Customer Reviews

Finding Common Ground: How to Communicate With Those Outside the Christian Community...While We Still Can

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I really like this book. I would consider myself a "harvester" but I see the importance of sowing the seeds of the gospel. Before I came to believe in Christ, there were many seeds planted in my life, from the campus pastor who came around our dorm to the little relgious things my girlfriend would write in her letters. We can plant seeds anytime we interact with people. This can be someone we are hoping to share the gospel with or someone you may talk with for 2 minutes in line at the grocery store and never see again. We are called to be ambassadors for Christ and planting seeds of the gospel is part of being an ambassador. Read this book and find out how to plant seeds AND to become a harvester of the spiritual fruit.

This is an excellent book for Christians who are too shy to share the gospel with friends, family or colleagues. Tim Downs manages to accurately capture the difficulties that Christians face when trying to communicate the gospel. He teaches us how to work around the barriers and to be 'shrewd' when communicating the gospel. This book is truly refreshing for those of us who are extremely frustrated by our failed attempts to speak to others about the truth of the Christian faith. All Christians should read this and apply it!

If you are an evangelical Christian, this is a book that comes highly recommended.

I purchased this book at a conference after a friend of mine (who hadn't even read it!) suggested it to me. It is perhaps the best book on evangelism that I have read (with Becoming a Contagious Christian by Bill Hybels a close second). Any Christian could share with you the importance of evangelism, and most could probably offer a suggestion of "how to". But this book breaks out of the box that so often limits our evangelism efforts.

As someone trained and practiced in the use of the Four Spiritual Laws (a gospel presentation frequently used by Campus Crusade for Christ, the organization of which Tim Downs is a part), I am relatively comfortable in "random" evangelism. But I have often struggled with reconciling such evangelistic attempts with being a "real" person. This book has helped me (and continues to, along with prayer and Scripture) to bridge that gap. Mr. Downs goes far beyond just a gospel presentation, but instead points readers in the direction of allowing their Christianity to spill over into every area of their life, thereby breaking the limits we so often place on our own evangelism efforts.

But beyond that, he also focuses on how to communicate with those who don't share the same worldview that we have become indoctrinated in. Many times, I've found that outreaches offered around me have been appealing to those who have grown up in the Bible belt and share this worldview, though don't actually consider themselves believers. But these often don't appeal to people who specifically disagree with elements of my worldview. How, then, do we reach out to these people?

This book is full of relevant, scriptural insight. It is worth every dollar you spend.

Tim Downs new book breathes new life into an old idea, namely sowing the seeds of the gospel. Mr. Downs reminds us that proclaiming the gospel is not always about going for the hard sell, but also can and must include dropping a seed here and there. Sowing is a matter of being subtle, even hinting at one's faith. While some hard line "harvesters" may find Mr. Downs' suggestions to be too soft and insist that the times require that Christians be courageously outspoken, I believe his arguments are right on target. I see them as especially on target for two groups: those who work in environments that either constrain or prohibit expressions of faith and those Christians who simply may not be as outspoken as others. While only some may harvest, all can sow. The only reservation I have about Mr. Downs' book is that he is a little too nervous about post-modernism and a little too dismissive of efforts to address diversity issues. However, those are only small points along the way. I highly recommend the book!

Tim Down's really has a good grasp on what our mission is as Christians in western culture. This is the only book that I know that addresses the principle of sowing (in order to eventually reap a great harvest of souls) in such a concise, practical manner. If you need help in your evangelism efforts (and who doesn't these days?) this is the book to read on the subject. It's not a new methodology or insight - just a great treatise on a largely forgotten biblical principle. We are now using this book for our teachings in our church - and my hope is with this review to help get it into the hands of Christian leaders everywhere.

Here's a book that all new Christians should read (before they develop severe insecurities because they can no longer relate!) don't get me wrong, this one is for all Christians, but I just wish it had been available to me 20 years ago. Very insightful into the condition of a believer who really cares about those he/she comes into contact with on a daily basis. Mr. Downs points out that we (as believers) often only see the non-Christian as a potential believer, never accepting them for who they are (unless of course they were to recite the four spiritual laws!). This is an extremely helpful book and I recommend it to everyone! Could be retitled "How to be normal, even when everyone thinks you're nuts". The best point Downs makes is that we see the unsaved as potential harvests, and that's damaging because we can only harvest that which has been sown. Tim challenges us to attend to sowing the Gospel, and allowing the Holy Spirit to do the harvesting (since that's His function anyway).

This book is the best book i have ever read on how to share your faith in a real, relavent, non threatening way with the people you work and live around that are not open to the Gospel of Jesus Christ! This is a must have for any believer who is serious about their faith.

This book approaches the issue of Christians reaching out to people in the Western culture in ways that are both helpful and meaningful. It is the best book on this topic and avoids the many dangers and failures of a book which seeks to speak a foreign set of values (Christianity) in an increasingly materialistic and relativistic culture. Tim is an excellent writer. His life bears out his writings.

Summary
In his introduction, the author presents his thesis at its most basic level. In response to the question, Will Christ return in our generation? he says, "Live as though He will, and plan as though He won't" (12). He wrote this book in response to recent trends (though the book is nearly a decade old now, the trends have continued the trajectory he describes) that find evangelicals focusing almost exclusively on the harvesting of souls, while the number of "ripe" souls has been and continues to be steadily declining. Why is this? He claims that it is because evangelicals have planned as though Christ will return in his generation and thus that we are living in the "Last Great Harvest." This has led to a virtual relinquishment of the Christian imperative to "sow," that is, to do the hard labor of cultivating the "soil" of individual unbelievers and the culture at large which makes it possible for the Gospel to take root.

Strengths
It is easy to see why Tim Downs received the Gold Medallion Award for this book. He speaks in language anyone can understand, but does so without condescending. He is compellingly practical, both in his illustrations and his applications. Most importantly, his thesis, insofar as it is an accurate representation of reality, is of grave import for the Church--and for the unbelieving world for whom Christ died and to whom Christ sent us. The book distinguishes itself from much of the proliferating church-critical material in two key ways. First, it is consistent and coherent. It focuses only those issues crucial for the case it presents and avoid superfluous rabbit trails. Simply, he says one thing, and says it well. Second, it is balanced. It avoids the doomsday tendencies of typical "prophetic" works, and offers itself not as an alternative to "harvesting", but as a necessary complement. To err to one side or the other is nevertheless to err, and that we cannot afford to do.

Weaknesses
At times, he overstates his case. The Western terrain is hardly of one, uniform type. Likewise, in Jesus' day, all types of soils were present, including the hardest, driest, shallowest and thorniest of soils. Nevertheless, his critique of the typical evangelical understanding that Jesus' announcement that "the fields are ripe for harvest" was a once-and-for-all declaration, thereby abdicating us of all responsibility to sow, is well warranted and desperately needed. While his case was argued very reasonably (and, to me, persuasively), substantiating his case more rigorously from Scripture would have strengthened the impact of the book, particularly for those most entrenched in "harvest mode."

Recommendation
The fundamental questions that must be asked are, Are his facts correct? Is his reasoning solid? Is it biblically sound? I believe, with minor caveats, that the answer to each of these is strongly affirmative. While the book may not be aptly described as rigorously exegetical in form, he really only needed to substantiate one point--his thesis. That he did without question. And if Tim Downs' analysis of the condition of Western cultural soil is correct (and groundbreaking research such as that of Ted Olson is revealing ever more decisively that it is) then the claims he makes are ignored to our great peril. Quite simply, we need this book. I enthusiastically recommend it.

Outstanding. I can't recommend this book enough. Something that should be read by all followers of Christ.