Building a Strong Culture of Evangelism in a University Campus Ministry with Gary Stidham

In this episode, Gary Stidham, long-time director of the Baptist Student Ministry at The University of Texas, Arlington and coach with The Campus Multiplication Network, shares about his ministry's journey to greater evangelistic fruitfulness over the past 15 years. The conversation highlights numerous practical things they've learned and put into practice and the heart and mindset behind it all.

What God has been doing through the BSM ministry that Gary leads is encouraging and exciting!  For the past ten years, their ministry at UT Arlington has seen at least one person make a decision to follow Jesus every week of the school year which, in total, amounts to hundreds of students who have taken the step to follow Jesus Christ. 

Gary is a down-to-earth leader and has a tone of genuine humility. Listen to what he shares in this episode to be encouraged and equipped for greater fruitfulness in your campus evangelism. 

Transcript

David: 0:35

All right. Well, Hey, welcome everybody to another episode of the college, faith and leadership podcasts. So great to have you joining again. And I am here with a very special guest. Gary stood him a collegiate minister from UT Arlington and Gary. Just awesome to have you joining the podcast today.

Gary: 0:55

Dave honored to be here. Appreciate you and your friendship and your ministry.

David: 0:59

absolutely, man. Yeah. It's just been so great to get to know you. I know we were just saying earlier that it feels like we've known each other for years, but in reality, it's only been like four months, but man just love your heart and love what God is doing through your ministry. There.

Gary: 1:15

Yeah, same. I'm really glad. And God's Providence. He connected us through campus multiplication network and, uh, it's been an honor to get to know you better and sharpen each other.

David: 1:24

Yeah, definitely. Well, man, I know one of the things that I've enjoyed just hearing about from you is just what God has done. In you and through your ministry there in regards to building a strong culture of evangelism where I know you shared with me, and you can share a little bit here with the podcast audience that, you know, you've, you've just seen a growing number over the years of people making a decision to follow Jesus through the ministry there. And I know that that's a desire that. So many have, and in fact why I believe that the college campus is one of the most strategic missions opportunities in the world today. Um, but just a lot of people don't necessarily see that same level of results and actual fruit. And so I'm excited for you to share. What you've learned and what you've done, that, that you feel has been helpful. Um, but, but, uh, Gary, if you would, firstly, just share a little bit of your story and your background and how it is. You came to be a follower of Christ yourself, as well as, uh, how you got into college ministry.

Gary: 2:30

Yeah, man. I appreciate the opportunity and we have seen evangelistic fruit, but it's all been a work of God. And we've just learned by making mistakes over the years. Uh, but my campus ministry story is I, I became a believer, uh, at the very beginning of high school, uh, out in far West, Texas, where I grew up and then attended university. Uh, but when I got there, I had never really been discipled. I think it was pretty immature in my fate and got involved in a good local church that preached the gospel and taught the Bible. And. But I got involved in a healthy campus ministry and through campus ministries the first time I was challenged to be a disciple of Jesus, to have habits and practices and no BDS to Christ in a way that really reflected what he wanted for all of our lives. And so I got my first opportunity to do Christian leadership, to teach a Bible study, to leave other people, to engage in missions. Um, had a pastor in my local church who met weekly with me and my roommate for about a year and a half to disciple us. And so that one-to-one, uh, disciple-making was a big part of my college ministry experience. And God used. That experience to call me into ministry. I assumed I'd be on the mission field, uh, at one point. Uh, but God ended up leading us to the university of Texas in Arlington, uh, which is where we've been for the last 17 years. Uh, and if. To give you just a snapshot of our context, that UTA, where a Dallas Fort worth metroplex is the fourth largest Metro area in the country. And so UTA Arlington is the city that's right. Halfway in between Dallas and Fort worth. So we're the urban university in Dallas Fort worth. So we, um, highly diverse, uh, fifth, most diverse in America, according to some. Measurements, uh, but majority minority, um, we have a ton of first-generation college students, ton of international students, kind of commuter students. Um, we do have, uh, we're S university of 46,000, but have, uh, uh, have only about 10 of those that live on campus. So that's who I am and where I'm at. Got a beautiful wife named Theresa. Who's my partner, one of my partners in ministry here, and two teenage sons, one who just went away to college and another that's in high school.

