A couple EYE opening reads

I just finished reading "They Like Jesus but not the Church" by Dan Kimball. I actually have just a short bit of reading to do in the book, which is an appendix where Dan answers some questions that critics of the book may have. This book, along with "UnChristian" by Dave Kinnaman and Gabe Lyons really confirmed many of the thoughts that I have had over time. The primary one being that the most effective form of evangelism is through relationships.

I think it was John Maxwell that once said, "People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care." I think this really sums up a good portion of what these books are about, or at the very least the portion of these books that spoke to me the most.


Both of these books cover similar material, but they come at it from a very different way. UnChristian comes to their conclusions based on a great amount of polling research done by the Barna Group, while They Like Jesus comes to these conclusions based on conversations with non-Christian people. Regardless of how they came to their conclusions, they came to basically the same conclusions. Through their research they found that by and large people have a negative opinion of Christians. These opinions can only REALLY be changed through relationships.

It is through these relationships that as Christians we begin to build trust with those that have a negative opinion of us. It is through that trust that we then have the opportunity to introduce them to Jesus Christ.

So anyway, if you don't have anything else to read, I would encourage reading both these books. As I said, they come from a completely different angle, and so both of them kind of work together to give the whole picture.