If you want to grow in your confidence and ability to share your faith, one of the most helpful things you can do is learn from Christians who have spent years thinking deeply about evangelism, teaching it and practising it in real life.
The books below are biblical, practical and deeply encouraging. Each one approaches evangelism from a slightly different angle – but all of them will help you move from fear and awkwardness to greater confidence, compassion and intentionality in sharing Jesus with others.
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Out Of The Saltshaker And Into The World – Rebecca Manley Pippert
Out of the Saltshaker is one of the most loved and influential books on personal evangelism ever written. (It also happens to be the first book I ever read on evangelism, and it still remains my favourite… though her more recent sequel, Stay Salt – see below, is a very close second!)
Rebecca Manley Pippert presents evangelism not as a sales pitch or special event, but as a natural overflow of everyday life and relationships. She combines biblical teaching with honest stories, practical advice and lots of encouragement for ordinary Christians.
What makes this book especially powerful is its warmth and realism. Pippert understands that many Christians feel nervous about evangelism – and she gently helps readers move beyond fear into authentic conversations about Jesus.
Pippert is also very keen to stress that people are not projects, and evangelism is above all about showing God’s love to the world and building real relationships with real people… not whacking them over the head with a Bible!
By far my favourite part of this book is the fact she includes word-for-word conversations she has had with non-Christians over the years… it’s like being a fly on the wall watching an incredibly gifted evangelist at work.
And she doesn’t just include the conversations that went well… she also includes the conversations that went really badly too… it’s incredibly encouraging to see that, even the most gifted of evangelists mess up, get rejected and have toe-curlingly awkward conversations sometimes!
Out of the Saltshaker was first written in 1979, so a few references seem a little dated and the language occasionally sounds like it’s from another era. But none of this detracts from the main message of the book, which is completely timeless… This book is a classic for a reason!
Key quotes:
“If our lives do not give testimony to the radical difference that knowing Christ makes, our evangelism will ultimately be ineffective and hollow.”
“When we live as Jesus did… evangelism will not be a dreaded task to be ticked off every Wednesday. Rather, sharing Jesus will become a true delight and evangelism will become a lifestyle.”
Best for:
- Christians who feel intimidated by evangelism
- Those wanting a relational, friendship-based approach
- Readers looking for lots of practical examples and encouragement
BUY IT HERE >>> Out Of The Saltshaker And Into The World
Stay Salt – Rebecca Manley Pippert
If you loved Out of the Saltshaker, you will almost certainly love Stay Salt, which is essentially the sequel: everything you loved about Out of the Saltshaker but brough bang up to date for the 2020s… and, of course, with the benefit of an additional 40 years’ experience of life and evangelism that Pippert has gained since she first wrote Out of the Saltshaker.
In Stay Salt, Pippert helps Christians think about how to share their faith in today’s increasingly sceptical and secular culture. She also tackles difficult questions about truth, identity, tolerance and evangelism with her characteristic warmth, wisdom, grace and humour.
Once again, you get that “over the shoulder view” of Pippert’s conversations as she shares her faith, tackles tricky questions and leads people to Christ (or, occasionally, fails spectacularly!) And this story-based approach, together with her honest, down-to-earth , “warts and all” style, is what makes this book, like her first, a joy to read.
One thing I love is that Pippert never approaches evangelism with fear or hostility. Instead, she encourages Christians to engage confidently and compassionately with the world around them, trusting that the gospel is still deeply relevant and powerful today.
This book combines biblical teaching, cultural insight and practical advice in a way that is both challenging and encouraging.
Key quotes:
“God is delighted to use us just as we are.”
“When God the Father decided to communicate the good news to our planet, he did not drop fliers from heaven… He sent… a person. And his strategy hasn’t changed.”
Best for:
- Christians wanting to engage confidently with modern culture
- Those feeling discouraged or intimidated by secular attitudes towards Christianity
- Readers looking for a gracious, relational approach to evangelism
BUY IT HERE >>> Stay Salt
Honest Evangelism – Rico Tice
Rico Tice addresses something most Christians can relate to:
Evangelism is hard.
In fact, the first four words of this short, but very helpful book are:
“I find evangelism hard.”
It is refreshing to read that even authors of books on evangelism find evangelism hard. It’s quite easy to read books on evangelism and dismiss them thinking, “Oh well it’s easy for you, you’re a gifted evangelist / natural conversationalist / born extrovert / seminary professor – you don’t know how hard it is for me.” Tice does not give us that get-out clause!
This excellent book explores why we often fear sharing our faith and how the gospel itself helps free us from that fear.
There is also an excellent story in the book about how something which looked like an epic fail (his first attempts to share his faith at school and the extremely negative reaction he received), turned into a future success he could never have predicted… This is hugely important lesson for us all, when it comes to evangelism: to not think that what looks like failure is actually failure… it could be a seed has been sown that just takes a really long time to bloom into success!
There is also an extremely challenging part where he basically says if we, as Christians, DON’T share our faith, then Jesus is clearly not our #1 priority and we are instead prioritising idols of “an easy life”, “wanting people to like me” and “the approval of family and friends”. But he is also keen to stress, our job is not to convert, it’s to witness to Christ… Conversion is God’s job.
Tice writes with honesty, compassion and realism, while continually pointing readers back to Jesus.
Key quotes:
“Hostility and hunger: that’s what you’ll find as you tell others about Jesus.”
“The reason Jesus talked about hell is because he does not want people to go there. The reason Jesus died is so people wouldn’t have to go there.”
Best for:
- Christians who feel fearful or discouraged about evangelism
- Those struggling with confidence
- Readers wanting encouragement
BUY IT HERE >>> Honest Evangelism
The Case For Christ – Lee Strobel
If you struggle answering questions about the evidence for Christianity, this is the book for you.
