Today on the Evangelist Podcast, Allie Campbell helps us think about the Evangelist and the family. The Evangelists Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley.
SPEAKER_02You're listening to the Evangelist Podcast, it's the show where we discuss all things telling the good news of Jesus Christ. I'm Andy Brinkley, and here's Glenn Scrivener.
SPEAKER_05Here I am. Hello everybody.
SPEAKER_02How are you?
SPEAKER_05I'm okay. I always feel like I need to have like a little trick or a catchphrase or something when you say, Here's Glenn Scrivener. Yes.
SPEAKER_02We haven't got the uh the applause or anything like that then. Oh yeah, remember that. Or the booing or Glen.
SPEAKER_05Uh yeah, it's hello everybody. That is kind of my catchphrase, isn't it? Hello everybody. You know? It's quite a good idea. Is it a little bit generic, let's be honest.
SPEAKER_02Not quite specific to me, but uh so sometimes on the podcast we we have a little bit of a look at things that we're going through, you know, or activities and stuff like that. So Glenn, uh why don't you tell us what you're writing at the moment?
SPEAKER_05Oh man writing a book. Oh, okay. It's like a dagger in my heart. It's remembrance of of deadlines. So uh I'm working on one book is an Easter book that's gonna come out with ten of those called Love Story. I think it's gonna be called Love Story, where we just I I just kind of talk about the Easter story as the ultimate love story. And it was really prompted by C.S. Lewis and the way that he became a Christian in 1931, he had this long conversation with Tolkien. Like, wouldn't you want to be in on that conversation? Like, Lewis and Tolkien, Mr. Narnia and Mr. Middle-earth having this conversation about um myths. Because both of them loved myths, both of them taught myths, both of them wrote myths. But actually C. S. Lewis had this ambivalent attitude. He kind of said, Well, they're nice, but they're not true, are they? He says they are lies, even though they are lies breathed through silver which is a lovely evocative phrase. But but then Tolkien comes back at him and says, No, they are not lies. And this just rocked Lewis's world, because he'd always loved these myths, and he talked about the myths of the dying and rising gods and kind of the Rags to Riches stories and the overcoming the monster story and the the Voyage and Return story and the Prince and the Pauper story. And he loved all those stories, but he just thought that they were escapism. And Tolkien's like, No, no, there is a true myth. And it's it's Jesus Christ. And when he says myth, it doesn't mean it didn't happen, it's a true myth. But it is this like epic tale, and every other story we ever tell is just a refraction and uh distortion of that original tale. And when the word became flesh is when the myth became fact. And so Jesus is the ultimate story to ultimate fairy tale kind of earthed into time and space. And that that like within a matter of weeks, um C. S. Lewis was converted and um and he started writing about Christianity as the true myth and being convinced that the the Easter story was was both the the myth that unlocks all other myths, but also this reality that had happened in history. So then it's just going through the Easter story and just showing people how it really is this story of overcoming the monster and the great quest and rags to riches and comedy and tragedy and it's the great love story. Um so that's yeah, that's what I'm working on. And I've got another book I've I need to get back to which is about Reformation and uh the five alone statements of the Reformation. Christ alone, Grace Alone, Faith Alone, Scripture alone to God's glory alone, and just relating that really to my teenage years as a Christian and and feeling like I kind of needed a Reformation when I was a teenager, because I was a very serious religious teenager, and I needed a kind of a Luther experience to break me out of a kind of a medieval Christianity my teenage years and to know the glories of Christ alone, faith alone, grace alone, that sort of thing.
SPEAKER_02So are these sort of like big books or smaller booklet type things?
SPEAKER_05I can't be bothered with big books anymore. I tried one of those and that's yeah, one too many. Um so about ten thousand words each of them, so yeah, like sixty, seventy pages sort of thing.
unknownOkay.
SPEAKER_02Maybe less. Scrivener by name, scrivener by nature.
SPEAKER_05That's right, Scrivener means writer.
SPEAKER_02So uh did you come up with these ideas or did the publishing people sort of say, why don't you write a book on Um so ten of those asked me about the Easter book.
SPEAKER_05They said, Can you do us an Easter book? And uh and then I s I had the idea of doing how C.S. Lewis uh considered it the great love story. So that's yeah. So they came up with the the occasion for the book and I came up with the idea for it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And your wife Emma's writing or written a book in the process.
SPEAKER_05It's with the publishers and going back and forths and having the design, the cover design being done and things like that. So that'll be out sometime in 2017, called A New Day, a follow-up to her first book, uh, A New Name, which is just that's my favourite evangelistic giveaway book, a new name.
SPEAKER_02You give away hers, not yours. Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_05Much better writer than me. But and and it's like this first person narrative, it's a it's a biography, it's a testimony really about Jesus meeting her in dark places, and and so yeah, that communicates with people massively. So I'd yeah, I'd far rather give people a new name than 321. Um so yeah, looking forward very much to a new day coming out with IVP next year.
SPEAKER_02Excellent. So uh this week we have Allie Campbell uh talking about uh the evangelist and the family. Um tell us a bit about Allie.
SPEAKER_05So uh Ali lives not too far away uh from us, and uh I I m met up with him uh last year for the first time and was just we really sparked off each other in terms of coming from the same place, wanting to lift up the name of Jesus, loving church and also wanting to get out there in the world. And quite often you find people who either love church or they love the world, and and it's it's um nice to come across someone who has thought through how to be faithful to discipling Christians in church, um, but for that not to be just a Christian ghetto, but uh a way of actually reaching the world. So, yeah, he's been working in youth work for a couple of decades and he's brilliant at what he does. He consults with lots of churches around the place about how to include youth and children in the life of the church. And I think what I've really been blessed by with Ali is really thinking about youth not as a category in the church that you minister to and that you do ministry to, but as a blessing to the wider body that they pray for you, that they bless you, that they preach to you, that they have gifts to share with you um and with the wider body. And I think when so often church just gets sort of subdivided into you've got a men's work and you've got a women's work and you've got an elderly work and you've got a youth work and a children's work, and you subdivide your children's work into five different subgroups, and um just getting back to that real sense of um we're all in this together, and let's not have a segregated church. Um let's be blessed by one another. So we talk loads about that, and we talk uh also about just home life and family life and and how we can be worshipping Jesus, praying together as family, and I found that very, very uh challenging and helpful as well.
SPEAKER_02Okay, you've wetted our appetite. Let's uh hear it now.
