The Speak Life Podcast, sharing Jesus in everyday life.
SPEAKER_01The computer games industry is worth more than the movies and the music industry combined. Each year, two and a half billion of us spend $150 billion on games. Games that put you in the driver's seat. Games that make you the hero of the story, as you collect each power-up, ascend through each level, and finally defeat the big bad boss. But one game challenges all that. Its creators, Ryan and Amy Green, have made a game that's hard to play. In fact, it's a game that's impossible to win. Because this game mirrors life. And in real life, you're not in the driver's seat. You don't choose your destiny, and you cannot defeat the big bad boss. Death always wins. That dragon cancer is a memorial to Ryan and Amy's young son, Joel, who for four years fought the dragon of brain cancer. And lost There are many things you can do in the game. The one thing you can't do is save your hell you can play the game. Loading It's another level. You find yourself on a boat crossing over to the other side. And there is joy. No one can, but through it, there is freedom, feasting, and joy. You cannot win the game, but you can be carried through death to a life beyond it. You see, Amy and Ryan Green are Christians. They believe in a dragon slayer. But the slayer is not Joel. And he's not us. The true hero is Jesus. And at Easter, he took on the final enemy, death. On the cross, he fought to the death. On Easter Sunday, he gained the victory, and everything is now different. As one hymn puts it, death is dead. Love has won. Life is not a computer game. Death is not a boss we can defeat. But Easter brings news of a hero. One who can carry us to a life beyond that dragon, Cancer. And even beyond that dragon, death.
SPEAKER_03Welcome to the live cast. Hello. It's not actually live though. It's not live. Welcome to the not live cast. But we're still casting. On the 9th of April, we're recording this on the 8th of April on a Monday. I can't uh be around uh today, so that's why we've recorded in advance. Today. Today's so confusing. What yeah, what tense should I use? The Blue Perfect. My favourite tense. No, no, no.
SPEAKER_05Um so yeah. Yep, so we're not, uh you can probably tell we're not in either the Speak Life Studio because it doesn't exist anymore, neither are we in my spare room. We're currently billeted at Holy Trinity Eastbourne. I was gonna say Brompton.
SPEAKER_03That's just the uh default there. That's the most famous Holy Trinity of all the. Yes. Is it really? It kind of is. Name a more famous Holy Trinity. I was thinking the Trinity Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. No, I forgot God. Um Holy Trinity Eastbourne had very kindly uh let us uh stay where uh they are so that we can knock down the old studios and put up big proper studios. And I stood in the studio space just uh this morning, and it's pretty exciting. It's like massive, tall ceilings, and don't know why I looked over there. Yeah. I made you imagine it. And um, it's gonna be fantastic. And we're gonna be able to have lots of different sets. And we were thinking just today, what kind of sets, what sets should we have for the for the life?
SPEAKER_05The lifecast, you know, because I mean this is fine, isn't it? But I mean you wouldn't want this, would it? It'd be a little bit sterile, just us at a desk, I think, you know.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. I think a fireplace.
SPEAKER_05I'm thinking wing back chairs.
SPEAKER_03Wingback chairs, a brandy in one hand, Chesterfield sofa, pipes, and uh ferns everywhere, obviously.
SPEAKER_05Yep.
SPEAKER_03Uh lots of potted plants, but uh that'll be that'll be something in May we'll be able to get back into our studios, and then from May we'll start to build different sets that might work for the live cast. Um but yeah, if you can think of what what does the live cast look like when you tear down the blue kind of wallpaper and uh the awards and the awards for you know best. What should it look like? Well, we shall see. Um you just saw at the top of the show uh That Dragon Death, um, because we've got a series of videos being released at Easter, um, and they're all themed around the most devastating computer game ever made called Bat Dragon Cancer. And uh Paul, you've been editing um an interview that I gave or that they gave to me. Yeah. Um Ryan and Amy Green. Ryan and Amy Green, and uh yeah, uh a quite moving story, really, about taking the tragedy of them losing their son Joel and actually turning it into a memorial that has blessed millions of people. Um and I think uh you're in for a real treat with that video that's going to drop next Monday. Yep, we have a sort of a 40-minute um interview where they really go into um their kind of theology of the cross, and uh I think before the tragedy struck, I think they had very much a um a theology that's um God shows up in our midst to heal now, and of course, when your five-year-old son dies and you've got that theology, something something's gonna happen. And what happened for them is you know, Amy sort of said, it's been amazing to us how our entire theology could change, but God could stay the same. Um, which yeah, you'll have to listen to the interview. But I think uh they gave such wisdom there, and uh I think we're gonna be blessed by it. And uh, if you want to help us out, uh give.net slash Easter is our crowdfunder for the Easter videos, and uh, we always want to share our videos so that they are free at the point of access. Um, but uh obviously that's costly to us. But if you want to help us to push out those videos a little further and a little wider, uh you can go to give.net slash Easter and help us with that crowdfunder. And if you just want to share one of the videos, we've uh released a 15-minute video, which is the documentary, and then a four-minute video, uh, a much more shareable uh piece of content that you can either share on social media or perhaps use in church, uh perhaps on Easter Day. Um it might serve your your resurrection preaching uh to think about how we can't slay that dragon death, but Jesus has. Um so today we are thinking about reaching the negatives, um, and that's that's not about sort of reaching pessimists, um, it's about reaching people who are far from the gospel. What do we do when people are far from uh the gospel? I've just been uh in the States, so last week Paul was uh uh broadcasting from his bedroom because I was in Indianapolis. Was it your bedroom or a spare room?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it was my spare room. Oh very good. That would be a different kind of you know set, wouldn't it? Just me in the bed, you know, just in my gym jams.
SPEAKER_03Capaco. Yeah. So last week you might have met uh Christiane from uh the conference. Uh she was yeah, she was pleased to have met Glenn Scriven.
SPEAKER_05Very overwhelmed, isn't it? Very excited.
SPEAKER_03Why are you never that overwhelmed?
SPEAKER_05The first time.
