Thursday, February 11, 2021

Evangelist Sam Chan on Creating a Space for Non-Christians to Belong


Sam Chan’s life is a laboratory for evangelism. The son of Chinese immigrants to Australia, Chan watched his parents evangelize the neighborhood and local college students. Dinners and Sunday lunches often included guests, and from the very beginning, evangelism was part of the rhythm and fabric of his family’s life.

He became a medical doctor, but the call to ministry was irresistible. After four years, he left full-time medicine and entered seminary in Australia and postgraduate studies in Chicago before returning home to teach in seminary. For the past five years, he’s been the public speaker for City Bible Forum, an organization that networks Christians and evangelizes the workplace in business districts across all major Australian cities. He connects with young, postmodern, post-reached and post-Christian audiences regularly.

Evangelism is a rich part of his personal life as well. He likes listening to behavioral psychology podcasts to better understand why people believe, and why they resist belief. He takes the long view, evangelizing through lengthy conversations, deep relationships and community.

He also writes a blog at EspressoTheology.com where he gives short bursts of theology, taking readers “from your world to Jesus in 60 seconds.” So it’s no surprise that his latest book is called How to Talk About Jesus (Without Being THAT Guy): Personal Evangelism in a Skeptical World (Zondervan).

Here, he talks to Outreach about the sort of evangelism we desperately need in today’s post-Christendom West. (Oh, and part of Chan’s lab of evangelism continues to be in a hospital. He still practices medicine a couple of days a week.) Read More

Also See:
Opening Evangelism’s Overlooked Back Door

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