Share Jesus without Fear (An Evaluation Paper)

Bibliographical Information

Fay, William and Linda Shepherd. Share Jesus Without Fear. Nashville, TN: B&H Publishing Group, 1999.

Author Biography:

William Fay was once a money hungry member of the Mafia. He had ties to houses of prostitution. When he was faced with the threat of jail time, he turned to Jesus Christ and gave his life to Him. Since that time, Fay has been leading others to Jesus Christ as well. He is currently a chaplain with the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency and lives with his wife in Fort Myers, Florida.

Linda Evans Shepherd is a speaker for Women's Groups and Retreats. She was 1997-98's Christian Author of the Year. She lives in Colorado with her husband and their two children.

Content Information

            In the book Sharing Jesus Without Fear we are introduced to learning to share Jesus without hesitation and fear.

Focusing on our hesitation and fear to share the gospel, Fay teaches that we must move from our comfort zone and into a place of non-comfort to teach others about God. Within the first three chapters, Fay is focused on our fear of failure, our sin of silence and finally how we can overcome our fears. The first thing that Fay tells us is that we can’t fail. Often people don’t want to share Jesus with others because of their fear of failure. However, Fay teaches us that as long as we are following the leading of the Holy Spirit we can’t fail. To the person who is witnessing, failure or at least the feeling of failure comes from the rejection of those they are witnessing too. Fay defines success as sharing one’s faith and living one’s life for Christ. (pg. 3)

Fay goes on to encourage us to “Catch the Vision.” To many times, we spend our time in silence because of our fear of rejection. However, Fay is telling us to stop worrying about rejection and to live our lives for Christ. Finally, Fay talks about overcoming our fear. Everyone who ministers at some point in time will come to the conclusion that sharing the gospel isn’t their job. It’s not their responsibility; they may be rejected. They will wonder what others think. However, Fay encourages us to overcome that fear and to realize that it is our job to minister to others and the lost.

Our next five chapters focus on learning to ask the right questions, to bring people to decisions, what to do to help others after they have accepted Christ and to answer their tough questions.

Starting in Chapter Four, we are given encouragement and solid teaching on the “Sharing questions.” These are questions that open the door for the gospel to be shared among people. Chapter five gives us the power of scripture. This gives us the encouragement to start asking the right questions and giving the right answers. After you have given the person adequate answers to the “share questions” and scripture power; many times they will come to a decision. We are given in Chapter Six, five questions that start the direction of thought on forgiveness and the ability to really accept it. Chapter Seven gives advice on what to do to help others after they have accepted Jesus. Finally in Chapter Eight, we are given several “Tough” questions that sinners often ask. This chapter gives us simple to us answers to the objections about Christ.

Chapters nine and ten deal with relationships with non-believers. Too often Christians are scared to have relationships with non-believers, but truthfully, if it wasn’t for relationships, then we ourselves probably wouldn’t be Christians ourselves. So Fay dedicates two chapters on how to relate to non-believers.

Finally in Chapter 11 Fay has shared enough to encourage you to go out and share your faith. Someone once said that opportunity knocks only once and for many of us it does. However, we must stand ready at every opportunity share our faith. Our time is now, and we shouldn’t be timid any longer about sharing our faith.

Evaluation

            As previously stated, the author’s purpose of this book is to encourage us to share our faith “Carpe Diem!” This book is well written, all points are clearly stated and easy to understand.  Every chapter is written with conviction and empathy of how a person may feel sharing the gospel for the first time. It’s not overbearing and isn’t heavy, yet the arguments are not shallow by any means.

            Within the main theme of the book, we are introduced to the common conceptions that many Christians harbor about sharing their faith. Fay reminds us that we can’t fail as long as we follow the leading of the Holy Spirit. Following a logical order of presentation William Fay teaches how to overcome fear and to realize that “fear” is a part of every “first” in our lives.

            William Fay writes this book with the assumption that many people are afraid to share the gospel with others because of fear. In some ways this may be a valid reason for not sharing the gospel; but in others it could be lack of training. This assumption resonates with me personally, since I came to this book without much evangelism training. To assume that one is scared of rejection is not completely valid alone. One must also remember that it’s quite possible that the “evangelist” has had no training.

            The arguments presented in this book are valid. Since William Fay shares his story, it’s not written from a “Theological Professor” standpoint and doesn’t read as a text book on ministry. Instead it’s written by “someone whose been there…” and knows what it’s like to share the Gospel with reservation, but also that it’s a part of their own calling. Fay doesn’t intimidate with his writing as so many other books on the same topic do. Fay seems to truly want to help others share their faith.

The best thing about this book is that it’s written in a completely empathetic style for the Christian who hasn’t shared their faith before. William Fay reaches out to connect with the reader by sharing his own story, thus encouraging others to be able to do the same thing.

            The one unique aspect of this book was how Fay addressed a “Christian’s Silence.” Instead of talking about it as a difficulty, Fay blatantly addresses silence on the part of a Christian as a sin.  Every time we don’t take the opportunity to share the gospel with someone, we are committing the sin of silence. As Christians can we really afford to commit this sin? This is a very legitimate question as it makes one think about how many missed opportunities one has had.

            Another unique aspect of this book is the common objection/question section. Isaiah states ‎“Come now, let us reason together, says the Lord:  and 1 Peter tells us “always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you.” (1 Peter 3:15b) Fay prepares us to be able to answer these objections that people are giving us. By reasoning and being prepared to answer questions we are following God’s direction by being ready.

            This book would be a good read for anyone who has never shared their faith openly because of fear or the misconception that “Someone else will share!” Since it was written in a very easy to read/follow style, this book would also be a good one for youth ministries; especially since today’s youth are pressured to be “good”, but not so good that they can’t do anything else. This book would allow them to learn to be more able to reason with their peers.

            Finally the question remains on how one can implement these concepts in ministry and how it will contribute to my own ministry. First off, one can use these teachings for very young Christians. This book would be a great discipleship text when it comes to teaching about sharing your faith. If one can use this as a discipleship text, then the young Christian will come out stronger in sharing their faith and more apt to not worry so much about failure.

            As for my own ministry, this book has helped me personally look at what I need to work on. Every Christian has a zone of comfort and often doesn’t want to step outside of that area. However, one must remember that we have been commissioned to share the gospel by Jesus and in order to do so, we must step outside our normal comfort zone.

            Overall this book was interesting, it didn’t present itself and its arguments in a intimidating way, instead the book was reader friendly. It encourages the reader to overcome fear and gives them answers to many of the difficult objection questions often posed by non-believers.