CONCENTRIC CIRCLES OF CONCERN BOOK CRITIQUE
Author Information
Oscar W. Thomson taught evangelism at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary where he touched the lives of many of his students. He taught there for twenty years and touched the lives of many people, and the people in turn helped him shape his view of the world. Many of these experiences and relationships have been recounted in his book Concentric Circles of Concern Seven Stages for Making Disciples. He has also served as president of the Oscar Thompson Evangelistic Association as pastoral consultant of Cancer Counseling Research Foundation and pastoral consultant and board member of the Trinity Valley Hospice Association, Inc. Thompson died of cancer in 1980, leaving behind his wife Carolyn and daughter Damaris.
He spent his final years in ministering those who were terminally ill and believed that relationships were the most important aspects of our lives. He practiced it in his personal life and has repeatedly preached this in this book.
Content Summary
Thomson begins the book by saying that relationship is the most important word besides proper nouns. He puts forward the idea that relationships are at the heart of all human interactions. If the relationships are beneficial to someone and help reach out to that person, it would be more effective to reach himher with the gospel. According to him, it is better to build and sustain relationships that are deeper and more fulfilling with people who are near you. These are the people who are closest to you, your family, relatives, your friends and then other people around you. It is more important that one makes stronger relationships with these people and then reach out to them with the gospel. We are encouraged to pray for these people and make disciples from amongst them.
The central idea of this book is the theory of concentric circle, which is an interesting exercise in reviewing ones own inventory in terms of the relationships of ones life. Not only is this model applicable to the believers, it can also prove to be beneficial to atheists and other non-Christians. He places the reader at the center of the circle and in order to love those who are outside, we must first learn to love ourselves. This we can do by building a better relationship with God and loving Him. Only after we learn to love Him can we love ourselves. This phase is referred to as getting right with God in the book. One can do this by seeing oneself through Gods eyes and being obedient to Him in all aspects of ones life
He says that if a believer is unable to build healthy and fulfilling relationships at home, then he would be unable to successfully evangelize not even at home but outside of the closest circle of his society also. By building better relationships at home and all around him, he would be able to evangelize more effectively. He emphasizes on the individual being submissive to Christ and always stay in the constant flow of learning, one must keep learning from Christ and meet the needs of other people by building relationships with them.
He also talks about seven stages of making disciples, which are 1. Get Right, 2. Survey, 3. Pray, 4. Build Bridges, 5. Show Love, 6. Make Disciples, and 7. Begin Again.
In the Get Right part the author urges the reader to love oneself and to love God. After that the reader is to take an inventory of his surroundings and to point out which relationships are important and close to him. Make a list of these people and these are the people one must pray for. After prayer we must reach out to these people and make stronger relationships with them. Stronger relationships with them can be built by letting the love of Jesus flow through us and reach to other people. Another important this that is stressed is the making of disciples. One must clear the doubts of all the people who we identified in our lists and bring them closer to God and the love of Jesus Christ. After making more disciples, we are told to begin the whole circle again where we repeatedly go through all the seven steps. By this method we keep all things in a constant flux and learn to build more and more relationships. Needless to say, this method is not only self-sustaining but also improves over time.
This book is full of anecdotes about the authors personal life as well as the success stories from Old and New testament. He shows from various examples of how and where and when these techniques can be effectively used to help people in their personal relationships and to help them get closer with God and Jesus.
Evaluation
Throughout this book, Thomson argues that relationships are at the heart of all human interactions and he keeps repeating everything that keeps this idea at the core of all his teachings. This he does with a very simplistic method and it is extremely easy to remember and teach his point of view, including the model that he presents in this book. While this model can be termed as simple, we can also call it overly simplistic. For example it is so simple that it is not flexible enough to handle complex human problems in a customized way . We can call it as a one-size-fits-all kind of a model which needs more room for flexibility. Another thing that is lacking in this book is the examples which show under what conditions can these methods fail. For instance, if some of us are unable to reach out to anyone in spite of building better and stronger relationships with them, what should one do. It is easy to lose hope in such instance from any evangelist but the book sheds little or no light on this aspect of evangelism.
Furthermore, his idea of reaching out to people and building better relationships keeps the reader limited to meeting the needs of others. This concept of building relationships is also too narrowly focused, because meeting needs of others is not all that there is to building lasting and meaningful relationships. Jesus built relationships with all the people around Him and blessed the lives of all humanity but He barely did it by specifically meeting the needs of others. Hence, this simplistic idea of building relationships is also flawed.
In some parts of the book one may feel that the language is inadequate to accurately portray the ideas that he is essentially trying to communicate. This may be due to his tendencies to simplify the book and widen its audience, however, to understand this book one must have some idea about what is right and wrong in terms of evangelism. It also fails to mention any views that may prove to be contradictory to his idea of meeting the needs of other people. Such an omission might place doubts in the minds of the reader who might think that meeting the needs of others is the most important thing written in the Bible. In fact, most of the Bible emphasizes teaching others about glories of God to bring them closer to Him.
Another place where this book misses the mark is the part about making disciples, which is given a very short and brief focus with respect to the whole book. There are some people who may consider this the most difficult and the most important part of the whole process. The need is felt here that the Author had shed more light on it and given detailed steps regarding successfully making and retaining disciples, who in turn create more disciples.
After overcoming this small initial hurdle, the reader will discover that this book presents some incredible ideas. If one analyzes the whole step by step process of building better relationships with the people who are close to us and eventually with the people who are familiar to us, one will discover its immense potential to reach out to increasingly large number of people. If carried out with faith and determination, such a method has the ability to inspire a religious revival comparable to the Great Awakening.
Furthermore, his concentric circle approach can have a very wide range of audience because of its universal appeal. In addition to evangelist Christians, this approach can prove useful to all those people who are seeking to connect with people who are around them, especially the relationships that they have lost in their lives. This is one of the strengths of this book because one of the major problems that the whole world is facing right now is the loss of healthy relationships among people. People are increasingly becoming distant and alienated, by successfully building relationships with these people, we can rekindle Gods love in their hearts. Any person who feels lost can apply these principles in his life to reconnect with those around him and feel closer to God himself.
This book is a very important companion for all those who are involved in bringing Gods message and gospels to the society in particular and the whole world in general. It can be so effective in reaching its mark that one can consider it as a users manual for all evangelists to carry out the Great Commission.
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