David: 4:41

that's awesome. That is great, Gary. Well, yeah. Thanks for sharing a little bit of that background and, you know yeah. I appreciate even you giving a little more context and explanation about what your university is like there, uh, I know, you know, just similar again in that I'm also. Serving in a urban context up in the Northeast. And so I think even when, you know, your average person hears that about doing college ministry in Texas, they may not exactly think exactly what, what you're doing. You know, you're, you're not, you know, you're not out in the middle of a, um, I don't know, a more rural setting, uh, you know, you're, you're, you're in an urban setting there, so yeah, that's awesome. Well, yeah, Gary, if you could just share some about your journey as it relates to evangelism, uh, item, you know, you've been in college ministry a long time. Um, what are some of the phases that you've gone through in terms of, growth and personally, as well as how that is reflected in your ministry?

Gary: 5:43

Sure. So when I, when we came to UT Arlington in 2003, um, I was the sole staff member and, uh, really felt insecure. I'm pretty sure I didn't know anything about what I was doing. Um, in my first year I was able to recruit a little bit of part-time help. I found a seminary student, a girl who had some campus ministry experience and, uh, Christy ended up being my partner, uh, building our ministry for about 11 years before she got married and had kids. Uh, but year by year, we got better and better at. Okay. Building events that had momentum at reaching Christian students and gaining attendance. And so we were seeing large crowds at events. We're seeing students discipled strengthened in their faith, but about five or six years in, we got broken hearted because we were having a few hundred students involved every week, but we were seeing scarce view. People come into Christ. And one of our, one of the convictions that we developed is that the purpose of campus ministry part and parcel to the purpose ought to be evangelist stick outreach. Um, because if all, if all we are is duplicating, the things that a local church can do, like providing worship and Bible study and, uh, and fellowship, then there's really not. A unique purpose for campus ministry. Uh, but what, uh, what campus based ministry can do that a single local church can, is to be on the campus seven days a week, equipping students to go into dorms to be on. And so we, we knew that was part of our mandate from our. Church supporting churches, but we were seeing so little fruit. So we've been getting began to be very burdened. Uh, we had a prayer movement where we started praying. We set aside a little prayer room and we signed people up to pray, uh, an hour at a time, uh, 40 hours a week. So they S they pray nine to five, Monday to Friday. Uh, we just started praying for revival in about, uh, about a year into that. Prayer effort. We became convicted that we were depending on relational evangelism. So we're doing small groups, just like most campus ministries, really major on small groups. We preach the gospel in our large group. Uh, we, we do outreach events, um, but we really we're training students saying, share Christ with your friends. Um, and what we had never had an emphasis on was just on doing higher initiative evangelism, where you'd go to. You go out two by two and talk to folks you'd maybe table with provocative questions to try to start spiritual conversations. So it became burdened to start. Doing that. And that was right at 10 years ago, I think in, uh, 10 or 11. Um, and, and we're really bad at it for about a year. And we saw very few people come to Christ in about, uh, uh, about a year. Ian, we. We realized we, we asked God, God, would you start saving people? And we tweak what we were doing. We paid the dumb tax and realized we were working against ourselves in some specific ways I can share in a minute. And we started seeing students come to Christ. And so that fall semester we saw three students come to Christ through. Two by two evangelism, the first week of school. And so that kind of jazzed our students up, got them excited. Um, and so they started sharing boldly because they saw all these people come to Christ. You know, we saw four or five the whole previous year, and then this year three, the first week. So they started sharing boldly and, and filling the sense of comradery that they were. Going out two by two together and sharing the next week, two more the next week, three more. And over the course of that year, we saw about 85 professions of faith. Um, and th and that, that trend has continued every year for 10 years. Now, we've seen a profession of faith every week. That class has been in session, um, at least one for, uh, going on 10 years now.

David: 9:42

Gary. That's fantastic. Um, I can imagine just that as these. Just resolve these testimonies. We're rolling in that. That was just faith building. Uh, what, what kind of change have you seen take place even in the students that have participated in this kind of outreach activity?

