In The Relay George Shamblin looks at the successes and failures of ten people in the Bible in passing their faith to the next generation, from the father of all failure (Adam) to the ultimate rags-to-riches success (Paul).
You sit in the study. You take notes on the sermon. You take in far more about Jesus than you ever give out, and you know it. You feel the guilt of it. Somewhere along the way you decided sharing your faith is something other people are able to do, and you are not.
You're wrong about that last part. Not about the guilt. About the "not able."
In any given place, Christianity is never more than one generation from extinction. Scripture is full of whole generations who "did not know the Lord" because the ones before them stayed quiet.
Faith is not a sprint and it is not a marathon. Both are individual events. Faith is a relay, and the baton was handed to you by someone who refused to keep it to themselves.
The Relay walks through ten runners in the Bible, from Adam, the first to drop the baton, to Paul, with Jesus at the center of them all, to show what passing the faith along looks like when it works and what it costs when it doesn't.
Ten short chapters, one runner at a time: Adam, Moses, Joshua, David, Josiah, Jesus, John, Peter, Paul, and the writer of Hebrews. Plain, practical help for talking about Jesus with your kids, your friends, and the people you work with, without being strange about it. A simple daily footing: "I will share Christ with one person before the sun goes down."
I left pharmaceutical sales in 1995 for seminary and have pastored and discipled men at The Center for Executive Leadership in Birmingham since 2012. This was my first book. I also read the audiobook myself, so if you'd rather hear it than read it, you'll get it in my own voice.
Someone handed you the baton. Don't be the generation that drops it.
