Today on the Evangelist Podcast, Paul Feasy. The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley. Welcome to the Evangelist Podcast. This is episode number 175. How about that? We've been going for a number of years trying to equip people in their everyday witness to Jesus so that you can share your faith with friends, neighbours, work colleagues, whoever you come across. And uh today it's uh a great privilege to have on the show someone we've spoken of before. Um we've been waiting for Paul Feasey to join us at Speak Life, and now he is here. A prayer request incarnate. He is in our midst, and uh Paul Feasy, our new associate evangelist at Speak Life. It's great to have you. Hello, it's good to be here. Thank you. Tell me a little bit about yourself, Paul. Tell me about your mother. My mother.
SPEAKER_00Tell me about your mother. My mother. Uh my mother is uh named Julie. Uh-huh. She's a lovely lady. She currently resides in Cardiff.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Uh with my father, in fact.
SPEAKER_01With your father.
SPEAKER_00His name's Roger. Okay.
SPEAKER_01But I affectionately refer to him as not Julie. Yeah. And you is that's that's where you grew up, isn't it? Cardiff.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, most of my life since I was six.
SPEAKER_01Which is why you have such a thick Welsh accent. Yeah, I mean, I know it's it's pretty.
SPEAKER_00Decipherable Yeah, since I was six, I grew up in Cardiff, so for me that's pretty much home.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. My dad moved to to Newport right next to Cardiff, because the Office for National Statistics was there.
SPEAKER_00That's kind of a letter thing, isn't it? Ending up in Newport. Newport.
SPEAKER_01I remember growing up in Newport, and almost this first day at school uh we had a French class and they showed us a documentary made of Newport, and it was it was dubbed in French so that we could learn all about our local geography and learn French at the same time. And I'll still I'll never forget the uh the opening shots, this panoramic view of this mud laden river at low tide, and just this everything is just silvery grey and bleak. And then in the in the voiceover, this woman just says, J'aime Newport. And none of us could hold it together because yeah. Um shout out to all the people from Newport. We we love you. Big up, big up you know, Louis Roderick, if you're listening, we we love you. Um so but growing growing up in Cardiff, like like church was a part of your life and that sort of thing?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, always went to church. Um started off in in quite a small little kind of church, which was a sister church, to a bigger one that we ended up at later on, uh St. Mark's. Uh we ended up at St. Mark's in Gabalva. Gabalva. Gabalva in Cardiff. Um and yeah, that's pretty much where I spent yeah, all my my teenage years church wise, and it was kind of through that and that youth group there that I became a Christian, really.
SPEAKER_01Fantastic. Yeah. And uh like the Church of Wales Church, Anglican in its own way, yeah.
SPEAKER_00So yeah, definitely Anglican, all the kind of you know, classic Anglican liturgies and things, but it was quite I suppose it was broad in some ways. I mean we we went to Source of Ivor and things like that, so it wasn't kind of straight down the line.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. You know, Anglican, I suppose, in some ways, but But in Wales it's funny, like I I go as an Anglican to Wales and and people kind of they clock that I'm a Bible-believing Christian and an Anglican. And often that doesn't those two things don't really go together in Wales. And I remember speaking to this one church pastor in in Swansea, and um and I I think he was convinced that I was a Christian. Like grudgingly, he had to concede that I was a Christian after after speaking to him for about half an hour, and then but he couldn't then believe that I was Anglican as well. And uh and he sort of thought to himself, yeah, oh the but there there is that one church up in Aberystwyth that's that's that's a a good Anglican church. In in his mind there was one one Anglican church.
SPEAKER_00One good Anglican Bible believing church. There was that one, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I suppose you could. Good, and and so you grew up there, and then you went to university in is that Nottingham?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, you got that one right. Yeah, you did get that one right. Yep. So um yeah, went there to study theology in I think it was about 2005, I think it was.
