Lecture

And we’ll be studying over the next few weeks a course on evangelism. If you’ll open up your course packet and look at the syllabus, I’d like to begin by overviewing the syllabus with you. First, a description of the course. This course will be a study of evangelism ministry with special attention paid to the context of a local church setting. Students will be encouraged to make specific application of the lectures and assignments to a particular setting of their present or intended ministry. That is, we’re looking for you to have certain outcomes from this course that you can apply whether you serve in an urban core church, a community or suburban church, a world church, or a church plant with young, single professionals, an ethnically diverse church, or whatever setting God may have put you in.

The course will begin with a study of biblical and theological foundations for evangelism. On this foundation, we will study methods of personal and group evangelism, how to equip laity to witness, and by the way, why most Christians don’t respond to our training seminars on evangelism, the use and development of church and parachurch structures in evangelism both ongoing and special, the care of converts and discipleship, and selected issues in evangelism. Your assignments will focus on practical application of workable solutions for evangelism in the local church. Those of you that are serving in a parachurch ministry will find much to relate to your particular and often unique needs.

We have eight objectives for the course. The first one is that you should know the essential content of the gospel message. That may seem very obvious to you, but in surveys and other studies, it’s quite surprising how many evangelicals don’t know the essential content of the gospel. We want you to know at least one method for communicating this message and the criteria for evaluating presentations of the gospel with respect to their accuracy and effectiveness. The second major objective for the course is that you would be able to explain the function of apologetics in evangelistic work, to be able to list some important issues for contemporary apologetics to address, and to know of some resources which can be used for this. Third, we want you to be able to describe possible strategies for sustaining an ongoing witness to those who have not responded to the gospel. As our society moves more and more into the post-Christian era, we’re going to be finding as evangelicals that our witness will have to be an ongoing process. And so we want to examine that. That’s what the third objective concerns itself with. Our fourth objective is to describe how an effective evangelistic program can be integrated into the total program of a church both structurally and systemically. By structurally, I mean part of your church or program or ministry that is evangelistic in nature and purpose. By systemically, I mean that evangelism occurs in your church’s ministries and programs when it is needed even if that is not the primary or even secondary function of that ministry.

Our fifth objective is to describe how to synthesize relevant biblical and secular source material into an effective evangelistic sermon or message and then to be able to analyze a sermon or message to determine how to conclude it with an evangelistic appeal. Our sixth goal is to list the essential content of a follow-up program and be familiar with at least two methods for communicating it. We’re using the term “follow-up” to mean the process of establishing a believer in the faith. Our seventh goal is to define discipleship and describe some resources available to the local church for discipling. And lastly, we want to identify and discuss some issues in evangelism such as the destiny of the unsaved, eternal damnation, Lordship salvation, friendship or initiative methods, the use of figurative language in gospel presentations, and others that are listed there. And as we go through the course, some of these will be addressed very directly and substantially. Others only at a lighter level. However, there is an assignment which allows you to work on any of these issues that are of particular interest to you.

The requirements are described in your syllabus. The mode of presenting them is given to you by ITS. You’ll notice on the syllabus that there are five major assignments of follow-up, witness, an exam, an evangelistic strategy, and reading of the handouts for this course. You’ll notice, too, that the follow-up and the witness assignments both have options within them. You are not free to choose just any one of the options for those two assignments. The options are given so that you will have an assignment designed for someone with your level of background and previous experience. So we want you to look at the introduction for each option and then determine which one of the four or three options for the follow-up and witness assignment is appropriate for you. Let’s go over those now and discuss them a little bit so you can get an understanding of this rather unusual approach to a syllabus where you have some choice.

Follow-up is the first major assignment. Only one of these needs to be completed. One is the conversion of follow-up materials. A second one is a current issue paper. And a third is a social ministry paper.

