Book Review: Honest Evangelism

Honest Evangelism – How to talk about Jesus even when it’s tough by Rice Tice with Carl Leferton (UK: Good Book Company, 2015).

Reviewed by Peter Blyth

I hope everyone has a great and wonderful new year and to pray for opportunities to share and be witnesses to Christ’s identity, mission and call to respond to him in faith.

I have be reading a short little book by Rico Tice (Associate Minister at All Souls Langham Place, London) and I think it is really helpful and offers some great tips to engage our family and friends with the good news of who Jesus is. There are simple yet effective ways of speaking Jesus into peoples hearts.

Following are some helpful hints summarized from the book:

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Almost Party Time! Time to get ready.

Christmas is coming (‘Already – please, it comes around so fast’!)

Some of us will be more active than others when it comes to inviting family, friends and colleagues, but let me say that Christmas is one of the easiest times to invite people to church things – we are helped that the retail calendar has been arranged around gospel events (i.e. Christmas and Easter).

There are three intentional steps which will help in inviting someone.

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Standing on the safe side of Salvation!

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where some obstacle gets in your way? Where your desire to get from one place to another is blocked by factors you find too hard to overcome. Normally this is not too great an issue. Just give up, or slowly find another way around the issue.

Increase the temperature. Imagine a life and death situation. A situation where the obstacle just has to be overcome because if not, you lose your life! The urgency will force you to take risks that you would not normally take.

Friends, I wonder whether we need to increase the temperature.

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Question: How should Christians approach someone who sees nothing wrong with same-sex attraction and is openly living in that context?

Thanks for a good Question.

I would suggest a few responses.

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Love actually!

Walk in Love said 2 John 6 – a key theme of his ‘Little John’ letters.

But How? By walking in obedience silly! It is difficult to think of ways to be loving in disobedience. That is because truly loving someone is actually about putting them before ourselves. If they ask you to do something that you don’t want to do, then being obedient to them would mean putting their will before our own. That is a demonstration of love.

But hold on, what if they ask you to do something that is wrong? Well, doing something wrong is hardly loving?!

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Gospel Bite: The Problem of Pain and Suffering

A ‘Gospel Bite’ – a short answer to a commonly raised objection to the gospel.

The question of suffering looms large in the modern mind, particularly in light of disasters such as the 2004 tsanami in Asia, or the earthquakes in Christchurch, or the tsunami and nuclear disaster in Japan in 2011. Many of the issues need to be dealt with philosophically (does suffering disprove God’s existence?) or theologically (is God powerless to do anything?).

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Gospel Bite: ‘All Religions are the same!’

A ‘Gospel Bite’ – a short answer to a commonly raised objection to the gospel.

Pluralism – the belief that all religions point to God – is one of the major challenges put to modern Christians. It appears in so many forms: ‘You Christians are so arrogant as to think you alone have the truth!’ or ‘My own view is more open: I like to think of all religions as containing their own truth’, or ‘What makes your religion so special when there are so many Muslims, Hindus and Buddhists in the world?’

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Gospel Bite: ‘I might not be perfect, but I am a fairly good person’

A ‘Gospel Bite’ – in other words a short answer to a commonly raised objection to the gospel.

Many people today regard themselves as mostly ‘good’ and therefore, without need of God’s forgiveness or commandments. It is often stated like this: ‘I might not be perfect, but I am a fairly good person’.

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Gospel Bite: ‘I am just not the religious type!’

A ‘Gospel Bite’ – in other words a short answer to a commonly raised objection to the gospel.

I wish I had a dollar for every time someone has said to me, ‘I’m just not the religious type!’

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Gospel Bite: ‘I haven’t got much time for religion; it often seems so judgmental and self-righteous.’

Gospel Bite: A Criticism of Self Righteousness

Last ‘Gospel Bite’ we looked at how we could use Luke 7:36-50 to answer a question about sin and forgiveness. To demonstrate how flexible a ‘gospel bite’ may be, this week we are going to use the same passage to respond to a different criticism. Please read the passage before reading on.

How might you respond to a friend who declares:

‘I haven’t got much time for religion; it often seems so judgmental and self-righteous.’?

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