SPEAKER_01And were you like at this point you're saying Jesus is for me, I yeah. I've I've jumped with both feet into the Jesus thing, it's not just my parents' thing. Like what how how did you transf transfer what's the word I'm looking for? Transition. Yeah. How did you transfer my own kind of thing? How did you make it your own?
SPEAKER_00Well, it actually happened at Soul Survivor when I was still at St. Mark's when we went away. I think I was I was sixteen or seventeen and went away uh for the week with the youth group, and it was actually at Soul Survivor I became a Christian. I think I thought I was a Christian. I basically, you know, people at school I think would have known I was a Christian. But I basically kind of thought Well, you know, I think what I did on Sunday was just different to the rest of my week. I thought I was a pretty good person, and I think in the eyes of society I probably was. You know, I didn't really get into trouble at school. I did quite well and did you have a nickname at school with fee fee fee? Fees.
SPEAKER_01Not easy fee, greasy feezy, no. Cheesy lemon squeezy.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean any word you can rhyme. Yeah. Probably someone did at some point. Most of the time it was just feas. Fees. Um feas and you tried to get that one trending. I think it was an ironic name. Um what were we talking about?
SPEAKER_01We were talking about Oh yes.
SPEAKER_00Um how I became a Christian. Yes. Um Went saw survivor. So I thought I was a you know a Christian. I think I thought I was a good person. Went saw survivor. And actually it was just during one of the kind of prayer um ministry bits in the big tent. Um I had a moment where I kind of was standing there and I remember it was Mike Pilovacci who said at the front, you know, we're not gonna pray today for particular like a particular need. Sometimes you have, you know, people would stand up for a healing or whatever. He said, We're all gonna stand up, we're all gonna pray, and you can pray whatever you want, really. And I was praying, he he may have said it with more direction than that, um paraphrasing. Um and I remember standing there and saying something like, 'God, if you're there, I think I really need to know now.' And within moments, I just um I just broke down. Don't know where it came from. Um and I remember really distinctly feeling like um I just realised how sinful I was. I thought I'd been basically a good person, but suddenly I realised I'd been living my whole life with kind of two fingers stuck up at God, really. And you know, I was like on the floor, and it's totally not like me. I'm not, you know, I'm I'm not given to not prone to kind of that kind of thing at all. And so I was on the floor and I was, you know, crying and crying, and then eventually that kind of turned to laughter, and I was just filled with kind of complete joy, and it was like all that stuff was gone, and I just remember there was just this real sense that you know God was real. I was more sure of it than I am, you know, that you're sitting in front of me right now. Um and from then on, yeah, kind of went back home and it all kind of changed from then, really, back at school, and I kind of knew. I remember saying to a friend, Oh, did you notice anything different? And he went, No, not really, you just seem more Christian. I was like, Okay, well that's probably Was that a good thing in the past? I think he thought it was okay. Yeah. Um but I remember another friend, oh well, the same friend said to me that another friend had said, Oh, I like um I like Fees, he's a nice guy, but it's a shame about that Christian thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. He seems to be getting more Christian. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00He must have laid it on a bit.
SPEAKER_01He's like the old Feesy, but 20% more Christian. Wow.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that was kind of how it how it happened, really.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing. I often ask people, like, as you became a Christian, how has it shaped the way you've tried to witness to other people? Have you ever done any thought about that? Like, if that was your encounter, if that was the most powerful encounter that you can think of with God, has that been formative in any way as you seek to introduce Jesus to others?
SPEAKER_00Um, I think I always have to keep it in my mind really, because I think like the way I've been kind of schooled, you know, discipled in terms of like ministry and things. I I've probably come from a bit of a background where that kind of thing's almost been slightly discouraged, you know, that we we we should focus on the word and not kind of big emotional things. And you know, and and generally I'm I'm down with that, you know, that of course we want to be Bible teachers. Um I mean I'm not sure it's shaped my the way I think about doing evangelism. I think I always have to kind of think back to it every now and again and think you know what that that happened to you and it could happen to someone else, and I think it's easy to kind of think, oh you know, it's just an emotionalism thing about other things you see happening, and then I've got to keep thinking, well that happened to you. So yeah. So yeah, it's it's a funny one really, because I think, like I say, I've not really come from a background where that was the thing, and that from what I've done afterwards, where I've worked in my kind of churches I've been in, they've never really been particularly kind of down that kind of more charismatic end of the spectrum at all.
