Radically Unchurched Book Review

Alvin Reid, author of Radically Unchurched is the Bailey Smith Chair of Evangelism at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, and he is also a professor of evangelism. (Reid, back cover) Reid has both his Master in Divinity and his Doctor of Divinity from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. (Reid, back cover) Overall, despite the fact that Reid spent his childhood in Alabama (Reid, 171), he obtained considerable education and status in his lifetime for a Alabama resident.

Reid recounts the Jesus Movement of the 1970's as having been a revival that affected him. (Reid, 154) Reid writes, "The words of this book, although mine, flow from several streams of influence, dating back to my early days in ministry. So many people ... have influenced my passion to reach the unchurched" (Reid, 15) Reid affirms this sentiment by explaining that in his practical experience no one has ever not taken a tract from him that he has offered, and thus many times he has been able to share Jesus Christ with those people. (Reid, 161) The point is that Reid identifies the progression of development of his evangelical qualities, and he points to the fact that he is very practiced in evangelism in a practical way.

Reid is so powerful that his speaking about Servant Evangelism at a First Baptist Church caused hundreds that afternoon to give away various items to show the love of Jesus as this resulted in the conversion of many. (Reid, 162) What is obvious about Reid's book is that he intends to have the same multiplying effect through his writing. Overall, Reid does not hold back anything in his evangelism but instead looks for, "a mighty movement of God" to penetrate culture (Reid, 13), and in this way his work has a parallel to the Sea parting under the staff of Moses.

Content Summary

If evangelism is spiritual warfare against the servants of Satan, then Radically Unchurched is gorilla warfare that focuses both on practical and theoretical views for evangelism. Reid writes that our culture is eroding from lack of rain from the Holy Sprit (Reid, 156), and what Reid calls for is a return to Christ-honoring worship through God-intervention that brings about an awakening in America. (Reid, 152) Reid also points out that Christianity is about more than just serving on a church committee as he insists that instead Christianity means a life that is radically changed through Christ. (Reid, 127) Reid thus goes so far as to denounce the practices of many churches to just have a youth minister that keeps kids out of trouble, a children's aria to keep kids occupied during worship, and a preacher that steps on people's toes only a little (Reid, 126), furthermore with this attitude Reid thus describes the spiritual condition of the church as having been paralyzed. (Reid, 17) Overall, Reid thus describes a large part of his book as being a wake up call for the church to return to its first love, namely, Jesus Christ. (Reid, 17)

Reid describes that from the fifties until 1993 the number of children that had no religious training at home grew from six percent to thirty-five percent (Reid, 23-24), and he indicates that six main failures exist for the church not doing its job while nine main myths exist for how the church is completely wrong about what turns the unchurched off from attending. (Reid, 24-25) Reid points out that the unchurched comprise second and third generation Hindu, Muslim, and Buddhist citizens that are often very Americanized (Reid, 26), but on the other hand Reid points out that increasing numbers of the unchurched are unchurched because of the shift from modernism to postmodernism. (Reid, 31) Overall, Reid then describes the story of Dean who in jail became saved by reading John and smoking the pages of Leviticus (Reid, 35-36), and the hard pressing evangelical question that Reid asks is if these kind of people will even be able to find a church when they find Jesus (Reid, 36).

Reid points out that some churches try to evade the culture (Reid, 37), others pervade the world instead (Reid, 38), but some invade the word like the incarnation of Jesus Christ. (Reid, 39) Reid then goes on to ask questions about how we can invade the kingdom of darkness and assault Satan's kingdom, and he answers his questions by suggesting that the gospel flow through living a holy life that includes prayer, the Holy Spirit, and personal evangelism. (Reid, 53) The advise that Reid gives is to not wait around for God to use a person but instead to start working for God (Reid, 60), and his advice is thus to become abandon to God's purpose instead of pursing self serving experiences that supposedly honor Jesus. (Reid, 61)

Reid gives an account of a Christian man that lived through the Holocaust that worshipped louder in church with others whenever Jews took the train past the church as their screams to their deaths could be heard inside the building (many of those Jews went in the flames of hell for all eternity), and the indication is that now the same thing is happening in America with the exception that the millions of killed children cannot even scream. (Reid, 64-65) Reid thus describes Modernism as failing under two world wars and the absence of rationally based consensus (Reid, 77), he also sees Postmodernism as feeding the sinful nature to live apart from God (Reid, 80). Neither view could excuse the Holocaust of the past nor the Holocaust of the current time, but sadly Reid points out the problem that now even inner city lands like Chicago look like foreign mission fields. (Reid, 84) Overall, Reid puts his hopes in the youth being trained as a generation for an invasion of the postmodern lost as they have expressed incredible zeal when trained in the recent past (Reid, 98), but Reid's main thrust is for the need of a passion like that of Jesus who died on the cross out of love for us as Reid points out that with a hundred dedicated men like this he could storm the gates of hell (using only them and himself) and set up the kingdom of God on earth. (Reid, 195)

