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Reviewed by Shane Raynor, a certified United Methodist lay speaker and the publisher of WesleyReport.com Got Style? Personality Based Evangelism by Jeffrey A. Johnson Judson Press, 2009 American Baptist evangelism expert Jeffrey Johnson offers mainline churches a useful tool to encourage everyday people to start evangelizing. Johnson notes that while most Christians don't have the spiritual gift of evangelism, every Christian is still called to evangelize on some level. Johnson wrote Got Style? to fill what he perceived to be a gap in resources in the Contagious Christian series produced by the trendsetting Willow Creek Community Church. The book explores six styles of evangelism and offers a personal assessment that is actually adapted from inventories found in the original Becoming a Contagious Christian book. Got Style? curiously directs readers to immediately skip to Chapter 8 to take the personal assessment. From this test, which is reminiscent of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, one should be able to identify a primary and secondary evangelism style. Then after pinpointing those styles, readers are encouraged to read the first few chapters, which set a premise and deal with each style individually. The styles are cataloged in a left to right spectrum of saying versus doing (not to be confused with a political or theological spectrum). The book doesn't really pit one style against another but it does note that traditional views of evangelism lean toward the saying end (assertive, analytical, and storytelling styles) as apposed to the doing end (relational, invitational, and incarnational styles.) Perhaps the greatest strength of Got Style? is that it encourages people who think they can't evangelize to find their style and just do it. It's biggest weakness is that, like most inventories, it essentially tells you what you already know. It simply organizes what you tell it and feeds the information back to you. That's helpful in some ways, but the danger is in finding an evangelism comfort zone and never moving out of it. How do we grow if we never do what's uncomfortable? The book provides a good resource for a church evangelism seminar, and it would work well both within and outside the mainline. There's a thorough appendix containing pages of recommended evangelism resources from all over the theological map. There's a handy introduction and guide for potential leaders, but be warned, some of the tables and charts get a little tedious. As someone once said, the people who like this sort of thing will find this to be the sort of thing they like. If you're introspective and love taking personal quizzes, you'll find it liberating. If not, you may find it a little confining. The liberal use of the ® symbol after the title Got Style? seems to indicate that supporting resources will be on their way. People don't usually register a trademark for a one-shot deal. My guess is that if Got Style? finds a niche, Judson Press may develop it into a small franchise. That would be a positive development, because the release of solid evangelism resources for a mainline audience is always a reason to celebrate. 
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