A Review of "Share Jesus Without Fear"

William Fay is a graduate of Denver Seminary, a noted author and the host of the internationally syndicated radio show “Let’s Go.” He was a successful businessman with ties to the Mafia and prostitution rings before coming to Christ in 1981. Since his radical conversion, he has traveled the world equipping believers to share their faith. That is the point of this book. 


“Share Jesus Without Fear” (buy it here) describes the dismal state of church growth in America due to a lack of outreach and articulates a practical strategy for reversing this trend with intentional evangelism including specific steps, a discussion of how to deal with obstacles and ways of multiplying one’s influence. 

This book begins with Fay’s encouraging testimony and the many people who witnessed to him before he came to Christ. He emphasizes the fact that success in evangelism is defined by obedience and explains how the many people that shared with him before his conversion were a part of the process that culminated with his acceptance of Christ’s gift of salvation; even though many of them never saw fruit from their labor, they were successful because they shared the good news with him. The point of this first chapter, that a person can’t fail when simply being obedient and sharing, takes the pressure off the evangelist and prepares the reader for the content that immediately follows.

The need for evangelism is described well with the alarming statistic that one hundred thousand churches will close this decade (p.6) and the reality that the lack of evangelism in America today is leading to the secularization of our society. The problem, according to Fay, is the sin of silence (p.6). 

Fear is pegged as the cause of this silence concerning evangelism and the issue of fear is discussed at length. The fears of rejection, what others might think, workplace peculiarities, a lack of knowledge, losing friends or relatives and not knowing how to witness are all explained and ultimately defined as excuses rather than substantive issues. After challenging the reader to drop these excuses Fay gives a practical strategy for overcoming fear and the sin of silence.

The five “Share Jesus Questions” (p.33) which can be introduced to any conversation to transition to the gospel are: 1. Do you have any kind of spiritual beliefs? 2. To you, who is Jesus Christ? 3. Do you think there is a heaven or hell? 4. If you died, where would you go? If heaven, why? 5. If what you are believing is not true would you want to know? These questions provide an easy way for someone to bring any conversation to a spiritual one and an opportunity to introduce Christ and His offer of a gift of salvation to all that put their trust in Him. 

Once the conversation has turned in a spiritual direction, seven scriptures can be shared with the hearer, inviting him to read each out loud from the sharer’s Bible. These verses are Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, John 3:3, John 14:6, Romans 10:9-11, 2 Corinthians 5:15 and Revelation 3:20 (p.44). The hearer is asked what he thinks each verse means after finishing reading it and before continuing to the next verse. Fay challenges the reader to trust the power of scripture in hearer’s life.

Fay encourages his readers to bring every conversation to a point of decision before concluding and once again, he gives five great questions to help with this (p.61). They are: 1. Are you a sinner? 2. Do you want forgiveness of sins? 3. Do you believe Jesus died on the cross for you and rose again? 4. Are you willing to surrender your life to Jesus Christ? 5. Are you ready to invite Jesus into your life and into your heart? These questions help bring a person to a point of decision. 

The rest of the book deals with following up with a new believer, dealing with common objections people often have, broadening the potential for influence by meeting new people and developing friendships with non-Christians and praying for the lost realizing God has to change their hearts. Fay concludes the book with a challenge to be obedient to Christ’s command realizing time is of the essence and every opportunity is vitally important. Readers are challenged to step out by faith, in obedience, sharing the good news and experiencing God’s joy in the process. 


Fay is convincing concerning the need for evangelism, correctly describes the hinderances to it and enunciates a thorough plan for sharing Jesus without fear. The statistics and stories he shares all support his claims about the current lack of evangelism and the benefit of this strategy. His arguments about the sin of silence and the need to be obedient now are compelling and at the same time encouraging. 

The seven “Share Jesus” scriptures (p.44) and Fay’s description of how to use them were a fresh approach to evangelism. The Bible is powerful and God’s Word changes lives. Fay challenges evangelists to trust God’s Word to work in a lost person’s life. It is encouraging to see this method of trusting the power of God’s Word in the evangelistic process by inviting the hearer to read these scriptures out loud. This approach is a welcome contrast to the lack of Biblical truth in many evangelistic approaches and strategies which seem to be more concerned with being liked by the non-believer than bringing that person to a life and eternity changing realization of the truth. 

Fay’s radical conversion seems to influence every aspect of his thinking. Having been saved from a very sinful past he seems confident of Christ’s ability to reach anyone, anywhere with the gospel. So many Christians today seem biased towards failure and this bias of belief makes this book very encouraging. 