SPEAKER_05So I'm here with Allie Campbell, a youth and children's ministry consultant. Thanks for joining us on the Evangelist Podcast. You are welcome. Yeah, brilliant. Great to have you with us. Now you you uh you live here in Sussex, is that right? That's right. Yeah. In Hollywood Seath, mid-Sussex. Yeah, lovely. And it you've been you've been around that kind of part of the world for quite a while now, is that right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we moved here in 2005. Okay. Okay. So yeah, good yeah, eleven years.
SPEAKER_05Eleven years. And tell me, what on earth does a youth and children's ministry consultant do?
SPEAKER_01Well, um most of my time spent encouraging churches in their work with children and young people. That can be anything from training teams of volunteers or supervising salaried workers, or just helping a church think through their approach to children's and family ministry or youth work, um, see it as part of the wider strategy of the church, and trying to help people see children and young people right at the centre of what we're doing as God's people.
SPEAKER_05Absolutely brilliant. And so and so a church will invite you in, and what's your first thought? So if if if a vicar or a pastor or s somebody, I want Ali, I want him to completely change how we how we do things. What do you what do you think people are thinking you're going to do?
SPEAKER_01And what are you thinking that you're going to do? Um I think sometimes people want an answer. Yeah. So they're they're posing a problem, or they've got a a thing they're trying to resolve, and externally they're trying to find an answer from somewhere else. And I guess I'm I really believe that God's given us, the local church, all the resources we need. Often we don't appropriate what we've got. So partly what I try and do is help them see they're the answer to their own prayers, if you like. If the church is equipped, if people are growing in Christ, God's given us what we need as his people in that local community to serve him and serve young people. So part of my role is just helping them grow in confidence about what they have rather than thinking they need to get that from somewhere else. Sometimes it's great to employ a salaried worker, but other times it's just about the church owning their responsibility for raising the next generation, and sometimes things just need a tweak to help people see um where they could put children and young people first in their thinking rather than you know last or not thinking about them at all in the worst cases.
SPEAKER_05And so you spend your time like dealing with uh the pastor or the vicar or a wider leadership team or the whole church.
SPEAKER_01How do you focus your input? Um, it depends. So sometimes a volunteer will get in touch and they just want me to support and encourage them as sort of somebody who's going to journey with them. Sometimes the church leader isn't quite on the same page in terms of valuing the youth work. Other times I get a a church leader who'll be in touch and um be really keen that the whole church gets something that he's passionate about, but he's struggling to communicate that in a way that the church is getting it. Um so it could be anybody that invites me if they've um heard about me or knows what I'm up to. Um and then really I'm keen that the whole church, which has to include the leadership, um, get behind whatever it is that they're hoping I'll do. So I don't like to do stuff in a silo, so I'm really keen that you know, church leadership, PCC, diaconate, whoever that is, gets a handle on what they want to see happen for children and young people. And um it's a bit of a cliched African proverb that's used a lot, but it takes a village to raise a child in the same way. I think in terms of church, um, everyone needs to be investing in the next generation. So I'll try and get everybody on the same page, I guess, would be a place where I try and start. Um, and then it's you know, helping them develop what's going to work in their community. So there isn't a generic thing I'll come in and do, so often that takes a bit of time to see where they're at, who they're engaging with, the shape of the church, style, theology, um, what's already happening, where there's momentum, where there are things that need to just maybe die a little bit because they're not doing anything that's helpful or growing the kingdom. So yeah. What I love is it's different every time I do it, because every church has got its own unique things. Yeah.
SPEAKER_05So uh what are the commonalities though, as as what what are the big problems that people are seeing when they think about the family, when they think about children and youth work that just keep recurring?
SPEAKER_01Um I guess drawing the dots between um what's often happening in the church, so whether it's Sunday school, junior church, youth groups, and drawing connections between that and the home.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_01Sometimes even drawing connections between what we do on a Sunday and the rest of the week. So if you you can start you can be quite isolated if you're just in your group and that's vacuum-packed at church. So if you've got a group for eight to eleven year olds, and they rarely, if ever, go into the main church, they don't see other adults worship particularly. They might be in at the start, they're out as soon as the church can get shot of them, and then they come back at the end. So, you know, just simple things like where have they seen other adults worship? Do they even get worshiped? So, in the context of sung worship and praising God and proclaiming who he is, where's that happening? Because often those things aren't reflected in their group activities. Um, and I I think in terms of growth, intergenerationally engaging with each other is how we're most likely to grow. The EA did a survey back in 2012, and it was asking young adults about their growth and their faith development, how they came to faith, and something like 70% said, you know, Christian parents and also the worshipping community. So that wasn't my Sunday school group or my youth leader or this activity I did on a Sunday that was in my own age group. It was that sense of being part of the whole worshiping community. And often I see that as a key challenge for the church. How on earth do we do stuff with all of us together?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because it can be so easy for a parent to think, um, my kids, they they have a youth worker, and the youth worker is going to be the one who's going to disciple my children for me. Um, but I'm guessing you're not saying that to people.
SPEAKER_01No. I mean, when I you know, if I'm really honest, when I started out, I was 18 um as a volunteer and started out kind of not really knowing what I was doing, and was a volunteer for a decade before I moved into full-time ministry, and during that decade it never occurred to me that parents had anything to do with the youth work, um, despite the fact that the young people were their children. So it's been a developing process for me to see the significance of parents and their place in the spiritual nurture of their own kids. And um I guess for me that's you know, just come into greater relief as I've become a parent myself with two daughters. Yeah, how old are your kids? Um two daughters, eight and eleven. Yeah, yeah. Um, and what we do as a family, what we choose to do, how we spend our time, how we invest our time, and when we certainly when we're going to church and we're thinking about what they're receiving, it's always with a sense that we are the primary carers for them, not just in terms of their physical needs, but spiritually as their parents. And I guess a key thing I try and communicate to churches is your parents are the key kind of spiritual nurturers of your children and young people. Now, obviously, that presents challenges if they're working in a community where there's a children's outreach club, for example, and those kids' parents aren't Christians.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so it it's not a straightforward reflection of how we should be when there are lots of challenges around what family looks like and how we parent and all those kind of things. But if you've got Christian parents, yeah, then they should recognise that they need to take the lead role in the spiritual nurture of their kids. And sometimes they abdicate if there's a children's pastor or youth worker and say, Well, that's their job, they'll do that.
SPEAKER_05And is that is that hard to then change that that culture within a church?
