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Dodson’s book, however, departs from this template in a couple of respects. In the remaining chapters, Dodson offers a practical section that presents a number of various gospel metaphors that, as he describes, can be used in evangelistic conversations metaphors like acceptance, hope, intimacy, tolerance, approval, and community.įrom my own experience with this genre, evangelism books have either tried to 1) motivate toward the practice of evangelism-whether by encouragement or rebuke-2) prescribe a certain way evangelism should be conducted-a methodology to be followed, or 3) a combination of the two. After showing exactly where these practices fall short in today’s context, Dodson moves on to discuss a way forward by 1) gaining a fresh vision of the gospel, 2) handling the gospel in its different forms, and 3) speaking the gospel in cultural key. To that end, Dodson lays out his case by first giving a brief reason as to why people find the gospel unbelievable, followed by a detailed cultural analysis of four distinct evangelistic practices that are common to the North American context. The thesis of Dodson’s book, as he states, is “to recover a believable evangelism, one that moves beyond the cultural and personal barriers we have erected in contemporary evangelism to rediscover the power of the biblical gospel” (14). In talking about the term itself, Jonathan Dodson agrees by saying that “Evangelism has become a byword…fallen to the wayside in Christian vocabulary” (11). While there have certainly been books on the market in recent years that touch on the topic of living on mission and the importance of sharing the gospel with others, I haven’t seen too many self-described as a book on evangelism. The Unbelievable Gospel: Say Something Worth Believing. The following review was written by Andy McLean, Editor of The Gospel Project for Students