It’s a new year and that means it’s a good time to start reading more new books. In this video, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Dr. Adam W. Greenway, recommends three evangelism and apologetics books that have impacted his life and that he thinks every Christian should read.
The entire video is above, and the complete transcript is below.
What are three books that have impacted my life that I would recommend to you? Well, my area of a lot training and specialization has been in evangelism and apologetics so I’m going to center my thoughts along those lines.
One book that I’ve read, that frankly I wish I would have read a lot earlier in my life and that I wish I could put in the hands of every Christian, is the little book by J. I. Packer called Evangelism And The Sovereignty of God. One of the great questions as you mature in the Christian life is the relationship between God’s sovereignty and human responsibility and free-agency and how do those two things interplay, particularly in terms of the task of evangelism and sharing Christ. Dr. Packer’s work is a short, simple book, but filled with extraordinarily powerful insights about these friends, as he calls them, of the divine sovereignty and human responsibility. And I found that book to be extraordinarily helpful and I highly recommend that to you.
Another book that I would recommend is a book by a man named Will Metzger called Tell The Truth. It may be the most comprehensibly helpful guide to personal evangelism that I am aware of. Metzger lays out, not just an approach to sharing your faith, but kind of the meta-narrative of Scripture and the grand storyline about God being King and what it means to be in right relationship in terms of coming home to God and having the confidence to know how to share Christ effectively and passionately, which ultimately should be the goal and the aim and the telos of every faithful Christian, that ultimately everything that we do should be: “How are we helping people experience the life changing power of Christ? How are we helping people experience God in a saving way, in a personal way?” And Metzger’s book, I found to be very helpful along those lines.
A third book I recommend is a little book called Tactics, by Greg Koukl. Tactics are practical strategies or ways to deal with issues or problems or questions that come up in sharing your faith. The reality is in today’s culture oftentimes people are starting further away from God with more questions, more baggage, more issues. And how can you take the conversation that may have a difficult question and be able to move that into a gospel conversation very naturally, relationally, and effectively? I found Greg Koukl’s book to be a great work for people who may not be familiar with the discipline of apologetics or the defense of the faith, to find then an easy way to learn some very practical skills to give them confidence as they share Christ as they go.
