Bibliographical Entry:

Will McRaney Jr. The Art of Personal Evangelism. Nashville: Broadman and Holman Publishers, May 1, 2003. 208 pp. $15.24.

About the author:

Will McRaney Jr., holds a Ph.D. in Evangelism that he attained after completing his studies at the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in the year 1992 and currently lives in New Orleans, Louisiana. In addition, Will McRaney Jr. is a team strategist for the Anglo Church Planting Team of the Florida Baptist Convention and plays the role of an assistant professor of evangelism. With the vast knowledge in the area of evangelism as he had written books on evangelism and served various positions relating to evangelism, Will McRaney Jr. was exposed to any organization that dealt with evangelism. As such, he became the Max and Bonnie Thornhill Chair of Evangelism at the New Orleans Seminary and a co-founder of the Ministry Enhancement Group. The Ministry Enhancement Group trains and acts as a consultancy team, which advocates for the growth of the church as well as providing information on how to develop leadership skills among the leaders.

Summary of contents

Personal evangelism is the start and the pillar of the church that help it to grow through spreading of the Gospel of God. The constantly changing cultural landscape of the American Society has made individuals who hunger for the gospel, to seek their spiritual questions about life in the crowded marketplace of ideas, rather than the church. The Art of Personal Evangelism by Will McRaney, Jr. is a unique book that is designed to draw people into the knowledge of God as well as his fellowship and acts as the fountainhead of Christianity. The book describes the involvement of God in our everyday lives as well as the role that we need to play as evangelists and as the messengers that God sent to reverse the church into godliness. However, to minister the gospel to the rest of world will require one to understand and have adequate knowledge of God’s Word, as well as the issues affecting Christianity around the world. As such, it will be easier to communicate the concepts of evangelism to other people and be able to create some sense in the gospel because you have sufficient knowledge on the Word of God and the outside world. In the fifth chapter of “Communicating inside Your Context,” Will McRaney Jr. emphasizes on looking for the people that are within the context that we are dealing with, of modernity (McRaney, 116). These people have been changed by both modernity and the postmodernity era and are seeking satisfaction from the gospel that they expect an evangelist to impact in their lives. Consequently, it becomes essential for the evangelist to get rid of all the internal and external barriers existing in evangelism and communicate the power of Jesus Christ into the lives of the people. In brief, the book provides some great insights about the involvement of God, how to involve ourselves, as well as the factors to put into consideration as we minister or spread the gospel. The book also elaborates on communicating the gospel inside and outside our context as we assimilate the power of Christ, still within the context. In addition to providing conversational tips, the book explains how the barriers to effective evangelism could be eliminated, thus; ensuring that there is a well-balanced aspect of evangelism in its content.

My analysis (strengths and weaknesses).

According to Will McRaney Jr., this book “The Art of Personal Evangelism” does not have weaknesses, but has strengths and coupled with limitations that he faced while compiling all the information on personal evangelism (McRaney, ix). After conducting several researches and interviews with people and church leaders on matters pertaining evangelism, Will McRaney Jr. found out that fearing the unknown is one of the major limitation that hinders personal evangelism. In the introductory part of the book, Will McRaney Jr. states that his focus was to find out the issues that affect personal evangelism, both from the past and the modern world. Some issues discussed in the book required some seriousness and investigating them had to be deep and intense. As such, writing the book was quite a big task to accomplish even though it was not possible to cover all the areas in personal evangelism. The book does not cover the issues in depth by using the biblical support but relies mostly on Will McRaney’s view and the research conducted. However, some other books that discuss similar issues concerning evangelism have done so, and more also, attempted to answer all the theological questions that people could have in their minds. In spite of these limitations, the book seems to have majored on the foundational and practical concepts that influence personal evangelism, with an aim of bringing the church back to its original roots. According to Will McRaney Jr., the church seems to be changing its face with the contemporary world and conforming to the world, showing a decline in its purpose. He focused on the greater measure of effectiveness by emphasizing on the essential elements that the gospel should possess as well as the most effective ways of communicating that message to people who need it.

Bibliography

McRaney, Will. The Art of Personal Evangelism. B&H Publishing Group, 2003.