Let’s look at the first one—follow-up. Evaluation of conversion follow-up materials. This is for students who have never followed up a believer. If you’ve never established a believer in the faith, it’s important that by the end of an evangelism course you have some tools that can help you to do that. That’s what this assignment is designed to do. You’ll see that it says first obtain two widely-available follow-up plans or books. A number are listed here in the syllabus, ones that are very commonly used because of their widespread sourcing in the parachurch and other movements.

Campus Crusade’s step number one, the “Christian Adventure” and the 10 Steps to Christian Maturity series, which has an excellent teacher’s manual that goes with it. If you’ve never led a small group before, you may find that teacher’s manual to be one of the best resources available. They also publish a Discovery Group student guide in their discipleship series. And I’m sure as time goes on, there will be other things that are published by them as well as the Navigators, InterVarsity, and other evangelical ministries. The Navigators’ lessons on assurance is widely used and has been adapted by many other groups. If you’re familiar with the Christian Businessmen’s Association, you’ll see that their follow-up material is an adaptation of this as are those used by a number of noted evangelists.

The Survival Kit is a program designed by the Southern Baptists. It has a number of different variations, so be careful if you look for that. Some are very simple with high graphics designed for junior high or high school age. Others are designed for an adult population. Although out of print, an excellent book is a book by Kuhne, The Dynamics of Personal Follow-Up. It may be available in your school library. The appendix to it has a schedule of ten follow-up appointments and is structured in a very different way than these other fill-in-the-blank type approaches. Kuhne gives you a one-page summary or outline of the follow-up material. It, therefore, requires a greater level of sophistication and biblical knowledge to be used than simply the fill-in-the-blank type approach.

Whichever materials you select, and I’d encourage you to spend some time at the Christian bookstore looking at the different materials, they need to be significantly different in basic approach or audience. Perhaps one is designed as a fill-in-the-blank, the other as a discussion such as Kuhne’s. Perhaps one will be designed for high school students, the other for adults. The first thing you do once you’ve bought those booklets is survey each follow-up plan or booklet, and in a separate paragraph for each lesson, summarize the content of that lesson. Now a typical booklet will have five, six, or seven lessons. That means five, six, or seven paragraphs. In addition to the summary of the content of each plan or booklet, compare and contrast the two follow-up strategies and a number of points are given in your syllabus to help you know how to do that. The third thing we want you to do in this assignment is to complete one of the two booklets and if memory verses are included, they should be memorized. At some point, you will be establishing a new believer in the faith. And it’s pretty difficult and perhaps even embarrassing if you’ve not memorized the verses that you’re asking them to do.

And then finally, the syllabus instructs you what to include with your paper: the titles of the books, the summary sheet, and so forth. You’ll find that the syllabus was designed to be used pretty much as a checklist. If you’ll just follow your way through it, do everything that it says to do, you are going to do pretty well on the grading for this course. In fact, the way this syllabus was developed, was over time I would look at wherever my students had not received at least a B-level grade in their assignment and then would review the syllabus: clarifying, adding, deleting, modifying until the assignments reached a level of clarity. If the student followed the assignment as described in the syllabus, they would get a good, solid B or A-level grade. So, follow the syllabus.

If you have done this kind of follow-up before, you may do either of the following. 2) An eight to twelve-page, typed paper on a current issue in evangelism: for example, Lordship salvation, the reality of hell, Jesus is the only way to salvation, and as time goes on, more current issues pop up and other ones begin to fade away as older issues that aren’t currently debated. Whichever issue you pick you have to use at least one primary source, not a book that tells what others say about the person who believes this, but a person who truly holds those positions. Your library should have access to the American Theological Library Association database (ATLA). They have a number of wonderful and helpful resources that can enable you to get into books as well as articles and journals that relate to the subject which you wish to write on. The assignment syllabus describes this assignment in detail and exactly what we’re looking for.

