You sometimes hear a preacher talking about the Old Testament worthies – the many witnesses that surround us, ‘leaning over the balustrades of heaven to watch us’ (Hebrews 12:1). I’m beginning to guess what they are saying to each other:

‘Look! The believers got into the twenty-first century. After all that persecution in the twentieth, then all that famous Western apathy, they made it. Amazing. Praise God! They weren’t put off and they’re still going.’

I’m also guessing that one of those who amazes them is Becky Pippert. Not only did she bless us with her book Out of the Saltshaker in the 20^th century – she’s done it again in the 21^st with Stay Salt. This is a full work-out on personal evangelism for our times. Tim Keller said, ‘This may be the best book on evangelism for the next generation’.

If you’re hoping that it surely must have all sorts of social media tricks – sorry, it hasn’t. It’s better than that. This time she wrote to help us bear witness to those around us who are trying so hard to be secular. And she does much of it by giving examples from her own experience. Very everyday examples. Like Heather, her manicurist in Holywood, County Down, in Northern Ireland – or Theo, her gay hairdresser in London – or the landlady of a short-term vacation rental in France.

You begin to realise where she’s coming from right at the start: ‘I am not a “cradle Christian”’. She documents her long and winding road from agnosticism to faith in Christ. Then she recounts that, in the first semester of her first year at university, she attended ‘a Christian conference’ where ‘the topic was evangelism’. It seems that the talks were designed as rather pushy instructions with an emphasis on results.

This is the part of the book where I cringed. Was this one of our Cru/Agape conferences? Did we goof? I was then vastly relived to see that, mercifully, she doesn’t disclose who ran the conference! Instead, she explains how she sidestepped the issue and set off on a life journey of aiming to do evangelism like Jesus did. Still in her first semester, Becky had to weather a threat from her university to ‘cancel’ her for running a private little Bible study. (She survived, the university’s reputation didn’t)

Such a non-formulaic approach defined the rest of her life, and she doesn’t miss opportunities to remind us of that in Stay Salt. You quickly learn that theology is fascinating, intriguing, stopping people in their tracks – just so long as you’re not speaking ‘evangelicalese’. And the theology is good for us too as we set forth as witnesses – a bit like the bees who depend on eating the pollen even as they are transporting it to the hive.

Amongst her many quotable quotes, you’ve got to love: ‘Jesus did not say, Go therefore, all you extroverts, and make disciples. The rest of you, just hang out’. Or, when she deals with justice, which has grown to take such a position in our society’s current narrative: ‘Why judgement day is such good news’.

But my favourite has to be her suggestion on how to approach a sceptical friend: ‘You know, I am truly excited about my faith, and I want to share it with you. But I’m so afraid that I might turn you off that I hesitate’. That’s so self-disclosing, so disarming, so engaging as to be almost unnerving – but in a good way.

In our business you’ve got to keep learning. I’m learning from Becky.