Gary: 10:00

Yeah, that's a great question. Uh, one of the things we realized, I think campus ministry, we major on discipleship, right? We say that's what we're. That's the key piece of what we do is to make disciples well, uh, I become convinced that that evangelism is one of the most powerful discipleship tools. Um, and one way I like to frame that is we make tons of kids who grew up in church and, you know, just put here's. My story is I had, uh, I. Part way through college. I read my Bible every day. I had a prayer life. I went to church, I was in fellowship. I had a discipleship leader and I never, ever, ever shared my faith. And I meet tons of Christians who, who are in God's word. They have a prayer life they're in fellowship and they never share their faith, but I've never met somebody. Who's emboldened and equipped and shares their faith often that isn't in fellowship with other believers, because who isn't in God's word, who doesn't have a prayer life, because there's something about the man addressing the fear of man that comes with. Having those conversations that comes with doing spiritual battle with the enemy. Um, and so by engaging in evangelism, it stretches your faith because you deal with your fear, it grows your prayer life because, you know, I can't save people. I can't convince people to turn from sin and to Jesus, God's got to do that. So I've got to pray. So it grows your prayer life. You you're terrified that you're going to say the wrong thing. In evangelism. So it drives you to God's word. Uh, and so, uh, one of the acronyms we use that we stole from Steve Shadrack is dice discipleship in the context of evangelism. And so what we saw is that we've had, we'd have a new freshmen come into our ministry and they'd see these upperclassmen who shared their faith. And so one, it became a culture where it just became normal to share your faith, but then it also became this. This catalyst, this fuel for discipleship because freshmen would start to share their fate and it would drive all the other spiritual disciplines. They became hungry, hungry for the comradery of having these partners that they were sharing Christ with and the dorms. And, uh, they became hungry for God's word and hungry for prayer.

David: 12:17

Yeah. Gary, I love that. Yeah. I've, I've heard, uh, Steve, Shadrack talk about discipleship in the context of evangelism dice, and I think that's powerful. Uh, even just what you were saying, because. You know, these other spiritual disciplines. I mean, man, you know, if you're, if you're trying to overcome fear well, that, that drives you to want to pray more. Or if you, you know, you're feeling kind of like intimidated to share Christ on your own, you think, man, I need to. Get with another, brother or sister in Christ. And just how I think that that's so wise to think of the connection that evangelism has. I know something that I've heard, some leaders in our ministry talk about, um, with every nation. Um, it is just, just even. the human body and how there's a need for yes. Nutrition, but there's also a need for activity and, and really how, you know, nutrition. Yes. You need to be feeding yourself on God's word and fellowship in these things, but also there's a need for obedience. And if we just sit back and we're just consumers, man, you know, that doesn't lead anywhere. Good. That just leads to spiritual obesity. We've got to take action in order to. You know, really be healthy.

Gary: 13:29

Yeah, that's exactly. That's exactly right. There's something about discipleship where when you call people to action, it's real discipleship. Um, I mean even the root of the word disciple is to follow and, um, and it implies action. Jesus, didn't call his 12 to. Sit and listen, he called them to come and follow. And, uh, uh, there's something powerful when as you disciple people, you give them jobs to do tasks, to do not, not, you know, the same task Jesus gave them to do. But, uh, to too often in the church, we view discipleship is head knowledge and not faithful obedience.

David: 14:06

Yeah. Yeah. And that's just energizing too. I think most people we don't want to just kind of be passive. I think you can get bored pretty quickly just being passive. But when you, you know, you kind of get in the game, you get on the mission. It's, you know, it can be a little scary of course, but it's also exhilarating. It's exciting. So, yeah. Uh, man, that's, that's really cool how you have seen God move in that area of your ministry. And I just, I heard as you were talking about the progress, I mean, just, I heard you, you really talk about prayer and you just laid this foundation of prayer and, you know, there was also this. Aspect of having more attractional type events. And it sounds like there, there was some, some good result that came out of that. And it sounds like just from other conversations that you and I have had, that that's still a part of your overall strategy. Uh, but where, you know, then you, you built in a more intentional equipping with relational evangelism and then adding to that, uh, what you call initiative. Evangelism and, uh, you know, uh, Gary, I have appreciated even in conversations that we've had, as you've kind of explained this, this combo of, of relational evangelism along with initiative evangelism, I think, I think it's helpful, um, the way you approach, uh, really not either, or, but you approach it as saying, Hey, there's a need and there's a value for both. Could you explain that a little bit?

