On the Evangelist Podcast, we continue talking to Evangelist Josh Williamson.
SPEAKER_03The Evangelist Podcast. Encouragement to speak life to a needy world. With Glenn Scrivener and Andy Brinkley. Hello again from Glenn and Andy. I'm Glenn. I'm Andy.
SPEAKER_02We're like Ant and Deck. We should always be I should always be the left channel and you should always be the right channel of the audio. Or people will get that good. Pretty much. I still don't know who Ant and Deck are. Is it literally like as you look at the screen, the one on the left is Ant? Is that how they've done it? I think it is.
SPEAKER_03I don't know. I don't need it to question it.
SPEAKER_02Exactly. You never do them as a pair. Well, exactly. You never do them by yourself. By themselves. That is an amazing double act when you think of Ant and Dick. Is it that like they haven't had a full remote? See, that's like that's that phrase. Like every every accent has to have a phrase that you can say that accent in and nothing else. Like Birmingham? I can say nothing else on a Brummy accent except Birmingham. Or New York, you know. Things like that.
SPEAKER_03What's Australian then, right?
SPEAKER_02Austria. Austria.
SPEAKER_03Austria.
SPEAKER_02What were we talking about? Anton Deck. Why were we talking about Anton Deck?
SPEAKER_03Before we offend them.
SPEAKER_02Andy has has gone to the dentist today. Andy has had. What tooth did you have out? One of them. Okay, just the one. He's been moaning like it's the whole set. One at the bottom.
SPEAKER_03No, just just the molar, I think.
SPEAKER_02And the anesthetic didn't work. Andy like a real man.
SPEAKER_03No, I had to have another one, so that didn't work either. So they gave me another one. And then in the end I didn't complain. I just let them.
SPEAKER_02Did you bite down on a bullet or anything?
SPEAKER_03No, it would have bitten their finger off.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, probably.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, so it's uh uh the the anesthetic's just worn off. Um so I'm not very happy at the moment.
SPEAKER_02But the soldier, the soldier that Andy is, he's only been talking about it for the last three and a half hours. You know. He's uh he's yeah. What a troop. Now why are we talking about that? Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_03I don't know.
SPEAKER_02Now back to Ant Deck.
SPEAKER_03No, whatever. We were talking about Josh Williamson. Josh Williamson, that's right. People are waiting to hear the second half of the interview.
SPEAKER_02Yes, probably. Maybe. Um so yeah, in this second half, we um if you haven't checked out the first part, go to speaklife.org.uk slash DEP and uh uh get would that be episode 130? Yes, the old one. So um that's the first half, and uh that's where we talk about Josh and his uh testimony and how he got into uh open air evangelism and some of the scandal of uh Perthgate, where uh he got arrested twice. Um so yeah, do check out that. But then uh in this part of our conversation we sort of talk about um how he goes about it, um, which is very interesting to me. I I always love picking up ideas from other people, and actually ever since we spoke, I've been yeah, the the cogs have been worrying about uh what can happen here in Eastbourne and what can happen elsewhere. So I hope that it gets to Cogs Turing for Cogs Turing? Cogs whirring?
SPEAKER_03Turning.
SPEAKER_02Turning. I I got caught I got caught between turring whirring and turning.
SPEAKER_03Created a new word.
SPEAKER_02A portmanteau. It was first heard here from Evangelion. Yeah, touring. Cogs whirring. And um yeah, no, I hope that uh yeah, I hope that you catch a bit of the bug um that has clearly gripped uh Josh.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, one of the things he says is is, you know, there's nothing better than getting alongside an evangelist and watching them and seeing them and sort of picking up you know how an evangelist approaches things. And there's nothing nothing better than doing that.
SPEAKER_02It's so true. I I remember um uh Roger Cardswell just just spending some time with him as a mutual friend of Josh's and and mine and and uh and just you know having a coffee with him and and just the way Roger kind of engaged the waitress and you know got into a conversation and it it didn't quite go anywhere, but um but the the fact that he's always sowing those seeds just again it it just uh um it inspires you. So I I hope this uh this conversation between myself and Josh inspires uh the listeners. Good.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well it's here then.
