In Evangelism in a Skeptical World, Sam Chan combines the theological and biblical insights of classic evangelistic training with the latest insights from missiology, illustrating his insights with real-world examples drawn from over fifteen years of evangelistic ministry.

Recently, Christianity Today awarded it a 2019 Book Award for apologetics/evangelism. Winfried Corduan, professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at Taylor University, said this of Chan’s new manual for evangelism:

For every generation, or maybe even every decade, a book comes out that will become a standard reference for evangelism and apologetics. This book has the potential to become the leading manual for Christians engaged in outreach for many years to come. Chan discusses a wide set of issues ranging from the theology of evangelism to how to give evangelistic talks to the place of apologetics…

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You’ve heard it said the twenty-first century is markedly different from the twentieth. It’s not only because we have terrorism scares, self-driving cars, and Facebook. Church attendance is decreasing, religious Nones are increasing, and the way people view and interact with truth has changed.

Yet many Christians and churches are evangelizing as if we are still living in the twentieth century—and failing to make the unbelievable news about Jesus more believable.

Although the essence of evangelism is the gospel—the message that Jesus Christ is Lord—the task of evangelism is our human effort of proclaiming this message. This task used to primarily mean quoting Scripture, or explaining the believability of the Christian faith through clever arguments.

Not anymore.

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If the gospel is the “good news about Jesus,” then why do so many people reject it? If Christians bear this “good news,” how can they better share it using methods that are effective in today’s post-Christian world?

Evangelism in a Skeptical World offers actionable advice for making the unbelievable news about Jesus more believable. It also explains why people often reject this news in the first place, equipping Christians to make it more enticing to non-Christians they know.

Here are at least ten reasons why people often reject the gospel, and what you can do about it.

1) The gospel doesn’t fit their plausibility structure

Plausibility structures “are accepted beliefs, convictions, and understandings that either green-light truth claims…

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Most Christians know that they should be engaging in the work of evangelism, but few know what evangelism is.

For example, is the stay-at-home mom who helps run the play group at her church doing evangelism if she incorporates Bible stories into the craft activities? Can a play group become an evangelistic play group?

Or does evangelism only occur in more “conventional” tactics: witnessing on the street, leading large crusades? Are those the only ways the gospel of Jesus Christ can be communicated, the only way people can evangelize?

In other words: What counts as evangelism? What is evangelism?

This word evangelism carries a lot of baggage, tradition, and emotion. Furthermore, most people have been poorly equipped with evangelism methods that are no…

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How do we really know that Jesus rose from the dead?

I could give you a traditional answer. It would be something like:

“Well the Bible says he rose from the dead, and the Bible contains many contemporary eyewitness accounts which are corroborated by non-Christian, non-Biblical evidence, and it’s been transmitted to us accurately through multiple sources.”

This is how many Christians would respond, and they would be right.

Or, I could say:

“You know what? We live as if Jesus rose from the dead, because we live as if there is such a thing as unconditional love, because somehow we feel that we should love everyone no matter what—especially the marginalized, the poor, and the outcast.”

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