The third possible assignment for follow-up is a social ministry paper. You may answer either of the questions that are listed here in the syllabus. The first being, “Are ministries that seek to raise people’s living standards or quality of life such as relief and development work, medical ministries, educational ministries, and so forth, a part of the Great Commission?” You may not know, but this issue is debated sometimes with pretty high levels of emotion within the evangelical world. Another question that’s related is, “Are actions that promote the image of God or encourage a witness to justice such as Operation Rescue, pro-life counseling centers, drug rehab units, some counseling ministries and so forth, a part of the Great Commission?” Pick either or both of those questions. You must answer “yes” or “no” in the first paragraph and then defend your answer in an eight to twelve-page paper. The grade is not based upon whether you answer “yes” or “no.” It’s based upon your willingness to take a position and then to develop a defense for that position. To do so, point B in the notes, you must demonstrate interaction with at least one supporter of the view you do not hold as a primary source. You must show adequate biblical research, the use of relevant books and periodicals. The format of your paper may be as a research paper. However, it may be that your church or ministry is struggling with some of these issues, so you may write your paper as a position paper for the ministry. If it’s done as a research paper, the final page should contain specific applications of your conclusions to the evangelism and missions program of your present ministry or a typical local church in the area you expect to minister after graduation.

A separate bibliography prepared in standard form must be included whichever format you use for your paper. The bibliography should include all sources read or consulted in the preparation of the paper such as books, commentaries, theologies, periodicals, and oral interviews. Those are the three options for the follow-up assignment.

The witness assignment has four options, one of which must be completed. The first one is witness with words. This assignment is designed for students who have not previously either read a book on personal evangelism or taken a personal evangelism training course such as Evangelism Explosion, Child Evangelism Fellowship’s training, Campus Crusade’s training, or any of a number of other well-thought-through and well-presented programs. If you’ve not done that, you should complete the following. Read Tell it Often-Tell it Well by Mark McCloskey or How to Give Away Your Faith by Paul Little.

Second, on three different occasions, share the gospel with a total of at least three different persons using a transferrable method which is theologically accurate and communicates clearly. We’re going to discuss these issues as we go through the course, so you’ll know what theological accuracy and claritive communication means as we progress in this course.

By a transferrable method, we mean one that you can use to equip another saint for the work of ministry. As a seminary student, you no longer have the freedom just to do ministry. Upon you is now the responsibility to equip the saints for the work of ministry. Therefore, when you learn how to share your faith, you should have at least one method that you can use to train someone in your ministry in how to share the faith as well.

Notice also in the syllabus it says, “the student should do this evangelism with an experienced student or lay person observing.” Ask around your church or your school. There’s probably a number of people who have been trained in evangelism and are fairly well-experienced. If such a person cannot be found at your school, your church, or elsewhere, you may include a statement indicating that you were unable to find someone to go with you. But I would strongly encourage you to give strong effort to finding that person. You will find that it makes it much easier, and you’ll find that you will learn a lot more if someone with experience can be with you and can give you observations and feedback. All students doing this assignment should find a prayer partner who will pray with them before and after their time with non-Christians.

Third, in at least one of these sharing situations, your evangelistic (that is, conversion) testimony should be shared. Fourth, we want you to distribute at least five pieces of evangelistic media, be it a tract, an article, a book, a tape; something that’s evangelistic to someone you’ve talked with or work with or live near. Later, an attempt should be made to talk with them about it. We’ll give you some ideas as we go through the course for questions you can use to ask them about the material and for introductions you can use to give them the material. Then when noted on the schedule, everything that you’re to do is spelled out very precisely in the syllabus.

Now if you’ve done this type of initiative or contact evangelism in the past and are experienced in it, then you can move up to witness with walk. The first thing there would be to read a friendship evangelism book such as Living Proof by Jim Petersen of the Navigators or Lifestyle Evangelism by Joseph Aldrich.

Second, we want you to do three separate relation-building activities with non-Christian neighbors, coworkers, or friends. For example: going to a ballgame, having them over for a meal, helping them out with a project. Those activities must be done with at least two different non-Christians. And typically, a relation-building activity is going to last several hours. So helping the older lady in your apartment complex carry her groceries up to her apartment is probably not a relation-building activity, although it is a good act of Christian mercy. But having her over for dinner, spending an evening with her, learning about her background sharing with her about who you are, that’s a relation-building activity.

