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Just walk across the roomThe personal touchJUST WALK ACROSS THE ROOM Bill Hybels, senior Pastor of Willow Creek in South Barrington Illinois and well-known conference speaker and author, wants all of us ‘ordinary’ Christians to take the risk of a ‘walk across the room’ to talk to people we don’t know well; the risk of making real friendships with non-Christians; the risk of speaking about the amazing love of God. As Christians, Hybels suggests, we need to re-learn what happened when Christ ‘walked across the cosmos’ all the way to the cross: what matters most to God is people who need reconciling to him, and that’s what should matter most to us. To be honest, the book is not big on Bible content, though there is some. Rather, examples of Hybels in action do most of the work. That said, they are good anecdotes — told with humour and modesty, enjoyable to read. More important, Hybels is honest about the cost and frustration of personal evangelism, as well as the excitement. Even in America, it seems, people don’t generally come to Christ after one good ‘conversation’ with a stranger; they come after receiving a lot of patient love and prayer from believing friends. What Hybels wants us to know is, it’s worth the effort. If you know it all in theory, but you’ve stopped doing it; if the only real friends you have are at church; if you feel you should ‘say something’ to the guy at work but don’t know where to start; if you’ve tried Willow Creek’s famous ‘seeker-sensitive’ services and are fed up because you can’t get outsiders to come to them; then you could do worse than read this book. Tom Forryan, © Evangelicals Now - April 2007 |