Book Review: The New Evangelization and You

A few weeks ago an advance copy of Greg Willits' new book, The New Evangelization and You: Be Not Afraid,which will be available in May, showed up in my mail box.  Because I enjoy listening to The Catholics Next Door podcasts and had thoroughly enjoyed the book he co-authored with his wife, The Catholics Next Door: Adventures in Imperfect Living, I simply had to dive into this book.

Blogging out in the Catholic blogosphere, you encounter a lot of blurbs about the New Evangelization and using new media to carry out this mission.  Personally, I have wondered on many occasions whether I'm doing enough or what more I can do in the area of new evangelization.

In his book, Greg gives a great explanation of what New Evangelization is so if nothing else, I was able to walk away from this book with a better understanding of just what the phrase "New Evangelization" entails.  But Greg, then goes on to detail a variety of ways that each of us can bring this New Evangelization to fruition.  And something that surprised me is that New Evangelization and new media aren't mutually exclusive.  For a while there, I had been under the impression that New Evangelization was contained to online media and podcasts but it's really so much bigger and all encompassing that that.

After having read through this book I found myself with newfound inspiration to plunge deeper into the work of New Evangelization.  And some of the chapters in this book provide you with so many different ways to get your feet wet.  One chapter in particular, gives fifty two suggestions (enough for every week of the year) to know your faith better and another fifty two suggestions for sharing your faith with others.  So no excuses for saying you're stumped and don't know where to begin.  With that many options everyone is bound to find at least a few that will resonate with them.

The overall format of the book is very approachable.  You won't feel like you're being preached to, instead you get a book that reads in an easy going manner that will leave you feeling ready to take action.  Each chapter ends with questions and a prayer.  I could see this book being used in a group setting.  While the questions are great for introspection, they'd also be great discussion topics as well.

This book certainly gets my recommendation.  It won't be released until May, but you can pre-order
it from Amazon.

I was provided with a review copy of The New Evangelization and You: Be Not Afraid,
 by the publisher, Servant Books, in exchange for my honest review.