Product Description

A book on evangelizing postmoderns by an experienced pastor-writer who is successfully involved in it.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19592 in Books
• Published on: 2002-01-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

From the Back Cover
WARNING: This is not just another book on evangelism. This book contains fresh, encouraging, challenging, groundbreaking, and doable ideas you’ll want to share with your pastor, your small group or class, your board, or your parachurch organization. OUT: Evangelism as sales pitch, as conquest, as warfare, as ultimatum, as threat, as proof, as argument, as entertainment, as show, as monologue, as something you have to do.

IN: Disciple-making as conversation, as friendship, as influence, as invitation, as companionship, as challenge, as opportunity, as conversation, as dance, as something you get to do.

You’re more ready for this than you realize, and so are your friends!

About the Author
Brian D. McLaren (M.A. University of Maryland) is founding pastor of Cedar Ridge Community Church, an innovative nondenominational church in the Baltimore-Washington region.

Customer Reviews

Now I'm More Ready Than I Realized!
More Ready Than You Realize I loved this book and I've put it into the hands of all kinds of people who think they suck at evangelism. As you read about the ongoing dialogue between Alice and Brian, you see how much people honestly want to find the way, know the truth, and live the life, but they've been put off by people who don't know how to simply listen and care and understand before they speak. The email conversation part is brilliant. Since I read the book, I've been carrying on spiritual conversations via email with all kinds of people, and Christ in Me gets a chance to talk every once in awhile! Email can be a terrible waste of time, or it can be wonderfully redeemed for people who like to talk through that particular piece of pipe.

Well-written but disturbing
This is an engaging and readable book. The author is a former college English professor, and his sophistication is evident. He knows how to write and how to structure a book in a subtle, intelligent way.

While I give this book an "A" for style, I must give it a "C" for content. Why? Simply because it reinvents evangelism in a way that is often unfaithful to the New Testament. What do I mean by that?

1. There is no sense of urgency in this book. Evangelism here is a leisurely, almost desultory process. There seems to be no danger of anyone dying in their sins (cf. John 8:24; Mark 1:15).
2. There is, in fact, little or no mention of sin, judgment, or the need for forgiveness (cf. Acts 10:42-43). Evangelism is "influencing all of one's friends toward better living, through good deeds and good conversations" (page 15). McLaren portrays Christianity, in my view, as an improved form of Epicureanism--the art of living well.
3. There is a tendency to reinvent Christianity by making it more tolerant, more pluralistic, more in tune with humanistic secular values. There is no sense of the exclusiveness Jesus himself claimed (cf. John 14:6; Matthew 7:13-14). There is no call to holy living, only a vaguely defined "new way of living" that tiptoes around issues like homosexuality (pages 29-30).
4. There is evidence of a curious self-loathing. McLaren is ashamed of much of what passes for Christianity and Christian evangelism. "I think a lot of us would become a lot better Christians if we spent less time at church" (page 89). He characterizes traditional evangelism as "sales pitch," "conceptual conquest," warfare, argument, threat, and ultimatum. But the apostle Paul was not ashamed to reason and persuade with passion (cf. 2 Corinthians 5:10-11; Acts 17:17; Romans 1:16), nor did he hesitate to use military metaphors to describe his ministry (Ephesians 6:10-20).
5. There is no cross in this ministry (cf. Matthew 10:38-39; 16:24). It is feel-good religion and "have it your way" disciple-making. Evangelism is a "relational dance," "a spiritual friendship," a friendly conversation. Paul, on the other hand, talks of "insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities" (2 Corinthians 12:10). Evangelism without sacrifice has little to do with the teaching of Jesus.

While this book is winsome, it is equally worrisome. In an effort to be "postmodern," it deconstructs evangelism and reconstructs it in its own vaguely self-indulgent image. As McLaren writes, "if we see evangelism as relational dance. . .I believe we will find our whole understanding of what it means to be a Christian will begin to change" (page 160). God help us. That is precisely the danger I see in this book.

It's true, they are.
This book was one of my assignments for a seminary class and it was fantastic. McLaren does an excellent job of conveying how to enter someone's journey and walk alongside of them. I actually used this model and joined a non-Christian's journey. The Lord really used it and he has dropped the "non" from Christian.