Be sure to allow plenty of time to accomplish these, because you will find typically that it will take two, three, four, sometimes even five invitations with a non-Christian before you succeed in having one relation-building activity. This will give you some insight into why friendship evangelism is so difficult to effectively implement in a church, because it in fact takes a fairly high level of commitment.

Third, share your personal evangelistic (that is, conversion) testimony with at least one non-Christian, preferably one of three people, or groups of people that you had these three different relation-building activities with. Then when noted on the schedule, turn in what’s described in your syllabus. You will notice in the syllabus a number of questions that are designed to provoke some thinking and some evaluation as to the benefit, the value, and the lessons learned from this assignment. Take the time to think through those questions well. Take the time to answer them adequately.

The third possible option for the witness assignment, for those who have done the witness with words and the witness with walk level of skill, is to witness to a special religious group. Select a major cult or a non-Christian religion such as Mormonism, Buddhism, and so forth. Study their theology, in particular, their soteriology. You should note points of agreement and difference with an evangelical understanding of soteriology and theology in general. At least one primary source must be used. By a primary source, I mean a source written by a member of that group who’s writing to explain their beliefs, not someone who used to be a member of that group and has left and moved to another religion. Third, this study should be summarized in a paper of at least five pages. A separate bibliography prepared in standard form must be included. And that bibliography should include all sources read or consulted in preparation of the paper.

Second, arrange an interview with a member of the group who will be familiar with their theological beliefs. Typically, this is a leader. So your Aunt Martha who has joined a local cult may not be qualified, because she may not be well-trained in their theology. If she is, the fact that she’s your aunt is not particularly relevant to this assignment. We want someone who has enough training and understanding of the cult’s or religious group’s beliefs to be able to determine the accuracy of your understanding of their beliefs and to be able to discuss with you the issues raised in the paper. Normally, you’ll do this by giving the leader the paper to read over and then asking him or her for comments and evaluation. You’ll probably find that the leader has answers you were not prepared for. You may find that the beliefs they represent, the group is holding, are in some ways quite different from what you thought they believed. This is not unusual at all.

A number of years ago, I had a student who did his paper on Mormonism. It so happened that the local Mormon “stake” had a visitor in from Salt Lake City who was one of the old, old leaders of their central organizational group. He knew some of the founders from his boyhood and had an intimate understanding of how Mormonism was structured. The student had quoted from Mormon documents about different beliefs and different aspects of the Mormon religion. This leader, though, said “Oh no. That’s just what we write in the books,” and actually drew out for the student answers to questions that he had never seen in the Mormon books. What a fabulous resource tool this student now has. When they talk to people who are interested in Mormonism and interested in Christianity and not able to sort them out, this student is able to sit down and to say, “Well, this is what the Mormons believe. I know it’s what they believe because I wrote a paper when I was in seminary. And that paper was critiqued by a leader, and you can read it here.”

After you’ve interacted with the leader, we want you to interact with their understanding of the plan of salvation and how they would respond to our understanding of the plan of salvation. Ask them simply, “How would you respond to an evangelical’s understanding of salvation.” If they don’t know that, take the time to share the gospel with them. Again, what a great opportunity. Think about it. It’s very hard to get to a leader of a religious group. If the Mormons wanted to witness to Billy Graham or some other noted Christian leader, they would have had a very hard time getting to him. With such a busy schedule, with organizational structures that protect him from outsiders, it would be hard for anyone to get to him personally. The same is true at a more local level. But with this paper, you can get to the leaders of different religious groups in your area and share the gospel with them from the perspective of asking them how they would respond.

