How to Talk About Jesus by Sam Chan: a review

Chan has hit the spot in his title. No one talks about how to 'talk about Jesus'!

Koukl's books: Tactics, Street Smarts and The Story of Reality are useful resources in this field, but I've encountered little effort in the 'down and dirty' of actual conversations. Chan steps into this field with a welcome contribution, albeit a few years ago.

Let's move through the chapters.

Merge your Universes

Useful information about 'plausibility structure' and making friends of your neigbours: harder in high-rise than on suburban blocks of cottages, but there must be ways.

We have to learn to 'gossip the gospel' as the ancients used to do...reputedly. That is being able to weave tendrils of conversational openings that a listener might grab so you can take the conversation to where you want, for however long...sometimes just a word, a congruent phrase, and that's it. But if we all do it...there's a cumulative effect. 

Go to Their Things

Very useful chapter. Be part of the non-churched community (without being swallowed by it). Ensure your church as 'contact' events where people can enter the premises without being 'sand-bagged' by a preacher. If there is any form of address or presentation, it has to use common language and link to common perspectives and challenges.

I took a couple of friends to a 'coffee shop' run by my church. Coffee, some live music, then a 'sand-bag' of some theological student giving a 'clear presentation of the gospel'. It must have been a college assignment because it was as clear as mud to my friends, and touched not one aspect of any shared experience or common perceptions of life...my friends asked me to never invite them to a similar thing AGAIN. 

Coffee, Dinner, Gospel

The idea of ordinary social get-togethers is helpful, but 'trapping' people into a dinner party where they get preached at is not. I'd suggest you prepare a few 'fire-cracker' issues to raise that you can give a Christian/biblical tinge to and leave it there. Let others enlarge if they want to, or throw out a challenge...give them comfort to disagree, they might love that!

"Here's something I want you to disagree with; see how you go..." Something like that perhaps. 

Listen

Of course. Conversations are about listening: the better conversation is marked by you listening more! 

Chan's taxonomy of questions was OK, for the book, but I think Scharmer's has a better grasp of the range in what I'd call 'positive' conversations.

The four types of listening reflect the underlying principles of the opening of the mind, heart and will are:

1. Dowloading: This type of listening is limited to reconfirming what we already know. Nothing new penetrates our bubble.
2. Factual listening: We let the data talk to us and notice dis-confirming information. Doing this requires opening the mind—that is, the capacity to suspend our habits of judgment.
3. Empathic listening: We see the situation through the eyes of another. Doing this requires opening the heart: using our feelings and our heart as an organ of tuning in to another person’s view.
4. Generative listening: We listen for the highest future possibility to show up while holding a space for something new to be born.

 (from Medium 2019)

Tell a Better Story

Good idea, but it slips at one point into 'worship' language. No one want's to 'worship'. By this they think of ceremonies, rituals, incense perhaps, peculiar music, strange lyrics and cloud-cuckoo sentiments, bowing, kneeling...That's not Christian worship: its a life transformed into wholeness as we follow the man who brought God to earth.

Apart form that, the idea of the 'better story' is a useful one. We all use 'stories' to shape our lives. Christ is the better story, but it can require a long introduction. 

Tell them Stories about Jesus

Plenty of scope here that has to be used judiciously...'who is this Jesus character' could be the response in most cases. It also sounds a bit cute for my taste. I think I'd say something like "that reminds me of an episode from the career of Jesus of Nazareth...or Yeshua the Nazarene." He was a Jewish prophet of 2000 years ago...that might spin out into a conversation about who he was/is.

The you can go on to I like what he had to say a lot because I think it resolved the very human dilemma we are all caught up in.

Here I like to use Schaeffer's definition: mankind/humanity is noble yet cruel. We can make meaningful decisions that have real effect...how does a pile of cells do that?

Become their De Facto Chaplain

This can be very good, and his examples are great. I'll not spoil them here: read the book.

But it is about being alongside of someone who is reaching out for some real human contact and understanding: listening, form a posture of some personal adversity. 

It is about being kind and 'non-judgemental'.The types of questions that might work are of the "How did that come about?", "How does that make you feel" No solutions unless you are asked and are competent to give them, but avoid them, is my thinking. Let the person talk.

Lean into Disagreement

Of course, we Christians are happy with disagreement because we stand on solid ground! Disagreement shows engagement, interest, unless it is mere show and braggadocio. If the latter 'call it out', and ask to have a real conversation.

As Chan suggests, take them to the logical implicatons of their world view and its use in the present. 

Looking for Black Swan Moments.