SPEAKER_03It wears off after a while. Um but yes, I was at uh an evangelism conference, a conference on evangelism uh run by the Gospel Coalition, and it really did strike me that America, certainly certain parts of America are a very different context for evangelism than the unchurched UK. And the question comes, you know, how do we reach those who are very far from the gospel? And one way that people kind of want to measure how far people are from the gospel is using the Engels scale. Um so uh James Engel back in 1975 published this book on what's gone wrong with the harvest, and he came up with this scale. And if you're in the negatives, you're not yet a Christian, and you might you might start off at negative eight, but really uh a conversation with someone who is far from the gospel, said Engels, is not really about the conversion step necessarily. The conversion step would be to go from minus one to zero and to begin your Christian journey. And Engels said, well, actually, if you move someone from minus seven to minus six, that's amazing. If you move someone from minus eight to minus five, that's an incredible conversation, even though they're still far from converting. It's not about closing the deal, necessarily. It's not about closing the deal, but but helping people on their journeys. Um what was interesting to me, I just looked up the original Engels scale because lots of people have kind of adapted his Engels scale. But originally in 1975, his scale went back to negative eight. That's as far from the gospel as you can get. But in 1975, um negative eight for Engels was awareness of a supreme being, but no knowledge of the gospel. I just thought that was very interesting. But um, back in 1975, the furthest from the gospel that Engels can kind of imagine in terms of having a fruitful gospel conversation, is that someone who had an awareness of God already just needed to hear the gospel. And I just thought that's very interesting. And these days when people use the Engels scale, they they tend to start at negative 10. Um, someone who has no knowledge of God whatsoever, an atheist. And I just wonder how, you know, how many of my conversations evangelistically actually don't even fit onto the Engels scale. They're sort of minus nine or minus ten. Um and it just goes to show that different contexts will require uh different thinking um when it comes to evangelism. Um but what do we do with those who are kind of far from the gospel? And uh it seems to me there are there are sort of two camps when it comes to those who are far from the gospel. Um you have the 1 Corinthians 1 camp and you have the Acts 17 camp. Um so Paul, you've got 1 Corinthians 1 in front of you. So what are the what are the 1 Corinthians 1 type people saying when it comes to reaching the unreached?
SPEAKER_05So, I mean, particularly we're saying that the way to do it really is about simply preaching Christ crucified. I mean, that's the classic, isn't it? So uh 1 Corinthians 1, 20, let's go from 22. Um for Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles. And that's the kind of classic, isn't it? People often say, well, what what is at the heart of what we want to proclaim it's this, it's Christ crucified, and so if we're not doing that, what are we doing? You know, wasting our time.
SPEAKER_03And like those who are seeking for wisdom, Paul's like decidedly not giving them what they're seeking, which is fascinating. You know, there are these Greeks who are demanding wisdom.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, foolish, yeah, and these things are foolishness, you know, to the what to the Gentile stumbling block to the Jews. What was it? It was Dawkins, isn't it, where he says something like it was it Lennox who asked Dawkins something along the lines of could you conceive of a God? And he said something like he could, but the idea that he God came to earth and died on a cross, you know, lived as a carpenter, died on a cross, it's just so petty.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_05That was his kind of word.
SPEAKER_03It's unworthy of the universe.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that kind of thing. And actually, that's precisely what this kind of thing talks about, isn't it? You know, if God is gonna show up and do something, surely God will be the powerful, majestic figure, um, full of awe and wonder, not this man who comes and bleeds and dies on a cross. Yeah. It just looks so petty and pathetic and foolish.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, even those who are asking for wisdom from that mindset, Paul like explicitly doesn't offer them that. He puts a stumbling block in their way, which is like, that's not very nice, putting a stumbling block, like literally like laying down a stone in front of people, so they will stip, so they will, you know, like stumble on it. Um what what what kind of nasty piece of work does that? Well, Paul does. Um and you know, and yet he goes on to say that actually preaching Christ and Him crucified is the wisdom of God, and it is the power of God. It's just not the wisdom or the power that people had thought that they wanted. And so he he gives them something entirely different that turns out to be wise, and it turns out to be powerful, but not in the way that the wise and powerful had imagined. Um the 1 Corinthians 1 school is just, you know, we would kind of say, you know, everyone who has an objection to Christian faith, it's just a smokescreen for unbelief, really. Um they don't really want to know. They they you know, they say they want to be wise, but when you actually offer them the wisdom of Christ and Him crucified, they just they just think of it as folly. So, from a 1 Corinthians 1 sort of point of view, you you you treat every uh every objection to the faith as a kind of a smokescreen for unbelief, um, and you preach Christ and Him crucified. Um that's 1 Corinthians 1. But then on the other side, you've got this this other school of apologetics, um, and it draws from Acts chapter 17. In Acts chapter 17, Paul is in Athens, it's the the very heart of where you know wisdom lies. Here are all the Greek philosophers, they are at the Areopagus, and um I love in Acts 17, verse 21, now all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new. Um that's kind of all of Greek philosophy in a footnote, just dismissed. Um and what does Paul do? Well, actually, you know, it it it does say that in verse 17 he reasoned in the synagogue with the Jews and the devout persons. And it says he goes into the marketplace, and in verse 18 there are these Epicurean and Stoic philosophers, and they say, What does this babbler wish to say? He seems to be a preacher of foreign divinities, because he was preaching Jesus and the resurrection. And I'm always amazed by Paul's first move with these cultured Greek philosophers is to preach Jesus and the resurrection, which are the two most nuts ideas that a Greek person could ever imagine. You know, it's like Jesus, who the heck is Jesus? Like, like there's nobody Jewish rabbi, self-styled Jewish rabbi, who was never a part of the establishment, never went through the accepted schools, never wrote a book, right? Never led an army, never entered political office, never entered, you know, military service. And yet here he is. I'm meant to I'm meant to listen to this guy who's crucified in his 30s. Um, okay, Jesus and the resurrection, and resurrection to the Greek mind is just like vulgar, just disgusting, just you know, um, the body is a tomb. We don't want to be embodied, do we? And and Paul is