Our evening church just spent today (Saturday) and last night on our annual houseparty. So, instead of going away this year, spending lots of money and not getting quite the numbers we might like, we just hosted the event locally. The speaker was Sydney’s own John Dickson.His publisher, blue bottle books, has this tagline in to describe the man:

which is a little like how they described another mythic hero:

I want to know what John’s take is on the other promotional line from Conan:
“He conquered an empire with his sword. She conquered HIM with her bare hands.”
Awesome.

John’s talks were outstanding, using ideas he’s published in his book Promoting the Gospel . He puts forward a strong biblical case that not all Christians are evangelists, that the ‘gospel’ is actually the whole life, death and resurrection of Jesus, rather than just the atonement, and that what we should prepare for, to share our faith, is ‘gospel bites’ – small nuggets of truth about Jesus from the Gospels. Godliness as a means to see the nations come to Christ also figures highly, as does prayer. It’s all good stuff.

Anyway, a real, live bishop wrote a review of the book here, and I concur, for what it’s worth, that these ideas will change the way we think about evangelism and mission for decades.

Buy the book at blue bottle.