Gary: 15:30

Yeah. Sometimes the ministry circles, we pit those two methods or those two philosophies evangelism against each other. And why do you, do you want to do, do we want to train students in relational evangelism? So they reach their roommates and classmates and coworkers, or do we do, do we just walk around on campus with clipboards all day? Uh, and the answer is I really. Am convinced that there's a role for both, uh, the higher end of evangelism, but, uh, as a way of fueling even better relational evangelism and the two really go hand in hand. Uh, one of the things we realized is we, as we emphasize people sharing boldly with, even with strangers and just taking initiative, like setting apart times during the week where they're going to share their fate. Um, that ended up fueling their relational evangelism too, because they realize if I can, if I can ask a stranger to share their spiritual background with me, I can ask my roommate to share his spiritual background with me. If I can broach this, uh, the gospel with a guy on campus, I can broach the gospel with a coworker at my job. And so it wasn't, uh, the professions of faith we started seeing. Weren't just. You know, these random strangers were meeting. They were the, there, there were a few of those, but there are even more of students who just felt emboldened because they, they got practice sharing their faith and they, uh, started sharing it in relational evangelism, far more effectively. Um, you know, one of the. One of the principles you want to get good at anything is you got to get your reps in. So if you want to get good at tennis, you're just going to hit the ball back and forth. Thousands of times, if you want to get good at, at whatever sport or skill or whatever, you just got to get reps in. And with evangelism, the more you do it, the better you get at it. Um, and, and I think one way we sabotage our students, if we only emphasize relational evangelism and maybe they're even an introvert and they don't talk to many people, then they're not going to talk to many people about Jesus. Um, but even extroverts can have fear, man. And I have fear man issues. And so they just don't bring it up very often. So they don't get to it. The rare and they might take a whole semester and say, I want to share my faith with my roommate. And then I go the whole semester and they bring it up at the very end and they've shared their faith one time. But if you've got a strategy for high initiative evangelism, that same guy can go out and have, you know, invite people to Bible study, have some spiritual conversations and he's, and it sort of demystifies it and makes it more. Something feels more like something I could do. I could, I could, I could do this with other people since I'm doing it with strangers. So we saw it emboldened our students tremendously.

David: 18:20

Yeah. It's so true. It's interesting how it actually can be counterintuitive that you would think talking to a stranger. Oh, well that's, that's intimidating, but you know, there there's. You know, there's less invested there versus talking to your roommate where you're going to have to see this a roommate every day. You know, if this, if this goes poorly, man, this could be worse. So, so in a way it is actually easier to talk to, uh, you know, someone just in the cafeteria

Gary: 18:47

Yeah.

David: 18:47

know, maybe you're sitting across from them at lunch or someone that you're not necessarily, uh, going to see every single day that, that actually. Though, maybe initially there's a, there's a higher hurdle of like, just breaking the ice with that person that, you know, there's not, maybe the stakes are actually as high in terms of how that could

Gary: 19:06

Yeah, absolutely.

David: 19:07

you know, with like, with a family member or a neighbor or somebody like that. So, yeah. That's great, Gary, just to clarify, I think I know what you mean, but when you talk about boldly sharing your face, could you, could you explain what you mean by that? Because some people, when they hear the word bold, they might. that for some people that might have a more negative connotation with it.

Gary: 19:28

Yeah, yeah,

David: 19:28

be more specific about when you say boldly sharing your faith? What does that mean? I'm guessing you're not talking about kind of, you know, getting up in the middle of campus and I don't know, being

Gary: 19:37

yeah. Yeah.

David: 19:38

anything like that. What do you mean when you say boldly sharing your faith?

