Evangelism for the Common Man: A Review of NUDGE by Leonard Sweet

I was given a copy of Leonard Sweet’s new book, Nudge: Awakening Each Other to the God Who’s Already There, for review, by The Ooze Viral Bloggers (http://viralbloggers.com/).

Synopsis
Nudge is a book about evangelism. The type of evangelism that Sweet proposes 1) acknowledges that God is active in the world and is involved in one way or another in everyone’s life. Nudge-evangelism 2) necessitates that “followers of Jesus “know” Jesus well enough to recognize where he is alive and moving in our day” (p. 34); and, so can read the signs of a friend’s life to see how God is at work. 3) Nudging is, then, sharing with that friend in a non-confrontational manner (notice the title of the book: Nudge, not Push) how God is working in their lives. “Evangelists nudge the world to wake up to the alive and acting Jesus and nudge others in the ways God is alive and moving” (p. 34). That is the essence of nudge evangelism. Thus ends the first part of the book.
That being said, there is more work that has to be done in order to do this well, so argues Sweet. Even before we begin nudge evangelizing, we must be able to read what God is doing in another’s life, and to be able to do that we, the potential evangelizer, must be paying attention to God. To pay attention to God we need to use our five senses (he means these in both physical and spiritual ways) to comprehend and notice what God is doing. We also need to be sensitive to the senses of those we are evangelizing to.
The first part of the book is very interesting and the second less so (perhaps I simply need more time to digest the thoughts there). However, there are some gems in the second part.
Length: The book is 279 pages excluding notes; 329 with notes.

Here are some quotes that summarize nudge evangelism well:
“Evangelism is awakening each other to the God who is already there. Evangelism is nudging people to pay attention to the mission of God in their lives and to the necessity of responding to that initiative in ways that birth new realities and the new birth” (p.28).
“For God to do something through us, God must be doing something in us. If we are not always evangelizing ourselves, we have no business evangelizing others” (p. 28).
“Nudging is more about dialogue than monologue…Acts of evangelism intentionally scooch and shimmy people in the direction of truth without the need for knee-bending, beat-my-back alter calls” (p. 31).

Review
The Good:
- Nudge evangelism is doable for all people, whether timid or bold.
- Emphasizes evangelizing to people who we already have a relationship with.
- Comes at evangelism from a perspective of love.
- We have our part in evangelism, but allows for God to do his work as well, which evangelists sometimes don’t make room for.
- Emphasizes that we need to be evangelizing to ourselves as well, and that we ourselves will be changed in the “nudging” process.
- Respects the process and journey of peoples’ lives.
- Presupposes God’s providence and his acting in all creation at all times.
- Integrates the spiritual and bodily senses, which is, at times, very insightful.
- Readable and understandable.
- Semiotics – or the study of understanding signs and the meanings of things in regular life is very interesting and must be a part of evangelism.
The Bad:
- The book makes friendship a precondition of evangelism, but this is not the only kind of evangelism.
- Way too many metaphors and similes. Sweet writes very poetically, which often makes books pleasant to read; in this case, however, the book is burdened and cluttered, and the reader is wearied by Sweet’s poetic metric and long for straightforward prose. However, some of the analogies are quite good.
- A tendency with this type of evangelism might be to read “signs from God” under every leaf and in every nook. Interpreting God’s actions in another person’s life (let alone our own) can be extremely difficult.
- Reading between the lines, it seems that Sweet buys into postmodernism and there are some lines that would suggest that he is a “constructivist” (truth is not there until people see/make it) rather than a “realist” (truth is there whether we see it or not and whether we understand it correctly or not).

My Thoughts
Nudge contains many interesting and good ideas, especially in the first half of the book. It might also spark more people to evangelize, as Sweet has done a good job of making evangelism accessible to all. I was interested in the second section, as spiritual sensation is very interesting, but the chapters are simply too long and burdensome. If you were to purchase or borrow this book, read the first half, and skim the second half. The underlying ethos of the book seems to be a little too “nice.” However, this will make it easier for people today to evangelize. The book is good in many ways, but it is bad in some major ways.

Recommendation and Rating
I recommend this book to all Christians.
Rating: 3/5

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