like, no, no, no. Let me tell you the good news of this, you know, this loser rabbi who was crucified as an enemy of the state, and let me, you know, wrap it on about how we're gonna have bodies forever. Hooray! And the the Greek mind just thinks this is nuts and vulgar, and they just think he's a babbler. And then, you know, Paul goes to 30,000 feet from verse 22 and he and he gives them the big picture, but when he gives them the big picture, he basically says, Look, everything you know about God is actually wrong. So from verse 23, he says, As I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription to the unknown God. What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. And there's a question then, like, is Paul kind of is he building a bridge with the Athenians? Is he basically saying, Yeah, you you basically know God, let me fill in the details? Or is he saying, the one thing you guys know about God is that you don't know him? And I tend towards the the latter interpretation. But within the school of apologetics that turns to Acts 17, uh, it's very important that Paul is building bridges here. And so someone who camps out in Acts 17 sees Paul as building bridges and uh seeing how there is truth in what the the Athenians are thinking and building on that a kind of a Christian worldview. Because he does actually quote from their poets. It's like you know, quoting from the from the rock songs, you know. As Bruce Bringstein once said, Yeah, everyone's got a hungry heart. You know, and so you you see, if you if you camp out in Acts 17, you see the utility in you know quoting the authors in that cultural space. Um and you know, he he leads to a kind of a gospel appeal by saying that God has fixed a day when he will judge the world in righteousness, he's given proof of this to all people by raising that man from the dead. Um that's Acts 17, verse 31. And so he leads to a gospel kind of conclusion. And those people in Acts 17 who like Acts 17 a lot tend to say that this is sort of stepping stones evangelism. You take people from the Athenian worldview to the Christian worldview. Um but I just don't think it's I don't think that's what's going on here. I I think he is quoting their own poets, he is quoting their own philosophers, but he's quoting them against their own cultural narrative. He's basically saying, you know, the poets say, in God we live and move and have our being. If you really thought that, why are you building little houses for God in Athens? Why are you building these little temples for God? Like, that that doesn't make sense, and and you're even contradicting your own poets. Um so he does quote their poets, but he quotes their poets against them, really. Um not really as stepping stones towards his own view of things. Um so to me, Acts 17, even though it's often quoted as it's often used as as sort of vindication for a stepping stones kind of evangelism, I don't really think it is. I think it's act- I think Acts 17 and 1 Corinthians 1 is basically saying the same thing. You know? He is basically preaching Christ having crucified, this vulgar, ridiculous concept, you know. So is reaching the negatives, is reaching the negatives about building stepping stones and trying to get people from a negative eight to a negative seven and then a negative seven to a negative six. Um I don't think so. I don't think so. I think what Paul is modeling here is actually he wants to talk about who is God, you know. Um and he goes back, he goes back to real basics with the Athenians. You know, God doesn't live in your houses, we live in God's house. Um he goes he goes right back to the the the who is God question. And that's interesting to me because like at the the the Gospel Coalition Conference, um I did a little panel discussion with um some other uh evangelists, and we were at one stage asked, what is the sort of the one doctrine that we feel um we really need to cling on to in a secular age to be able to preach the gospel uh especially to the youth. Um and it really struck me that the one thing we really need to do is to start off with which God are we talking about? And to be really clear that we're talking about the Jesus God. Um but somebody else who watched that. Video sort of reflected back to me and said it's interesting that those who are in uh a more churched setting, it it it wasn't as obvious to them that we needed to go back to the which God question. Whereas it seems it seems to me that the the more you are encountering people who are negative eight, negative nine, negative ten on the Engels scale, the more you actually realize we just we just need to go right back to basics and figure out which God are we talking about. So should we have a look at um have a look at that panel discussion? And then off the back of that uh we'll think about how we actually address the question of which God we're talking about in evangelism. Centered theology and a a knowledge of God that is focused in Christ is just so vital. I do a lot of evangelism with with adults as well as youth. Uh, and my rule of thumb is always if if someone is over 55 and they tell me that they're a Christian, I don't believe them. At least not right away, um, because there's such a thing as nominal Christianity. You know, I'm not rude about it. I don't poke them in the chest and say, you know, you know, sing a few hymns or something. But I it has been easier for an older generation to look at the the labels that are out there and pick the Christian label and put it on and go out into the world. And we know there's such a thing as nominal Christianity. But I I speak to a lot of under-25s, and when they tell me that they're an atheist, I don't believe them. And for the very same reason. Um because it's very, very easy today to go to a shelf full of labels and to find the atheist label and to put it on and go out there into the world. And you haven't done more than five minutes of philosophical thinking about you know materialism, but you're an atheist. You know, are you really? Well, it's it's just an identity that helps you to navigate the world a little less frictionlessly a little more frictionlessly. So there is such a thing as nominal atheism. And so my my question to over 55s is, you know, which God do you believe in? My question to under-25s is which god don't you believe in? Um and usually they end up describing some distant individual high on power, low on personality, kind of a Thor figure with a thunderbolt ready to hurl, and I just say, Well, it sounds like Thor. I uh I don't believe in Thor. Um can I tell you about Jesus? And I'm always using the phrase the the Jesus God. I picked it up from an Iranian uh woman who sort of escaped from Iran when she became a Christian. She became a Christian because her uh her uncle had given her a copy of the gospel. She read through the gospel, she got halfway through Luke's gospel, and she said, I realize that God cannot be the God of the Ayatollah. He must be the Jesus God. And I love that phrase. I've been using that phrase ever since that moment. So I do think the big doctrine that I'm just always preaching when I'm speaking to youth in particular is let's be talking about the Jesus God. When I say God, I'm picturing, most particularly, I'm picturing a man on the cross with his arms wide open to the world leading for his enemies. I don't know what you're thinking of when you think of God. But I think if we are to really shape our thoughts in Christ and in Christ crucified, then that's the sort of thing that we should say. And it's the sort of thing that's really compelling, especially for youth.
