Customer Reviews

The Logic of Evangelism

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thanks so much for the item... the product came in tact and in a timely manner. Please keep up the good service!

I bought this book for school and most of the pages are falling out. I am constantly taping it back together. I'm disappointed as it is a book I need to mark up, but if you open the book to write in it, pages fall out. The content of this book is so great and Dr. Abraham is a brilliant writer. I want to keep it, but the manufacturing is a great disappointment. Time does not allow me to return it as I need it for a class project now. I expected higher quality manufacturing.

Evangelism books are many and as I have read many of them, I always wished that evangelism would be simpler activity. The books that I have been reading were mostly written by people with clear evangelist gift, but not necessarily pastors, which made it difficult sometime to apply to regular church life as they seemed to be strictly proclamation focused and guilt driven. However, the book I would like to review is very different. Acclaimed theologian William J. Abraham, is a United Methodist pastor and theologian. A native of Ireland, he is currently the Albert Cook Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.

Abraham focuses his books on his colleagues and professional clergy, and raises some very important questions, especially when dealing with more traditional stream of protestant church. His main focus is that evangelism is an initiation into the Kingdom of God rather than just proclamation of the gospel or focus on the church growth. He constructs his thesis by discussing how conversion, baptism, morality, the creed, the gifts of the Spirit, and the classical spiritual disciplines are related to kingdom initiation. After developing his thesis in the first five chapters, he then examines the relation to evangelism of conversion, baptism, spiritual gifts, and ecumenism. Discussed orientations of evangelism: proclamation and church growth, along with three other perspectives: soul-winning, witnessing, and disciplining focus on one dimension of the kingdom of God which is then erected into the essence of evangelism. The kingdom perspective of evangelism, that Abraham suggests, shifts the focus from the anthropocentric to the theocentric where we focus on the majestic activity of a Trinitarian God, thus on worships.

No doubt, Abraham's volume will be praised among the theological colleges and among his peers, also he estimates highly John Wimber's "power evangelism" because of its eschatological orientation, which makes him popular also in the Pentecostal/Charismatic circles. He praises the work of the church growth movement for revitalizing the debate about evangelism but critiques its pragmatism, the shallowness of its theological reflection, its discontinuity among Christian traditions and its overly simplistic view of initiation into the body. We need to note, however, that he wrote it in 1989 and these has been days before some of the theological concepts of church growth as well as spiritual side of growth such as prayer life, Spirit filled life and such were discussed in the church growth movement (and as we see in later works of C. Peter Wagner, Thom Rainer, Elmer Towns and Gary McIntosh). So it is hard to compare his beliefs when there is another 21 years since the book was written and the contemporary church growth movement is far more organic and discipleship oriented than the one he criticizes.

I have personally did not understand why he introduces the discussion about the wider ecumenism as he may go too far in suggesting a form of universalism. While it is possible to say that biblical Abraham was unaware of Christ yet saved through Him, it is a stretch to argue that this permits a similar work amidst those of other faith traditions today. Abraham was worshipping the true God as He had revealed Himself at that point in history. As such to draw a distinction between God of the Old Testament and Jesus Christ is counterintuitive when considering the experience of the Old Testament people. While we as Christians must pursue evangelistic encounters with respect towards both atheists and other faiths, it does not change the fact that there is one God of the universe who has demanded a response from His Creation through acceptance of the life changing work of Jesus Christ.

The overall feel I have from the Abraham book (perhaps because of lack of personal stories), is that Abraham writes more as a theorist of evangelism than an active participant. He certainly has interesting and important things to say, but for the practical learning on evangelism and for motivation of the church it is not an ideal choice.

I'll be eaten alive for this review by someone who knows its value better than I do, but I found the book dreadfully boring, and suffocating. The table of contents is bleak. There should have been sub-headings included so that the book's structure could have been easier to work with. If I had to choose a sample of the kind of writing that just makes me want to scream it would be chapter three on Proclamation, specifically the section "The Case for Proclamation." He wants so much to make it sound like proclamation is something distinctive from any ordinary ecclesial activity: so just say that. Same with the section on Initiation. Don't get me wrong, if you enjoy that sort of distant faux-objective presentative academic style, you'll love this. But you have to work so hard to get each linking piece that supports the overall thesis which is that 1) the coming Kingdom of God is the core of the gospel into which people are "initiated" rather than into a specific church itself---though that comes with it, and 2) this Kingdom of God and rule of God message must be part of the "verbally" proclaimed gospel. Objections to this are that he has taken material typically reserved for post-conversion education and front loaded into the evangelistic activity. A supporting thesis are that the goals of evangelism are not to be rooted in church growth---he comes down pretty hard on that. As a matter of style, I just kept stumbling over his awkward verbosity. I think this text could have been edited further with an emphasis on clarity and concision, rather than on the production of yet another terse and unapproachable work that will only be required reading for seminarians. I can't bring myself to give it one star since I did learn something.