Questioning Evangelism

Like all normal human beings, I find personal evangelism pretty difficult. I've read 9 or 10 books on the subject and heard countless sermons on it too. Most of them have not been all that helpful. Some have been useless. One huge problem is that they often get platform evangelists to write books on personal evangelism. But often these guys have next to zero experience of rubbing shoulders with the world day to day, forming relationships in that context.

You get a vibe in such books when the author is talking more theory than experience. Our modern world is wired to sniff out the inauthentic. If someone is going to tell me about playing bass guitar, they need to have spent hundreds of hours playing the thing. If someone is going to tell me about one to one evangelism, then they need to have spent hundreds of hours forming relationships and sharing the gospel in that context (not from the stage!)

So I was very impressed with these two talks by Randy Newman, author of "Questioning Evangelism" and "Corner Conversations". Within about 10 minutes I could tell that this guy had actually spent many hours talking to unbelievers one on one, witnessing for God, answering their questions, sharing the gospel. His answers and approaches also seem very savvy, they click with me. His response to the old chestnut, "How can a loving God send people to Hell?" is "Do you believe in Hell?" "You don't - then why are you asking the question." "You do - do you think anyone goes there?" Much, much better approach than abstract talk about the justice of God etc.

I'm very keen to check out both of Randy's books now. I'll let you know if they live up to my expectations.