SPEAKER_01So it's slightly bizarre in some ways.
SPEAKER_00It's interesting.
SPEAKER_01But I guess i i i it's the the irrefutable tr proof of God, isn't it? You meet him.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah, that's that's basically what it was.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um and it had that twofold impression on you, you know, first driving you down in conviction of sin and then raising you up in holy laughter and forgiveness and gratitude and yeah. Which is what we try to do with the word. Exactly.
SPEAKER_00In some ways it's it's it is textbook almost, isn't it? Like in that sense. You know.
SPEAKER_01Um textbook Jesus, that was. Textbook Jesus.
SPEAKER_00But you know, I mean I think sometimes I've been hesitant to say, you know, because some people would would want to hear you tell the story about how, you know, you heard the word preached and whatever. And and Which you had done hundreds of times. Yeah, yeah, of course. Um but it wasn't yeah, it was just a very different thing, I suppose, thanks.
SPEAKER_01And also because a lot of people crave that experience. A lot of people have told me I just I just haven't had the Damascus Road experience yet, and I'm still waiting for that. And people have told me that whether they're Christians or not. So I guess there's there's always some reticence in sort of front putting that front and centre. Yeah. As though that's what it means to be a Christian.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And I think, like I say, uh the way I've been kind of discipled, it's been kind of primarily a quite a conservative evangelical background, and and you've almost felt like, oh, you mustn't don't don't let them know. Don't tell them that story.
SPEAKER_01It's dangerous. You never know what the youth might get up to next. They might be experiencing God for themselves and we can't have that. Okay, so uh so but then you you go and you study theology in a secular university. Did did that kind of impact your your your faith? Because now it now you're studying from from quite a uh an academic viewpoint, though I I imagine you're you know you're looking at textual criticism of the Bible and Yeah you know, yeah, actually, I mean it was I think Nottingham I don't know what it's like now, but at least then in in some ways it was quite an easy place to study theology.
SPEAKER_00It wasn't a hostile, you know, kind of faculty. I think a large majority of the faculty at that point would have called themselves Christians um and were at churches and things like that. Um that doesn't necessarily mean that I would want to affirm everything I heard. But it was actually really tough, and actually it I I'm not sure it was tough so much from well, there was definitely things I was hearing that were I was struggling with. Um and I think now I know that you know, actually, just because Electra says it from the front, it doesn't mean it's doesn't necessarily mean it's true. I mean it's it's kind of they they've got their interpretations of things and their kind of own agendas they want to push sometimes. Um but actually it was really hard because I was struggling with that, and actually my kind of first year of university I I went to I kind of basically my the I pretty much just went off the rails a little bit. Um and it was a really hard year. Um and I struggled, I didn't really feel I fitted into the Christian Union and I didn't really settle in a church um initially and that was quite tough. Um and I think actually it was it was it was I'd gone from a position in my previous church at home where I'd been um really heavily involved and I was leading a Sunday school class and I was leading the youth band and you know we're in the youth group and there were a couple of us who are at the top end and stuff like that, and and and in a sense you were I don't know how to say you were you're quite involved in those things. And then you kind of turn up somewhere where you're just no one. Yeah. And I think I didn't really quite know where I fitted.
SPEAKER_01Um You tried to tell everyone you're the Feasonator and it just didn't catch on. You may have heard of me.
SPEAKER_00Um Yeah, and so that was actually really tough, and it wasn't until the end of the first year when I kind of you know got back home and went, I think I went on a camp in the summer. Camp, so yeah, yeah, and um yeah, uh I'm just speaking to a guy, one of my friends there, and just saying, like, oh you know, stuff's not right, you know, I need to get back on track, really.