This isn’t just an opportunity to share the gospel though. Because what you will find out is many times they have answers to our evangelical positions that you have never heard before. Answers that are, at times, difficult for us to reply to; answers that are, at times, easy for us to reply to; but ones that you never thought that they would use. If you are talking to a person who comes from this background or talking with a person who is wrestling between joining that group and an evangelical ministry, knowing what the other side will say is often very, very helpful. The syllabus then explains what to turn in, in a paper of whatever length is necessary. Evaluate your research in the interview. A number of questions are given here for you to answer. We are not looking necessarily for long answers nor for short answers but for thoughtful answers. Then when noted on your syllabus, turn in these materials.

The fourth option, under witness, for those who have already done friendship and initiative methods of evangelism, would be to do an evangelistic message. This assignment assumes skill in the art of speaking. And since those skills are not taught in this course, if you do not already possess them, you should not attempt this assignment. What you will do is first, research and manuscript an evangelistic sermon, textual or topical, or an evangelistic message which is not built upon the text itself. And we will define all these terms as we proceed through the course. On a separate sheet, describe the intended audience: their location, their age, their educational background, religious background, and so forth. Based on this description, explain how the topic, the location, the time of the meeting will appeal to the intended non-Christian audience. No work done for previous sermons or messages, either for a course or ministry, should be used for this assignment. It should be something fresh, built upon what you’ve learned in this course. And then what you are to turn in is described in the syllabus.

There is an exam for this course. It’s a very thorough exam. I would encourage you to study very carefully for it. I think you’ll find that it deals with the major issues in the course. It’s not an exam of trivial pursuit, but there are a lot of major thoughts in the course that need to be studied and understood well.

The final assignment is the evangelistic strategy. Here we want you to think through the nature of the community where you will minister or expect to minister after graduation. Describe that community. Thoughtfully discuss any obstacles which a witness ministry has or may have in this community and how you are going to deal with them. Consider the following factors. What’s the religious life or belief systems that a significant number of area residents have as background? In our contemporary times, for many people in many neighborhoods, religious belief or faith is simply a matter of background, not a matter of some expressed preference or something that they do every Sunday, like go to church. Consider the church or religious background such as a Catholic area, Lutheran area, Baptist area. Perhaps better ways to understand them is thinking about worldview, or the New Age, or an agnostic area or atheistic area. The presence of extended family and cultural heritage, which tends to hold people back a little bit, make an area more conservative. Take someone who personally might be a little more towards the New Age and make them sound a little more open to their background. Look at any other background factors that should be taken into consideration in developing an evangelistic strategy to reach the members of this community. You may need to chat with some people in the community: a few phone calls, fifteen to twenty minutes; a visit one Sunday to a church in that area, if you are not presently there, could yield an immense amount of information that will help you to understand. In Doctor of Ministry courses, when we’ve done an assignment similar to this, pastors have often come into the class with a somewhat sheepish look on their face, for they realize that their evangelistic programs have been targeted at perhaps only ten or fifteen percent of the community, that they’ve never really known who their community is. They have structured their programs in a way that do not appeal to the broad base of who composes their community.

Second, we want you to look at the history of previous efforts, both positive and negative, to convert individuals from the community and how, if all, it has to be dealt with. I grew up in a city in the eastern part of the United States. Back in the 1950s, there was a strong, evangelical ministry in the city. However, the leader of that ministry ran off with a large sum of money and someone’s secretary. The scandal was all over the newspapers. In a city that was predominantly Catholic, the newspapers had a wonderfully fun time showing how foolish the Protestants were. The scars from that experience were felt in both the evangelical community as well as remembered by the non-evangelical community for over twenty-five years. When I became a Christian, I began to wonder why certain things weren’t happening. As I asked pastors and looked at the situation and talked with lay people, this one event from the 1950s kept coming up. It’s remarkable sometimes how a negative evangelistic ministry can have a long-term effect upon a community.