SPEAKER_05I agree. Well, I agree, actually. I remember I can't remember what passage I was preaching, but it was quite a few years a few years ago, and I said something near the beginning about you know what words would you want to define, you know, what's the kind of Christianese words that we use that people outside the church might not understand, and I got people to talk about it for a few minutes, and people talked about you know sin and stuff. Um and there was you know, there were a few suggestions that cropped up, and I said, you know, I've made my own list, and I said, and some of those have come up, and I said, but the one that I think we need to define is God. Um because like it really winds me up actually. Really winds me up. Come on, tell me how it really winds me up when I hear Christians talking generically about God, just this God figure, um, and there's like no reference to Jesus. Um I've heard whole testimonies given where people have talked about God with no reference to Jesus, and you just think like I I do sit through those and I just think, well, maybe do you understand the gospel? Yeah. If you if you've not even referenced Jesus in your testimony, I don't know. Um but yeah, I I I think there is this, we just assume people know what God what God means when we say God or who God is. But I mean, so for instance, like recently I I helped on the Life Explorer course at my church, and there was a lady on the course who said, Um, Oh well, actually I believe all this stuff, so I don't really know why I'm here, you know. Um and that's a bit of a red flag in my mind, anyway, when someone says, I don't think I need to really be here. Um and then one of the weeks, it was about three weeks in before this course started, she said something like she'd watched a documentary about Islam, and she said, Well, I think it's important like to learn about other faiths and see what they believe, because you know, they believe in this. She says, Do we um do we believe in um in uh some kind of afterlife? And I was like, Yes. Yes, yes, we do, and and she was like, Okay, but not reincarnation, and I was like, No, no, and I was thinking, yeah, you probably do need to be here, you know, like just all these things, just I'm not sure you really understand Christianity. You've got this kind of generic generic religious god thing going on, yeah. But you won't mind the Jesus brand. Jesus is great, but you know, but surely he fits in with all the other bits. Yes. Um no, not really.
SPEAKER_03Uh I like the spirituality brand and the the Jesus sub-brand seems strong, but yeah, no particular allegiance.
SPEAKER_05Strong brand.
SPEAKER_03It's a strong brand, you know, that cross thing, it's it's very recognizable. Um it's got a lot of market penetration of the cross.
SPEAKER_05But um things like you I think you said before, haven't you, that like can you imagine you know, Elijah talking about God and the prophets of Baal being like, yeah, we believe in God. Yeah. Elijah being like, Great. Let me just tweak your doctrine of God slightly.
SPEAKER_03Because I think, you know, although you believe in Baal and he's a big green monster, you know, actually Yahweh's a little bit less green. Yeah. Yeah. And and when you were talking to your your youth, your youth, none of them said that God was a term that needed to be um redefined.
SPEAKER_05That was that was that wasn't with the youth, that was in the main church. It was in the main church.
SPEAKER_03And like no no Christians took it.
SPEAKER_05No one came up with that off the bat without me throwing it out there. Yeah, wow. Um yeah. Yeah. Which yeah, it's it's like you say, you I think we just assume people understand what we're talking about when we say God, and I don't think people do.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. Um and so what does Paul do in Acts 17? Like he does, he doesn't build on their knowledge of God at all. He like from verse 24, he says, Look, the God who made the world and everything in it does not live in temples made by men, and he's doing that looking around it all the time, like, here are all your gods. Yeah, yeah, God's not like that. Like, you don't make a house for God, God's made a house for you. Like, you've got to totally turn your thinking on its head, 180 degrees. Like, he's not building on their knowledge of God at all. So I I think Paul is channeling the spirit of Elijah here. I think he's far more like with the prophets of Baal here in Acts 17. And the number one thing he he kind of targets is the doctrine of God. Okay, let's let's start with God, because you guys have got that totally backwards. Let me tell you about God. God is not just one being within the created order. Um, and that's that's one thing you should say about God, especially to somebody like Richard Dawkins, who says, you know, I don't believe in God and I don't believe in the flying spaghetti monster, um, as though those two things are in any way equivalent, as though God is some item within the created order who's just hiding behind the planet Neptune or something. Um, no, God doesn't live in our world, we live in God's world. So, so you know, on that level, asking which God is really important, but but most vitally, yeah, we believe in the Jesus God.
SPEAKER_05And it is important, isn't it? And I remember someone saying to me once, like, oh no, you're not one of those Christians who thinks that we need to talk about the Trinity in evangelism, are you? Um like it was this new fad, like, you know, like why would you talk about why would you talk about what God is actually like when you're talking in evangelism? Why would you do that? Why would you complicate matters like that?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um and it's really resonated with me, I stuck with me, not only because it's striking, because you just think, well, why wouldn't you? But also just because there was such vitriol in the questioning of it. Like ugh, like ugh, you know, why would you do that?
SPEAKER_03Spoil our game. I I wonder whether it is about spoiling the game, though. I wonder because because if you start with Trinity, you you're instantly doing an Apostle Paul and saying everything you've known about God is like not what the Christian doctrine is. You know, like because I I wonder whether people don't want to start with the Trinity because they want to start with a point of connection. And the Trinity is not connecting with people because no one else has such a nuts doctrine of God. So maybe well, maybe it's because they want to do the stepping stones thing.
SPEAKER_05Exactly, but then maybe it is that, but of course, the the connection is there, isn't it? Because I mean you often talk in your stuff about you know a God who is love and and and all the things we value most, love and relationships and all those things. And like so there is a connection in there, isn't it? But it's not to what their view of God is, it's just to their whole experience of life, yes, you know. So you're the fact that you you know, often in evangelism you're saying things like, you know, don't we all find that those relationships and those things are the best parts of life? And that does resonate with people, that does connect with people, and they go, is it possible that that is because you come from a God who is like that, who is a god of relationship and love and yada yada yada? Um yeah. So you are kind of connecting it in, but just by saying, Well, this is what God is like, not by saying, Yes, here's your view, and let me connect into your view about God. Yes. There's a view that you're connecting to their view about something else. Yes. Even if their view of God is radically off-Celter with the Bible.