Share Jesus without Fear lives up to its title by giving readers a valid perspective on the current situation in America, hope about how God will move if Christians will simply obey and practical ideas that make that possible. The transition questions given make getting into spiritual conversations and sharing the gospel simple in any conversational setting. The major barriers to evangelism, fear and a lack of knowledge about how to witness are handily dispatched in this concise and informative book. The practical notes listed in Appendix 2 (p.151) on how to include the main points of this strategy in the cover and margins of a Bible for quick and easy use make the plan easily applicable. Overall, this book seems to hit the nail on the head in many different and important ways. 

There seems to be one significant omission, however. As good as the Share Jesus without Fear method seems to be, there is a lack of transferability. Fay’s emphasis on follow-up and discipleship is vitally important and the issues he covers, assurance of salvation, scripture, prayer, fellowship, etc (p.78), are all important. Helping the new believer learn to share her faith is equally valid. Statistics show new converts are often some of the most effective evangelists. It is important to help young Christians learn to share their faith right from the start so they can make the most of their non-Christian spheres of influence and develop good perspectives on evangelism before they catch the unbelief of Christians they’ll soon meet. That being said, a good evangelistic approach should always be simple enough to reproduce without barriers of complication. The Share Jesus without Fear method seems to get very close to the more complicated, less reproducible side of the equation. Once again, the notes in Appendix 2 (p.151) are helpful but still, it seems like this is a bit much to ask a new believer to do. The one exception might be someone who came to Christ through this method; obviously having seen it first hand they might be much quicker to be able to reproduce it as well. A simpler tool, like the Four Spiritual Laws would probably be a more transferable tool, which in the long run, would create more momentum and multiplication in evangelism. The Share Jesus without Fear way of witnessing is useful in so many ways and  the transferability issue seems to be its only drawback. 

This book has wide appeal and would be helpful for Christians in all walks of life since all believers are called to share their faith and most struggle with fear and a lack of knowledge about how to witness. Anyone who wants to obey Christ’s command to make disciples of all nations by being effective in reaching the lost will benefit from this book. The ideas included will make a lifestyle of evangelism attainable for anyone with a willingness to follow Christ in this area.

The Share Jesus without Fear strategy can be implemented in any ministry if leaders will train people in this method and help them take a few first steps of application. Effective ministry requires multiple evangelistic methods and this one can be added to any ministry’s repertoire of evangelistic resources. An individual can make this a natural way of making the most of any and every opportunity by simply following the instructions in Appendix 2 (p.151) and being willing to start the process by asking the first Share Jesus question, “do you have any spiritual beliefs?” A commitment to transitioning conversations to the gospel will inevitably lead to a lifetime of effective evangelism. 

Transitioning conversations to spiritual topics, the gospel and a point of decision is an imperative aspect of all evangelistic approaches. The Share Jesus without Fear questions, scripture and method provide a standardized way of accomplishing that. This easily applicable approach is a significant contribution to personal evangelism and a simple way of helping believers reach their spheres of influence for Christ. If believers will make a habit of applying these steps, being obedient to Christ’s call and saying no to the sin of silence the negative societal trends Fay mentioned in the beginning of this book will be reversed and personal evangelism will transition from the domain of fearful confusion into that of joyful obedience. 

“Share Jesus Without Fear” describes a practical way of reversing the modern trend of declining church growth and individual disobedience to the call to evangelism in America by equipping believers with a simple and practical evangelism strategy and helping them overcome hinderances to witnessing in order to fulfill Christ’s Great Commission here and now. 

