Today on the Evangelist Podcast we discuss resources for Christmas and the new year.
SPEAKER_03The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_05You're listening to the Evangelist Podcast. Here's Glenn Scrivener. Hello. Hello, Glenn. I'm Andy Brinkley, and uh we hope that you'll be encouraged. This uh episode some resources that you could share maybe for Christmas or with your church or things, it becomes a a tradition that uh we do a Christmas video each year now.
SPEAKER_07It is. It's it is now lore. L-O-R-E-Lore.
SPEAKER_05So how many years have we been doing it now? About Santi Ranty was twenty twelve?
SPEAKER_07Yeah, we did it earlier.
SPEAKER_05And then we did Santi Randy was before that as well, wasn't it? Because we did Yeah.
SPEAKER_07Santi Ranti as opposed to Santa vs. Jesus.
SPEAKER_05Okay, yeah.
SPEAKER_07Interestingly, there was a there was a uh a game called Santa vs Jesus. It got it got in the news a couple of weeks ago. Oh, really? By a couple of very secular guys who are having fun. It's basically like a a Top Trumps game and like who's better, Jesus or Santa, as a you know, and they have all these scenarios in which maybe Jesus is better, maybe Santa's better. And and I guess their publicists did a brilliant job because instantly all you know the regular Christians sort of got very outraged at it, and suddenly a game that nobody would have heard of is kind of front page news on BBC website and things like this. And so interestingly, I I then sent them because they they own the Twitter um handle Santa Santa vs Jesus. And and the Santa vs Jesus hashtag was just full of discussion about this game. And so I just sent our video, Santa vs. Jesus, to him, and he he said they loved it and they retweeted it and that sort of thing. Really? Yeah, it's interesting. I've I've used this yeah, I've used the Santa vs. Jesus um video quite a lot actually online. Any kind of atheist who I follow will very very commonly say, you know, I'll tell you why I don't believe in God when you tell me why you don't believe in Santa. Yeah. And it's the same reason. And so it's very, very handy to have a little three-minute thing that you can just send off and send that and say, look, this is this is the difference, really. Yeah. Which you could like you could write an article about the differences between Santa and Jesus, but I think like a an an you know a quirky a quirky, pretty, pretty prettily made video actually um gets under the skin a little bit more. So that's that's kind of why we do these Christmas videos, really.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, yeah. Um and uh this the video we've just released, um he came down. Um totally different from Santa vs. Jesus in tone. Yes. Well, to begin with anyway. Well it is, yeah.
SPEAKER_07It is. And he came down as very much more like Christmas in Dark Places, just sort of saying, actually the little Lord Jesus meets us um yeah, with the poor and meek and lowly dwelt on earth our Saviour holy. That's that's kind of a a a big thing about Christmas, which is interesting because I was I was um preaching, I'll say where I was preaching in a second, but I was I was preaching on Monday nights and uh speaking about Christmas showing up in dark places, and I had just a number of people come up to me afterwards and say, Thank you so much for saying that Christmas is the dark places because this has happened to me in twenty sixteen. It's been a rubbish year, and I'm not looking forward to twenty seventeen and I feel the pressure for this to be the most wonderful time of the year, and it doesn't feel like it. So thank you for for giving permission for Christmas to be a a time of dark darkness um and not just, you know, jolly kind of japes. So um so so yeah, the the idea behind behind He Came Down is is really Yeah, Jesus meets us in our weakness and when we realize that we have nothing, then we are truly welcome in this story. Which is why anyone can be welcome in in this story. So yeah.
SPEAKER_05And uh we we've got some more sort of audio, behind the scenes audio, if you like, to play a little bit later. Yeah. Hendon Timothy.
SPEAKER_07Yes. So Hend is the is the woman on the um on the video. And perhaps should we should we play the video now?
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_07In in case I don't know where you've been, if you haven't yet heard um or seen uh he came down, but uh if you haven't yet, let's give you a taste of the video.
SPEAKER_02I know it's no one's fault. It's no one's fault that someone is born with a with a disability, but then you still feel like, but why did this happen to us?
SPEAKER_01Welcome to Olip Ye. Please take a seat. We want to now share a participant trait. This story of Christmas, we tell it in rhyme. Some actors have lines while some of us mime. I was overwhelmed with grief at the loss.
SPEAKER_02I thought the beautiful baby has got down syndrome and it's such a disaster.
