Ray Comfort. What Did Jesus Do?: A Call to Return to the Biblical Gospel. Genesis, 2005. 176 pp.
The Diagnosis and the Cure
A television documentary showed a Tibetan peasant woman making her pilgrimage around a sacred mountain. She stopped every few steps to prostrate herself on the rocky soil. She stood to her dust-covered feet, walked a few more paces, and repeated the arduous and painful ritual. She had completed the thirty-two-mile pilgrimage twenty-nine times. Asked why she did it, she smiled sweetly and answered, “We want to be reborn in heaven.”
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Alan Chambers. God’s Grace and the Homosexual Next Door: Reaching the Heart of the Gay Men and Women in Your World. Harvest House, 2006. 288 pp.
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.
—1 Corinthians 6:9-11
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Al Fasol, Roy Fish, Steve Gaines, Ralph Douglas West. Preaching Evangelistically: Proclaiming the Saving Message of Jesus. B&H, 2005. 148 pp.
Characteristics of an Effective Evangelistic Service
Know Your Listeners
Some preachers study the Bible. Others study people and culture. Effective preachers analyze both. Why? Because the effective evangelistic preacher will preach differently to a group of senior adults than he preaches to a group of high school seniors. Likewise, he will preach differently to a group of unchurched, white-collar, upper-class people in suburban Los Angeles than he preaches to a group of church-oriented, blue-collar, middle-class people living in a rural area in the southeastern United States. Although the message of the gospel never changes, how it is presented should connect with the cultural persuasions and unique personalities of the people addressed.
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Randy Newman. Corner Conversations: Engaging Dialogues About God and Life. Kregel, 2006. 208 pp.
Introduction
Welcome to Turnerville. I only wish this town existed someplace besides in my imagination. Everything moves slowly in Turnerville. People take time to think. They discuss issues that typically get rushed or ignored. Even the leaves seem to change colors more slowly there. When city planners drew up blueprints, they strategically placed benches all over town so people would stop and chat. The mayor boasts of a higher bench-per-capita ratio than any other locale.
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Gary McIntosh. Beyond the First Visit: The Complete Guide to Connecting Guests to Your Church. Baker, 2006. 192 pp.
We’re a Friendly Church
If you were to survey churches and ask them to list their strengths, almost every one would include, “We’re a friendly church.” . . . It’s interesting that in every one of the churches I coached, someone either wrote on a survey or stated verbally that they believed their church to be a friendly place. It did not matter if the individuals were attending churches in danger of closing down, in the midst of twenty-year-long plateaus, or bursting forth in growth. They all felt their church was a friendly one. . . .
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Ben Young. Why Mike’s Not a Christian: Honest Questions About Evolution, Relativism, Hypocrisy, and More. Harvest House, 2006. 144 pp.
A while ago I was flying from Pensacola, Florida, back to Houston. I was sitting next to a businessman from Connecticut, and we got into a conversation about what we did for a living. I was just returning from one of our youth retreats, where I’d been talking on the subject “Who Am I?” So we got into a little discussion about philosophy, and it kind of meandered into theology. And as my fate would have it, during the course of conversation he found out I was a minister.
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Randy Newman. Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People’s Hearts the Way Jesus Did. Kregel, 2004. 240 pp.
Introduction
You may think that this book is just plain weird. When it comes to evangelism, I think differently than a lot of people. I ask questions that other people don’t ask. I come up with answers that many people don’t think of. And answers that a lot of people find knock-down-drag-out invincible, leave me unconvinced.
Maybe you think like I do. Or maybe you know people who ask the same kinds of questions that I ask. Or maybe our world has changed so significantly that we need to rethink evangelism. . . .
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John Piper. What Jesus Demands from the World. Crossway, 2006. 400 pp.
Introduction
The aim of this book is God-glorifying obedience to Jesus. To that end I am seeking to obey Jesus’ last command: Make disciples of all nations . . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matt. 28:19-20). Jesus final command was to teach all his commandments.
The Impossible Final Command
Actually, the final command was more precise than that. He did not say, Teach them all my commandments. He said, Teach them to observe all my commandments. You can teach a parrot all of Jesus commandments. But you cannot teach a parrot to observe them. Parrots will not repent, and worship Jesus, and lay up treasures in heaven, and love their enemies, and go out like sheep in the midst of wolves to herald the kingdom of God.
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Douglas Jacobsen & Rodney Sawatsky. Gracious Christianity: Living the Love We Profess. Baker, 2006. 144 pp.
We have a gracious gospel. The good news that Jesus proclaimed is that God is graciously disposed toward us. God loves us, and, indeed, God loves everyone and every good thing in this wonderful world in which we live. We are expected to do the same. The gospel invites us to mimic God’s own graciousness in our lives. It calls us to become so enveloped in God’s graciousness that we become conduits of God’s grace and love for others. Graciousness is a nonnegotiable dimension of Christian faith. It goes to the very core of the gospel. It is what makes the gospel good news.
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Paul Bramsen. The Way of Righteousness: Good News for Muslims. CMML, 1999. 544 pp
Line Upon Line
God’s revelation to the children of Adam is progressive, “precept upon precept, line upon line . . . here a little, there a little.” (Isaiah 28:10) God’s Book begins with “In the beginning, God” and goes on to reveal His complex Person and His categorical plan by which He can count sinners as righteous.
The Way of Righteousness radio series presents the message of God’s prophets in consecutive order. Through the narratives of the people, patriarchs and prophets of the Holy Scriptures, listeners can discover for themselves God’s uncompromising system of forgiveness: how He has provided a way by which the fallen children of Adam can be delivered from sin’s curse and restored to happy fellowship with their Creator.
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