Soma Church Blog

Reimagining Evangelism

Rick Richardson

IVP:2006

If you are not a Christian and you are reading this review, you may find it a little rude and abrupt.  But let me be perfectly frank with you, as Christian I think being a Christian is the best thing in the world and I want you to be a Christian too.  Not because I get something out of it (I don’t), not because I think I am right and you are wrong (though that is part of it, otherwise I would not hold this view), but because being a Christian means communing with your Creator and He is awesome and I hope you meet Him one day.  This book is about helping Christians to help you know God.

I have to admit that I read this book twice.  The reason is that the first time I read it I thought Richardson had pushed the boundaries of what it meant to be a Christian and what evangelism was too far.  The second reading I realised that he did push the boundaries, sometimes too far but sometimes he was spot on, it was just that I was not used to thinking this way and helped me to learn about how to show the love of Jesus more clearly.

The main thesis of the book is that people are not going to become Christian if you push a bunch of doctrine down their throat.  They might become a Christian or at least have a better understanding of what it means to be Christian if you love them and be their friend.

Like I mentioned at the start there is a lot about this book that I think goes too far.  Phrases like “belonging comes before believing” p27 gets me nervous.  Jesus did not call people to repent and belong, he called them to repent and believe.

But when the sentence is followed by “evangelism is about helping people belong so that the can come to believe” I am a little more at ease.  Though to split hairs, I think that we need to have a fairly narrow definition of evangelism: the explanation of the story of God, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus and the grace that it brings.  Too many other things get put in the basket, like getting to know someone.  These other things are good, but not evangelism in and of itself.

The danger in Richardson’s approach is that people could get confused about the believing and belonging relationship.  Am I a Christian because I belong to the Soma community or because I believe in Jesus?  Why do I need to believe in Jesus when I belong?  To what extent does someone belong to the community if they don’t belong to Jesus?

On the other hand this is a book worth reading because we need to be pushed, we need to find the boundaries, we need to learn from people we don’t agree with, partly to learn new things and partly so we know where the truth lies as we wrestle with the ideas.  Richardson may have pushed too far on some things, but he is on the right track and there is a lot we can learn from him.