SPEAKER_01I think if the mindset is there that, you know, and some parents have this view that you know you're gonna fix what I'm not doing the rest of the week in the half an hour that you've got my child, um that's not happening. Yeah, yeah. No, there's no youth worker I know that's that good. Yeah. Um but I it it's it's getting to a point where you recognise it's a partnership, and that's the place I guess to move towards. Um the more youth and children's workers involve parents in what they're doing, um, the better. I I find it odd that I get inundated from school with parent mail about all kinds of stuff that's going on for my kids. I've had about four letters today, this morning, you know, a couple from the secondary school, a couple from the primary school, and there's this constant to and fro where we recognise that it's a partnership for the formal education of our kids. Why is it that we don't see our responsibility as parents for the spiritual formation of our kids? Right. Um and often I think there isn't that to and fro between the church and the home that would help that relationship feel more solid. Um I think some churches you're lucky if you get a letter once a term that says this is what we're looking at with your kids. Um so to me, there needs to be far more backwards and forwards communication between church and home.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um and recognising that for some parents they don't know where to begin. Exactly.
SPEAKER_05I was just gonna say, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Spiritual stuff.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, because if they're now thinking, Oh gosh, I had never considered that I am the chief discipler of my children, hopefully, hopefully they should have considered that. But but if this is a new thought to them, um I'm imagining they then feel very much out of their depth, and what do I do next? What do you what do you say to them at that point?
SPEAKER_01Um I don't want to lobloads of things at church leaders, but I think if you were to think of sermons you hear regularly, if you know somebody's married and got kids and they're standing there preaching, when was the last time you heard somebody use an illustration that said, Okay, this is what we're looking at this morning. How are you gonna work this out with your family at home? How are you gonna talk to your kids about what we've talked about this morning? How are you gonna if you're thinking if we're thinking about our prayer lives, for example, how's how's your prayer life gonna be lived out in front of your kids? I rarely in a sermon hear people illustrating stuff that's about what your practice looks like in front of your kids. I hear a lot about what it looks like in your workplace, sometimes even what it looks like on the playground, so you almost get there, but depends who's doing drop-off and who we're talking about. Often it's how does your evangelism or witness look like with your peers rather than how does it look like with those you live with?
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01Those right in front of you that see you every day. And maybe that's more challenging for us. Maybe it's easier to be an evangelist with people at work that only know me a little bit.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_05Being evangelists with people in my own home who's there are fewer integrity issues at that point, aren't they? Well, yeah. Yeah, less of a less of a gap between life and lip when I can uh mask it at at work. But yeah.
SPEAKER_01I just think I'd encourage church leaders to look at their illustrations and what they're highlighting in terms of practice and living stuff out and and lob things in there for parents to think about. Man, what what does this look like in front of my kids? It's a good thought. It's a good thought. What about yourself, Allie?
SPEAKER_05Did you grow up in a Christian home?
SPEAKER_01I did grow up in a Christian home. Um my dad was a Baptist minister. Uh my grandfather before that was a Baptist minister. Um so I feel a bit like a Levite, if you like. Um I think what I would say, I mean, this is just from my own reflection growing up, and I guess it's fed into my ministry, is never assume when you're working with children at a church that they understand the gospel.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_01And I guess I'd grown up with it and I knew it, so I could tell you what the Bible taught about who Jesus was, and I could parrot fashion relay the story of the gospel, but I guess um it wasn't until I was eleven, ten, eleven, and there was a group visiting from America um called Living Sound, and it was this rock group, and this was the 70s, so they had flares and huge hair.
unknownWow.
SPEAKER_01And in between the songs at this rock group concert thing, which we never had in our church, Tiny Baptist Church, so I was very excited. I invited a load of my mates from school, um, having not a clue really what I was invited to, it was just like there was a rock concert at church, and the lead singer in between the songs would just share a bit of testimony, and he just you know laid out the gospel, and I it was as if I'd suddenly heard it for the first time. And he said, If you want to, you know, give your life to Christ, come to the front. And um, you know, fairly classic. Invitation, if you like, and I felt my legs start to shake. I started to cry, the whole thing was happening, and I didn't move because I had all my mates from school, so they're all sat next to me on this row and they all start looking at me because I'm doing this weird, shaky thing and crying, because I know I'm supposed to go up, you know. You just know and you know her sometimes, God's speaking to me, I've got to do something, and I didn't go up. So what happened after that was I spent the next two weeks thinking that's it, I've damned myself because that was my invitation. I blew it, and it wasn't until a friend of my dad's visited the church a couple of weeks later, and I don't I couldn't bear it anymore. So I just told him, Look, this happened two weeks ago, and I've blown it with God, that's it, it's over. And he said, No, it's not. We're having this chat now. You can give your life to Jesus now, and I was I was blown away by that. I thought I had my one chance and I'd lost it. Goodness So you know, I prayed the prayer with him and gave my life to Christ, and you know, that was when was I when I was eleven, and and even then I think I still struggled to grasp grace, understand forgiveness, you know, know what it meant to be a new creation. I mean I'm eleven, you know, I haven't sorted it all out, but I think the key thing I would say to people in your working with kids, never assume they know, and I guess the thing I would all always say is have you invited the children and young people you're working with recently to say yes to Jesus? Um, and often children are just waiting for permission to step into what God's got for them, but often adults are the gatekeepers of some of those decision-making processes for kids, yeah. Um and it's doing that in a way that's authentic and real, not manipulating, but just encouraging them to consider the claims of Christ if they haven't, and just share that in a way that's accessible and the kids will grasp, and even kids that have grown up in church, as I've done that in different places when I've visited, they've given their lives to Christ, and that you know, people that are leading them think they're Christians already, and they just for themselves have never said yes, they've never said yes, I want to own my faith, yes, I'm gonna follow Jesus, um, you know, and that even that just sense of repenting of sin and knowing that God's dealt with the stuff in our lives. So I guess that's that's my own kind of journey of not really of freaking out and thinking I'd blown it. So again, I think that you know how we talk to kids is really important.
SPEAKER_05You know, you've you've got an example of of where altar calls go wrong as well.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, so all the all of what you're saying has that in some ways it didn't yeah, I I didn't fit he didn't communicate anything to me that said if you don't respond now, so it wasn't anything that was like if you get run over by a bus tomorrow, do you know where you're going? That's a popular one though. They didn't lob that in there, but it was what I internalized, and I again I think that the responsibility when we do an invitation, do we know, particularly working with children, what is it they're internalizing, what is it they're hearing from our words, and we just need to be really thoughtful about how we communicate something that we're hoping brings life, but is it how are we doing that in a way that is filled with grace? Yes, it needs challenge, it needs people to stop and think. Um but I think how our words and the way we choose to articulate that's really important.