SPEAKER_03Yes. But that that then shapes your evangelism according to cross and resurrection. Because like actually the first thing you're doing is kind of putting to death their view of God. But then on the far side of it, you've actually got a God who makes sense of their whole world. So you do want to, you know, you do want to make a connection, but Jesus himself makes the connection by saying, no, no, not your thing, my thing, but actually my thing connects to your thing. And you know, Dan Strange has written brilliantly on this um stuff. He's the vice principal of uh Oak Hill Theological College in North London, but he he talks about subversive fulfillment. Um, and you need both. Like Jesus is not just the fulfillment, he doesn't just say, you know, hey, would you like better skin and you know a girlfriend? Then yeah, you know. That would just be that would be fulfillment, right? Um and he doesn't just do subversion, he doesn't he doesn't just say, you know, everything you want is stupid, you moron. Um he does subversive fulfillment. He says, You are a moron. Because you're looking for love in all the wrong places. Let me put to death that idea and raise up for you something that truly does fulfill you in a way that you'd never imagined. But it's got to take that journey of cross and resurrection. But yeah, so so this this issue of who is God, um I don't think we should try to build a stepping stone from an agreed doctrine of God and then say, oh yeah, but there's this nuance over here called Trinity. Um I do think you sort of start with this surprising doctrine of God that then gives you what you want.
SPEAKER_05And I mean, isn't I just wonder whether we always overcomplicate these things and because there's a sense in which you just kind of want to go, or at least I feel I want to go in evangelism. I kind of just want to say, I don't really I don't even really want to have to do evangelistic talks. I'd rather sit down with someone and say, well, why don't we just read some gospel and then you can see Jesus and we'll go from there really. Because I kind of feel like if you put if people actually look at Jesus, like I mean that's gonna do most of the work for you.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_05But so often we I don't know, we we've almost got trying to get this formula or something to get people to a certain point.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05And I just want evangelism should be so simple as just be like, you know, here's Jesus.
unknownRight, right.
SPEAKER_05Have a look, you know. Yeah he's alright, isn't he?
SPEAKER_03Like Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it should it should be. You open up the Bible and say, Hey, Jesus, huh? You know, and then just go he says this.
SPEAKER_05What do you think about that? What do you think? Yeah, you know, and as people read, you know, like like you say with the Iranian woman, she read it and she kind of went, Yeah, this guy must be God. Like, right.
SPEAKER_03Um but then someone will say, Okay, but you don't understand the Engels scale, right? On the Engels scale, there are people who are back at minus six, minus seven, minus six. I don't think Paul understood the Engels scale either. He totally didn't. He could have been much more contextualized. Paul and X17 needs to be more contextualized than that. Yeah. But I I think if you buy into the idea that you need to bring people and and and and then if you focus on the minus sixes to the minus tens and say the loving thing to do is to take people gently by the hand step by step towards conversion. Um I just I I don't see that that's what people are doing in the Bible, and uh I don't think it works.
SPEAKER_05You're the Well no, you can't have it as a strategy, but it it just naturally happens though, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_05I mean it's not that you're sitting. You don't sit there with a friend and think well, I don't sit there with a someone and think, you know, he's probably at minus six about now, so let's see if we can get into five, minus five, see how we go. But you do have conversations and you know that that person hasn't become a Christian off the back of it, but you hope that it's brought them a little bit closer.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_05But then I think I think I I mean I did a talk on Isaiah 6 once about evangelism and what makes what is successful evangelism. Um and like Isaiah is told, isn't he, to go and be a you know, go and proclaim kind of the message that the Lord has given him, but he's told that basically no one's ever going to respond. Um and so the question I was asking was, you know, is Isaiah a rubbish evangelist? Is he a failure? And I was basically saying, well, no, because he he did what he was asked to do, he faithfully proclaimed what he did, and people's response to it makes no difference. And you read Acts 1 and it talks about being a witness. Now, if and I and I talked about if you're a witness to a crime and you go to court and you you say exactly what you saw faithfully and truthfully, and the jury don't believe you, that's no s that that that is no reflection on you as a as a witness, you know. And I think sometimes we think being an evangelist means like scoring the goal and getting the touchdown, but if you think of being a witness and you're just proclaiming the truth of what you've heard and seen and know, then if you if you if you walk even if someone even if you get to the end of the conversation and someone says, I think that's absolute rubbish, you're deluded, in terms of you as an evangelist, you have done a good job in faithfully proclaiming the word, hopefully.
SPEAKER_03Whereas if you have been a witness on trial, and because you've manipulated the truth, you've actually got a you've actually got the conviction when it's being felt. You've you're actually a bad witness. Lying for the Lord, all that kind of stuff. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Yeah. Just tell the truth. Just that's what you're called to. Just tell the truth.
SPEAKER_05And and and is it the again, I mean, in again, in in how simple I think sometimes evangelism is, the it's the demoniac, isn't it, where Jesus basically says, just go and tell what the Lord has done for you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05And he doesn't say like, make sure you've got a worked out you know, theology of doctrine of this, this, and this. He just says, Tell your story of what I have done for you. Yes. And like, actually, anyone can do that. And it doesn't have to be a kind of down to pat, you know, here's my, you know, whatever outline it is, and here's how this works. Yeah. It's just a witness to what God has done in your life. Yes. And that itself is a proclamation of the gospel in some form.
SPEAKER_03Um and I think that's that's something that the Engel scale kind of misses because it's all focused on how do you get someone from the negatives forwards. Whereas, doesn't the gospel actually encounter people? Isn't Christ's word actually heading in the other direction that, you know, from Christ and Him crucified, there is a message going out that meets people in their sin and in their lostness. Um, and uh so the God's eye perspective is actually of the gospel going out towards the net the negatives. And obviously, from an anthropological point of view, you know, the man's eye view is that we are, you know, ascending towards God. Um and in one sense, you can you can reflect back on someone's conversion and you can see, yeah, they they took a step and they took a step and they took a step. But that's a bit like you know, Lazarus, you know, after he's been raised from the dead, you know, he's at the barbecue, the funeral has turned into the into the barbecue, and he's you know, he's regaling people with tales of how he raised himself from the dead, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And everyone else is going, yeah, okay. There's another perspective on that, Lazarus.
