Brendon Gill, a New York theater critic wrote an article in the New Yorker magazine in which he was bemoaning the way all the Broadway musicals are miked and amplified. He said that in great old theaters where actors had spoken and sung with ease for fifty years, audiences are now obliged to listen to what he called a “totally phony sound.” He said that in an amplified world “the voice is never heard in its ordinary resonance ... it is pure tin” (James Harnish, “Like Father, like son,” June 19, 1983).

There is a resurgence of emphasis on evangelism in the church today, and we thank God for that.

With that being the case, why would I think about a theater critic’s word about a “totally phony sound” when I began to prepare a sermon on evangelism? Let me say it candidly. Evangelism can be p…