In our post-Christian context, public life has become
markedly more secular and private life infinitely more
diverse. Yet many Christians still rely on cookie-cutter
approaches to evangelism and apologetics. Most of these
methods assume that people are open, interested and
needy for spiritual insight when increasingly most
people are not. Our urgent need, then, is the capacity
to persuade to make a convincing case for the gospel to
people who are not interested in it. In his magnum opus,
Os Guinness offers a comprehensive presentation of the
art and power of creative persuasion. Christians have
often relied on proclaiming and preaching, protesting
and picketing. But we are strikingly weak in persuasion
the ability to talk to people who are closed to what we
are saying. Actual persuasion requires more than a
one-size-fits-all approach. Guinness notes, "Jesus never
spoke to two people the same way, and neither should
we." Following the tradition of Erasmus, Pascal, G. K.
Chesterton, C. S. Lewis, Malcolm Muggeridge and Peter
Berger, Guinness demonstrates how apologetic persuasion
requires both the rational and the imaginative.
Persuasion is subversive, turning the tables on
listeners' assumptions to surprise them with signals of
transcendence and the credibility of the gospel. This
book is the fruit of forty years of thinking, honed in
countless talks and discussions at many of the leading
universities and intellectual centers of the world.
Discover afresh the persuasive power of Christian
witness from one of the leading apologists and thinkers
of our era." |
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