SPEAKER_05So you are you saying that we often think about like we're trying to draw people in to like this central thing, but eventually it's uh going out.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um the angle scale is kind of depending on where we're bringing people towards God. And the gospel is God goes out towards us, you know. And and we we just for you know, for every minute we spend thinking about this very human perspective, I think we should spend at least five minutes thinking about, you know, God's perspective of how the gospel goes out and encounters people in their lostness. Um we uh we recently did uh an apologetics day, I guess, at St. Catharines, at Church of England School uh in Eastbourne. And the chaplain there um did a great job of of sort of stirring up lots of people to ask questions. Mostly about wasps. Wasps was the number one question. So sick of the wasp question money and the five hours of wasps. I don't I still don't think I've got a good answer to the wasps question. I don't really I don't really get it as an objection, but yeah, it was like teenager after teenager after teenager wanted to know about why did God allow wasps. Um and at the end, at the end of like five hours of or something like that, of of kind of trying to answer objections from teenagers, the chaplain just quietly said to us both, yeah, people just don't like God very much, do they? Which was a brilliant encapsulation of five hours of trying to answer difficult apologetic questions. People don't like God very much.
SPEAKER_05Well the difficulty about that, I think, that's I mean, it was a good morning, um, and you never know what people take away from it, but particularly in the setting we were in, you come away feeling like I don't know, I came away feeling like just no one wanted to really be there and hear what you had to say anyway. Like they'd been brought into this situation and made to sit through us, you know. Um just that's it's in a sense hard work.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um, there's that. But you know, it's it's not as though we believe, you know, because we're one Corinthians one people, it's not as though, you know, whenever anyone asks a question, we say, Who are you, oh man, to answer back to God? That's just a smokescreen for unbelief. But it what it does mean is that you take every opportunity, you take every question as an opportunity to preach the gospel, you know, even even if it's wasps, you know. You know, God created all things good and there was a fall, and that means wasps, but you know, Jesus is, you know, comes to redeem. You try to tell a gospel story because that's really the power of God for salvation, um, rather than a brilliant, you know, academic treatise on wasps, you know.
SPEAKER_05So maybe if you CCF are listening, maybe some lunch bars next year on wasps. Well, lunch bars on wasps. Clearly, it's the question people are asking.
SPEAKER_03It's what the kids want to know. What are we doing about the wasps question? Um, but I was online recently and uh came across this uh little video from uh Dominic Steele uh who um in a very provocative little minute um uh made a at least posed a question about apologetics and then in particular about how we advertise apologetic questions more publicly. And I thought it'd be very interesting to hear his thoughts on this.
SPEAKER_02What so gets my goat is the stupidity of the strategy of advertising apologetic questions. Um so you've picked a four week apologetic series, you're gonna do it, and you advertise it on Facebook or wherever it is, and um the Bible's a myth question mark. Or um He's got irrelevant. He's got irrelevant question mark. Um, or even worse, God is irrelevant.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, he's got a tyrant.
SPEAKER_02He's got a tyrant. And 99% of the people who see that ad don't come. But it's worked. It's like Coca-Cola running an ad saying, Does soft drink taste bad in cans? Well, I hadn't had that thought until then. But you've just given me, oh yeah, that's a really dumb way to drink. Now, I just can't. Marketing 101 says, that is stupid. Anyway.
SPEAKER_03So it's a negative message.
SPEAKER_02It's a negative message. Don't do it.
SPEAKER_03You want to put it in the process.
SPEAKER_02Let the non-Christians do that. You do the positive message.
SPEAKER_03I do like that.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, absolutely. I do like that. It's I really like it because he says the kind of things I know I find myself saying, and I'm just really pleased it's someone else saying it and taking the flack for it, and not me for once. So it's nice. Oh, you will after this episode. Yeah, yeah. But I completely agree. So no, we were talking about this earlier, and I was just like, my my concern like when you do these lunch bars, you just think sometimes lunch bars are sort of student socks that you give at a lunchtime. Yeah, you're kind of apologetic questions. And there are just times when I come away and I think like, is anybody even asking these questions, really? I mean, given the fact that 99% of people don't turn up for them.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_05I'm like. And I think because and I it worries me a little bit because I think about even when we do our Thorney questions, and you know, you to be honest, if you you look six months down the line back at some of them and you think, you know, four 400 views, you know, after six months, you just think, is anyone even people are asking these questions. Like, and then we were saying earlier in in terms of marketing, I mean, if you had a self-help guru come to your university, you know, there's no way they would market it in that way. It would always be like how to have a fulfilling life, you know, it would always be something really positive, yes, and then people would be like, ooh, yes, I want to go to that. Um actually, uh, it's like sometimes I don't know, sometimes it's just like we forget we've got good news to tell people, and it's like we we're starting on the defensive, yeah. Um, assuming people have all these questions and accusations against Christianity. When I think the reality is that we're so unchurched now that most people aren't even aware of objections to Christianity because they don't know enough about Christianity to object to it. So they just come up with wasps. Well, like listen, wasps, yeah. You know, and and I wonder if that is the case. Um, because I'm surprised how maybe it's because we spend so much time thinking about these kind of big questions of life from our context here. I'm often just surprised how many people just people aren't thinking about this every day. No people aren't thinking about big questions of life because most people are they're just thinking like I've got to get the kids to school in the morning and I've got to get the lunches made, and like now I've got to go and do all the washing and I've got to do this, and and they're not stopping to ponder, like, is my meaning is my is my existence completely meaningless, you know, you know, you know. Yeah. And so I just think like, how do we how do you actually connect to people?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05You know, what and and I said to you earlier, it'll be really interesting to know, you know, when people get surveyed and you say, What's one question you could ask God? I mean, people then are deliberately thinking something religious, aren't they? Yes. But I wondered if there was a way of surveying people to say, like, what's your big question of life, you know, without a religious context to it? What's the thing you're aiming for, hoping for, or the things that worry you, concern you, I don't know. Yes. It'd be interesting to see what those things are, because I think because I truly believe the gospel would speak into those things anyway.