Wife and I  took a cruise on a local bay. Leaning on the rail of the boat I was standing next to an older woman. I made a 'throw-away' remark about the 'wonderful' creation, or nature, if you like. Her response was 'I wonder why god bothered' (Her 'god' was a small 'g').

I asked "What do you mean?"   What she meant was her older husband had early dementia. Their lives were changing. She was grieving. I commiserated with her. 'But there's hope.  We weren't made for this world, we were made for a better place...we chatted briefly, and the she moved off.

For all its qualities the book has some deficiencies.

1. Unlike Koukl's idea of 'putting a stone in their shoe' as the 'gardening' aspect of evangelism, Chan sets the bar too high for most people. That is, he sees the main game not as representing Christ as an ambassador (ambassadors rarely seek to change their host nation's policies), but as a 'closer' in sales talk.

The main game is certainly to end with leading others to awareness of the real content of Christian faith, but the more frequent game is to actively sow the seeds.

While Chan doesn't 'close' too quickly, he spends most of his time on contact approaches, rather than connections. Now this is OK: getting involved with community (school) groups, hanging off your children's activities in the earlier years (say, up to 15 or 16). Connections flow, in some chapters, but the preparatory work is not emphasized.

There is little about 'testing' (in a nice way) the other's world view or picture of reality. Koukl talks about questioning tactics: prompting someone for their basic beliefs from some trivial thing: a ring they wear, a bumper sticker they display, etc. and asking about that..."What does that mean?" "Why do you say that?" "How does that work out?" 

This invites conversation, but doesn't necessarily want to get to a 'conversion' conversation. Indeed today we seem to want to race people to that, rather than help the questions they have develop and come into the open.

2. He spends little time on the huge task of de-theologizing language. These days, few people might really know who this Jesus chap is. Muslims think they know, so fruitful conversations can easily be had, if you have done some general research into Islam. So called 'New-Agers' (although that terms is passe now: almost everyone is a 'New-Ager' by default) might also have a better grip on Jesus, or 'the Christ' than the average person, or think they do. People from the sub-continent are also ahead of the game and can be open to discussion more directly. But not the 'average Joe'.

For the average person we need to use simple communicative language. Churches need to teach, practice and train their members for this, and encourage discussing with each other their attempts and outcomes for joint learning and skill-building. This is the hardest skill for most older Christians to master; older in the faith, I mean. Not necessarily in years.

Being adept with common language would also assist people develop conversation pathways that can get 'spiritual' or proto-spiritual without being inappropriate to the conversational topic or tone and so come across as impolite or gauche.

Alongside that, we need to learn to understand what a 'world-view' is and how it plays a role in evangelism at whichever level. I've never heard a sermon about this. I've never heard Schaeffer's discussion of this issue introduced to a congregation. Not that a sermon is a useful means of growing people of course. It's not. Adults learn by grafting in the new to their current stock of ideas and they do this by discussing, asking questions and having issues teased out. We don't do that in church, at our 'services' do we? 

3. The third is equipping. The previous weakness is an aspect of that. Another is the development of skills by local churches.

Christians need to be practiced in putting the Christian message, and 'pre-message' into everyday language, and to deal confidently, if not adroitly with the most common questions that people have, and discussion points that people raise that have Christian implications. Chan touches on this in principle, which is helpful, but I think churches need to up their game and also deal with such issues in discussion groups, not in that one-man, usually, performance known as the 'sermon show'.

Moreover the format of most church gatherings implicitly tells people that a) they have nothing to say, and if they did b) its not worth saying. Against this, the NT church was a place of community communion (as in talking to each other). Many contributed, questions were asked (a little to volubly in some cases, attracting Paul's rebuke to some noisy women), and people grew. The church grew. Except some of the addressees of the letter to the Hebrews seemed to have missed that memo: Hebrews 5:12. 

Some specifics 

Christians need to be able to easily deal with a few common issues:

The Bible: what and why it is, its textual reliability (Bible publishers can help by providing true tables of contents to the major stories or episodes in the books of the Bible, and short orienting intros to each book).

Church: why do you attend/be part of;

Jesus: who is he, why do you/should I follow him? Why is he the only way/

God: does he really exist...and who is he?

Christian: why you are one?

Science: hasn't it disproved the Bible?

Evil/suffering: how can a God of love and mercy allow such?

Training in dealing with these topics is not for the sermon-lecture. It is for focused workshops where people can discuss, simulate encounters, and develop skill in crafting their own approaches. 

The hard part about swinging a conversation to Christian matters is: can I answer the objection (let's make that a 'yes') and the segue from talking about the stock market to talking about values, then talking about how we value...I mean what value does life have if we are a bunch of molecules?  You can usually do it in a few steps to change the 'tone' to what we want to be effective and not 'that guy'.