Hell's Best Kept SecretHell's Best Kept SecretI picked up this book at the recommendation of a friend of mine, long before I'd watched any of Ray Comfort's DVD series on evangelism. I took the book to read on a flight somewhere, and only got about three chapters into the book before putting it aside forgotten.
It's not an easy book to sit down and read, some parts of it read like a sales pitch and might rub you the wrong way. But there's a lot of good stuff scattered throughout this book. People tend to have a love it or hate it opinion about the techniques Ray teaches, whether its in this book or his DVD series or elsewhere. This book might be an excellent source to photocopy a few pages from to give as handouts in a class on evangelism, or to use to identify scriptures that are relevant to evangelism and not being discouraged about being an evangelist.
If you do happen by this book at the library or, more likely, a bookstore, flip straight to chapter 10 "lets buy the world lunch" and just read this chapter which takes a detour from Comfort's usual style. This chapter is an excellent eye-opener to how "practical ministry" can be really effective at reaching the lost, sometimes much moreso than preaching the gospel would be (though he goes just shy of actually saying its better).
He shares a story about a church that started doing vegetable evangelism. They bought vegetables in bulk and then delivered them to about 100 homes in the surrounding area, with a note attached that the vegetables were from the church, out of love, no strings attached, no christian-ese, no message of how to accept Christ in your heart, no follow up of church members banging on people's doors. They just did something nice for these people. And people responded to it. Included are several short letters the church received in response, in addition to stories of some of the fruit that came out of this effort. He also shares stories about buying a heckler a pair of shoes and some punk youth lunch and how doing those works helped them to understand that he really did care about them, spiritually as well as physically, and opened their ears to listening to the gospel message that they previously weren't willing to hear from him. The stories from his experiences are one of the best parts of the book.
If you feel like "you can't evangelize" or have no idea how to, this book may build your confidence and erode your fears about evangelism. Ray shares a lot of practical wisdom about what's worked and not worked in his experience. Of course, because he's sharing from his own experience and opinions about how to evangelize, you do have to prayerfully ask the Holy Spirit to help you differentiate Ray's opinion from God's opinion. Sometimes there's generalizations--Ray assumed his neighbors might not welcome them into his home becasue they lived a very different lifestyle than his--so he gives practical advice about what you could do to overcome that, but he never even questions whether his underlying assumption about his neighbors might have been presumptuous. So while there's a lot you can get out of this book, you do have to filter through it a little bit as you read.
A lot of the book focuses on teaching how and why to use the 10 commandments (the law) to convict people of the fact that they're sinners, and they need a savior so they don't go to hell when they die, unforgiven of their sin. Most people either really like that technique or you don't. He also throws in a lot of practical stuff relating to street evangelism, like taking on faith that what you're doing will be fruitful to God, and the difference between a true conversion and an emotional response.