SPEAKER_03Yes, yeah. Um and I think a lot of Christian unions are doing that with their lunchtime talks. Like, you know, we we were in Southampton for the the human mission, and um, you know, what is it that makes us human? And what about meaning and significance and joy and hope and forgiveness and um all these sorts of things that people you know are concerned with. And so I I think there are some really good models of how people are trying to engage the campus and how people are trying to engage engage non-Christians, but you know, what Dominic Steele is talking about are those provocative, you know, questions where you're just trolling people.
SPEAKER_05Clickbait titles, yeah. That's what it is.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I I always talk about the the one where um it was, you know, why does God hate women? And uh and the the univ the the Christian Union did not want me speaking on that issue. They got a woman to speak on that issue, and she spoke brilliantly, and I was just in the I was in the audience doing what evangelists do when they're in the audience, just stealing all her illustrations one by one. And uh and in the Q ⁇ A time, there was this angry atheist who got hold of the microphone and just asked her every single question about homophobia, about holy war, about hell, and just just all these talking points, and everyone's shoulders were getting up around our ears, and it was just the most awkward thing for 15 minutes before some poor student had to get up and say, Right, well, uh, that's all the time we've got for. Hopefully, you come back tomorrow. Please come back tomorrow. And they played the music, and the event was at an end, and our shoulders were still up around our ears. But I just turned to my neighbour and I said, What did you make of that? And he thought for a second, and then he pointed to the atheist who'd been asking the questions, and he said, I wasn't listening to anything he said, but my granddad just died, and I'm wondering what life is about. Do you have any thoughts? And I had some thoughts, and uh and away we went, and we had a brilliant conversation for an hour, and he came back that night, and he prayed to receive Christ that night, and and he's still going on as a Christian. And and you just think, like everyone else in the room thought that the guy with the microphone was their was the was the mouthpiece for where people were at. And and the Christians were thinking, oh yeah, that's that's what unbelievers are thinking. Unbelievers are exactly like that angry atheist with the microphone. And you know, non-Christians might think, oh, that's what it is to not be a Christian. Well, but actually, people just have lost their grandfather and they want to know what life's about.
SPEAKER_05But isn't it the key and it's so true, isn't it? Because when you go and do a QA type thing, or even if you do one particular topic, even if you're not doing it a whole week, you've always got in the back of your mind, what if someone asks the question about this, this, or this, and you've got your kind of how do I respond to the sexuality question? How do I respond to this question, that question? Um and you're kind of going just with a series of answers ready in your head because you're you're you're you can imagine the angry atheist getting up and hitting you with this, that, and the other holy war or whatever.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Um and the reality is so many that just people aren't asking those questions on the whole.
SPEAKER_03No. I mean, that guy is so rare. But he's he's got a microphone and he yells loudly, and the new atheists have yelled very, very loudly. And I think we Christians have thought, oh, that's what that's where society is at. And society's not there at all. You know, it's I'm always quoting this statistic that um Hope and the Evangelical Alliance and the Church of England did this big survey a couple of years ago, and they asked people, you know, do you think that Christians are homophobic? And and 7% said yes, and and that means 93% like that's not on their radar. Um, and yet we always disqualify ourselves from having a conversation. We don't want to stick our head above the parapet and say I'm a Christian, because we just feel we're gonna get shot down as a homophobic bigot. And like literally, for 93% of the people, they It won't even cross their minds. It wouldn't even cross their minds. And so we like we fear being censored by the angry guy with the microphone, but actually it's just ourselves, we're just censoring ourselves.
SPEAKER_05Isn't it? I mean, we've you you read you open Marx Gospel and literally the line number one, you know, the beginning of the good news about Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and you think, well, we've got good news. Now, I just can't I can't think of another context where you think, how can I announce good news? Let me think of the way someone might object to this, and I'll couch it in that way first, yeah, in order to announce it. Like I don't know, it's just a really weird way of doing things. It's like we we don't trust enough that we've got something good to say in the first place.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean, wouldn't it be in a sense? I would prefer not to have to do talks on science and faith again, or you know, more of this one, more of that one. You just want to kind of go, here's a story about Jesus meeting so-and-so.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Wow, isn't this great? And then off the back of that stuff might come, and you just you just want to kind of open up and go, here's some Jesus, here's some Jesus, here's some Jesus. Yeah. What do you think of Jesus? Do you like this Jesus? He's pretty good, isn't he? This Jesus, you know, and yeah, something because it's easy to do all those talks and then you and almost feel like you've not really had a proper gospel opportunity in there, but you're just deflecting intellectual academic ideas in order that someone else, maybe later, can talk about Jesus.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_03Um that is answering the who is God question, you know, the which God, it's the Jesus God, the Jesus God. And and I think if that's front and center in what we're thinking about as evangelism, then you can just present Jesus. Whereas if you're thinking that Christianity is a worldview, um, then there are various planks within that worldview that you've got to explain and you've got objections to deal with and that sort of thing. Um whereas if you just raise a banner for here is Jesus over this way, um, and you know, okay, but if somebody says, That's fine, Paul, but there are many people who are not ready to hear about Jesus, how do you love them? What do you say? So, you know, you just want to do a talk from Mark chapter 1, verse 1, right? Not that people aren't ready to hear it, the people won't come if they if they just say it's uh you know, Paul Feasy is gonna give a talk on Mark chapter 1, verse 1. They won't come to that. So, how do you love people who are negative six?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's a good question.
