Book Review: Sam Chan, Abbreviated Evangelism in a Skeptical World: How to Make the Unbelievable News about Jesus More Believable, Zondervan, 2018

Review:

Sam Chan’s new book Evangelism in a Skeptical World, is a very important book for all of us committed to relevant communication of the Gospel in the world. He has a clear understanding of the presuppositions and lifestyles of postmoderns and demonstrates throughout the book the ways to connect with this younger generation. He helps people move from the traditional western propositional approach of sharing the Gospel and gives very practical ways to reframe the Gospel within postmodern thinking. He encourages communicators to Resonate: describe, understand, and empathize with their presuppositions.…The goal is to get our audience nodding their heads and agreeing with us. (p. 197), dismantle: show a deficiency or dissonance in their presuppositions), gospel: complete their cultural storyline with the gospel (p. 255). Chan has a helpful section on contextualization and wonderful chapters on evangelism, gospel culture hermeneutics, and Story telling the Gospel. He makes an interesting observation that most international students are concrete – relational learners ... This simply means that they prefer learning from stories and not from abstract concepts … They learn better from hearing a story about how something works then from hearing an abstract theory that needs to be applied (p. 173-174). As a communicator, his approach has help me restructure how I preach and teach, and I’m looking forward to the positive results.

5 stars                        M.L Codman-Wilson, Ph.D. 4/14/18

Excerpt:

The aim of the evangelist: Retain and repurpose the culture’s story line. Gospel Message: “Your culture’s storyline is good. But Christ can make it better. Model of Christ: Christ transforms the culture’s storyline… It offers freedom from superstitious rituals. It offers freedom from the fear of evil spirits. And it offers a better way to find status, honor, and success… You only have to compare your life with the Asians who haven’t found Jesus yet: they’re still captive to superstitious rituals, fear of spirits, and the never-ending drive to find success through study, qualifications, and possessions (p 169).