Msgr. Charles Pope has a great review on Eric Sammons’ book The Old Evangelization.
However, many have taken up the phrase (the “New Evangelization”) in a less restrictive sense and use it in the marketing sense of “new and improved!” This has opened the terminology to abuse and misunderstanding such that it comes to mean that we must mimic secular marketing principles and “mega-church” tactics. To some, it also means that we must alter the message of the Gospel by emphasizing what is popular and pleasant, while minimizing what is challenging and countercultural.
“Welcoming” has become the watchword for many in world of the misconstrued “New Evangelization.” Being welcoming is most often used to mean being nice, pleasant, unchallenging, and completely inoffensive. The only problem with this is that Jesus, as we shall see, wouldn’t qualify for membership on such an evangelization committee.
As a kind of admonition and corrective to much of this, Eric Sammons has written, The Old Evangelization: How to Spread the Faith Like Jesus Did.