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562 - How Shall We Witness? Faithful Evangelism in a Reformed Tradition |
How Shall We Witness? Faithful Evangelism in
a Reformed Tradition
By Milton J Coalter and Virgil Cruz
Louisville, Westminster John Knox, 1995. 186 pp. $16.99.
This book is a collection of papers and lectures given at a conference at Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary in March of 1993. Most of the articles are well-honed historical essays about evangelism in a Reformed mode in past generations. Only the last chapter, by Darrell Guder, begins to address the issue promised in the book's title, namely, how Christians (especially those of a Reformed persuasion) dare to witness faithfully and publicly to the reality of Jesus Christ when our contemporary life is so baffled and buffeted by ecclesial niceties, political correctness, and cultural inhibitions. To this reviewer's disappointment, the current volatile and pressing agendas about an appropriate contextualization of the gospel in our own day are hardly aired. Equally disappointing is the meager attention given to the role and powers of particular Christian congregations as necessary communities for faithful witnessing in the 1990s. Perhaps my two disappointments are linked: Distant and intangible understandings of evangelism seem more congenial and negotiable within a Reformed ecclesiology barren of vital congregational life. We wait eagerly for a follow-up volume that addresses how the Reformed tradition engages contemporary life and living.
John W. Stewart
Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, NJ.