Arthur Blessit’s book Give Me a “J” is all about sharing Jesus. This might sound like a standard topic, but the author looks at the sharing of the gospel through a different lens. Namely, he looks at sharing the gospel through the context of the Jesus you know.
The primary idea in this book is that people should share the words and the message of a Jesus that they are most comfortable with. While there are obviously only so many different ways to package Jesus, people should stick with what they know. For Blessit, sharing Jesus was about walking around with a cross and spreading joy. For others, this may mean some other approach.
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"Book Review: Give Me a “J”".
One of the terms that is important in this book is “natural.” The author urges people to make sure that sharing Jesus is done in a natural way because that will ultimately make it more effective. This means not forcing one’s self to be something that you are not. Rather, if one wants to have a receptive audience, then one must be authentic.
Likewise, the author stresses that comfort is a very important tool. People are ready to listen to the message of Jesus most often when they are in a non-threatening environment. What this means for people sharing the gospel is that they must, for the sake of reception, try to create an environment that is not threatening.
One of the most interesting things about this book is that it discusses different ways to share Jesus with many different kinds of people. Whether one wants to share the Word with a family member, with a friend, or with a stranger on the street, the author has an answer for that. He stresses the important point, as well, that all of these situations are different and demand a different approach.
The author challenges the reader to think outside the box a little bit. As Christians, he argues, people sharing the world are often chained to their normal conceptions of what sharing must look like. The author notes that one can often find opportunities to share in some of the least likely places. The key, of course, is to keep one’s eyes open for these opportunities because they are out there.
Perhaps the primary strength of this work is the credibility of the man who wrote it. He spent much of his life walking around with a cross, sharing the gospel with people in various ways in various places. This book is essentially the combined knowledge that he picked up while he was out doing those things. This is why, if one wants to truly understand how to get out in the world and share Jesus, this book comes in handy.
This book does struggle in one way. The author seems to be trying so hard to be different that he neglects those people who are trying to share the gospel in conventional ways. There is still a place, of course, for people who are doing preaching in a standard church, and in his hurry to talk about the other ways to share Jesus, he sometimes fails to recognize that the conventional movement still exists.
Give Me a “J” is an interesting and entertaining book, and for a person who is looking for some motivation to think differently about the sharing of Jesus, then this book can be a good one. It does not break any new theological ground. Rather, it reads like one man’s experiences on the road. The author clearly has credibility, and his ideas seem likely to be effective for someone looking to follow in his footsteps.
