Customer Reviews

Witnessing Without Fear

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book will make you have to go out and witness. Not only will you want to but you'll know how and have a knowledge of how to present the Gospel, how to get across to anyone, and how to answer questions and deal with arguements. It will change your life if you want to whole-heartedly serve God I can promise you that. Buy it right away.

I strongly recommend this book for any whom God is calling to a deeper commitment to share their faith with others. This book approaches witnessing from the standpoint of love for others and obedience toward God. It's method centers around the Four Spiritual Laws tract that was made popular through Campus Crusades. This book, along with Evangelism Explosion (Kennedy) have been instrumental in changing my whole outlook on life and ministry.

I was looking for a book I could use to teach a class on relationship evangelism. My ideal is a book that addresses post-modern people (especially Gen-Xers and Gen-Yers) with their common aversion to embracing any claims of exclusive or absolute truth.

I wanted a book that combines scriptural foundations and practical models to gain a few memorable approaches and build lifelong habits.

This book, unlike most on the subject, includes:
1. Discussion or review questions at the end of each chapter
2. Application exercise(s) at the end of each chapter

This book is one of the best at providing clear, easy to adopt "how to" ways to build effective relationship evangelism habits. It could stand some updating about addressing post-moderns, but that does not hinder its effectiveness at helping you right now.

A promising book that I may also use is Evangelism Outside The Box (Rick Richardson, 2000).

Older books that have worked well for me in teaching others are: (roughly in order of preference): Power Evangelism (John Wimber, 1992), Witnessing Without Fear (Bill Bright, 1987), Out of the Salt Shaker (Rebecca Pippert).

I find the practical suggestions in Witnessing Without Fear to be very helpful. Let me comment on Mr. Edgar's one star rating. I read the book he sugggested by Ray Comfort. Rev. Comfort believes that much more emphasis should be placed on repentance during witnessing. I agree with that. Rev Comfort suggests using the 10 Commandments to get the unsaved to understand sin and see that they are sinners. I agree that is a good approach. But that said, I don't think the failure of Bill Bright to discuss those approaches makes Witnessing Without Fear a weak book.

Also, Mr Edgar said that Bill Bright had written that his method had been wrong. Actually Mr. Bright said and I quote part of the Revival Golden Key page 83 statement, "I confess I have failed to declare the reality of hell as often as the love of God and the benefits of a personal relationship with Christ. But Jesus spent more of his time warning listeners of the impending judgement of hell than speaking of the joys of heaven.....However, as a result of a steady decline in morals and spiritual vitality in today's culture and a growing indifference to the afterlife, I have come to realize the need for greater discussion of hell......"

Mr. Edgar and Rev. Comfort also criticize the Four Spiritual laws tract Bill Bright wrote, especially the first spiritual law, "God loves you and offers a wonderful plan for your life." They do not like the word "wonderful". They think it causes a lot of disillusionment by new Christians who expect every aspect of their lives to be wonderful after they pray to receive Christ. The Bright book encourages a substantial amount of follow-up with the new believer, and part of that follow-up should be to help one understand
that 'wonderful' relates more to your relationship with Christ than to meeting your monthly bills and having a good old time.

The Rev Comfort book is also worth reading. His ideas are helpful.

Witnessing Without Fear has praise in the foreword by such leaders as Billy Graham and Dr. James Kennedy, the originator of Evangelism Explosion. Graham wrote "This is a book I wish Bill Bright had written years ago, for if every church and every Christian individual were to put these proven methods to work on a daily basis,it could change the entire approach to world evangelism."

Practical, easy to read, and most of all...motivating. If you are looking for a simple yet effective witnessing tool, this is it.

I read this book and then led six people to Christ within two weeks. Four of them were people I had met for the first time. I've been doing regular street evangelism for a couple years and in that time had only seen a couple come to Christ. I then shared some of this with some sixth graders I mentor and one of them led his uncle to Christ and another led his friend to Christ.

The key thing Bill challenged me on was my attitude. Do I have a positive attitude? Am I hoping in God to transform people as I talk to them? I realized that I often evangelized with a critical, condemning, or cynical heart. Those of you who do street evangelism know how cynical you can get about people. Ultimately all those are symptoms of doubt and not faith.

The book is not really one about a method, although it did encourage me to actually read tracks through instead of just hand them out. The book most especially is about inspiration to see God transform lives. Bill shares so many encouraging stories it is impossible to go away not hoping to see likewise!

While it may be true that some have been saved by this method of evangelism, and have continued to be saved throughout their lives, the end result is usually not that happy. Statistics show that there is an 80-90% fall away rate from decisions in our churches, and nearly a 100% fall away rate from Crusades. Bill Bright himself, in one of his later interviews, admits that he was wrong for using and promoting this method because of the tragic results it produces (Revivals Golden Key, p.83). Rather than producing real conversions, the "love, joy, peace" gospel seems to only produce stoney-ground hearers and bitter backsliders who are innoculated to the gospel message.
Martin Luther called the ones in his day who used the same love-joy-peace gospel message that the majority of modern evangelists use a "sect" that was "stirred up by Satan"

I would not recommend these tracts or this method, but rather the method that Jesus, Paul, all of the great preachers in history (including C.H. Spurgeon, Wesley, Finney, Edwards, etc) have used and promoted vigorously. It is the use of the law to bring men to Christ. For a good book on this, i recommend reading "Hells Best Kept Secret" by Ray Comfort, or "Revivals Golden Key" by ray comfort.