SPEAKER_01Um And you've been working in churches for a significant part of your adult life now.
SPEAKER_00Pretty much since well yeah, since I left university, basically. So it's it's coming up nine years or so.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Working mainly with youth.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, on the whole. Yeah. Yeah, so I've just done just done eight years at All Saints Crowborough, where I was the youth uh youth minister was my technical title. I feel it sounds quite grand. It just means servant.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, the youth is servant of the youth.
SPEAKER_00So I was a yeah, well, I was a youth youth worker there for eight years, so primarily kind of eleven to eighteen year olds.
SPEAKER_01What do you what do you like about working with that kind of age group and what frustrates you about working with that age group?
SPEAKER_00Uh what do I like about it? Um I think you know, I I had such a good experience of youth work, I felt. And and and I I think I mean I wanted to do youth work from the time I was about 17 after I'd become a Christian. And I think it's because I I I thought it was such an important time. You know, for young people in their faith, those teenage years are so crucial. And I kind of wanted to I thought I'd been blessed to have a really good youth work. And I thought, yeah, this is what I want to do. And and I think, you know, what I like about it is it's it's it's such a privilege to be able to actually not just sit with these guys and share the Bible with them and stuff, but actually share your life with them. You know, you think about the kind of stuff in Thessalonians where Paul talks about sharing, you know, not only the gospel but our lives. And I think that's what's so enjoyable. I mean, of course that that's all areas of ministry, I suppose, but but they let you in a lot more. Yeah, and I mean I I was never a a children's worker end of the spectrum. I was always a youth worker end of the spectrum, and I think it's because I felt with the teenagers that often we had quite a lot of shared interest, you know, because they're at the stage where they're getting into films and movies and uh music and all that kind of stuff. So you you could have a conversation and and have a kind of a real rapport and friendship, um which I I struggled with with kind of children perhaps. Yeah. Frustration-wise, um I think it's all the all the usual things, you know, just uh that you might hear from youth workers that education seems to be a bigger and bigger idol in not just young people's lives. I think i I mean I I expected young people to be really concerned about their education and you know, when the exam season rolls round, yeah, people start coming. I think the thing that was hardest was when you found parents buying into that as well. Christian parents Christian parents buying into it and who some some of whom you you would think, you know, the rest of the time you seem pretty on the ball. Right. But you know, s a lot of people seem quite blinkered about education, and you know, I think I got myself into trouble a couple of times by being slightly disparaging about the importance of education, and some parents weren't as happy about that.
SPEAKER_01But Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Is that changing? A are you now starting to see the possible uh idolatries? You've got two girls of your own. They're not they're not quite at GCSE level, but uh No, they're not quite there yet.
SPEAKER_00Um it's interesting. I mean I I you know only one of them's at school, but I I kind of I'll be interested to see what happens over the years, but I really don't want to fall into those traps of you know their lives being consumed by school and you know just doing things for the sake of the the UCAS form when they're 18, you know, to say they've they've learnt this instrument or they've part of that team, you know. If they want to go and do those things, great, but I'd rather they did those things because they would they wanted to do them rather than because mum and dad were pushing some kind of worldly agenda on them. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01Tim Keller talks about, you know, he he he remembers taking a music appreciation class so that he could listen to Mozart, and he took the music appreciation class so that it would look good on his graduate school application, and it would look good on his graduate school application. So he go to the right, you know, university, and once he'd gone to the right university would help him to get the right job, and once he got the right job, he would get the right kind of money. So essentially he was listening to Mozart to make money.