Orthodoxy

Orthodoxy has been a great read! Having read most of C.S. Lewis' books it is easy to see how G.K. Chesterton influenced him for Christ. This isn't a book about rigorous Christian apologetics (and he reiterates that numerous times) but rather, a style of deep-thinking, common-sense, practical-life apologetical philosophy (a lot like C.S. Lewis). It is his testimony of how he, as a skeptic, found Christ through reason. He summarized agnosticism saying, "Christianity is rational but it is not simple. The ordinary agnostic has got his facts all wrong. He is a non-believer for a multitude of reasons but they are untrue reasons. He doubts because the middle ages were barbaric, but they weren’t, because Darwinism is demonstrated, but it isn’t, because miracles do not happen, but they do, because modern science is moving away from the supernatural but it isn’t; it is moving towards the supernatural with the rapidity of a railway train." Chesterton's ability to deduce life truths and crystalize them into paradoxical, common sense statements is unbelievable. One example is the following quote: "Man must have just enough faith in himself to have adventures and just enough doubt of himself to enjoy them." His insight is tremendous. One of my favorite quotes from the book is this one: "The mere questioner has knocked his head against the limits of human thought and cracked it. The fact that he doubts everything gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything – for all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything." That is fairly typical of the entire book. He described his encounter with Jesus, saying, "I looked at the New Testament. There I found an account, not in the least of a person with his hair parted in the middle or his hands clasped in appeal but of an extraordinary being, with lips of thunder and acts of lurid decision, flinging down tables, casting out devils, passing with the wild secrecy of the wind from mountain isolation to a sort of dreadful demagogy. A person who often acted like an angry God and always like a God. The diction used about Christ has been, and perhaps wisely, sweet and submissive but the diction used by Christ is curiously gigantesque. It is full of camels leaping through needles and mountains hurled into the sea. He called Himself a sword of slaughter. That he used other, even wilder words on the side of non-resistance greatly increases the mystery but it also, if anything, rather increases the violence." Wow! I think this is a great book for every thinking Christian to read. It is thought provoking and poetically written. I hope you get a chance to read it. You can find the audible version (that I listened to) here or get it on Amazon here. I hope you enjoy it!

Finally, as I close out this post, here's one last Chesterton quote that will blow your mind! “You are free in our time to say that God doesn’t exist. You are free to say that He exists and is evil. You are free to say, like poor old Renault, that God would like to exist if He could. You may talk of God as a mystification or metaphor. You may boil him down with gallons of words or boil him down to the rags of metaphysics. And it is not merely that nobody punishes but that nobody protests. But if you speak of God as a thing like a tiger as a reason for changing one’s conduct, then the modern world will stop you if it can. We are long past talking about whether an unbeliever should be punished for being irreverent; it is now thought irreverent to be a believer.”


What's so Great About Christianity?

I love Audible.com! You can sure get through a lot of books when you can listen to them anywhere you go on your phone or ipod. I just finished "What's so Great About Christianity" and thought it was an interesting read with some great philosophical discussions. Dinesh didn't take a meticulous evidence based approach in this book but rather more of a philosophical one. I also found the blanket acceptance of evolution odd and think Dinesh showed a lack of a grasp on the biological facts. He used examples of evolution, like peppered moths and bacteria - which are examples of microevolution and nothing more. I liked his approach of telling the atheists that even if evolution is true it changes nothing. He challenged Dawkins' "Blind Watchmaker" claiming he gets nowhere by positing the existence of a factory (evolution) to explain the existence of a watch (life) claiming the factory is even more elaborate than the watch. I also liked his philosophical challenge to Darwinists to leave evolution to its own realm instead of imposing its ideology on the rest of us. I still think he should read up a lot more in the area of evolution. He had some great arguments about the good of Christianity and harm of disbelief in God and interesting observations on numerous authors' works. He also did a great job stressing the reality and necessity of hell. I liked the book from a philosophical perspective and thought it was an interesting read but don't plan on giving many copies of it out. It isn't the hard hitting evidence based approach I had hoped it would be. It is a good book to get your non-Christian friends thinking but there are other books that would probably do a better job.

I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist

I just finished "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist." I've given this to people in the past but had never read it myself. It opens with great philosophical arguments, followed by cosmological arguments I've always thought make disbelief in God crazy. They spend time dealing with chemical evolution and biological evolution. They do a really good job with the historicity of the resurrection and authenticity and reliability of the New Testament documents. From there they do a great job supporting and confirming the deity of Christ. Their next argument seemed intellectually weak. They extrapolated that since Jesus is God, the rest of the Bible is God's Word. That is basically the accusation I always hear when we debate atheists - Christians believe Jesus is who he says he is because of God's Word but then they believe the Bible is God's Word because Jesus said so. Circular reasoning. Of course we believe that, just not solely because of that line of reasoning. There are many other great reasons to believe the Bible is God's Word and I think this book would have been a bit better if it included those in more detail (check out the MP3 below for a few of those). The book concludes with a dramatic description of Jesus' crucifixion and a thorough description of the gospel. "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist" will encourage anyone in their faith and is a great evangelistic tool to give out to non-Christian friends that have never heard a good response to the critics or an intellectual grounding for faith in Christ. I hope you'll read it and share it with others. You can get it here or get the Audible version I listened to here. I hope you enjoy it!