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Sam Chan Pic

Sam Chan is a national communicator for City Bible Forum and regularly trains Christians in how to do evangelism in today’s world. He is the author of Preaching as the Word of God: Answering An Old Question With Speech Act Theory and blogs at EspressoTheology.com.

What is one thing you wish all Australian Christians knew about evangelism in today’s world?

The premise of evangelism is that God uses our human attempts as the natural means for his supernatural work of saving someone. So, on the one hand, we can just give evangelism a go. If God chooses to save someone, it doesn’t matter how feeble our attempt might be – God will save.

There is no secret silver bullet method that will be guaranteed to work. And there is no ‘you must do it this way or else you’re wrong’ method. I’ve met gifted Christians who were so scared that their methods were going to be judged as wrong by other well-meaning Christian leaders.

On the other hand, your question mentions Australian and today. So we also need to be sensitive to our 21st century Australian cultural context – which I call post-modern, post-reached and post-Christian. Methods that once worked really well don’t seem to have the same traction. And methods that work well in other countries, might not work so well here.

Australians today – rightly or wrongly – form beliefs based on intuition, emotions and community groups. Where we once tried to win the mind, we now also need to win the emotions, hearts and trust of our friends.

So this is an exciting time for us to be creative and explore other methods of evangelism – especially through the creative arts. This is also the time to explore other biblical metaphors of salvation which might have more existential traction with our Australian friends. For example, my friend who became a Christian in the 1990s really loved the forgiveness aspect of salvation. Today others might find more connection with freedom, or peace, or adoption.

You regularly train Christians in what it takes to do evangelism in today’s world. Do you think that Christians are in general more anxious than they used to be? If so, what are the main causes and what can be done that might help them be more confident in their evangelism?

If we are more anxious about evangelism there are many good reasons! First, in the Western narrative, Christians are now the bad guys. We are the ones who oppress, harm and take away freedom.

Second, we have a strict sacred-secular divide that has been imposed on not just us, but our friends. Australia is what I call an unofficial, de-facto closed country. It’s almost impossible to talk about matters of faith, values or worldviews in public.

Third, most Australians simply do not believe in a transcendent, interventionist God. When we talk about God and the Bible, we may as well be talking about unicorns, fairy-god mothers and mermaids.

As a result, our evangelism needs to be like a lifestyle change. The analogy is fitness. Every New Years day, we promise ourselves that we’re going to get fit. So we add something to our lives – maybe a 5am run, or we sign up to the gym, or we take up a diet. But after a few months we stop. Instead, fitness needs to be a lifestyle change, not something extra that we add on to our lives. Our whole life needs to become fit.

It’s the same with evangelism. It’s not simply an evangelistic church event or brave conversation that we add onto our busy lives. Instead, our whole lives need to become evangelistic. We do this by becoming friends with non-believers. We invest time into our non-believing friends. We become part of their trusted network of friends. We go to their events, parties and birthdays. It’s just as much about being as it is about doing.

In doing so, our non-believing friends might gradually adopt our plausibility structures. When this happens, the Gospel – which is true – will also become more and more plausible to them.

Image: ‘Street Preacher’ © sframe depositphotos.com

In Part 2 we ask Sam about conversion in today’s society.

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