Book Review: The Unexpected Adventure

The book The Unexpected Adventure is written by Lee Strobel and Mark Mittelberg, who also worked together on the “How to Be a Contagious Christian” curriculum produced by Willow Creek Association.

It has a similar focus to “Contagious Christian” (our church went through the DVD and book about 2 years ago), but the framework is completely different.  The book is designed to be a six-week devotional, with 42 short (5 – 6 page) “chapters.”  The authors suggest that we read one chapter each day.  So… okay.  I didn’t want to.  I borrowed the book from the library, and I wanted to read the whole thing.  So keep in mind that I didn’t follow the instructions, and anything I don’t like about the book is my own fault now.

Each chapter has a story about one of the authors’ evangelistic interactions.  They then follow the story with an “action principle,” or summary of how we can apply the principle, and then something they call “stepping into the adventure.” This often had a biblical example of the point… or sometimes they just talked more.  I never did quite gather what the “stepping” section was for.  But since I don’t have nearly enough evangelism stories to fill 42 chapters myself, the authors get to do what they want.

The strengths of this book are the repeated examples of relatively normal people talking about their faith with non-Christians.  Some of the important things I learned are:

• Sharing my faith makes my faith grow, and gives my life adventure and meaning (hence the title).
• I don’t have to expect to lead every person I talk to to Christ.  Anything that moves them further along their spiritual path is a successful evangelistic encounter.
• It’s important that I’ve practiced my testimony (explanation of giving Jesus control of my life) and have thought about what to say when people bring up the “usual” problems (why do bad things happen, why would God send people to Hell, the Bible is full of contradictions).

The problems I had with the book (besides the format, which by necessity leads to minimal flow or concept-building) were:

• WAY too much pushing of the authors’ own books.  I understand Strobel has written lots of books on apologetics and evangelism, and he probably thinks they are the best books to hand to people.  But it just isn’t the humblest effect when you say so in books you write.  I’ve only looked at “The Case for Christ,” but my personality didn’t mesh with the goal of the book.  While there is plenty of good evidence that the historical Christ did exist and his body did disappear, I don’t understand why someone would feel this proves Christianity is real.  But it works for others, so I’m good.
• The gospel message the authors encourage was very much the traditional “cross diagram” message.  And while this simplified gospel has clearly worked for them many times, I have really enjoyed the more recent discussions of how post-modern people want a fuller kingdom gospel that includes community and reconciliation (see here and here).

I also found it interesting that the authors were strongly in favor of inviting friends to church as an evangelistic tool.  This, of course, is not as “cool” as current missional thinking.  But if the gospel message is regularly presented at the church, it may in fact be a good way to grow the seeker evangel-ee, if not the evangelist invite-or.

You should read this if: you like the “Case for ___” books by Lee Strobel, and believe the people you hang out with will respond to the “cross diagram” explanation of the gospel message (we’ve sinned, Jesus died for us, we are saved by grace and can be with God when we die).  While I find this gospel message a bit limited for my world, I was encouraged to prepare myself better for spiritual conversations and to be braver about initiating them.  And that is always a good thing.