Follow C. S. Lewis’s Lead in Evangelism

If you like Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (or any of his other works), you will like Mere Evangelism: 10 Insights from C. S. Lewis to Help You Share Your Faith by Randy Newman.

The author, Randy Newman, is the Senior Fellow for Evangelism and Apologetics at The C. S. Lewis Institute in the Washington, DC area. In each of the ten chapters, he explains a different approach that C. S. Lewis used to share the gospel. He quotes from several of Lewis’s works, including Mere Christianity. Then, he gives examples of how we can use this approach today. 

The first few chapters talk about pre-evangelism. Some people are not ready to hear the gospel. If you start by sharing the message of salvation with them, they will reject it. First, seeds need to be sown to prepare the person to receive the good news.

A great example of how C. S. Lewis used pre-evangelism is in The Chronicles of Narnia. Readers see clues and images that point them to Jesus Christ and the gospel message.

The remaining chapters in this book talk about approaches to evangelism such as how to ask questions that make the other person think and what to say when you meet opposition. A chapter is given to the power of praying persistently for another’s salvation.

In addition to apologetic essays, such as God in the Docks, The Abolition of Man, The Four Loves, and The Problem of Pain, C. S. Lewis wrote books with imagery, such as his Space Trilogy and The Chronicles ofNarnia. He wrote The Great Divorce, an allegory of a bus ride from hell to heaven; The Pilgrim’s Regress, which relates Lewis’s own search for spiritual meaning in life; and The Screwtape Letters, where a senior demon teaches a junior demon how to defeat the man he has been assigned to.

If you want a new approach to evangelizing people who have today’s worldly mindset, Mere Evangelism, published by The Good Book Company, is the book for you.