SPEAKER_02Take me through what you do on such an evening. What uh what what does it look like when when the OAC go out on the on the on the streets?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I often uh one of the first things we do is understand the context of where we're ministering. So there's areas that we do evangelism in there where there'll be no preaching, it will just be one-to-one in tracks. Um there's other areas that we will set up and do a full open air meeting with sketchboards. So you've got to, I guess, exegete your audience, understand where they're coming from, understand the context, the culture, and present in a way that's not going to cause needless offense. So that's our first steps. But on, say, for instance, a Brisbane on a Saturday night, we'll go in, we will set up something that works brilliantly as just a simple table with a banner on it saying free Bible and literature, and we'll have different materials on it, and people line up often to get the material, and we'll have guys there doing one-to-one witnessing with people who are asking for resources. We will set the sketchboard up and sometimes we'll use that for preaching, other times we'll preach just with Bible in hand and you know, go through a passage. And we try to make our preaching as exegetical as possible because the power's in the word, not in us. So we're trying to teach the scriptures.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And often that what happens in a Brisbane open air meeting is someone comes along and says, Oi, I've got a question for you. And that's where the meeting really begins. Because the moment that guy asks that question, your crowd will double and triple in this. Yes, yes, yes. And you know, some Christians said, Oh, we should pray against them. No, we should pray for them. This is the best thing that can happen. Um that you know, these guys come along and they ask a question, and you try and reason with them, you you debate, you present arguments for the claims of Christ, and you you're arguing everything with an eye on the cross. It's not just an apologetic back and forth, but we keep bringing it back to the gospel. Yeah, and oftentimes at that point, we find our Bible tables will get overflowed with people rushing to get different material because they've gone, okay, there's something to this Christianity. So that's our standard Saturday night. We'll do that, we'll have lots of one-to-ones, lots of tracks, open air preaching, and uh hopefully a bit of an apologetic discussion.
SPEAKER_02So open air preaching, so there'd be a number of different preachers who would preach for for kind of how long at a time?
SPEAKER_00We have no set times um for how long someone could preach. Uh the average sketchboard goes for 15-20 minutes. You can make it shorter. Once you get a heckler, that could change everything. So the longest I've ever preached with heck dealing with hecklers was two hours and 45 minutes. Um, and that was exhausting. But you had a crowd the whole time, and it was a stationary crowd, it just kept building. One of our other guys from Operation 513, who comes out witnessing with us, he hit three hours and four minutes uh dealing with hecklers. And at the three hour mark, even the atheist hecklers stopped and gave him a round of applause and says, Well played, mate, well played. It was just fascinating to see. And that night, those nights we only had one preacher.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00But other nights we might have multiple preachers. So there's no set time.
SPEAKER_01Yep.
SPEAKER_00Um, sometimes the most effective open air has been a guy that's got up, read a scripture, and explained the scripture in about three minutes, and people gathered around one, hmm, never thought about that before. Yep. Yeah. So there's no one size fits all.
SPEAKER_02And then you've got other members of your team who are part of the crowd, are they? And then they sort of turn to people and say, What did you make of that? Is is is that how the crowd gets involved?
SPEAKER_00That's how we encourage people to um who come out with us. What that's how we encourage them what to do. They uh hopefully stand in the crowd listening, praying while the preaching's underway. And before, you know, before the crowd dissipates at the end, they turn and say, Hey, what do you think? Or give them a track at least. And that I think that that's a sign of an effective open air, is when the preacher steps down, looks out to the crowd, and sees one-to-one conversations occurring everywhere.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um, I've often described as the open air preacher as the machine gunner. He's getting up, he's machine gunning everywhere. But then you've got the troops on the ground doing the one-to-one. Um, and that's what I think needs to be done. The preacher proclaims the gospel, he draws the crowd in, and then the one-to-one guys grab it and personalise it.
SPEAKER_02The airstrike and the ground troops working together. Yeah. Pretty much, yes. Yeah. And and tell me some success stories. Tell me what happens when this stuff goes well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, there's so many testimonies that people got converted, and uh, that's that's the incredible thing. I think one of the ones that always stands out in my mind was uh a few years back in Brisbane. We were preaching one night, and this rough looking group showed up, and they were in leathers, they had their motorcycle bikey gang logos on, and they're not exactly the sort of people who invite over for dinner. So these rough guys were standing and they just gave me grief. They ripped into me, they were yelling at me, they were mocking, you couldn't engage them. Uh so you just have to keep trying to present the truth and to deal with other people who were listening. And uh they left, and I thought, oh, I'm glad they've gone. A week later, three of them were back. I thought, oh no, here we go again. And again, we went through that back and forth, back and forth. They went away. The week later, one of them came back. And this time he stood there just drinking a cup of coffee and didn't say a word. And he'd come back for quite a few weeks in a row just by himself to have his coffee, listen, and leave, and then he disappeared. Six months later he came back and said, Do you remember me? I had to do a double take because he wasn't in his leathers anymore. And he goes, I just want to let you know that uh I've become a Christian. You you got to me. Wow. And uh my fiance and my future mother-in-law, we started attending a church. My fiance's now a Christian, my mother-in-law is reading the Bible, and you just stand there going, Praise Jesus. Wow. Amazing. You know, there's nothing in me. I'm there going, This is ridiculous, get rid of these guys. Yeah. Yet uh God was at work uh in his heart.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And that that's encouraging. And uh you know, we can point to local churches in the Brisbane region that has grown quite a bit through the open air evangelism where leaders even have been converted in the ministry, gone converted, gone off, trained for the ministry, and now serve as pastors. Uh it's not uncommon to get emails from churches where uh, for instance, a guy I went to college with who was opposed to open air ministry, emailed me apologizing uh for being anti-open air, and I said, What brought this on? He said, Well, a young man presented himself for baptism, and when we asked him how he got converted, he said, Oh, one night I was walking down the Queen Street Mall in Brisbane and I heard this preacher. And uh, you know, you hear those testimonies and you rejoice going, This is the fruit we're seeing. Yeah. What what what's eternity going to testify to?
