Featured Good Books on Evangelism

Another classic book on soul-winning is Evangelism Explosion, by James Kennedy, a Presbyterian. This book is copyrighted 1970, but by the 6th edition (what I have) the very next year it had sold 105,000. All in all it is a good book to have on the subject, especially for a pastor, since it is designed to be used in training believers to win souls.

The basic design of the book is based on complete personal evangelism experiences Dr. Kennedy has written out, with many helps for different problems and questions the prospect has. There are also chapters on "The Proper Use of Testimony," "Handling Objections," "Do's and Don'ts," and so forth, with an excellent follow-up program in the last chapter.

One interesting thing is that Ray Comfort may have been influenced strongly by this book, which is included in Comfort's "Suggested Reading" list at the end of Hell's Best Kept Secret" (along with some other books that disagree completely with Comfort's method--go figure ). The reason I say that is that Comfort uses "Four principles of selling" in his book (Ch. 8) and Kennedy uses the "Five Laws of Selling" (pp. 58-60 in his book). To be fair, though, the two sets of principles are somewhat different.

Again, Kennedy uses the law somewhat, though not nearly as much as Comfort. And Kennedy does not require the use of the law in his method, as does Comfort.

I do have one caveat to recommending Kennedy's book, and that is that openly requires the prospect to accept Jesus as Lord as part of the deal (p. 53), long before John MacArthur wrote about the subject--but that will be all to the good for some of you.

 

I'd like to shift gears a little with this post, and mention Communicating Christ Cross-Culturally, by missiologist David Hesselgrave (Zondervan, 1978). Hesselgrave is, IMO, the leading missiologist of the 20th century, and I promise that my opinion is not based on the fact that he was a missionary to Japan for 12 years.

Here is a sample quote: "In every case care should be exercised in selecting culturally appropriate expressions of God's message to man. Let the polytheist be told of the power of Christ, not just to save souls, but to subdue all things to himself. let him hear that the 'unknown God' has revealed Himself to men. Let the Confucianist know that the only superior Man is the Son of God and Savior of men who recreates men and makes them into better husbancs, wives, children, friends, and citizens. Let the Muslim see that God is love and hear why God can be just and the Justifier of the one who believes in Jesus. Let our Jewish friend hear once again that Christians believe that God still has a great future for them as a people and that a new day will dawn for any Jew who will look long enough at Jesus of Nazereth to see who He really is. All of this is, of course, oversimplified and somewhat redundant. But if it is also suggestive, it serves a purpose" (p. 137).

I highly recommend this book to all missionaries, and to anyone else involved in a cross-cultural ministry: to Hispanics, deaf, immigrants, etc.

 

Amen!

 

Here is another classic: How to Give Away Your Faith, by Paul E. Little. This was first published in 1966 by InterVarsity, but my copy is from the 13th printing in 1973. If a book has been through 13 printings in just 6 years, you know it must be good.

Here's some common sense wisdom: "I personally believe that parading along the sidewalk in a sandwich board which reads in large, scrawly letters, 'I'm a Christian. Ask me.' is not the Lord's method. He did not call us to become oddballs.... As soon as the average onlooker who might be attracted by the Christian message sees an oddball Christian, he thinks, if that's the typical behavior of a Christian I'd better forget all about Christianity"" (p. 34).

Here is a quote about his approach: "These, then, are our seven principles--see and know non-Christians personally; establish a mutual interest in conversation; arouse a person's interest by life and word; gear explanations to his receptiveness and readiness for more; accept and even compliment rather than condemn; stay on the track; and persevere to the destination" (p. 44).

Oddly enough, Ray Comfort includes this book in his "Suggested Reading" at the end of Hell's Best Kept Secret, even though it completely ignores using the law in it's presentation of the Gospel. Comfort is truly inconsistent.

 

I would be remiss if I did not mention a little volume from 1979, The Making of a Soul Winner. There are stories of a great soul winner, stories of the author's soul winning, and some original Scriptural research showing how each believer should witness for Christ. The last chapter is practical advice on how to become a soul winner. It sold 6000 copies at the time, and there are second hand books available at Amazon.

See the book at:

 

For you Calvinists (and everyone else, too), I recommend Spurgeon's The Soul Winner as one of the classics. It is still in print today after over 100 years, and also available in various e-books.

The book does not give a particular method, but instead gives great encouragement to be separated from sin and worldly amusements, be totally dedicated to Christ, be diligent to witness and preach Biblically and evangelistically, and pay the price necessary to become a soul winner. Here is a representative quote: "A fisherman who gets his living by it is a diligent and persevering man. The fishers are up at dawn. At day-break, our fishermen off the Dogger-bank are fishing, and they continue fishing till late in the afternoon. As long as hands can work, men will fish. May the Lord Jesus make us hard-working, persevering, unwearied fishers of men!" (p. 292-293 in my edition).

 

Right.

Now, one last book by a Calvinist, Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God, by J. R. Packer. This is more of a theological book than a "how to" book. He especially opposes the hyper-Calvinism that says, "God will elect people to be saved, so we don't have to worry about witnessing to them." Here is a representative quote: "The belief that God is sovereign in grace does not affect the urgency of evangelism. Whatever we may believe about election, the fact remains that men without Christ are lost, and going to hell" (p. 98).