Third, any other factors that an evangelistic program for your community should take into consideration, should be looked at. These may be obvious to you, but your grader won’t know them. He hasn’t mastered the Klingon mind meld. He doesn’t have the ability to read your mind, so you have to tell the greater in a clear manner, especially if you are describing a community you grew up in. Try to think very consciously about the things that someone who did not grow up there would not know. For example: is this a rural, suburban, urban community; low income, blue collar, farming, professional, college-educated? Is it semi-literate, illiterate? Is there a dominant religion or religious heritage that has to be dealt with? If you don’t have a preference for a community, then use the community in which you are presently ministering. Although the specific information may not carry over to your post-graduation ministry, the exercise will. And you will know what to do when you’ve graduated.

Second, demographic studies have alerted us to the rising number of elderly. We’re going to discuss this later on when we talk about the changing culture and the need for relevance in evangelism. Historically though, the church has focused its ministries on both youth and families. Think, if you would, with me for a minute. Think in your mind of evangelistic ministries that evangelicals have developed designed to reach the youth of America: children, preadolescents, adolescents, and college students. If you’re like most, you could describe ten or fifteen as quickly as you could write them down. Now think about ministries, national in scope, developed by evangelicals with an evangelistic emphasis, that are designed to reach older adults. It’s a pretty short list, isn’t it? In fact, in some ways it’s a list of nothing. One of the reasons that we’ve been so successful in reaching youth is that’s who we’ve been talking to. But we need to be talking to the elderly more. They are the rising and growing segment of the population. How are we going to reach them with the gospel?

Third, one of the great problems that the church faces is its retention of youth. Describe how you could seek to ensure that all the children in a local church you attend will understand the gospel and how you would seek to avoid overkill with this age group. We’re going to discuss this trait in great length when we get to the lectures towards the end of the course on evangelism in the church.

Number four, list five possible service talks. We will describe those when we talk about presenting the gospel through evangelistic messages. These are non-expository topical messages. Things that a non-Christian audience would find useful, that enable you to build a ministry with them. Write a one-paragraph description for each talk. You do not have to be able to personally create or deliver them. For example, you may have in the community a large percentage of young professionals. Several obvious service talks are: Parenting a preschooler. Parenting when both parents work. Parenting the emerging adolescent. Those types of service talks can be phenomenally helpful to the non-Christian. They are like salt and light in the community. You probably have someone in the church who can give those talks, perhaps a woman who has been an elementary principal for twenty years, is well respected and known in the community and is full of wisdom on these issues. Perhaps another subject that could be looked at would be finances. A lot of young couples both work. When one loses a job or when the economy goes into a recession, finances become a major issue. Why not have someone who works in that area help your church reach out to those people and serve them through a service talk dealing with finances? And again, we’ll talk about this at great length as we go through the course. What you are to do there is describe the audience, assuming at least ten to twenty percent are not converted, at least some have no religious background whatsoever,and then write out in manuscript form, which means word for word, not an outline, but word for word your evangelistic close.

The final section of the lecture notes on developing an evangelistic message will probably help you quite a bit, as well as notes dealing with the gospel message terms and definitions and presenting the gospel, a survey of methods. Be careful in this assignment that you do not assume too much religious background of the non-Christian in the audience. Be sure to illustrate, and make the illustration clear. You will probably find that several drafts will be needed. Again, we’re not asking you to create an evangelistic message. You are using someone else’s message, assuming it wasn’t evangelistic, and determining how you are going to give a pre-evangelistic or evangelistic thrust to that message. Then when noted in your syllabus, turn in the materials that are described here. You will notice that this course also has a large amount of handouts. We expect you to read those handouts thoroughly and carefully. In the lectures on tape, I will not go through every word of every page of every handout or of every lecture note. The reason we are giving you points for this, is that you will read them thoughtfully and carefully on your own even if they’re not covered during the lecture.

