A searchable, downloadable PDF of the original review appears below. Calvin Brown, Cambridge, Ontario, is the Executive Director of the Renewal Fellowship.
Michael Green, One to One: How to Share Your Faith, Moorings, div. of Ballantyne Publishing, Nashville, Tennessee, 1995,118 pp.
At a time when How To books are frowned on by many, Michael Green, author, public speaker and one of the worlds foremost authorities on evangelism takes a risk in presenting a book on how to share your faith with a friend. Unlike many How To books, especially about evangelism, Green doesn’t promote a set of pre-packaged approaches but rather deals with the root of evangelism which is sharing good news with people we should care about. Some call this relational evangelism and it is noted that most people come to faith through it. He approaches the motivation for evangelism from a sensitive caring response to peoples’ needs as the following quotes from the book indicate: “I think the challenge to us Christians is to confront needs humbly but confidently with some appropriate aspect of Jesus Christ as we come across them. Loneliness, fear, meaninglessness – these are common enough situations where there is obvious need. We do not have any cause to be shy about the remedy” (p.37). This caring comes, he says, by yourself being so full of the Lord that you simply cannot help overflowing, just as people in love cannot help themselves – it keeps bubbling out in words, looks, gestures. And people will want to know why. It is useful to tell others what Jesus has done for you but Green says it is necessary also to tell them what he does for them. In clear and simple ways Green then offers dialogue examples and gospel summaries so that the reader knows the type of thing he means. Michael’s own humour and enthusiasm comes through in the book even when he confronts and challenges the reader who may be tempted to back off the task. What is needed, then, is a clear idea of how to help someone to Christ, coupled with a lot of flexibility in our approach. We must not offer people a hardline program; but neither must be like the fisherman who, on his return home empty-handed, was asked by his wife, “How many did you catch?” He had to reply sadly, “None exactly, but I influenced a great many.”
Green’s book is useful in that it presents clearly the need, motives and methods of evangelism. Not trying to avoid difficulties, or ignoring the arguments of some modem scholars who question the scriptural accounts, Green affirms the gospel’s power to save. It is a useful book to bring all Christians back to the basics of understanding the reasons for their own faith and encouraging them to share the faith with others. Evangelism is often caricatured as an intrusive attack on the so called pagan “enemy.” But Green puts it clearly in a biblical context as compassion that overflows from a life filled with Jesus and neither starts or stops with the moment of conversion.