SPEAKER_05So how do we how do we stop? Because um I um I gave my life to Jesus a thousand times as a teenager, and I and I don't think that's an exaggeration. Like I I think I think you know, every single night between the ages of about fourteen and seventeen, I think I was, you know, and ever more melodramatically saying, God take me, use me, your will be done. Um and just more and more thinking that that actually my Christianity was my life given to God rather than Christ's life given to me. Um so actually I I had a sort of an experience of that whole altar core thing that actually it's it in my in my teenage mind became almost like the sacrament of almost a medieval religion in in which you know I've got to constantly give my life to God and who knows whether he's received me, who who knows whether I've been, you know, abandoned to the will of God enough, and so I kept on doing it again and again. Are there dangers in in in the sort of the invitation to Christ thing that can happen? I mean I believe in invitations to Christ, I'm an evangelist, I offer them, but but like what what what advice would you give uh to a serious-minded religious kind of teenager like me um and to to my youth leaders?
SPEAKER_01I think in in the context of that serious-minded thing, and also in terms of youth leaders, if if you think about the way we often work, and this is even more now so than when I was younger, um, we don't play sport just for the fun of it. We don't do music unless we're going to be grade eight by the time we're seven. Everything that we're doing is assessed, and it's based upon our effort. Um, you know, and that's true for kids. The pressure, um, you know, young people phoning up childline, the amount that's increased over the last year, 40% increase in those phoning up with anxiety. Just in the last year. Yeah, just in the last year amongst children and young people, you know, because they're they're stressed and they're worried about the world and what they see in society. And who can blame them as we look at you know the political situation in you know both sides of the Atlantic? But um everything is about what they're going to achieve through their own effort. And here we have a gospel that says the opposite, and I think that is really hard for young people to grasp that you can't do anything to make God love you, you can't do anything to make yourself acceptable to him. He loves you because he created you, he sent his son to die for your sin. And I think I love Watchman Nee's picture of you know um the blood covers our sin, the cross deals with our humanity and who we are, and that sense of those two things happening when Jesus dies. But often we think we need to keep coming back and dying again when if we've already died to Christ, we're a new creation. And I think sometimes if we're passionate about evangelism, and often this happens at big events, you can have the same people turn up again and again to those events because they're passionate about God and they want to worship, and then the evangelist does the evangelist's call every time to the same group of young people. So I guess a a word to an evangelist might be when do you call them on beyond responding into discipleship, into that deeper place of using your gifts and talents for God? And you can do both. I think you can say, if you haven't responded to the gospel, here's an opportunity. Think about what God's calling you to to lay down the life that you have been living for yourself and turn to Christ, and that that's great. But then for those of you that have already made that decision and are choosing to follow Him, have you thought about whether you're reaching your mates? Have you thought about whether you should be teaching or preaching? Have you thought about whether you've got a pastoral heart and you need to be serving God in that way? And and so calling them into using their gifts, because they're already followers. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's getting that balance. To me, the work of an evangelist is both those things, but I think sometimes we focus on a conversion rather than the call to make disciples. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So Colossians 2 verse 6 really springs to mind, you know. Um what is it having received Christ, now walk in him, overflowing with gratitude, and you know, and I think sometimes that's that's the message that needs to come across. Um, not always give your life to Jesus, but having received Jesus. Yeah. Um and this sort of gels with what you're saying as well about the intergenerational thing and seeing kids as part of church is actually if you're treating them as disciples alongside the rest of the body of Christ, then yeah, fantastic. Why why aren't we saying, Oh, having received Jesus, um, how are you gonna serve the body? And and you know, may maybe you've got gifts that Christ has given you for the rest of the body. Um when we siphon them off to just the youth group, then I guess there's nothing we can ask them to do except just receive Jesus again.
SPEAKER_01I love Peter um quoting Joel in his Pentecost preach. Wow, yeah. Um and I just love the bit where he says this is for you and your children, and I think sometimes the church has interpreted that as this is for you and for the next generation as they grow up. But actually the word he uses is technology, at least as we've got it in the Greek, which means child, it doesn't mean next generation, it means an actual child. And I think you know, we need to grasp that children and young people, when they give their lives to Christ, receive the same Holy Spirit that we do as adults, it's not a baby or junior version of him, you know, it is God, and they've got talents and gifts to use now. Yes. One of the reasons I think we lose young people from the church before they hit even sometimes their teenage years, if we haven't given them a place of significance in the body of Christ to serve alongside adults in ways that are appropriate for their age, but to get stuck in with growing the kingdom with us.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. And then that ties in with the whole intergenerational question, and I mean, does does that then put a question mark over you know, should we be siphoning off the children and youth away from the main body of worship and discipling them in a in a different room with a different syllabus? Um how do you where where do you come to on that?
SPEAKER_01Well I think it depends. That's a kind of on the sit-on-the-fence answer, isn't it? But uh I think in some places the the sense of community is so great that being separate for a time is positive and encouraging. In other places there's no sense that we're ever together, and and I would say sometimes larger churches fall into this trap to a greater extent because they have every bit of programme you could possibly imagine for the children and young people to partake in without ever having to see their parents, and vice versa, or any grown-ups other than those who are doing youth or children's work. And I think that's to the detriment of the church. I just think we don't enjoy the fullness of what God has given us if we're not together, and I you know, when Paul talks about the body of Christ and you know whether it's looking at Ephesians 4 and who we are, there's no generational difference for me in terms of he's not suddenly talking to adults and not the whole church. Um so I think sometimes there are things that we need to look at. So when we say, you know, in a church meeting, we love it if you can all come to the prayer meeting. We don't actually mean that because we've put the prayer meeting at half past eight, so children can't come to that, can they? Because they're gonna be in bed. But we communicate a language that often talks about the whole church are doing X, Y, or Z, or we as a church are going to, and what we mean is we as the adults are going to. Um, and I mean I I'm not a fan in some ways of doing stuff that feels um restrictive, but there's something really positive about the lectionary and everybody going through together something that means in three years we've done the Bible and we've all done it, rather than you know, the regurgitating of preaching on our pet passages because they're the thing we love. Um, so you know, maybe the adults never get out of Mark's gospel for more than six months because it's the vicar's favourite book, so we're always going to come back to it. But actually, we're getting the whole you know, sense of scripture and the whole breadth of what God's got to teach us through his whole word. I don't know if we're just hanging out in Mark's Gospel, and that's nothing against Mark's Gospel, it's brilliant. But you know, we need the richness of the whole diet of God's word, and if children are doing something completely different from the adults, those conversations that we hope might be happening around the dinner table, I just think are a bit harder. If if we're all doing the same thing, then wouldn't it be great if we're all sat around talking about the woman at the well, because we've all looked at that today, uh, or we're all sat around talking about the beatitudes because everybody's looking at the beatitudes.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And you know, the understanding that children have that brings a different perspective or just a diff their understanding can inform ours as adults. Um I think in terms of my ministry, I've learnt more from kids, if this isn't a you know dangerous thing to say in some ways, than I think I've taught them.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Simply because their how they see the world and how they see God has shown me things about God I would have missed if I wasn't talking to a child. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_05I mean Jesus doesn't say to the children, grow up for goodness sakes, he says to the adults, become like little children, doesn't he? Like it's that way around, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Um there's a dip there's a reliance upon and a complete trust that I think is fragile in some ways, and um, you know, it's the kind of thing where my kids still will stand halfway up the stairs and expect me to catch them. And that's pretty much regardless of where I am in the house. You know, if they suddenly launch themselves, I've just got to somehow beat and catch them. And you know, at eleven, she's great, but I'm structuring it to not fall on the floor.
