Book Review: "The Soul-Winning Church"

“The Soul Winning Church: Six Keys to Fostering a Genuine Evangelistic Community” by J.A. Medders and Doug Logan Jr. The Good Book Company, 2024.

I am probably the thousandth person by now to make a post like this about the “Soul-Winning Church,” but I have to say it. This book was fantastic. It was to my heart what kerosene is to a fire. Fuel!

I have lived and pastored for a long time now with an always increasing frustration and confusion as to why our churches aren’t making more disciples. Why are the baptismal waters so still? Why is so much church growth dependent on other church’s decline? What are we doing wrong or missing all together? What needs to change? I have walked around with these questions swirling around in my head, but not ever really being able to put them into words, let alone find their corresponding answers. And then this book showed up in the mail.

In only 164 pages (making it super accessible and easy to hand out to almost anyone) Medders and Logan do a massive job, and they do it well. They give hope to pastors like me that our little churches can be soul-winning churches; that evangelism can be ingrained in the culture of our churches and not just be another category of ministry, and that we can love the people that come from other places, without settling for transfer growth as the ultimate means of growth.

Medders and Logan identify in the book six key areas of focus for becoming a church that reaches the lost. Each key is just as convicting, convincing and compelling as the next, well at the same time being so obviously biblical. I am not lying when I tell you that I only made it through chapter one before stopping to spend the next week reflecting on the first key and laying out plans for walking through the chapter with my elders at our next meeting (which is exactly what we did).

I think if you’re a pastor you need to read this. I think if your plumber you need to read this. I think that this book needs to be read by home groups, men’s groups, women’s groups, youth groups, and by everyone else in the church that’s not in a group. At the end of the day, I don’t think that I am the only one feeling this perplexing frustration about the lack of souls being won. Something is missing, and Medders and Logan identify that missing piece. They remind readers how central soul-winning is to the mission of the church, and then they go to work on equipping the church for that mission.

We have got to be churches that are consumed with winning souls, because Christ is consumed with winning souls! And if there is a book that can play even the smallest part in further fueling that passion and preparing Christians to walk it out, then in my mind, that is a must read.

As Spurgeon writes (and as Medders and Logan quote him saying), “Soul-winning is the chief business of the Christian minister; indeed, it should be the main pursuit of every believer. We should each say with Simon peter, “I go afishing,” and with Paul our aim should be, “That I might by all means save some.”[1]

Grab it, read it, and lets go!

[1] C.H. Spurgeon, The Soul Winner: How to Lead Sinners to the Savio (Fleming H. Revell. 1895), p 9.

Human Signposts

I remind people from the pulpit on a weekly or semi-weekly basis that if they are Christians then they are God’s witnesses. They have been saved to now witness to the reality of the Gospel. As Luke writes and Jesus says in Acts 1.8 “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”

In saying that though and quoting Scripture that says the same, I do realize that the idea of being a witness can seem overwhelming. I can picture people’s minds racing with questions as mine has often done, “Do I have to stand in a pulpit? Do I have to speak in public? Do I have to prepare sermons? What if I don’t know what to say? What if I say the wrong thing? Where do I even begin?”

If this is you at all then let me try to put your mind at ease by attempting to describe the act of witnessing in a very simple way. Maybe you will realize in this that being a witness to Christ is less intimidating and complicated than it sounds.

We all know how to point at stuff. My son learned to point before he could walk. Well witnessing is just pointing. Pointing away from yourself and to the thing you are bearing witness about. Jesus calling Christians to be witnesses is Him simply calling them point; to be signposts; to be arrows that point to back to Him. And the first way we point is by living like Him. We live lives that imitate Jesus. We live in such a way that people see can something different in us. We live lives that people are curious about, lives that as Peter says, make them ask “for a reason for the hope that is in you” (1 Peter 3.15).

The second way we point is the response we give when they ask for a reason because they have seen this different reality in our lives. At this point we must use words, but this too does not have to be so intimidating. It’s still just pointing. You know the beautiful thing about witnessing to Jesus is that the gospel writers have already done the hard work of telling His story. The words that we speak then are just to try and point people back to the gospels, to the Words and the Word of God. Of course, we have to be able people to tell the story of Jesus and explain the gospel enough to point to it. But it’s the Words of Scripture that are inspired, that stir that affections, and that ultimately lead to salvation.

At the end of the day witnessing is just pointing. I don’t say that to belittle the job of a witness or to be careless about the role, but just to simplify it. Anyone who loves something will inevitably be able to point to that something in word and deed, and honestly it will probably come quite naturally. Perhaps the key then to being a good witness is just loving Jesus and seeking to love Him more than we do.