Peppermint-Filled Piñatas: Breaking Through Tolerance and Embracing Love

Evangelism in our country has had a rough ride. The one consistent goal has been that Christians are trying to help people who don't know Christ come to know Him.

Today, people in American seem to come in so many shapes, types, backgrounds, and colors. Formula witnessing only works when the formula fits the person. The world we walk in today has so many people from different, completely secular backgrounds, that we need a new approach.

Enter Eric Michael Bryant. Bryant is on the leadership team at Mosaic in Los Angeles, California. He has written a book, Peppermint-Filled Piñatas. This book does an excellent job of helping us understand how we can live purposefully and evangelistically without being hypocritical and annoying.

The author doesn't shy away from the hard questions. He discusses loving Muslims, homosexuals, lawbreakers, rich, and poor all the same. He discusses them from the point of reality — his own experience and discomfort as he faced himself and found that Jesus could love all people through him.

Jesus loves people. He is calling them to a relationship with himself. He wants to use you and me. He isn't looking for converts, He is looking for relationship, and relationship comes from relationship. We need to be relationship growers. This book reveals how we've been missing the mark as a church, but more importantly, how we can meet the mark as believers and Christian leaders.

(Zondervan plans to come out with an updated and enhanced version of the book this summer.)

--Reviewed by Rev. Kim Martinez