SPEAKER_05Maybe you just need to let her let her drop. She'll learn.
SPEAKER_01She will. But I think that there is that kind of relationship that is about that's how they see their relationship with God. And it's not I think sometimes as adults we can go, oh well they'll grow up and they'll soon grasp the reality of it. But you know, just I mean what I love um I think one of my favourite Bible characters is Andrew, who, you know, in John's Gospel, certainly at the beginning of John, um, it's Andrew who then, having met Christ, the first thing he does, having just seen who Christ is, is bring Jesus another follower by going and getting his brother. And then, you know, when we're looking at the the feeding of the five thousand in John six, it's Andrew again who's the one who highlights this little boy with his pack lunch. Huh. Interesting. He's just this encourager, but he sees things in a way that others don't. Philip, you know, is kind of like, oh, it would take eight months' wages and done all this thing about it. And and it's Andrew who just says, Well, we've got this, and he doesn't say this will do it, but the fact he even mentions it, it feels to me, you know, dare I read between the lines, but it feels to me Andrew's seeing something that you know Philip hasn't. You know, he's kind of thinking, This is something, maybe we can do something with this, and then God does something incredible with it. But it's a child's pack lunch, yeah, you know, effectively. And what is it that our children bring? It may look small and not significant, but in God's hands, he can use it just like he can use us.
SPEAKER_05Do you think we have too low expectations of children and youth in the church? And and it sounds like you're saying yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_01I think we've got to tell stories of what we see God do. And I know that sounds obvious, but you know, I we look at some of the stories in the Old Testament, and you've got David who is chosen, you know, from this man's family to be the next king, and he's not even in the lineup at the start of the kind of you know, effort rocking up there. And what I found find staggering about that story is what Samuel seems to have forgotten. So if you think Samuel was chosen as a child, and he he was picked as a child, and there he is as a grown man, he's now this prophet, supposedly hearing from God, you know, and and he just goes, This must be the Lord's anointed, looking at the oldest son. And I'm like, Man, Samuel, have you forgotten? Right, yeah. Part of the thing is to say to adults, remember what it's like to be a child, rediscover the wonder of being a child. And you know, I mean, Samuel's first prophecy was not, I see a river and it's beautiful, and we can all swim in it and it's gonna be lovely, you know, or I see a tree and isn't it nice. But his first, you know, is basically Eli, your kids are a nightmare. Yeah, and the Lord's gonna judge Israel, and it's all a bit rubbish at the minute. I mean, fancy getting that as your first word. Right. You know, he delivers it and gets on with it. Yeah. And then he grows up and kind of somewhere he's forgotten what what God looks at and has to remind him. And that's interesting. So I think you know, if we look at the heart, I mean there are kids' hearts for worship, kids' hearts for what God is doing that just you know crack me up. I mean, just one example. Um, my sister-in-law had a um kidney um failure, and so was on dialysis and needed a new kidney, and about a year she was on dialysis, uh, just in her mid-thirties, and uh my youngest um started praying for her right from the outset of us finding out that she would have a new kidney, and she prayed for her every night for a year, and if we didn't pray, she reminded us that we had to pray for Claire, and then she would pray for Claire. I mean, she just did that every day. And you know, not she shamed me because there were days when I forgot to pray, or I'd be so you know, rushing to get her into bed, and you know, it's now half past seven, you should be asleep, and she put we haven't prayed. And you know, I was often brought up short by my speediness to get out of the room while she's thinking, We haven't prayed.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, really good reminder, thanks.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, exactly. And I'd never seen that about Samuel, actually. The the yeah, so there is Samuel as a youngster, and then his first word is about youngsters, and then yeah, he anoints the youngster David, and that's very interesting. Um Tell me, I often go to churches and I'll preach, and I'm meant to be preaching evangelistically, and um and then at some point after the third song or so, the leader of the service gets up and says, And now all our children and youth are going out. And I'm seeing like 18-year-olds like leaving the service, and I'm thinking, I'm I'm pretty sure they can get what I'm saying. I'm seeing 14-year-olds leaving the service, and I'm thinking, yeah, I'm pretty much pitching what I say at a 14-year-old level. I'm seeing eleven-year-olds leave, and I'm thinking, you know what, actually, they can sit through a half hour of maths on a Monday morning. Can't they can't they sit through my preaching? Should should the the youth be leaving the service at that point? Um and if you know, and I'm sure there are good good arguments for saying yes, but if not, have you seen churches where all age worship is done very well? Um what are your thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_01Um I have, but I think in terms of how things are pitched, um I've seen it done badly. So I've seen uh the kids stay in and then the church leader do two talks, and they've done a three-minute uh how simple can I make it with a with an illustration that nobody understands, but it was funny, and then do a you know shorter but still a ten-fifteen minute exegetical thing. So what they're doing is I've got to do something for the kids, so I'll nod to them, yeah and then I've got to do my preach. And what I don't see is people being equipped to think about actually when we've got everybody together, and I think partly it's because we've lost the art of doing it, if you go way back, church was everybody together because Sunday schools were in the afternoons. Yeah. So if you if your family came to church, you all went to church, you all sat there, and then Sunday school was in the afternoons, and you know, you can look at people like Mark Griffiths wrote a book in 2008 called Um One Generation from Extinction, and he looks particularly at children's work and youth work, but he just asks a question. When we shifted in the 1950s and sixties, there was a little dip in church attendance, and unlike the church, thinking particularly the Church of England, it shifted into panic mode and reacted quickly, which it's not used to doing. Um sometimes takes twenty years for it to think about a question. That is a panic, but yeah, go on. That yeah, but uh in this instance that shifted quite quickly. Sunday school in the afternoon. Took the hit and um we shifted stuff to Sunday mornings, and there were Sunday schools in the mornings as we were trying to address this kind of thing. But then what happened after that was suddenly attendance went off a cliff.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Now, you know, he was saying don't just look at this as kind of there's causality, but that doesn't necessarily mean these two things are intrinsically linked, this decision and then the you know continued decline in terms of attendance. But there's something about you know preaching to the whole assembly. If you look at some of those stories in the Old Testament where the whole everyone who could understand is how it's phrased often, was present. So you know, you've got a prophet rediscovering the law in a way that the ch the people of God have not grasped. And literally, I don't know how many days that they stand there and they read it until everybody's heard it. But it says all that could understand were present. Well, I think that's children and young people are there. They're hearing along with everybody else God's word.