There are two other items that were attached to your syllabus that I think you will find helpful. 1) The reading report is self-evident. That just indicates the percentage of handouts read. But the other one that I would like you to find is entitled “Critical Reading Skills.” And if you will turn through your materials, it should be right near the syllabus. Find the page that’s entitled “Critical Reading Skills.” Okay, I hope you found it now. What we are trying to do here is help you to learn how to read thoughtfully. The word critical is not being used in the sense of “oh you’re a [series of noises]” or a cranky mode in the sense of showing fault or pointing blame but in the sense of thoughtful and in the sense of understanding intent and purpose. Let me overview this handout with you for a few minutes, because I think you’ll find it helpful not just for some of the assignments in this course but for much of your seminary training. Why do you read a book? It’s a good question to ask the students. We as professors don’t think much of asking you to read a book for tomorrow’s class. I find my students don’t think much of it either. Do you read simply to verify that there are words on the page? Do you want to know what the book was about; that is, its subject and complement, its major themes, its basic structure? Or are you a critical thinker?

A critical thinker reads to understand the basic argument presented and to ensure its validity. Critical reading in this sense is not the negative idea of severe and unfavorable criticism, but the positive idea of careful and thoughtful evaluation and judgment. A critical review is not necessarily a hostile review. You can be critical in the sense of thoughtful even if you agree with the author’s position, even if you agree with every point in the author’s position. Knowing how to read critically, though, will enable you to benefit from your course-related and personal reading so as to better use the time you invest in reading. The most important elements of a critical review are an understanding of four issues. One, the logic of the author’s position. Second, the soundness of its underlying premises or assumptions. Third, the development of its argument, and finally, the validity of the conclusions reached.

To identify these, it’s usually helpful first to get an overview of the book by reading the dust jacket, the author’s preface, the foreword, the table of contents, and maybe even some reviews of the book. It’s always helpful to develop the habit of reading with a pen to take notes and to mark the key passages, assuming you own the book and it’s not the library’s. I sometimes make a written summary in the blank space at the end of the chapter, and I ask myself some of these critical thinking questions described in this essay. Now what do we mean by identifying the logic of the author’s position, the soundness of its underlying premises or assumptions, the development of its argument, and the validity of the conclusions reached? Because these are the foundations on which the book is built, if they’re not solid, then nothing else is solid no matter how passionate and eloquent the author is. Remember the story about the house built on sand and the house built on solid rock? These are the foundation issues.

In a good critical review, in your opening paragraph, you will concisely and clearly introduce the main points of the review. The body then should be devoted to identifying the main or central arguments used in the book and evaluating them as described below. The review should reflect proper use of grammar, correct spelling, clear organization and expression, proper format for text and bibliography, and a neat and attractive appearance. As you examine the main or central arguments in the book, you should demonstrate familiarity with the book and cite specific examples as needed. Your interaction with and your response to the book should be clear, concise, logically-developed, and thoughtful and, of course, reflect a solid understanding of the primary text or other evidence that the author has cited for support.

At times, a critical review will require reference to other books or articles. I remember writing a review of one author’s work on what was then the current debate in the evangelical community concerning evangelism, Lordship salvation. Some of the quotes didn’t sound quite right to me, so I went back to the books cited and found an amazing number of quotes had been taken completely out of context. In a few cases, simply twisting the author’s intention in a way that was more favorable for the person citing them in his book. But in a few other cases, they were actually completely misrepresenting the source at hand. Now a critical review is not a summary of the issues, positions, or interpretations of the book. A critical review is a thoughtful review. You should interact with the book’s strengths and weaknesses in a critical or thoughtful manner.