Gary: 19:42

Yeah, I appreciate that question. I maybe, maybe I talk a bigger game than I actually have, but, uh, um, yeah, we, we definitely, we are not street. We do not do street preaching. We do not do in your face anything. Um, in fact, when we train students in evangelism, we w we have a little, uh, resource we wrote called salty, uh, and it's just some principles for how to do. Uh, higher initiative evangelism and some of the principles in that training one is that it's always upfront, always respectful and always kind and always permission and always permission-based. And so it, it, it not a conversation if say Dave and I were walking around, uh, on a campus. It not a conversation might go something like this. I might say, Hey, I'm Gary, this is Dave. Part of a Bible study on campus. And we just like to ask people to share their spiritual background with us. Would you be interested in sharing with us for just a minute or two? And so they knew exactly who we are. They know exactly what we want to talk about. We've identified ourselves as people of the book, Bible, Bible study members and we've, and we've asked them permission. And you, and when I asked that question on our campus, I might even have my hands up, like in a hold on. Uh, kind of gesture. Uh, so it's really clear that if they don't want to talk, I don't want to talk to them, uh, because we don't want to get in your, we don't invade your space. We don't want to have a conversation if you're like put off by it. Uh, one of the things that, uh, you know, if you read in, um, Scripture. There's you think about how the Holy spirit is always at work? He's always moving, he's convicted some people, his sin, and I look out over a big sea of students and I'm convinced there's some of them and the Holy Spirit's at work in those people's lives and he's convicted them a sin. He's drawing them to Christ they're seeking. And there's some that are not there yet. They're just they're turned off. And so the easiest thing to do is to ask. Tentatively, would you be interested in having a conversation when they say no, the, or even if they're hesitant, then we don't push that conversation. Um, and so we asked permission and we asked students just to, if they would be willing to share with us. And, uh, then, uh, in the, in our salty training, we just asked them a series of questions to get to know their. Them their spiritual life and where they put their hope. And at no point, are we trying to share the gospel with them? We're only trying to be like a doctor diagnosing the problem. So we're gonna, we're going to ask them about what they think happens after you die. What do you thinks on the other side? What do you, uh, what do you believe about God? What do you believe about Jesus? Um, and at the end of that, we're going to ask that same permission-based question again. Hey, would you be interested in. Hearing, uh, what the Bible says about those questions. If you're interested, I can share it with you in three to five minutes. And we just have a simple gospel tool that we share. And some people say they're not interested, but people who do they felt respected in that conversation. And they've said, sure, you can, you can share that. Cause they've been, if you've listened well and been kind and courteous, a lot of people will be really open to hearing what you, what you want to share. Uh, and so what we never do is force a conversation. What we are doing is looking for those people, like Jesus talked about in Luke chapter 10, that are people of peace.

David: 23:05

Yeah, Gary. That's. That's great. I appreciate that clarification. Yeah. Cause when you say you say bold, I mean, you're really talking about just again, the initiative piece of you're not passive, but you're more active in the process. So you're not talking about being obnoxious or aggressive or

Gary: 23:21

Yeah. Not at all.

David: 23:23

quite the opposite, but you're just saying, Hey, you know, by being bold, Hey, I'm not going to just shrink back and just, you know, Never take a step or never initiate a conversation with someone, you know, but that you are going to initiate and you're going to initiate respectfully. You're going to initiate, you know, and allow people to say, no, Hey, I'm not interested, but nevertheless, you're going to at least initiate a conversation, um, in a respectful, which I

Gary: 23:47

Yeah, absolutely. But bold and high initiative are synonyms to me. So yeah,

David: 23:53

Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah, Gary, I know in, uh, in our ministry with every nation and I think others use this tool as well. A lot of people are pretty familiar with the God test, which is, uh, a questionnaire. I think it sounds like similar just designed to, uh, though it's called a test. I mean, it's really is more of a questionnaire designed to generate some dialogue and such. Uh, so I love these conversation-based. Uh, tools, um, Gary and another, some other tools that you've mentioned, perhaps I could even link to them in the, uh, episode notes. What are some other tools or resources that you've found helpful, whether training resources that you and your ministry have, uh, developed or other things that have just helped you to, to really practically do some of the very things that you're talking about.