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um just being read out to them. It's not even being preached, as far as I can see, it's just we've rediscovered this. This is manna from heaven, this is food for us spiritually. Yeah, you think about Nehemiah 8 and places like that, aren't it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like let's hear God's word. Yeah. Let's be filled again in a way we haven't for for for decades. And God's people lap it up. And we seem to have I think partly we've lost a passion for God's word that means we're excited about preaching and teaching, and we're excited about when we open scripture, God speaks. If we've prayed, if we're faithful to the word, then God's going to do something, and that expectation needs to be there regardless of whether we've got just adults or children and young people together. I think there's a there is an art to engaging children and young people, and I don't know colleges that teach that to people that come out as pastors of churches. So they might have a half a day on working with children and young people, but I I don't know any colleges that particularly teach on preaching to everybody and how to craft something that means you can engage the whole room. If you if you think about I mean, story particularly, I think is the way to do it. So you think about a family gathered round for a meal and granddad suddenly decides he's gonna share a story. I mean, you know, my kids are gripped by that. Every generation in the room is paying attention because there's a great story and it just resonates and it communicates something, and often there might be a bit of humour in it, but it just draws you in. And you know, there's a lost art of storytelling.
SPEAKER_05Yes, and it becomes self-reinforcing, doesn't it? Because we if we're not growing up in churches that are like that, then we have no experience of that to pass on to the next generation, and it's kind of no, and and I guess that you know, what are our expectations of kids?
SPEAKER_01I think was you know one of those questions you had. I mean, here's here's two quick examples from my own practice. Um when I've done church weekends away, so another thing a church might ask me to do is do a weekend away and come and do the main sessions for the youth work if it's a young people's thing. And without fail, when I've done those weekends away, including the ones when I was a full-time salaried youth pastor, is when I'd do a little form at the end or a little feedback thing on what have you found most useful, um, what was the thing that spoke to you the most this weekend. Without fail, it's the time when I've said, have 15 minutes by yourself with a Bible, a notepad, a pen, go and find a bit of space, just you and God, pray, read something from scripture, see what he might be saying to you. And literally, I cannot get kids back from that. And that's going down to eight, nine-year-olds, um, up to kind of seventeen, eighteen-year-olds. And at the first time I did it, I thought, man, they're all just they've had five minutes, now they're all running around hitting each other with sticks outside. But but actually I have to get them back so that at the end of the 15 minutes, there's nobody back in the room, they're all still doing it.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, and that's that's with and then they put that on their form. And if you think about it, again, this is about permission that adults give or don't. Is when do we give young people permission just to have space where we're not requiring anything of them, um, and it's space for them. There isn't a device, you know, they're not on the iPad, Netflix, you know, they're just there, and they've got a Bible, they've got a pen, they're in nature. I think there's something about being outside and in God's creation that makes a difference for us in terms of just being able to be a bit more peaceful, um, and having that space where it's just you, yeah, and and you and God, and you've got permission to go and have 15 minutes with him without any expectations of what you're gonna deliver at the end.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01And you know, there's that, and the other thing was um these two kids when I was doing kids' work at New Wine, um, and this for me just illustrates my own kind of lack of expectations, but then God blowing us away. So these two lads came up to me, interestingly called David and Daniel, you know, so uh reminders from the Bible, but these two just say, We think God's speaking to us, and they both had these pictures that they shared, and uh they said to me, What do you think that means? I said, Well, I don't know. Um, and you know, trying not to be the leader that doesn't know anything, but I did say, Why don't you go away and pray about it and then come back and have a chat with me again, and I'll pray about it too, and we'll see what God might be saying. And I thought, Great, I've got out of it. Um, you know, I've sent them away to pray. And they came back the next day really excited, and they said, We think we know what it means. Um, God's asking us to pray for leaders.
SPEAKER_04So I was like, Great.
SPEAKER_01And they said, So can you so suddenly it was back on me, can you get as many leaders together as you can so we can pray for them? Now we're doing the uh these are two seven and eight-year-olds, and we're doing the sevens and eights, nines and tens uh new wine, so we've got about a hundred leaders for what is about seven to eight hundred kids. And so I get the blue team, which was the seven and eight leaders, the red team, the nine and ten leaders, so get them together, I explain what's going to happen, and we invite these lads. And what was funny is their their mums came and dropped them off for this particular we set aside a 45-minute prayer time for them to come and pray for leaders. Their mums dropped them off and they were like, Oh, we're so sorry, we're so sorry about this. No, it's fine. It's fine. This if this isn't what we're here to do, what are we to do? So then these two lads came in and they started praying for the leaders, and they both did it very differently from each other. But they went round and for 40 minutes they prayed for these leaders, just walking around, laying their hands on them, praying one at a time as they went round, and just praying that God would fill them with his spirit and encourage them, you know, and it was amazing. I've never we're I've never witnessed anything like it, and it really just pulled me up short about what on earth are we doing if we struggle in church to let kids walk across a carpeted room with a juice in their hands. Right. Yeah. But we we're worried about that. Yeah. When they could be praying for you know the church, they could be leading us prophetically, who knows what they could be doing. Yeah. They have mission, and we're we're the gatekeepers often to what children can do and step into preventing them, yeah.
SPEAKER_05So let's let's throw open those gates and let them in. Let's raise our expectations as we raise the next generation. Yeah, brilliant. Um two two final areas I'd love to ask you about. And and one is um if I'm an evangelist and I want to reach out to my locality, reach out um through the church to those around me. How should I be thinking about family? And I've I've got a a good friend Nate Morgan Locke who who says quite often what we try to do is actually, rather than evangelize adults, we'll stick on the the kids' work and we'll do a uh a holiday Bible club or something. And he describes it sort of provocatively as as this is like climbing in through the bedroom window to the house to evang evangelize the kids. Um how how do we how do we honour families as families but also try and reach out to kids if we're evangelistically minded? How do we do an all-age kind of evangelism?