Here are some of the questions you should ask, and you can see them on your handout. Number one, did the book raise the right questions? Sometimes a book doesn’t. I remember reading another book on the Lordship-salvation issue, and the author never understood what the real question was. It was a very frustrating book as he wandered off from tangent to tangent, rabbit trail to rabbit trail, never discerning where the main path was. Second, ask yourself, were the parts of the book related to the whole? Was there a unity with this book? Did it have some type of overarching theme in development? Third, was there a basis in evidence and or experience supplied for what was said? Sometimes people just say things, and they give no support whatsoever. Fourth, were the sources used valid? That is, were they reliable sources, and were they accurate sources? Many of you taking this course are in a seminary degree program that requires the use of Greek and Hebrew. Sometimes it’s good to go back and look at the Greek and Hebrew that’s being cited. Sometimes you find that the author hasn’t learned their Greek and Hebrew well, and they’ve misused some biblical evidence. Fifth, was the overall argument logically valid? Sixth, was it biased? Did it present a biased picture of events or evidence? Seventh, what were the author’s obvious and hidden purposes, viewpoints, and assumptions? I remember reading a book on knowing the will of God. The author, in what is probably a very unusual burst of honesty for authors, in the opening preface to the book told us the reason why he wrote his book. His reason was simple. He said, “I tried learning the will of God the way evangelicals tell you you learn the will of God, and it never worked for me. So I am writing a book about what has worked for me.” Well that’s very helpful. The author’s honesty there enabled me to understand why he so quickly discounted things that many, many other evangelicals had held up as central issues. The reason he discounted them was not theological, not exegetical. It was simply personal. It never happened for me. And then lastly, ask the implications present in the material and inferences suggested by tone, word choice, and style.

Now, what’s important in this critical review is not to ask these questions of every single detail. If you do that, your review will be even longer than the book. Let me use an illustration. In times of war, one of the things that one of the two opponents wants to do is destroy bridges. One way of destroying the bridge is to fly a plane overhead and have it drop bombs on the bridge. Usually this succeeds in putting a number of holes in the deck of the bridge so that it’s virtually impossible to drive anything across it. However, this is essentially a great waste of time and energy, because you can patch most bridges up very, very quickly. And traffic can be flowing over them in a matter of minutes to hours after the bombing raid. A far better way is to find where the weight of the bridge has been placed. Typically, on either bank there will be some large thrust blocks or big concrete structures. And in the middle of the river, there may be another foundation, a pier that the bridge rests upon. If those structures, which hold up the bridge, can be in such a way damaged that they no longer hold the weight of the bridge when it has a load on it, then it doesn’t matter what the bridge looks like. The bridge is useless. That’s what you are doing in a critical review. You’re not trying to find every nut and every bolt and every screw and look at it and see if it’s properly screwed together, if the nut was turned on nice and tight, or trying to respond to every detailed point in the book. Rather, you are trying to find the central premises of the book, the central positions upon which the rest of the argument is built. And if those central positions do not hold, then no matter how well the rest of the book was written, it does not hold as well.

To do that, it may be helpful to you to differentiate between three words and what they mean: assertion, assumption, and argument. An assertion is a statement or declaration, often made with great confidence (might I add, especially by preachers), which is made without proof or supporting evidence. Unlike assumptions, which cannot be proven even though they’re usually accepted as reasonable, assertions sound like arguments and are often used as if they were arguments, but an assertion is not an argument. It just sounds that way. When you look at it, you realize there was nothing given to support it. An assumption is a different kind of statement. Instead of being a declaration made with confidence with no supporting evidence like an assertion, an assumption is a statement which is assumed to be true; sometimes referred to as a presupposition.

Assumptions are necessary for nearly all discussions. They should be shown to be reasonable. This may be done either by direct discussion, implication, or association with a movement or person or theology which has established the reasonableness of the assumption. For example, when speaking to an evangelical community, the assumption that the Bible is inerrant, it is the Word of God, is authoritative, is a reasonable assumption to make. An argument is the final type of statement. It’s made with coherent, supporting evidence. If the evidence is convincing, the argument may be referred to as a proof. When you read, ask yourself if the author is presenting an assertion, an assumption, or an argument. Identifying each is a big help in critical thinking. The length of a critical review is simple, long enough to accomplish these purposes. Paul said in 2 Corinthians, “We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought so as to make it obedient to Christ.” Let us make that our goal in thinking as well as our goal in evangelism.