Book Review: "Tactics: A Game Plan For Discussing Your Christian Convictions" by Gregory Koukl

Tactics: A Game Plan For Discussing Your Christian Convictions by Gregory Koukl

Buy It: Amazon.com

Textbooks. You either love them or hate them. Some are practical, easy to understand, and immediately applicable; others are confusing, inaccurate, and require extra work before usage.

This book is 100% the former.

To get the meat out of the way, if you are looking to share your faith with others, you are doing a disservice to yourself by not reading this short book. "Tactics" is a book that trains you in how to be a solid ambassador for Christ. Gregory Koukl, founder of the incredibly effective "Stand to Reason" ministry, instructs you on how to be a solid representative of Christ by walking you through conversational strategies that, when properly practiced and implemented, will give you the upper hand in respectfully presenting reasons for the faith. Rather than teach you how to hit a home run every time, "Tactics" teaches you to just get up to bat. Rather than trying to win a soul with every conversation, Koukl encourages to "leave a stone in the shoe", something for the person to ponder and think about. The goal of this book is 100% evangelistic in nature. As an apologist, this is THE must read book; in fact, it has become my default book for evangelism, both apologetics driven and not. Even if sharing your faith is just going through the ABCs or the Four Spiritual Laws, reading this book will provide incalculable benefits.

With catchy names like "Columbo" and "Sibling Rivalry", Koukl effectively communicates a set of conversational strategies that are easy to understand and immediately applicable. Even better, the strategies Koukl presents are not just untested theories but refined and well-worn strategies Koukl has been using for years. Complete with several examples of his strategies in action, Koukl isn't writing some theoretical nonsense but is writing down what he has used for many years in words for us to learn from. His writing attitude in the book is like that of a teacher, guiding step by step through the specifics of each tactic. In all seriousness, if you like books that are concise and to-the-point yet immediately useful, this book gets the gold medal. I loved how easy of a read this was yet how incredibly useful it was. In fact, I have already been putting to use several of the strategies of this book to use in Twitter conversations and it is amazing how effective they are. If I had known half of this stuff back during the Pray for an Atheist event, I would have been so much more confident and bold in my faith. And if you are shy by nature, or freeze up at challenges to your faith, reading and applying this book will turn you into a lion.

What ties all of the various conversational strategies together is the fact that Koukl isn't teaching these tactics just by themselves, but with an ultimate goal in mind: to make you an ambassador of Christ. According to Koukl, as written in several parts throughout the book, a good ambassador has three things: knowledge (being aware of facts), wisdom (how to engage in smart dialogue) , and character (an attractive and winsome attitude and personality). Before diving into the tactics themselves, Koukl spends his time defining what an ambassador is and why being an ambassador for Christ is so important. Indeed, if you try to read "Tactics" without understanding what Koukl is saying about being an ambassador, you will miss out greatly. This section of the book is especially important for evangelists and missionaries just as much as it is for apologists. It is in this section of the book that Koukl really shines, as makes defending the faith and being an ambassador of Christ not only something that is attractive but something that is desired as well.

You really have nothing to lose by reading this book. It is very short (you could read it in a weekend), it is written in everyday language and written toward an audience with little to no knowledge about apologetics and philosophy. However, the wealth of knowledge and information this book deals out makes "Tactics" one of the best buys around.

4.5 stars out of 5