I needed to read this book. So might you, if you feel discouraged about your evangelistic efforts and need extra impetus to say those things you know to be important, yet never get round to saying.
Mike Mellor is a man with an evangelist’s heart. This book is his heart and soul. It is infectious, or at least we should find it to be.
Written in an appealing and accessible style, the book encourages the timid, stirs up the lethargic, and focuses every one of us on the noble work of winning souls. The language is plain and straightforward. Both recent and long-standing converts will find something to stir and stimulate them.
Mike Mellor’s aims are twofold. First, he wants to highlight the work of the Holy Spirit in energising and directing evangelism. This is where the title comes from: ‘The pursuit’ refers to God’s pursuit of the sinner. He is the ‘hound of heaven’, giving them no rest until they admit his claims upon them.
Second, Mellor wants our evangelism to become a natural overflow of hearts ablaze with love. Evangelism should not be an uncomfortable bolt-on to our Christian lives. He hopes that ‘the joyful, at times euphoric, experience of being led by the Lord in eyeball-to-eyeball, heartbeat-to-heartbeat evangelism, might become a regular way of life’ (p.16).
You will not agree with everything written. Sometimes he tackles big subjects — the place of election, the importance of sanctification — at high speed. That said, the author’s economy of words on profound topics does not prevent him from making insightful points on these topics.
I also found a stumbling block in some of the cited authorities and chosen examples. They come from a more eclectic range of theological thought and practice than I would be happy with. However, there are plenty of other representatives from church history that help establish his case admirably.
You are, perhaps, weary of the excessive use of the word ‘passionate’ in contemporary culture. I will happily let Mellor off using it in this book. He feels passionate about the fate of perishing sinners. So should we!
Chris Hand
Crich
