A friend sent me a copy of J.Mack Stiles’ book, Marks of the Messenger several months ago and I left it on my desk until this past Sunday. I had heard many people recommend the book, but honestly had just not had time to read it. I wish now that I had made the time sooner.
Stiles has written a fantastic book on evangelism–actually its a book more on the evangelist than on actual evangelism. In his own words it is “a book about basic ideas that make up health evangelism before we ever share our faith.” He takes pains to show who the evangelist should be, not merely what the evangelist should do. This is very important in an age that is really reacting against canned evangelism methods in favor of a lifestyle approach to evangelism.
Stiles shows how to have the kind of gospel-filled lifestyle that can enable you to speak into the lives of lost people with the power of the gospel. He takes pains to show that one is saved–not merely from sins, but from sin.
There is a tendency to think that our sins are bigger than our sin. When Christians feel that sins (acts) are bigger than sin (condition), they see evangelism as an effort of moral reform rather than explaining the steps that need to take place to rip out our wicked hearts and replace them with new hearts–that amazing work of God that Jesus called being born again.
One of Stiles’ greatest contributions in this book is his illustrations of the process of losing the gospel. he argues that the gospel isn’t lost all at once, but rather over time.
Losing the gospel doesn’t happen all at once, it’s much more like a four generation process too:
- The gospel is accepted
- The gospel is assumed
- The gospel is confused
- The gospel is lost.
It is easy to trace this four stage decline in the lives of many Christian denominations and theological institutions in America today. Stiles warns us to be on our guard as evangelists to never assume the gospel in our everyday encounters or even in our churches. The assumption of the salvation in the lives of the people we encounter causes a confusion about what the gospel is. This confusion may be liberal (social ministries) or conservative (legalism), but regardless of what the confusion is, it still leads to hell if it is not the true gospel of Christ.
I heartily recommend this book and I’m not alone. D.A. Carson writes, “I do not think I have ever read a book on evangelism that makes me more eater to pass it on than this one–better, that makes me more eager to evangelize than this one.”
A more in-depth review of this book can be found here.