Gary: 24:41

sure. So, so we, uh, we go a little bit light on tools, but we have, uh, our, our primary tool is what we call salty. And it's just a, it's an acronym for start a conversation, ask questions, listen to the answers. Um, Tell the gospel, tell them about Jesus and why is yes or no? Where if God gives you, brings you to that point, you ask for a response, you, you invite them to response. And so we train on salty, quite repetitively. We try to get key student leaders competent enough that they can train other people on it. And it's, um, it's a very versatile tool. It's, uh, it's you can use it in a, kind of a high initiative evangelism context. You can use the same. Diagnostic questions, uh, sharing with a friend or a roommate, you can use the same questions. If you do an appointment with somebody who filled out a card at your table or at your event, and you do an appointment with them. And so it's just a very. Uh, versatile tool. And so what we like to say is we don't want to give students too many tools, because if they've, if they've had a little bit of exposure to a lot of tools, then they're not gonna use any of them. Um, and so we, you, we teach one gospel presentation, which for us is the three circles gospel presentation. And we teach one tool to help them guide a conversation. And then we just. Kind of repeat those ad nauseum. Uh, so that it's driven home. You know, if students know, if students have seen five gospel presentations, they may muddle them. They may not feel competent in any one of them. Uh, so when we've got our leaders together, where you have them pull out note cards and practice three circles may do it. Over and over because we want to get the reps in. So they're really comfortable and confident with it. Um, when a new semester starts, I pull out note cards and I practice three circles. Cause, um, I think, you know, I haven't been on campus in three weeks and I haven't shared the gospel. I want to make sure I'm sharp, not rusty. So yeah, we salty in three circles are our primary tools and we have some other teachings that are just kind of. Principles for relationship evangelism and how to lead a evangelistic Bible study, simple tools like that. And our website, if you want to link to it, uh, has all of those simple resources on it.

David: 26:53

Okay, perfect. Yeah, we'll do Gary. Yeah. That's good stuff. Yeah. I just, at the practical level, you know, I hear you saying better to be, really be proficient in kind of one thing, rather than to be loosely familiar with a few different methods and not really able to actually communicate any of them. So that makes a lot of sense from a training perspective.

Gary: 27:14

yeah, for sure.

David: 27:16

that's great. Well, Gary, just regarding the people that are making these decisions, uh, I know you and I have had a conversation about even the, the parable of the sower, um, and how that relates to some of this. I know I was even asking you not too long ago about man. How, how do you, think about. Just the various responses and people that respond, but then maybe you don't talk to you again and follow up. And the connection between evangelism and discipleship, I thought that was really helpful. And I appreciated your perspective on that. Would you mind sharing a little bit about that here?

Gary: 27:50

yeah. You know, um, When, when we started seeing a lot larger number of professions of faith, some, some people who are maybe more, uh, I don't know, doctrinaire in their outlook or, or, or just discerning, uh, started asking the question, well, how many of those new believers are following through with discipleship and, or getting involved in churches and getting baptized. And, uh, and the answer is, um, not all of them. Uh, and, and that bothered me whenever we started seeing a profession of faith. And then we'd have some people who fell away after a period of time, or we'd see a profession of faith, but man lost people's new Christians lives are messy. And, uh, and, and so some people you wanted them to grow, but they weren't. Growing as fast as you want. And so we, we have, uh, a new believer discipleship process. We have a little, uh, 13 week booklet from the navigators called growing in Christ. And so anytime somebody makes a profession of faith, we try to one-on-one with them through that 13 weeks. Um, but. We would be discouraged seeing people who fell away. And then we started reading this parable of the sower and the whole idea in that parable is that the sower sows, the gospel broadly, he throws lots and lots of seeds out and the seeds land on different kinds of soil. This is the words of Jesus. And so some get rejected. Uh, and then there's the fourth soil where some bears all this fruit, but then there's these two middle soils and there's this. There's third soil where it grows up and it gets choked and there's, there's a fruit, there's a plant there, but it's not bearing a lot of fruit because it says the cares and concerns of the world choke it out. But then there's a second soil where it says that somebody, they received the word with joy joyfully, but then they withered away because they never had a root. To begin with and we realize we're stressing out because something is happening that Jesus said was going to happen. He said, there's going to be second. If you're sowing lots of seed. If you're casting the net broadly, you will see second soil people. And so it went from being a discouragement that we'd see people make a profession of faith and fall away to being an encouragement that man, if we're, if we're sowing lots of seed, we will see all four soils. So, so every semester we see. We see people reject it. People fall away, people screw in their lives up and people bearing tons and tons of fruit. Um, and so what we don't want to do is to try to avoid like, you know, don't ever, uh, in fact, here's a story. I think I shared with you when we first started. Doing two by to evangelism. I had a student who was a really sharp guy who was helping kind of trumpet and lead that effort. And he had been part of a ministry, had gone on mission trips, where they had done that. And he said, you know, I could help train, but he had bought into some bad theology that said, Almost a false conversion is worse than no conversion at all. And he said, so the last thing we want to do is to manipulate people into a decision. And I agree, I don't ever want to manipulate somebody into a decision. Um, but he took it to the extreme where he said, we need to present the gospel to people. And then we need to tell them, just go get alone with the Holy spirit and pray and ask God, if you should follow Christ. And, and so that guy, you know, he helped us become a. A little more outward focused. Uh, but he graduated and we asked the question, is that the right thing? Because in the book of acts, people are cut to the heart and Peter doesn't say go home and just ponder the decision. He says, repent and be baptized. And the realization was that lost people don't know how to receive Christ. So, so in order to help people. In order to help lost people know how to receive Christ. We want to give them an opportunity to respond. So in, in our salty acronym, um, tell the good news is after the gospel, why in salty is yes or no. And so we came to the conviction that every time we share the gospel, we want to simply ask the question, uh, do you want, are you ready to follow Christ yet? Or what would stop you from. Committing your life to Jesus at this point. And we wanted to give everybody who heard the gospel a chance to respond to the gospel. And most people said not yet, or no, but some people started saying yes. And that was a big turning point for us is to simply every time we share the gospel, we ask people if they want to respond,

