I’m profoundly saddened by the passing of Randy Newman (1956–2024). When news of his death became public, it was touching to see how many people expressed their thankfulness for and appreciation of Randy’s ministry.
Many knew him as an author or a senior fellow at the C. S. Lewis Institute; others were shaped by his teaching as a professor at Reformed Theological Seminary; still others enjoyed a deeper friendship marked by curiosity, encouragement, and laughter.
I thank God I had the privilege to know Randy in each of these capacities.
Curiosity
My first exposure to Randy was through his book Questioning Evangelism (2003), where he modeled Jesus’s posture in using questions to draw out a questioner’s deeper concerns and objections to Christianity. Writing during the height of the New Atheism movement, Randy added a needed voice to the apologetics conversation—not by returning their strident rhetoric about Christian belief with his own sarcastic language but by asking questions.
He was adept at turning a question designed to pin Christians down into an opportunity to have a substantial conversation, all because he saw that questions were a mirror of the questioner’s heart.
Although Randy wrote the book on asking questions (which was republished in a third edition in 2023), his real strength was his ability to listen. Randy’s final book, Questioning Faith, was the product of insights he’d gathered from hundreds of conversations he had with new believers about how they came to faith. He was a present conversationalist whose gift was never asking a close-ended question. Randy would happily sit and listen to you as if you were the only other human on the planet. His ability to make you feel seen was a gift to many, and I’m confident that was what made him such a fruitful evangelist.
His ability to make you feel seen was a gift to many, and I’m confident that was what made him such a fruitful evangelist.
Encouragement
Randy was the consummate encourager, and I became aware of this in perhaps one of the most unlikely environments: seminary. Many Christians lack confidence in sharing their faith and so taking a class on evangelism with an “expert evangelist” could be intimidating.
Where he could have guilted or coerced his students to share their faith, Randy instead led with humility and courage: he would be the first to admit he had squandered evangelistic moments, but his joy in Christ would propel him (and us) to continually try and try again, resting in the truth of God’s sovereignty through—and even in spite of—our evangelistic giftings.
One thing Randy would remind us of again and again in our class was that people who become Christians will often need dozens of interactions with the gospel and several relationships with followers of Jesus. Even if we feel our evangelistic skill is lacking, our friendship with nonbelievers is nonetheless vital in their lives. Conversion involves a change of heart, but it also coincides with a change of relationships, and God rarely brings about the former without the latter. So Randy encouraged us without ceasing to not view non-Christians as projects to complete but as people to love.
Laughter
For those who’ve read his books or heard him speak, one of the most memorable qualities about Randy was his laughter. Growing up in a Jewish family in New York, he inherited and developed a wry, witty sense of humor and an ability to laugh at himself and to point out the hilarity of the world around him.
Randy once said to me that his favorite C. S. Lewis book was The Screwtape Letters, a work of satire Lewis wrote from the perspective of a senior demon writing to a younger demon about tempting humanity. Lewis recognized humor’s power to overcome evil and the Devil. Randy embodied what it looked like to have a levity of spirit that buoyed the soul amid despair, and he’d draw on humor not to distance himself from the world or from pain, or to shield a hidden wound, but to remind him and those around him of transcendence, of that consummate fulfillment of heaven that lies at the end of every longing and desire we have.
His joy was the joy of heaven, and the time you spent with Randy made you long to possess that kind of joy for yourself. You knew that if you had what he had, you could face anything.
My Friend, Randy
It was a great privilege to know Randy as a student, a pastor, and a friend. I’ll miss our quarterly conversations about books we’re reading, what evangelistic conversations we’re having (and how to help one another have better conversations), and how Christ is shaping our lives, ministries, and relationships.
His joy was the joy of heaven, and the time you spent with Randy made you long to possess that kind of joy for yourself.
These “evangelistic accountability meetings,” as we sometimes called them, were particularly helpful. I’d ask for advice on how to talk to my retired Jewish neighbors at the dog park, and he’d ask for ideas about how to talk to the young people in the community college class he enrolled in as a way to meet nonbelievers. We’d debrief conversations, talk about the next steps we’d want to take in them, and then laugh about how people are never as predictable as we wish they’d be.
We’d end with prayer and mutual encouragement—Randy encouraging me in my work as a pastor, and me praying for his continued health and stamina to keep writing, speaking, and spending his best efforts on his wife, children, and grandchildren.
It was a great privilege to know Randy as a student, a pastor, and a friend.
When we’d get together, I’d ask Randy what he was working on. “This and that,” he’d say, but then he’d describe a book idea that he said he’d probably never get to. He wanted to write a book about music and how it plays a role in evoking the longing for another world, the world we were all made to inhabit. And though Randy will never write that book, he’s now listening to and participating in the most glorious symphony there is, in an unending chorus with his Lord.
Well done, Randy.