SPEAKER_00Yep. Yeah. I think I said a few times, you know, you know, why do we want to why are we so obsessed with getting this good education where we get the good grades so we can go to the good university to get the good qualifications so we can get the good job so we can get lots of pay and we can have all the nice things and then we'll all be happy, won't we? And it's like, well, of course we know that's rubbish, but yet somehow we've we're we're buying into that with some of you know, and pushing our children down that road sometimes. You know, that's not always the case, is yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but it's but everything's becoming more graded, isn't it? Everything's you know, our performance at every level is there there is an exam for it at younger and younger ages, and yeah we feel in kids' lives.
SPEAKER_00And I don't know, like my oldest is in school, like say she's she's just starting year one and they don't do a great deal of testing at the moment, and I don't really know how she's gonna do down the road. Right. But I remember she said something the other day. Well, I can't remember the exact context, but she basically said, but you know, we've just got to make you know, we need to be kind to one another and say even if someone's horrible and we must be kind, or if someone's playing if someone's got no one to play with, we should go and play with them and those kind of things. And and I kind of thought, you know, I'd much rather that she had that kind of attitude to things than being a grade A student, you know, or they don't even do A's anymore, do they? It's all numbers they chase to numbers. What? I don't know. I asked one of our youth group the other day, I said how he asked how he'd done his GCC. He said, Well I got a eight in this. I was like, okay, that means nothing to me.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, out of fifty-six. What what is that? Right, numbers. Okay, well, because we used to get numbers for effort. Did you ever get that? You'd have a a a a letter and so the you know, the ultimate was to get an A5. You know, you wanted to get uh top grade for actual performance, but bottom grade for effort. And uh yeah, I got I got straight A5s in the in my final year. In my final year at university. It was yes, that's another story. But uh I played poker in school until I couldn't tell red from black cards anymore. That's that's really they couldn't do anything but give me a five. But uh anyway, enough about me. So tell me about home life. Who's at home?
SPEAKER_00Home life. So uh yeah, there's myself and then there's my wife Becca, and then we've got the two girls, Melody, who's five, and Clara, who's three.
SPEAKER_01Brilliant. And you're still at All Saints Crowborough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, still still going there. Yeah. Yeah, even though, yep, now stop working there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's like me. I still go to All Souls Eastbourne.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But I don't I don't work there. And uh they'll get you to preach and things at uh at All Saints.
SPEAKER_00Yep, that's the plan. Yeah, I'm on the preaching rotor for this term. Um and yeah, I think I will be onwards.
SPEAKER_01That's a passion for you, preaching. Like, like what is Paul Feasy, tell us what is preaching?
SPEAKER_00What is preaching? Oh my goodness.
SPEAKER_01Why? Why do we have preaching? Why don't we just read the Bible out for twenty minutes? Why do we need you to stand up and shoot your mouth off?
SPEAKER_00Well, I mean, it's fair to say, isn't it, that I suppose the only time you know God really is speaking is when the Bible itself is read. Um But you know, at the end of the, you know, whilst we all believe, I suppose, that you know, a anyone can understand scripture, there are still bits which are tough and sometimes you know we need you know, I think God just uses preachers, doesn't need to, you know, by his spirit to use the words of preachers to speak into people's lives by expounding scripture and you know, sometimes illustrating it or whatever. And people do need to hear. And yeah, I mean, of course, you could just sit there and read the the Bible out, um and I think actually that can probably have we probably don't do that enough in in the church. Often, you know, we we just expect the preacher.
SPEAKER_01Well, you meant to. I mean, in Anglican churches, you're meant to have an old testament and new testament and the gospels readings, and then you know, you might say a psalm together, but it's fun funny that the the churches that most Think of themselves as biblical in the Anglican spectrum are the ones that have the least Bible. Yeah.
SPEAKER_0045 minutes of preaching, but quite short reading sometimes. But yeah, I suppose you know it's the kind of Romans um 10 stuff, isn't it? About people need to hear, you know, how can people believe unless they hear and so on.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00And and and so I think that's why preaching is so important.