SPEAKER_03Um I think I think actually love them might be the I don't know, like like like because people say that to me, and they're like, how do we love people who are you know angry atheists and and you know why not why not actually love them?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, the thing is that the thing is the problem is the question's out of context, isn't it? Because the reality is like how do you love the reality is that often the probably the majority of people listening and even us, our day-to-day experience of the of the minus sixth person, if we want to use that kind of thing, is not at a lunch bar where they're coming to hear a talk. It's that they're your next door neighbour or you work with them, or they're a family member or a friend or whatever. And actually, when you put it in that context and you realise we're not talking about an event with a a talk, you can kind of see how it's easy just to love them in that setting, you know. Yeah, like your next door neighbour or whoever. Um and that is a powerful witness in itself.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um yeah, so if we put on events and the negative sixes, sevens, eights, nines, and tens don't come or don't even think of coming, I don't think that's a massive loss necessarily. Um you absolutely want to love everybody and love everybody on the Engels scale. Um, but it doesn't necessarily mean that you need to um tailor your speaking events to to that demographic. Um I think you know, let's let's actually love people at that end of things and let that be a massive part of our apologetic. You know, John chapter 13, verse 35, Jesus says, By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you love one another. Um so there's a massive apologetic value to actually just loving them. Um and then, you know, what about praying for them? Um, you know, if we spent as much time talking to God about our friend as we did talking to our friend about God, um that could be incredibly powerful, actually. Um and when I think about some of the debates I've had long into the night with non-Christian friends, and you know, I I might have spent four or five hours on the trots talking to them about God, I don't think I've ever spent four or five hours talking to God about my friend.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You know. Um, but why, you know, so love them, pray for them. Um and then I I I I think kind of the importance of storms coming into their life that that actually, you know, you can build on sinking sand for a long time, and you can think you're doing brilliantly building on sinking sand. But when the storm hits, you realize that your foundations are not solid. And that's when you're ready to hear of the rock of Christ. Um, and actually, you know, as a severe mercy, God often brings storms into people's lives. And um one of the talks at the Gospel Coalition um last week, uh Tim Keller kind of mentioned about the plagues and how in early Christianity um one of the things that really marked Christians out and got the whole empire kind of noticing Christians was that when the plague hit the city, everyone was running out of the city and Christians were were running into the city to care for the sick and the dying in this incredible way. And and actually, when suffering hits and when Christians are able to model that they handle suffering differently. Um that's just that's just huge. And and I was reminded of that um just yesterday when I was uh reading about Candida Auris. You know, this there's there's a new plague, people, and it's it's this silent killer, and you know, uh it's untreatable by antibiotics and it's killing people the world over. Great gospel opportunity. So that's that's my take home. Plagues plagues are good for the gospel. Um it did, you know, plagues were good for the gospel in Exodus, plagues were good for the gospel in the early church, and uh and actually what I do mean by that is that when suffering hits, the church has an opportunity to model something different in the way they respond to suffering. Um, and it might not be an apologetic talk that wins over the negative seven, the negative eight. Uh it might be Christians showing that they can live a little bit differently. Um and then, like the the last thing to say, I think, on on what do we do with the negatives, what do we do with the people who are way down the end of the Engels scale, is um the spiritual practice of moving on. And I just think that's that's huge, actually. Um, in the New Testament, people move on all the time. Um so the the parable of the four soils, you know, you you you sow on one soil, you sow on the next, you sow on the next, and and you know, some people are gonna be hard, some people are gonna be stony, some people are gonna be choked by consumerism and worries. Um you well, you just move on because you've got good seed and there is good soil out there, so keep on sowing, you know. And Jesus talks about shaking the dust off your feet if people won't receive you. And he says, Don't cast pearl before swine. And you know, even in Acts 17, Paul preaches the gospel, some believe, some sneer. Paul leaves, you know, and he moves on. And and and I don't mean that you move on from your you know non-Christian sister who you know doesn't trust in Jesus. Um you don't stop loving the loved ones in your life, but you but you do you do go quiet for a bit, you know. If they go quiet on the gospel, you go quiet, and you don't bring it up again till Christmas. Um but the spiritual practice of actually moving on is what I see in really practiced evangelists. When I s when I see Roger Carswell, when I see Adrian Holloway, I see these people who've been around the block a number of times, and they they know that they've got good seed, and they know that there is good soil out there, and so they they don't continually like cram the seed in into the path and say, You stupid path, why don't you see how reasonable this is? They move on, you know. And I just think, you know, like if I was in Acts 17, if I was the Apostle Paul and there were people sneering at me in the Areopagus, I'd get really upset and offended, and I would think, How dare you sneer at me? I am I am intellectual, I can go toe-to-toe with you Epicurean and Stoic philosophers. I can, you know, don't sneer at me. This is intellectually credible. And I would start up Areopagus ministries and you know, I would bed down in Athens and try to at least defend the reasonableness of the gospel to all those sneerers. Um and I just think Paul um does something different, you know. It seems like he sort of lays hands on Demaris and Dionysius, because they are named as believers in Athens, and it seems like they kind of probably lead the church from then on, and he kind of hands it over to them, and Paul moves on. Um and what what do we do with the negative sixes, negative sevens, negative eights? Well, you know, I think we love them, we pray for them, um, we try to model handling suffering in a distinctive way, and we move on. Yeah, I think anyway. Just some thoughts, just some thoughts on how we reach the negatives. If you've got thoughts on how we reach the negatives, love to hear about them in comments. Uh let us know. And uh and do be sharing around the place uh uh Easter videos. Uh if you want to see all the videos in one place, you can go to speaklife.org.uk slash dragon. And uh yeah, we'd love to see those go far and wide. So please do share them on Twitter and Facebook and all the rest of it. Yep, get them out there. Get them out there, and stay tuned for next Monday when the uh interview with Ryan and Amy Green will drop on the Monday night. Yeah, we'll get that out. And uh all being well. This will be a uh a podcast that drops on Friday. Should be, yep. Brilliant. Well, guys, thanks for joining us. And uh next week we should be live, I think. On the Tuesday.
unknownOh yeah.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, you okay. Paul won't be here. We'll figure we'll figure something out for next week. But thanks for being with us, and we'll see you again soon. Cool. Take care. Bye bye. See here.