SPEAKER_01Meanwhile, great Caesar Eugustus in Rome made a decree to return to your home. But Joseph is ruling meant Basley Help Town. So they rode on the donkey all the way down.
SPEAKER_02God didn't give me a straightforward answer of why this happened. It just took time for me to realize God's answer was it wasn't so much what was wrong with Leva as much as there was something wrong with the way I was thinking.
SPEAKER_01Mary will speak this. She did know how these things have happened, but still she beheld.
SPEAKER_02I think of Mary, of all she goes through, it's not her plan, it's God's plan. She just goes with it. She's humble, she's calm, she's reassured by the fact that everything's gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_00Lovely lovely.
SPEAKER_02Um I think I was the most beautiful child, and there was no reason for me to grieve or compare her. You know, um you know, feel sorry for her. Before she told me, I thought she would lack. She's not lacking.
SPEAKER_01All people are well's joy. The listener of Jesus. He came to the flash, he keeps you as a flash. If you're feeling it's a test, it's clear to it as many church.
SPEAKER_05Okay, so that was uh he came down video that we've done for Christmas.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, Hend is the yeah, the mother of Leva and her husband, Timothy. We um we interviewed them on the day of the nativity, and uh and Timothy said brilliant things as well. He's a he's a minister um here in Eastbourne, um, and he had brilliant things to say as well, but we just thought like to have too many voices crammed into into three minutes was was too many. So unfortunately, he's on the cutting room floor. And she loves that. Hend Hend has is been you know rubbing salt into Timothy's wounds. Poor Timothy. But um but that's why I'm very glad we've kept up our sleeve. Um, this other stuff, um this this other um footage, not footage, what it this other audio from our interview with Timothy and Hend because um some of the stuff that he says about raising a child with special needs is um sensational and mind-blowing. You'll you'll hear him say in a second if you were to present him with the option, would you like your child to would you like your child not to have downs? Just listen in for his answer. It's pretty it's pretty stunning. And uh yeah. So I I learnt I I learnt loads about what people with special needs teach uh us who think we've got it all together and what we can all learn about Jesus joining us as a speechless baby who's absolutely helpless, who needs to be cared for. What kind of gospel is this where God needs to be cared for? And what does that say to a society in which we hate being cared for? And the the worst thing is for us to lose our faculties, and the worst thing is for us to lose our independence and that sort of thing. God lost his independence. God lost his independence and became gave it up. Yeah, that's better to say. In order in order to save us and and in order to be at the center of a world where everyone's lifting themselves up, and then he came down. But and and I just think that that gives us a a radically different vision of what life is like. Um so he came down, sort of came out of uh Sally Phillips did a documentary, uh the actress and comedian Sally Phillips did a documentary a f a couple of months ago on BBC Two, A World Without Down Syndrome question mark. And through a particular screening test that pregnant women can take, you can detect or completely safely you can detect the presence of of Down syndrome in a child in the womb. And in the countries in which this has been rolled out, 99% of of mothers terminate their pregnancies. And she was making the case, well well maybe why don't why don't we just why don't we just wait and see and love whoever we get, you know? And it was just such a beautiful vision, and I know that Sally is a Christian. I mean, um I can't remember whether she says it in the documentary. I think she probably doesn't. Um but I know that she is a Christian, and I know that the Christian vision of life uh is not let's try and choose our way through this world so that we can navigate the world according to what is convenient and free and easy. If that's the vision of life we're gonna have, then we're gonna terminate the weak. And we're not gonna care for those at the end of life, and we're just gonna concentrate on those who are rational decision-making, together powerful people. And it's quite a chilling vision of life. The Christian vision of life is that God shows up in a manger, utterly speechless, and comes down for the meek and lowly and therefore creates a society in which we care for the meek and lowly, and we care for the unborn, and we care for uh for those with special needs. And so, yeah, my my way of highlighting that issue was to have a s an activity in which everyone's got Down syndrome.
SPEAKER_06Yeah.
SPEAKER_07From the angels to the shepherds to the baby Jesus. And what a beautiful baby Jesus we got. Yeah. Yeah. So he was funny actually, we we got him from um Facebook. You can get everything from Facebook. Um it's amazing what you can source on Facebook. So yeah, I just found this this mum who had posted a photo of her beautiful, you know, ten month-old child as he was at the time. And and she was in South Wales, and I was like, You wouldn't consider coming down to Eastbourne, would you? She says, Yeah, sure, fine, whatever. And I was like, Oh, well, we can, you know, we can put you up in a hotel over and yeah, no, we'll just do it in a day. And so they did an eight-hour round trip. They were with us for about half an hour, and uh and it was totally worth it, because uh he absolutely steals the show. So yeah.