SPEAKER_01Um bring good news. That yeah, that actually if if someone if someone gets up and in a contemporary voice heralds what is being said in the in the scriptures, that that comes home with a different force than you know someone who just gets up and reads, often badly reads some gospel account. Yeah. Yeah. That that actually yeah, someone who with a contemporary voice heralds it anew. Uh I think that strikes home with a fresh power, definitely. Yeah. So you'll be doing some more of that preaching at All Saints. Um but also you are coming on board here um part-time as an associate evangelist. What do you hope to do?
SPEAKER_00What do I hope to do? Great. Uh well, I mean, I I hope that there'll be more opportunities for preaching and speaking, wherever that might be. But I guess, you know, one of the main things we've been talking about together has been this uh reaching out evangelistically via YouTube and social media. So, you know, we we've been throwing around these ideas of what that might look like. And I guess I I hope that we'll we'll hit on something that will be not only useful for Christians, but actually the kind of thing that a Christian can share with a non-Christian friend so that actually, you know, the the gospel you know, is it goes to a wider It goes viral. It goes viral, yeah. I mean to the ends of the earth.
SPEAKER_01Well I it it does occur to me that actually the way Jesus wants the gospel to go forwards as we look in the you know the the the Great Commission passages at the end of the Gospels and in Acts chapter one is is kind of viral. It's it's you know, he starts with you know, these twelve guys, and and in the upper room there's only a hundred and twenty, and then you know, it expands to three thousand and then to five thousand and then it's person to person you know, as yeah, the gospel i is meant to go viral because what you like you share, and that's that's true online, but it's also true spiritually when when people catch the gospel and they get the good news, they like it, they share it. So it seems to me that online works the same as the gospel. We just need to harness it better. So we've been yes, we've been thinking today about uh the needs that are out there and plotting and planning some uh uh series. So we're we're hoping to do um a series on the Reformation. So we're gonna do some uh five videos on the five solars of the Reformation leading up to the 31st of October when we uh remember five hundred years since uh Martin Luther hammered up the the 95 Theses. So look out for for those videos and uh and also thinking about um we we don't have a name for this yet. Hot pops. No, I d I don't know what it's gonna be.
SPEAKER_00It's not gonna be that nice.
SPEAKER_01It's not gonna be hot pops. Okay, it's not gonna be this name, but dear listener, you can you can feel what what I'm intending here. I I want to see heart takes. Okay, not hot takes I told it's not gonna be this name, but heart takes, okay. Um or warm takes. And by this warm, warm takes. Yeah, warmed over. It's like macaroni cheese. It's slightly warmed over. Yeah, spit it out of your mouth. Well what what I mean by that, like everyone wants to read the news and then give us their hot take. And their hot take is usually something political, philosophical, or philosophical, or moralistic about that issue. And just just the other day, I clicked on, you know, somebody on Twitter had written something about Charlie Gard, and I've probably read a dozen different articles on Charlie Gard. And all the articles from a Christian point of view are, well, this is exactly why this country is going to hell, or if they're, you know, from America that this is exactly what happens when you have socialized, you know, healthcare, and this is exactly what you have when you have single payer healthcare, and blah blah. And everyone was making like political points about it, even Christians, you know, and even Christians were talking, you know, does does the child belong to the state or to the family? And and those are important issues. But I just clicked on this one link about Charlie Guard, and I read, you know, my 13th article about Charlie Guard, and it was totally different. He just opened up by saying, Um, the one thing we learn from the Charlie Guard case is that we cannot save ourselves. And I just thought, oh, that's gone, that's that's a heart take, baby. That's that's that's what I mean by a warm take. That's what I mean by it's it's not it's not a point scoring exercise. It's going beneath the political and the moralistic and the philosophical and going to the heart level and saying, actually, put yourself in the shoes of Charlie Guard's parents. You're doing everything you can to try and save this child and nothing's gonna work. Actually, that's the state of you and I. None of us can save ourselves. We are we are mortal, we are so frail, we are so dependent, and we do anything we can to try and stop ourselves feeling that way. If we're Charlie Guard's parents, we go around the world to try and stop feeling out of control. If we're, you know, uh an American conservative, then we rail against the NHS, and that's m that makes us feel in control. And, you know, everyone wants to feel in control, and actually the whole story is screaming at you. You're not in control, you're mortal, you're weak, you're perishing. And and that kind of touched my heart, actually, as I read that, and I thought to myself, there's gotta be a market for that, actually. There's gotta be there's gotta be a space in the marketplace of ideas, there's gotta be a space for Yeah, going beneath the surface, getting curious about things, and speaking about things at a heart level, because it's at that heart level that I think Jesus meets us in a yeah.