David: 32:27

Yeah, Gary, I really appreciate that. Uh, and, and to me, when I heard you share that, that was so helpful because I think I can tend to be maybe a little bit more of the, Hey, I don't, I don't want to force somebody into something or, or have a kind of a false response. I want it to be genuine. I want to see, you know, as I think you do as well, want to see people's lives genuinely transformed by Jesus, not just a kind of external conformity of sure. I'll raise my hand and that I'm going to assume I'm good, but you know, you made a.

Gary: 32:55

Yeah, absolutely.

David: 32:56

of saying lost people don't know how to respond. And so, you know, really making, making a clear opportunity for how someone whose heart really is being moved, making clear opportunity for them to respond versus kind of backing off at that moment and just hoping they figure it out.

Gary: 33:14

Yeah, absolutely. We, um, and the Holy Spirit's funny, man, you, uh, there's some people you think, man, this guy should be, he's heard the gospel a thousand times. He's already, but it just doesn't quite make it, uh, but funny story, uh, I was on campus with a student. It's less than two semesters ago. And we were, uh, we're just having conversations with people. And we ended up having this long conversation with a guy who kept giving us permission to keep talking to him. And we're very different. Like, man, if you're busy and understand, he's like, no, it's fine. But if you looked at his countenance and his demeanor, he did not look into the conversation. He's like not making eye contact. It's kind of staring off. You'd look at his phone. And, and so we, you know, we'd say he'd share some things with us about his spiritual background. He asked us to share the gospel. We did, uh, and we got to the end and we're like, this guy is not into this at all. And S but we decided to ask the yes or no question and say, man, is there, uh, or, you know, or how, how ready are you on a scale of one to 10 to follow Jesus? And he like stared me straight in the eye. And he said, I don't know why, but for some reason I think I'm ready. I think today's like basically the taste of the day, uh, and that, and he committed his life to Christ and he's been, you know, he's still walking with Jesus stay, but if, and so what we, what we don't want it, we don't want to say no for other people. We want to ask people and let them say yes or no to the gospel.

David: 34:47

Well, Gary, this has been such a helpful conversation. And, uh, man, just so appreciate you and your insight sharing your experience. Uh, I'm just hopeful that even as others hear this, that, that others are going to go on a similar journey of just taking some next steps to become even more fruitful in evangelism within their campus ministry, including both ministry leaders, staff members, as well as students. And as you mentioned, It was some students that really helped to initiate some of

Gary: 35:17

Yeah, absolutely.

David: 35:18

the two by two evangelism. And, and so, um, man, just appreciate you. Thanks so much for sharing.

Gary: 35:25

Yeah, I really honored to be here. Appreciate you and your ministry, Dave.