Lee Strobel was the legal affairs editor at The Chicago Tribune… and an atheist.
And for much of his life he believed (without actually doing all that much investigation, ironically!) that all the evidence pointed to God being merely a product of wishful thinking, mythology and superstition…
That was, until his wife became a Christian.
This prompted him to launch an all-out investigation into the facts surrounding the case for Christianity – applying all the training he had received from Yale Law School, together with his years of experience as an award-winning legal journalist.
And to his own astonishment, the evidence for Christianity being true was overwhelming… and ultimately led to his conversion.
In The Case for Christ, Strobel essentially retraces his own journey and expands on it.
He investigates the evidence for Jesus’ life, death and resurrection by interviewing scholars and experts across fields as diverse as history, archaeology, philosophy and psychology, and looking at numerous categories of proof from eyewitness accounts, documentary evidence and scientific evidence to corroborating evidence, rebuttal evidence, psychological evidence… and even fingerprint evidence!
He forces the experts to defend their positions with solid data and clear evidence, and he throws all the hard questions at them, in an attempt to check for holes in their arguments.
The result is a compelling and highly readable exploration of the evidence for Christianity. Strobel invites his reader to behave like a juror in a criminal trial – to read his book with a an open and fair mind, and to draw conclusions based on the facts, not preconceptions and prejudices.
He also reminds his readers that the stakes are high – if Jesus was who he claimed to be then nothing is more important than how you respond to him.
Clear, compelling and highly accessible, this book is especially helpful for Christians who want greater confidence answering difficult questions and engaging with sceptical and atheist friends.
Key quotes:
“If my conclusion in the case for Christ is correct, your future and eternity hinge on how you respond to Christ.”
“We have to ask, Why is there no other first-century Jew who has millions of followers today? Why isn’t there a John the Baptist movement? Why, of all first-century figures, including the Roman emperors, is Jesus still worshiped today, while the others have crumbled into the dust of history?”
Best for:
- Anyone wanting help in answering difficult questions about Christianity
- Those seeking evidence for Christianity
- Christians wanting a highly readable and engaging approach to apologetics
BUY IT HERE >>> The Case For Christ
Mere Christianity – C.S. Lewis
I have a very special place in my heart for Mere Christianity – quite literally – because Mere Christianity played a huge part in my husband’s journey to faith.
Mere Christianity was written by C.S. Lewis (yes, the same C.S. Lewis who wrote the Narnia books!) who, like Strobel, was a staunch atheist in his younger years, but was later convinced by the overwhelming evidence that Christianity was true and eventually became a Christian.
Mere Christianity is adapted from a series of BBC radio talks that C.S. Lewis gave during World War II. In it C.S. Lewis explains core Christian beliefs with remarkable clarity, logic and wisdom.
His book covers 4 main topics:
- Arguments for the existence of God
- A defence of Christian theology
- An exploration of Christian ethics
- An explanation of the Trinity
It was of course written the best part of a century ago and is therefore a little dated in places and uses slightly old-fashioned language, but none of that detracts from the core messages of the book.
This is an especially valuable book for helping Christians think clearly about how to explain Christianity to others, or for anyone who is seeking a clear, logical and evidence-based approach to examining whether Christianity is true, and if so, what to do about it.
Key quotes:
“Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance, the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.”
“Aim at Heaven and you will get earth ‘thrown in’: aim at earth and you will get neither.”
Best for:
- Christians wanting a deeper understanding of the Christian faith
- Those wanting to communicate Christianity more clearly
- Anyone seeking evidence for Christianity
BUY IT HERE >>> Mere Christianity
Evangelism And The Sovereignty Of God – J.I. Packer
This book seeks to answer one simple, but profound, question:
“If God is sovereign, why do we need evangelism?”
J.I. Packer tackles that question head-on in this brilliant little classic.
He starts by basically making the point that all Christians must believe in the sovereignty of God, or else they are not really Christians at all. But this does not mean that we do not have a role to play in evangelism – sharing our faith is clearly commanded in Scripture.
He then goes on to explain that the fact God is sovereign, yet we have a personal responsibility to share our faith is an “antinomy”: an apparent contradiction between two statements or beliefs, both of which seem equally reasonable and justified.
We as humans find such a seeming contradiction difficult to deal with, because our human minds crave order and logic, but Packer reminds us that the reason we can’t understand this fully is because God’s ways are so much higher than our ways!
He also goes on to explain how, because our minds so dislike antinomies, we tend to believe one more than the other, and both lead to problems: either we sit back and do nothing (in clear disobedience to Scripture) or else we try to evangelism in our own strength, which leads to aggressive and borderline brainwashing techniques to try and “force” people to become Christians.
Rather than seeing God’s sovereignty as a barrier to evangelism, Packer shows how it actually gives us confidence and hope. Because salvation ultimately belongs to God, we can faithfully share the gospel while trusting him with the results.
It’s worth pointing out that this book was written in 1961, so it is a little old-fashioned in its style, language and references in places. But none of that detracts from the main message, which is timeless.
In fact, what is surprising about this book is quite how readable it is. Unlike other authors, who sometimes seem to do their best to make their theological arguments as unintelligible as possible, Packer’s style is very clear and easy to follow.
Key quotes:
“Which matters more – our reputation or their salvation?”
“We are to order our lives by the light of [God’s] law, not by our guesses about his plan.”
Best for:
- Christians wrestling with the theology around evangelism and the Sovereignty of God
- Anyone who struggles with motivation for evangelism
- Those who feel under pressure to “make converts”
BUY IT HERE >>> Evangelism And The Sovereignty Of God