SPEAKER_00And I think I think you're right that it's so important to get past just the morality comments.
SPEAKER_02Right.
SPEAKER_00Because I've had this discussion with a few people about I don't know, so uh just a trivial example would be things like the the chocolate Easter eggs. Right and they're like, oh, you know, whichever companies are not putting the word Easter on there, it's all campaign and stuff.
SPEAKER_01And and my basic thing dare they not use the name of this pagan festival Easter.
SPEAKER_00Well, exactly all those things, but also, you know, my my basic thing was look, at the end of the day, if if we didn't rest until every chocolate egg bore the word Easter, no one would be any nearer the kingdom for it, you know, at the end of the day, like these kind of moral issues. I mean, there are things we should probably campaign on, definitely, moral issues, but just getting people saying, Look, society, this is wrong, behave yourselves. Right. I mean, that's just the comp it's not the gospel at all, is it? Like it's so the other end of the spectrum. Yeah. Um, so like you say, yeah, I think we want to try and get beneath the surface into like what are the heart issues behind various things going on in well, you know, we talked a bit about the news or what the films that are coming out, the the songs that are coming out that people are you know paying attention to. What are the messages in there? Um, good and bad. In popular culture, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Hence the term hot pops. Does that work for anyone? Hot pops?
SPEAKER_00Maybe let us know in the comments. Let us know.
SPEAKER_01Yes, do do let us know uh what you would like to see in uh in programmes like this. But but the I mean the goal in all of it really is uh we hope people are curious. We we we want to make Christians curious um so that we go beneath the surface and and think personally and pastorally about all these issues. Um we hope that non-Christians uh get curious about these issues, because everyone's talking about it at the water cooler. I don't think actually, everyone in England, we don't really have water coolers. We don't need water coolers. It's all pretty cool enough already. Um but we know, yeah, we use that phraseology, water cooler, that that conversation that you have in the workplace with other people. We w we want to be able to speak at a heart level, in a way that equips Christians, uh in a way that touches Christians and and and you know, we all get to see the beauty of how Jesus um interacts with us at a heart level. Um but also equips Christians to be able to have different kinds of conversations so that at the water cooler their conversation is not about socialized health care. Um you know, as as as interesting an ish uh an issue as that is, but actually get to the heart of the matter. So that's one thing we're gonna be doing because my goodness, there's a billion people on YouTube every month and two billion people on Facebook every month. These are the biggest countries on earth, and uh we want to be missionaries to this to this mission field. So it's great to have you with us, Paul, and uh uh listeners gonna be hearing a lot more from Paul, so I hope that gives you apologies in advance. Um yeah, so um do check out more about Paul. We're gonna we're gonna put up um uh a little page on the Speak Life uh website uh where you can learn a little bit more about Paul. Uh that'll be on the show notes for this episode, which is episode number one seven five. So if you go to speaklife.org.uk slash TEP175, uh, you'll find this particular episode with its show notes, or you can just go on to uh speaklife.org.uk slash TEP, and uh you can find all the buttons that'll help you subscribe. It really helps us uh if you do subscribe, and it really helps us even more if you go on and uh leave us a rating and a review. Thank you very much, everybody, for listening in, and thank you, Paul, for being our guest on the Evangelist Podcast. And till next time, we'll see you later.
SPEAKER_00Goodbye.