SPEAKER_05That's great. Well, we're we're dying to hear the uh the extra exclusive content from the uh the director's cart. Cutting room floor?
SPEAKER_07Yeah. Well Timothy is anyway. He was completely butchered and uh lies on the on the cutting room floor. Okay. Uh an emaciated man, uh lacerated. But um yeah, no, let's it's it's great. What what both Timothy and Hen says is um is so apt not only for learning more about special needs, but also learning more about the gospel.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_02We didn't even want to have children. We were like, are we gonna be this I don't know why. Do you remember what they said? I don't know why would people want to have a child.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, why do they want to have children?
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_02Even having her in my arms as soon as she was born. She just looks so beautiful and just I was just happy, but then there was something that told me that could there be something wrong? There's something about her beautiful eyes, she just doesn't look like me. That was the only thing that kind of started to make make me, you know, doubt that if she's okay. I was overwhelmed with with grief um at the loss. That uh I thought I you know, um my child is my baby, my beautiful baby has got down syndrome and it's such a disaster. Um you know, it just took time for me to realize God's answer was it wasn't so much that it was wrong with Leva, as much as there was something wrong with the way I was thinking, with the way I perceived the world. I know it's no one's fault. You know, you read this in the Bible, that it's no one's fault that someone is born with a with a disability, but then you still feel like, but why did this happen why did you allow this to happen to us? It's not like God was angry with us or he wanted to punish us for something or teach us a lesson, you know. Some people would say maybe God wanted you to learn something. Maybe. But but what we learned um was that God was with us, God suffered with us, and um and he gave us the most beautiful child, and there was no reason for me to grieve or compare her or you know feel sorry for her.
SPEAKER_04But I think through Leva, God has challenged um whatever we think norm is, uh, and you know throws me back to to Jesus again. Now, what is the norm? And the answer, whatever it might be, it's not me. I am not the norm. The society as I know it is not the norm. Uh there is another norm.
SPEAKER_02When I think about the nativity and what especially what Mary went through when she was uh told by the angel that she's gonna have a child when she's not even married and living in a conservative uh you know community. I just I'm humbled by her calm, her trust in God. It's not her plan, it's God's plan. But that means that she will have to abandon however she imagines her life is gonna look like with her husband to be Joseph. And she takes God's plan and and she just goes with it. Um she's reassured by the fact that everything's gonna be okay.
SPEAKER_04Four or five years ago, if someone would have suggested if if you could have Leva without the Down syndrome, would that be an alternative you would accept? I would have said yes. Uh but now uh I think no, I don't want Leva without the Down syndrome. You see them, I want Leva as Leva is. Uh and she's not not perfect because she has Down syndrome or she's with Down syndrome. Um because like the rest of us, we are all imperfect and loved for for who we are. Not loved because we were created by a loving God and uh He created us to be loved.
SPEAKER_05So that's a little of the behind the scenes of uh the He Came Down video that uh we released this Christmas. So where can folks go if they want to uh share the video again?
SPEAKER_07Uh you go to speaklife.org.uk slash he came down. And uh and if you share that link, people have the opportunity of um getting a free book of all kinds of Christmas, and they can view some of our other Christmas videos and that sort of thing. So everything's collected together on that landing page. Speaklife.org.uk slash he came down.
SPEAKER_05Okay. Well it's pretty much Christmas now. We close up for uh for about a week or so. Uh-huh. Have you got lots of Christmas um active I know that uh you you're moving at the moment.
SPEAKER_07I am moving. You've got your your house uh to not only move but decorate first and yeah, we've got to stop it making stop it looking like a bomb site and uh make it slightly habitable and then move into it. So yeah, that'll be fun over Christmas.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And you've been doing lots of speaking. You said uh earlier in the podcast that uh you were at uh a place on Monday. That's right. Durham Durham Cathedral. Cathedral.