Evaluation

Although the hundred men that Reid calls for to help him storm the gates of hell (Reid, 195) would bring about a glorified fantasy about 'giving the devil a black eye', the problem is that Jesus Christ has already gone to hell and has arisen from the dead as just one person that has already accomplished this mission for us. Thus if anyone would go to hell a second time, then it would be a purely human effort and it would be God that would send them their. Although Reid expresses much zeal for his cause, a person must remember that faith comes from God and from God alone. Overall, if this was not true then faith could be manufactured by man and with what is known about the testimony of Jesus Christ (Matthew 17:20) people could be moving mountains all the time.

The fact that people are not moving mountains all the time says that God is not willing to give people the faith to move mountains, and thus what also follows is that if God wanted to give the devil a 'black eye', then he could give the faith to make that happen as well. Reid does not appear to believe that faith is a gift of God, but instead he sort of insists that people should instead find something godly to do and to get to it (See Reid, 60). The problem is that no human efforts caused the resurrection of Jesus Christ, but instead no matter how hard mankind tried to put Jesus through those gates of hell he arose from the dead as a matter of God's own choosing. The thinking of Reid would work best for ministry with a careful hierarchy of values, goals, and plans that focus upon the development of the youth, but the problem is that values, goals, and plans are all human instruments that could never raise anyone from the dead.

The only thing that can raise a person from the dead is God's own choice to raise a person from the dead. The chapter of Romans 9 gives a clear message that God expresses his choices to do what he wants in creation, and Paul wrote such words as he knew first hand that no evangelist could have ever given him the faith in Christ as what was only given by Christ himself to Paul (Acts 22:6-11). Overall, Reid cannot accomplish his vision of storming the gates of hell with his one hundred men because in order to do that he would have to raise people from the dead (literally, figuratively, and or both).

Although Reid mainly focuses in reaching the unchurched through obtaining the lost through human efforts to rearrange human disposition through surrender to Christ, he cannot be entirely successful because salvation is impossible through the efforts of man (Matthew 19:26). The complete surrender to God by man can only be achieved through Christ as this is the message of the cross; moreover, if this was not the case, then the Jews could be saved without any need for Jesus. Overall, ideally the servant of God would utilize resources to maximize the profits of the master, but such a servant would not spend those resources (those talents) in such a way as to work in a uncoordinated fashion with what Christ is already doing or has already done.

A point is that in order to have a successful time evangelizing the lost, invasion could be done in such a way as to treat people with the same harsh tone that Jesus treated the Jews with. Instead of bowing the knee to wash the feet of the heathen while the rest of the body goes filthy, successful ministry would fully submerge (baptize) a heathen into the teachings of Jesus Christ while only washing the feet of the believers. The problem thus is not that the church needs to focus more on a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, but instead the church needs to focus on a corporate relationship with Jesus Christ that centers around the washing of the feet of each other as Jesus initiated and promoted (John 13:1-17).

Evangelism Will Become a Permanent Part of my Life and Ministry

My personal experience with evangelism involves my founding of Jesus on the Web that grew into nearly four hundred members in five years, and I also founded many Christian organizations that worked from the secular campuses that I attended. The focus of my work was to get Christians to dialog about Christianity in the open, and the idea was that through this process the unbelievers would see the value of Christ working in the world and would be encouraged to consider Christianity themselves. The point is that before doing any evangelism the body of Christ must first be built up to work competently, and this is why Jesus washed the feet of the disciples and told them to do the same before giving them the Great Commission.

When (as a youth) I believed in evangelism as the primary focus of Christianity, I was perhaps too zealous and liberal in promoting God's work in reaching out to people. As a result I tried to evangelize a self proclaimed Satanist in my Differential Equations class, and I soon found that not only did be know the scripture far better than I did but also he had the power to rally everyone around him (I only read the scripture six hours a day at the time). The instructor of the class was a devout Lutheran, and needless to say the instructor got terminated midway into the term while I on the other hand became permanently socially estranged from the school and from the Christian mentor that discipled me for six sold years.

The scripture says, "Do not give dogs what is sacred; do not throw your pearls to pigs. If you do, they may trample them under their feet, and then turn and tear you to pieces." - Matthew 7:6 (NIV) The point is that Jesus knows what he is talking about in regard to throwing the pearls to swine, and as a result of my experiences (the encounter with the Satanist being one of them) I also know what Jesus is talking about. The point is that instead of amassing a quantity of unbelievers that enter the church and then have a belief that is paper thin that teaches them to go out and bring more like them in, the church should instead be about collecting the 'pearls' that bring people in to share in the 'spiritual treasure'. Overall, even Jesus Christ spent three constant long hard years with his disciples going everywhere with them before he even uttered the Great Commission, and when he uttered it he did not give this commission to the multitudes that attended him.

