Book of the Week: Evangelism: A Concise History

This book of the week is none other than John Mark Terry’s Evangelism: A Concise History. This book hits some of the greatest evangelists and the greatest evangelistic efforts since the beginning of the church.  It’s one of those books that gets you excited about what God has done and what we can anticipate him doing again!

Top 5 Thoughts:

  1. Concerning the evangelism practices of the New Testament, Terry wrote, “Much, or perhaps most, of the evangelism was carried on by laymen who witnessed while they went about their daily activities” (25).
  2. Paving the way for the reformation, “Wycliffe based his theology on the authority of the Bible. This was a radical concept in his time. He insisted that the Bible has authority superior to that of the pope or a church council” (62).
  3. “The reformers did not intend to start new denominations; rather, they wanted to call the Roman Church back to its origins-the authority of the Bible and salvation through the grace of Christ” (83).
  4. “These farmer-preachers had little formal education, but they did have a conviction of God’s call to preach and a holy boldness to proclaim the message of salvation through Jesus Christ” (130).
  5. Describing the twentieth-century revivalists, Terry stated, “They all believed in a conservative theology and they all preached a simple gospel anyone could understand” (159).