Video: Lessons on Evangelism from an Unlikely Evangelist

Collin Hansen: As a Christian, you probably feel at times like a stranger in a strange land. And you’ve considered how to respond. Should you retreat in cultural isolation? Or should you engage in political aggression to take back what you’ve lost?

Either option can be warranted depending on the situation. More than anything else, though, we need hope when we’re far from home. We need encouragement and insight from the men and women of Scripture, both the Old and New Testaments. Because God’s people have been faithful through the ages in the face of hostility, they can help us with everything from how we worship to when we protest. They show us how those with hope beyond this world can be faithful in it.

This is the premise behind a new book, Faithful Exiles: Finding Hope in a Hostile World, published by The Gospel Coalition and edited by Ivan Mesa and Elliot Clark. The chapter on apologetics was written by Claude Atcho, pastor of Church of the Resurrection in Charlottesville, Virginia. He previously served as a pastor in Boston and Memphis and wrote the book Reading Black Books: How African American Literature Can Make our Faith More Whole and Just. Claude features the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4 in Faithful Exiles, and he explains how her example can inspire us as we testify to Christ, even in today’s hostile world.

Claude writes, “Our witness or apologetics will have no pulse and no power apart from a life-giving experience with Christ that shapes us, day after day.” Claude joined me on Gospelbound to discuss the transformative power of personal encounters with Jesus, evangelism, how the gospel changed his life, and more.

Watch the full interview above, or listen in the Gospelbound podcast available anywhere you get your podcasts or on our website.