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Tough talk 2

Gritty testimonies

TOUGH TALK 2
By Joe Lampshire, Martyn Parrish & Simon Pinchbeck, with Millie Murray
Authentic Media. 178 pages. £7.99
ISBN 978-1-86024-700-2

An occultist, a heroin addict, a bent ex-copper — but that’s enough about my work colleagues... (NOT!).

Author and writer, Millie Murray, has in Tough Talk 2 brought us the true stories of three new members, Joe Lampshire, Martyn Parrish and Simon Pinchbeck, of the UK evangelistic team, Tough Talk, who make over 250 appearances each year in churches, prisons and schools, as well as outdoor events, sharing their stories of salvation using powerlifting as a unique backdrop.

Their gritty testimonies are successively related in a very easy-to-read style, with vivid detail and commendable honesty. The first two stories fill about 50 pages each, and the third 70 pages.

When evaluating such testimonies, it is helpful to ask certain questions of them: What is the pre-/post-conversion balance? Do the individuals focus primarily on themselves or on Christ? Do they glamourise their pre-Christian experience, or concentrate more on how Christ has transformed them by grace? Is there enough gospel content for a non-Christian seeker to respond to?

Tough Talk 2 receives a mixed marking. Each testimony contains only two to three pages on their lives since conversion, and there is little detail on sin, repentance, faith and Christ’s work on the cross. Although, in fairness, all three men continually make it clear how their former lives were on a downward spiral without God, the graphic detail could be a stumbling-block to readers, and the emphasis is unconsciously more on self than on Christ’s grace. The book is pre-evangelistic, and I fear there is insufficient gospel detail for an earnest seeker to latch onto. Simon ends by saying: ‘If God can use people like me, and the other members of Tough Talk, think what he could do with your life — if you give him the chance!’. Yes...but Jesus said: ‘You did not choose me, but I chose you’ (John 15.16).

Richard John,
bookstall manager, Selhurst Evangelical Church (FIEC), South Norwood, London