SPEAKER_07How about that? Was that for the uh with the university? It was yeah, the Christian Union's uh Carols service. So that was yeah, Monday the twelfth, and uh yeah, they they pack 'em in. Yeah. So it's a massive cathedral and you know, people standing at the back and they sort of they sit on the floor at the front around the pulpit and around the choir stalls and things like that just to get in, because it's just such an event in the in the calendar. So brilliant to be able to to speak about uh John chapter one to those guys and uh yeah, sort of led them in led them in a prayer. I I I get all my best evangelistic tips from the Queen. But she um do you remember a few a few Christmases ago, she she basically prayed that that final verse from a little town of Bethlehem, oh holy child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray, cast out our sin and enter in, be born to us today. Like, oh that's brilliant. That's like it's basically the sinner's prayer, can't that set the music? And they they had just sung that before my my sermon. So just being able to, you know, lead three thousand people in that kind of prayer, and who knows who knows who was praying it from the heart, but um a great opportunity 'cause I'm going back to Durham at the end of February, and we're gonna run a big uh a big events week uh in which we again will reach out to thousands there. So something to pray for.
SPEAKER_05Have you got an any more appointments before the end of the year? Not very many, no, just yeah, a couple of preaching gigs locally. So just in the in the kitchen, in the bathroom as bedroom.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, I'll just as as I put the roller up and down and yeah, so good.
SPEAKER_05Well we've got uh an exciting guest coming in uh January?
SPEAKER_07Kind of a big deal. Yeah. People know him, and we're not gonna say who it is, because it's just it's so exciting. We've got so somebody shared um our Christmas video with a big deal in the evangelism world. Okay. We're gonna we're gonna have to work out time uh zones, okay, as we do this. That's that's about as much as I'm gonna reveal, but we're we're gonna have to deal with time zones in in setting up this this interview. But yeah, I a famous evangelist shared, he came down on uh the Facebook page and was very complimentary about the video. Um yeah, a friend sort of said, Why don't you get on the podcast? And so so this he is gonna come on the podcast. And so my and then my next my next slice-by-slice world domination um kind of plan is uh Justin Welby. So yeah, he now follows me on Twitter. How about that? This is like 2016's been an incredible year. First I got f I I got followed by Kate Botley, the goggle box ficker, and then Justin Welby. I think Kate Botley's probably a a better get in in social media terms. In social media terms, but yeah, thrilled that Justin Welby really uh really liked the video as well. So we'll have to get him on, don't you think? Yeah, yeah. Talk about evangelism. Excellent. Yeah, why not? Why not? I'm not promising that, but I'm just saying maybe. Yeah, yeah. Maybe you got a dream. You got a dream.
SPEAKER_05Everybody tweets Justin Welby and say you've got to be on the Evangelic Podcast. Oh. Good. Um final thing that we're gonna talk about is uh reading between the lines, because we've done a whole year. Or you well, you've you've done the whole year.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, man. And Andy's looked at my face probably every day of this year editing together these videos. Reading between the lines. Um just recap for us or give us a summary of of reading between the lines and well stay tuned for a a little a little poem uh that I just recorded a couple of hours ago, um, which is a hundred famous phrases from the Bible done in three minutes in rhyming couplets. Um and the whole idea of reading between the lines is three hundred and sixty-five famous phrases. Uh we did three hundred and sixty-six this year because it's a leap year, but it takes you from Genesis to Revelation, from in the beginning to hallelujah at the end, and uh you travel through the Bible one phrase at a time. And we've been doing these videos about five, six, seven minutes long each day. And uh they've lived on uh YouTube this year. Next year they're gonna live on Facebook. So if you want to travel through the Bible with us from Genesis to Revelation, then uh go to our Facebook page, Speak Life UK. Is that the best way to search for us? How do how do they search for this?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think for us Speak Life UK is is the best to just search uh Speak Life UK.
SPEAKER_07Speak Life UK, and then that video is gonna go up every day, and uh and you can join with many other people as uh as we travel through the scriptures together. It should be fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_07Okay.
SPEAKER_05Is there anything else we need to cover?
SPEAKER_07Only to wish people a very happy Christmas and a Merry New Year. It should be the other way around, shouldn't it? You can never say happy Christmas or Merry New Year. That's wrong, isn't it? No, it's just totally wrong. It is. Even though probably New Year probably is a bit merry, isn't it? Yeah. Happy Christmas, Merry New Year. That's my thing from now on.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, but you're Australian, so Yeah.
SPEAKER_07It's gonna be backwards.
SPEAKER_05Okay, well, uh have a good new year and uh see you in January.
SPEAKER_07See you next year.