The point is that just as Jesus was public with his ministry, so too we need to be public with Christianity. The most productive evangelism that I have ever done involves me discussing Christian truth of scripture with a friend while going out into the world and doing everyday activity, and when this happens others become attracted to Christianity (this may be why Jesus had multitudes follow him). Out of several texts that I have read regarding evangelism, the one that I know for sure that gives proper models for evangelism is Concentric Circles of Concern. In the text the general model is to start with yourself, next evangelize immediate family, next extended relatives, next friends, next neighbors and associates, next acquaintances, and last the unknown people that exist that the evangelist has never even seen before; moreover, in the process a person gets right with God, surveys relationships, works with God through prayer, builds bridges, shows love, makes disciples, and begins the process all over again. (See Thompson, 30-31) The point is that once Christ makes himself central to a person's life, then each Christian begins to be like the Son (or Sun) that all other planets in the aria (or people) begin to make their paths (or lives) around.

A black middle aged Pentecostal woman that I know that dropped out of junior high school is very oriented in doing evangelism through a similar model that I have described. The woman owns a very nice house so big that she was considering making it into a hotel, and she has owned businesses and is very wealthy. The way that the woman got her wealth is by combining Christian thought with almost all other arias of her life, and thus her church, her friends, and everyone else gravitate around her as she keeps pulling more and more people into her circles (so to speak). The point is that people see how this woman is administrating something that they would want to be part of, and as a result more and more people come to her to know what is going on (Abraham may have operated his tribe of people the same way). I plan to build my life and ministry in a similar way with evangelism, but this process takes time.

How Evangelism is to be Effectively Incorporated in Life and Church

Although the church that I go to is very cautious about expressing the least bit of change or zeal (as a result of the multiple generations of attendants), I hope to be effective in helping to provide the solid content for the foundation and development that gets people attracted to Christianity. Secondly, I plan to promote campaigns that get people out of Church with their faith, and this could perhaps take the form of a neighborhood cookout in the lawn of the church that the community is welcome to attend. The idea is to get people interested in what the church has to offer before doing evangelism, and this way the evangelist looks like an ambassador for Christ instead of a beggar on the street with an empty bag to sell.

Before I gained employment that offered a slightly hostile tension to the gospel (as a result of legal liability), I was very comfortable about openly sharing the gospel message of Jesus Christ everywhere that I went. Today in the United States in many industries in many locations a person has to either be silent about what they believe or has to live off of the support of others that work in such places (often at the expense of public disgrace). Fighting for liberties that the constitution grants often causes the estrangement from employment opportunities all together in most industries, and these opportunities are usually essential for supporting a family and living a godly lifestyle. Overall, although I will work to be evangelical in the workplace, I must nevertheless calculate the cost very carefully while making evangelism work out when appropriate.

As of now, I have evangelized my family for the most part, and I have communicated the hard messages of scripture to my friends. What I will need to be working on is constantly promoting the message of the gospel to associates, neighbors, and other such people that are more distant from me. The problem with reaching such people with the gospel message is that in my community people 'shut down' when they are approached about anything that sounds like religion. Overall, although I plan to conduct more servant evangelism when appropriate, I cannot rely only on servant evangelism because it can make people very uneasy in my northern Illinois community.

In the long term I plan to move my ministry into my own church like what I had with the small congregation that I had when I attended Southern Illinois University; moreover, I also had been working with a fellow at a large university campus to build another church. The problem was that once I started seminary school, then I had no extra time to help my friend build his church and I had no extra time to do my other evangelical operations that I would normally do (for example I worked six to ten hours a night writing posts to keep up with my theological news group) . The plan that I thus have is to concentrate on evangelism work during times when I have less hours at work and during times when I have less studies to do at school, but on the other hand even during busy times in the past I have distributed many of my best class papers before (to people that would benefit from reading them) and I am working on doing this again. My distribution of class papers has really reached out to a lot of people in the secular institutions that I have attended because no matter what the subject I have always reconciled it with Christian teaching in various ways. The point is that I have both long term and short term plans for how to continue to practice evangelism in the future as a permanent part of my life.

Bibliography:

Reid, Alvin. Radically Unchurched: Who They Are & How to Reach Them. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Kregel Publications, 2002.

Thompson, Oscar and Carolyn Ritzmann. Concentric Circles of Concern: Seven Stages for Making Disciples. Nashville, Tennesse: Broadman and Holman Publishers, 1999.