories according to their answers to a few basic theological questions and analyzing their stated beliefs on moral issues and their attitudes toward evangelists in general. Barna also interviewed various officials from successful evangelistic churches, and some from churches that were not. He discusses small churches vs. large churches, evangelically minded churches, and those less so, as well as a cross-section of the American population from various generations to obtain data and infer conclusions.
All of this was done with the intent of assisting churches to develop or improve existing evangelistic programs. The stated moral beliefs and theological awareness of people in various "Christian" categories, the opinions of average Americans, and the relative lack of evangelistic interest among churches and senior pastors were all disturbing. By revealing common traits of churches with successful evangelistic programs, he provides the reader with many ideas to increase and improve the evangelistic work in his/her home church.
The book has several strengths. First among them is a call for more and better evangelistic activity from all churches, as well as a call to all Christians to perform their God-given duty to share the Gospel as deftly as they can as an act of obedience. Mr. Barna presents his data effectively to show the need for long-term interaction with each individual as well as the need for follow-up assessments with the non-believer or the new convert. He discusses the anesthetic effect of well-worn phrases that have lost their power with many non-believers, such as "God loves you and has a wonderful plan for your life" (p. 119). Attention is repeatedly drawn to the fact that effective evangelism is not a "decide now," "take it or leave it" proposition, but an ongoing interaction, with follow-up, until the prospects look dim or the new convert is a well-established participating member of an appropriate church. He also comments on various evangelistic efforts, including the use of various broadcast media, direct mail, cold-calls, pastoral visits, church-sponsored events, etc. and discusses the various costs, benefits, and drawbacks of each one.
There are two constitutional weaknesses in Barna's work. First, the author does not adequately discuss his methodology. He informs us that he used telephone interviews, asked various questions, and gave us some of the criteria he used to place the responder into various categories. He does not tell us the specific wording of the questions he asked or the order in which they were presented. It would have been more meaningful if he had revealed the entire poll questionnaire. Another weakness is his penchant for repetition. He relays his well-founded opinions on the importance of evangelism, the need for prayer, the need to tailor your evangelistic effort to your strengths and the circumstances, etc. quite a few times. To a point, this was good for emphasis but it became too noticeable and slowed the progress of the reader who is looking for more pages filled with gems of information, as many of his pages were.
Rating:
Summary: Very good for getting in the mind of your friends
Review: This book provides many good ideas but falls somewhat short on presenting how-to items succinctly.What I was looking for was a book I could use to teach a class on relationship evangelism. Furthermore, my ideal is a book that addresses post-modern people (especially Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers) with their common aversion to embracing any exclusive or absolute truth. This book worked very well, but I had to work harder than I would have liked in creating my own group study guide. This book, like most on the subject, takes a narrative approach to each chapter. What I would have liked but did not find were:
1. Discussion or review questions at the end of each chapter
2. Application exercise(s) at the end of each chapter, focused on building lifelong habits. The content is there, but not split out in a clear, action-oriented recap. Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry & Mary has similar strenghts and weaknesses. A promising new book that I may use is Evangelism Outside The Box (Rick Richardson, 2000). Older books that have worked very well for me in teaching others are: (roughly in order of preference): Power Evangelism (John Wimber, 1992), Witnessing Without Fear (Bill Bright, 1987), Out of the Salt Shaker (Rebecca Pippert).
Rating:
Summary: Very good for getting in the mind of your friends
Review: This book provides many good ideas but falls somewhat short on presenting how-to items succinctly. What I was looking for was a book I could use to teach a class on relationship evangelism. Furthermore, my ideal is a book that addresses post-modern people (especially Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers) with their common aversion to embracing any exclusive or absolute truth. This book worked very well, but I had to work harder than I would have liked in creating my own group study guide. This book, like most on the subject, takes a narrative approach to each chapter. What I would have liked but did not find were:
1. Discussion or review questions at the end of each chapter
2. Application exercise(s) at the end of each chapter, focused on building lifelong habits. The content is there, but not split out in a clear, action-oriented recap. Inside the Mind of Unchurched Harry & Mary has similar strenghts and weaknesses. A promising new book that I may use is Evangelism Outside The Box (Rick Richardson, 2000). Older books that have worked very well for me in teaching others are: (roughly in order of preference): Power Evangelism (John Wimber, 1992), Witnessing Without Fear (Bill Bright, 1987), Out of the Salt Shaker (Rebecca Pippert).
<< 1 >>
|