SPEAKER_01Um I mean I've done it, so I'll give you a quick sort of little synopsis of what we did here in Franklin's village for three years. Um what we did was we started a kids' club. Um there was nothing on the village that was uh accessible or going on, and there was a redundant church building. So we started this kids club, and the purpose of doing it was to engage with families uh not just to engage with the kids. So we ran the kids' club, but we were building relationships with families. After the kids' club had been running for a year, we started doing a monthly family worship. So, you know, we were trying to do both, not one or the other. And through having built relationships with the kids, we built relationships with the families, but we saw it as kind of we're coming here, engaging with people in both ways and seeking to build relationships. We weren't doing the kids in order to get to the adults, and we weren't doing it the other way around and not paying any attention to the children because they didn't matter as long as we get the parents. So I think balance is really important. But I think some simple things that people can do, just even in church, if you get a new family rock up and you've got two adults stood next to each other, and next to them are little people who are their children, often I've seen leaders just talk to the grown-ups who are new. And I'm like, get down and have a look at those kids, say hi to those kids, welcome those children. They are seeing that you welcome their parents and ignore them. Wow. That's a great picture for kids as they come to your church for the first time. It's not just the adults that have come for the first time. So it's just little things like that make a big difference.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And um when you go visit families, again, if they're new and they come along and you think, Man, let's go and visit, and they are happy for you to come and visit again. Talk to the whole family, you know, engage with whoever's in the house. Don't just think I've come to talk to you know, either and I think for some church leaders they're not quite sure how to tackle that with kids. Um, but if their parents are present, it's fine. Talk to the children as well as the adults, make them feel like you've come to visit the family, not just the parents. And you know, for me that makes a massive difference to how kids feel about church, about community, about them being included. And and I think for some kids that that's a huge thing. Right off the bat, you know, the church leader spoke to me and seemed to be interested in me. Yeah, you know, and their experience in other churches, maybe the church they didn't know they existed. Um so just little things like that can make a difference.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, that's very honouring and dignifying of of yeah, of all ages. Yeah, that's that's very important. That's that's that's shifting my shifting my understanding a bit as well, which is very helpful. Thank you. Um So final final area to think about is is what about our own families? So you you're you're involved in in kind of full-time ministry, as we might phrase it, and so am I, and we have families, and and so often there's a there's the phrase kind of you don't want to sacrifice your family on the altar of your ministry, and people talk in those sorts of terms. That is a danger, isn't it? So um how how do we think about a sort of a ministry-family balance? Is that the right way to think about it? And and how should we think about our own families?
SPEAKER_01Um well, I think ministry it's one of those words that I think is really difficult because it is service, that's what it means. Yeah, and I think well, my primary role is to serve my family, which means my wife and my children. So my primary ministry is to them, and when we start to think of what does the word ministry mean, and we unpack that and we realise that means service, I think we can change how we think about what we're doing with our time. So um I want it to be holistic. I grew up in a you know, my dad's great, but I grew up where the study door was shut, um, and there was no access, really, and it felt like there's time for others, there's time for people not in my family, and if I can at the end of the day I'll squeeze in my family. So, you know, that that was a generational thing, perhaps. There was a you know, pressure that I think was there in terms of ministry expectations, but I think for me, if if I'm in a minister effectively, I've got to have a healthy home life and engage with my family really well because they're they're the people that I primarily am here to support, encourage, nurture. And actually the overflow of that for me is if I'm in a place where the home feels healthy and happy and whole. I think I'm I've got greater peace as I minister to other people than if the home's a mess and actually ministry's an escape from the home.
SPEAKER_05Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And it it's you know, we need to be in a place where you know we the home is a place of rest, sanctuary, you know, a place of hope for my own family and kids. It's a place where we share stories and encourage each other, where prayer is normal, um, where there's a rhythm and a pattern to life together, where as much as possible we eat together. I know that you know, for some that is a a stress and difficult to make happen. For some in ministry, it is easier to eat together with your family because of work hours and how stuff is, and I think for people you know working full-time in London and commuting backwards and forwards, you know, family time that is difficult. I think then there's a challenge to the church in terms of ministry if our focus is men's ministry, women's ministry, children's ministry, youth ministry, we separate everybody. Yeah. Yet one of the things we say to everybody when they're separate from their partners or their family is don't forget to invest in your family. I've invited you to this thing that means on one of your few precious Saturdays you're not with them. But I just we need to get our message straight about what we're sharing. And you know, families fracture all the time, too, including Christian ones, and you know, we're struggling, I think, as a society, to get a handle on what family looks like, you know, what faithfulness is in the home, what support for each other as partners looks like, and you know, it how do we model something healthy to our children if we have no time for the family and being in it? And if ministry is calling us away from our kids, that is something I don't think we can ever recover in terms of you know, you don't get those years back when they're children. If people are, you know, and it's hard if you've got an itinerant ministry as an evangelist and it's what God's called you to, you know, there's some real tension there about when what to say yes to and what to say no to, particularly if it pays the bills.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well what yeah, go on. But it is that striking the balance and thinking, well, actually, you know, I've got to work this stuff out in the home. And if and in some ways it's easier for me to think about it, because my ministry to others is about children, families, and youth work. I'm thinking about it a lot, and I want to try and make sure, you know, in my faltering, stumbling way, that I'm trying to do this stuff at home. Yeah. I'm not just telling people here's some good ideas, and I never try them myself.
SPEAKER_05Sure, yeah. Are there uh would you recommend books or courses um as people try to think about you know, how do I make a Christian home where prayer is normal, where I, you know, disciple my kids in in the way of Jesus? What where would you point people who who wanted to think about this further?
