DAVID ADAMS reads Mark Mittelberg’s book, ‘Contagious Faith’…
Mark Mittelberg
Contagious Faith: Discover Your Natural Style for Sharing Jesus with Others
Zonervan Reflection, Grand Rapids, Michigan, US, 2021
ISBN-13: 978-0310113287
“As we emerge from COVID-related social restrictions in many parts of the world, Contagious Faith serves as a timely encouragement for all Christians to make sharing our faith with those we encounter in life a deliberate part of our daily walk.”
What evangelism looks like can differ widely from one church community to another; indeed from one Christian to another. Yet all to often, evangelism is explained as following a simple recipe – going up to any stranger and trying to immediately engaging them in deep conversations about their faith. And while that may work for some, there are other approaches.
Which is why Contagious Faith, Mark Mittelberg’s take on how to share your faith with others, is so refreshing. Mittelberg, executive director of the Lee Strobel Center for Evangelism and Applied Apologetics at Colorado Christian University, recounts early on in the book his own experience of joining a mass effort to evangelise communities in London through a door-knocking effort and how, such was his failure, it made him decide to leave evangelism to those “gifted” in it. Thankfully, after a hearing a sermon on the subject about the diverse ways the apostles reached out to people in the New Testament, Mittelberg changed his mind and instead started to consider what his personal style of evangelism is.
It’s a good starting point for Contagious Faith, which, as the subtitle states, is about discovering “your natural style” for sharing Jesus with others.
After introducing some evangelism “essentials” – including that evangelism is something every Christian should be engaged in, that we communicate the Gospel using both words and works and that, much as we might like quick results, “reaching people is a process”, Mittelberg outlines five main “styles” to approaching evangelism: friendship-building, selfless-serving, story-sharing, reason-giving and truth-telling.
Each of the five “styles” is supported by Biblical examples and there is an accompanying section with each style drawing out some broad lessons – of use to any Christian – as well as some warnings about what to avoid when engaging in a particular style.
Those that find their style doesn’t neatly fit into one of his five outlined styles need not be concerned. Mittelberg notes that you may find your style draws on one or more of the styles listed or be something else entirely, “style number six or seven that I haven’t thought of”. It’s also important to understand, Mittelberg says, that not everyone will relate to your style and that there will certainly be times when evangelism will involve working in partnership with other Christians.
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Mittelberg is also at pains to point out in the book that evangelism is always something done in partnership with God.
“Spreading the gospel is ultimately God’s business – and we have the privilege of joining him in what he is doing to reach our world,” Mittelberg writes, adding that prayer and partnering with the Holy Spirit are both “indispensible aspects of helping build God’s kingdom.”
The book also features a chapter on understanding what the Gospel is actually about (fairly important when it comes to sharing it) along with some illustrations to use. It’s supported by a six week video course for those who want to look at it as a small group (Mittelberg was the primary author of a previous course series called Becoming a Contiagious Christian.) There’s also a sizeable list of further resources at the end of the book.
If you’ve been a Christian for a while, it’s highly likely you’ll come across many of these ideas before. But, whether evangelism is something new to you or something you’ve been at for a while, it is handy to have the different approaches elucidated in such a clear way. As we emerge from COVID-related social restrictions in many parts of the world, Contagious Faith serves as a timely encouragement for all Christians to make sharing our faith with those we encounter in life a deliberate part of our daily walk.