SPEAKER_01It's funny you should ask. I've got three great books to recommend. Um the first is called Together with God, which is an introduction to family worship. Um it's by a guy called Ed Mackenzie and Gareth Crispin. Um Ed works at Methodist Church, Gareth is a Church of England uh children's families pastor. And basically what's great about it is it is literally 15 stories of families and just what they do at home to worship, to encourage each other and inspire each other in their faith. So it's not a book to make you feel guilty about what you're not doing, it's a book to give you ideas about what you could be doing in the home. And they're all different, so there is not a generic template, oh you must do it like this. There for people to look at their own rhythm of life and think about how could we incorporate some of this in our home, whether it's around reading the Bible, feasting, and celebrating around food, prayer, worship, whatever that looks like. Great book for just practical examples for families in the home. Okay, together with God, great. Together with God. Um one about prayer that's got a particular focus around night time, and I think for some kids and for some parents, going to bed, bedtime, night time is a stress because kids don't go to sleep, or you know, depending on the age of kids, there might be night terrors or nightmares might be a feature, um, or just the dark, and you know, that kind of stuff. You know, there's a great book called Comfort in the Darkness by Rachel Turner. Helping children draw close to God through biblical stories of nighttime and sleep. So Rachel Turner was that? Rachel Turner. It's a great book for last thing at night, you sat there with your cookie and your milk, and you've got your dressing gowns on, you're all cozy on the sofa, and just you know, great stories, just reading a story that unpacks a biblical story in a narrative form with you know just a little prayer thought that links with it. And they're all stories linked with the night time or moving into or something happening in the dark that happens in the Bible. They're brilliant.
SPEAKER_04Great.
SPEAKER_01Um, but again, a great way to finish the day together and know that God is with us in the night time, not just the daytime, have a sense of his presence as we go to sleep, and certainly we've really enjoyed them as a family. Um, you know, our kids are eight and eleven. I would say ideal for families with kids up to about that age, um, and and it's to be read too, rather than you know, have them read it. So I think that's you know, again, just get into the habit of reading to our kids stuff that's gonna be good for them. Yeah. And then one other thing, Tim and Sue Muldoon, who are Catholics, have written a book called Six Sacred Rules for Families, a spirituality for the home. And what I love about it is just the kind of way that they shape this kind of almost like a rule of life for the family.
SPEAKER_04Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Um, so they've got I'll just tell you the first rules, but the book's great. So God brings our family together, that's the first rule, on pilgrimage. So it's that sense of journeying together through life. The second one is our love for one another leads to joy. Um, the third rule is our family doesn't care about success, and that just needs unpacking. What does it look like to live a good life? What are we passing on to our kids? What is it that we value? Um, God stretches our family towards his kingdoms, the fourth one. The fifth rule is God will help us. And the sixth rule is we must learn which desires lead us to freedom. And each of those is some great things that it unpacks. And not again, not in a threatening, oh no, we can't do this, but very gentle, just gives a little bit of shape to people thinking about rhythm and family and how they do stuff together.
SPEAKER_05Interesting.
SPEAKER_01Brilliant.
SPEAKER_05Well, we'll we'll put some of those details in the in the show notes. And um uh your own uh website is called The Resource, is that right? What's it? The Resource.org.uk.org.uk. And what's what's on there?
SPEAKER_01Um I guess the main thing on there is blog articles I've written. So the main place to go at the minute is the blog. Um, as with anything, because I work for myself, if I'm doing stuff on my website, I'm generally not being paid by anybody to do anything. So I'm squeezing in time when I can to update things. Um what hopefully will be up there probably next year is an area of you know, if you want particular kinds of training or support around certain things, then you can get in touch. Okay. Um, and there'll be stuff up there. But the blog is the main place at the minute, and you can click the link to that off the home page. And just there's articles there on children's families ministry, youth work. Discipleship, faith formation, the church, all those kind of things. Hopefully they're useful tools for people.
SPEAKER_05Brilliant. Brilliant. Well, again, we'll put links for that in the show notes, and we hope lots of people uh get in touch with you. But um Ali, it's been a real privilege and a pleasure, and it's been a challenge and an encouragement uh to talk to you about uh discipling all ages. So thanks so much for joining us on the Evangelist Podcast. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_02That was Ali Campbell talking to you, Glenn. What uh most stuck out to you about the interview?
SPEAKER_05I th I think we we do just tend to tend to have such low expectations for youth and teenagers, and and just you know, hearing hearing those stories of you know eight and nine-year-old boys praying for their youth leaders and you know taking forty-five minutes to do it, and and yeah, we aim so low in in terms of expectations of youth and and that doesn't help them, and it doesn't help us as the wider body of the church, because they are a blessing to us. And while ever we just infantilize them, I know they are infants, but but there's a way of infantilizing them and and not getting them not treating them as the disciples of Jesus that they are and not allowing them to be a gift to the rest of the church that they are. So that's very challenging when you think of all the implications that that has. Very, very challenging for the life of church.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. How can folks get in touch with Ali or see more of his stuff?
SPEAKER_05Yeah, so theresource.org.uk, and um there are links also to his Twitter and things like that. But uh yeah, lots of helpful articles there, and that's a site that will be uh developed more and more. But yeah, theresource.org.uk.
SPEAKER_02Okay, great. So we're nearly finished. Um we want to uh highlight or ask folks to pray for our uh Christmas video this year. Um hopefully coming out uh before Christmas.
SPEAKER_05Before Christmas is is is the ideal, I think. For the Christmas video. Although when we did do the original anti Santi Ranty, that was that was pretty close to the wire, wasn't it?
SPEAKER_02It was, yeah, like two days before.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, I think I think we released it on the twenty-third. We filmed it on the twenty-second or twenty-first or something. Something like that. Crazy.
SPEAKER_02Crazy. Crazy times. Um but also, you know, well, after you've shared this year's one, go and share last year's one, which is Four Kinds of Christmas. Four kinds of Christmas.
SPEAKER_05Award winning Four Kinds of Christmas.
SPEAKER_02Uh uh award oh yes. Yes, yeah, well, and award nominated.
SPEAKER_05And award that yes. Well, yeah. And he says that because we're recording this before the uh Premier Digital Digital Awards, in which it's up for an award, but um don't know. Don't know. Don't know. Maybe maybe it's double. Maybe it's multi-award winning. You know the you know the one I I I want people to share is um Christmas in Dark Places. That's that's that's one I really like that um that doesn't get the attention that it deserves, I think.
SPEAKER_02Uh you know it's overshadowed by a man in a fairy.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, it's anti anti-sante overshadows uh Christmas in dark places. But um just because, yeah, Christmas is a hard time for a lot of people. So if that's if that's a theme that you want to pursue in your church at Christmas, or if that's just something that you think will help a friend, I think Christian in Christmas in dark places can be helpful for them.
SPEAKER_02Good. Okay, well, we better leave it there. Don't forget to subscribe to the Evangelist Podcast to get more uh episodes. Uh, you can do that by going to speaklife.org.uk slash tep. You'll find all the episodes there, plus links to subscribe and rate us on iTunes and Android, etc. But I think that's it for now.
SPEAKER_05No worries.
SPEAKER_02See you next time.
SPEAKER_05Ciao.