SPEAKER_02Yes. Yeah. I often say with open air, it's it's a little bit like um, you know, Mark 4, the parable of the soils, when you scatter the seed more widely, you will find out just how much rocky soil there is, but you'll also find out how much good soil there is. Um, and both things surprise you, don't they? Like to both the hardness of people, but also just these surprising stories that you'd never would have uh imagined just come up.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. Absolutely true. As what John Calvin said, the same sun that melts the ice hardens the clay. And you often see that in open-air evangelism, you'll see people that you preach the gospel to that just seem to be harder and harder. But then you'll see other people who you thought were hard break. Yeah, and they'll just stand there, you know, going, What must I do to be converted? How can I become a Christian?
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And I I rejoice at both because ultimately I don't know the hearts of the hard-hearted one. I don't know what he's doing, I don't know what's what God's going to do on his heart. And I take confidence that I can't save anyone and I might just be sowing a seed that won't come to fruit for say 20, 30 years. Who knows?
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00Um I'm just called to proclaim the gospel, not to uh yeah, get numbers on a decision card.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I was gonna ask you about that. The sort of the getting the numbers on the decision card. How do you how do you handle the whole area of results and that kind of thing? Because, you know, I I follow different evangelists on Twitter and Facebook and I get various prayer letters and and I mean people claiming salvations um you know when when they go to a certain place and people have prayed a prayer and and then they go. And I how do you I I I don't really know the answer to this question myself, but how do you how do you ever talk about the response in a way that that honours the sovereignty of God and what he's up to in a heart that that we just can't see?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, even though I do open air evangelism, it's only one aspect of the ministry I do. We do a lot of church evangelistic meetings, evangelistic rallies, um, yeah, where you school chapels where you preach and you call for response. And uh in those times you often do see people respond. And the question is, what do we do we tick the box and say these people are Christian? Well, I can't do that, I don't know if they're Christian or not. Uh so what I do is I just say these people either profess faith or want to learn more. They were inquirers.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And uh in those situations, we connect them with a local church, we try to get a Bible or something into their hands. And ultimately, I I won't say someone's been saved under my ministry. I don't know. Uh when I was pastoring, I saw people who said, Hey, I got saved by your preaching who are now apostates. And I'd say, Well, you didn't get saved under my ministry. Other people who I thought never got converted under what I did who are now converted. So I I can't step back and say X amount of people have become Christians because of me. I don't know. Um all I can do is I've preached the gospel, people have professed faith, people have made inquiries, and that's all I can work with.
SPEAKER_02That tended to be how sort of Wesley and Whitfield would talk about things, isn't it? That the that sort of certainly Whitfield would talk about inquirers after his message, which you know, we we live post-Charles Finney now, in which he, you know, his methods were very much, you know, how he was going to create a revival and and create Christians himself. Um so we, you know, when we hear Whitfield talk about, you know, I uh there were some inquirers at the end of my message. We it's it sounds like he fails. Um but actually but actually it well, if we've got biblical goggles on, it it looks like he's doing biblical evangelism, really, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_00Well that that seems to be the case. I mean, I think um a lot of churches unfortunately have been influenced by Finney's approach. And the idea of success is how many numbers did you get? How many people said a prayer, how many people walked an aisle. That's not the biblical definition of success. Um I think the biblical definition of success is were you faithful? Were you proclaimed did you proclaim the gospel? If so, you were successful. Uh Jesus was lifted high, that's wonderful. If someone responds, well that's that's that's marvelous. But that's not how we define success. If we go out and preach the gospel and no one responds to the gospel, no one says, I want to become a Christian. Was it a successful campaign? Absolutely, because Jesus was proclaimed and he's worth to be proclaimed. Yeah, yeah. So that's I think we need to change the mindset in evangelism. Yes, yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02I I remember the the last church I was preaching at in uh in London. I was I was there for about four years, and there were a lot of non-Christians in the church, um, not yet converted, and I just preached my heart out the final s final sermon, and I was in tears at the end. Uh, and then a friend of mine came up to me afterwards and just consoled me with four words, and it absolutely changed my outlook on everything. He just said, You sowed the seed. I was like, Oh, okay, and the shoulders drop, and you're like, Okay, well, yeah, that's what success looks like. You sowed the seed. Um, yeah, God gives the gross. That's all we can do. And yeah, we can't we can't do that bit, but that's yeah, that's what we're called to do.
SPEAKER_00I'm I'm glad we can't do that bit, because I'd muck it up. Yeah. Um, so I'm glad all I can just proclaim the gospel and let the saving stay in God's hands.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yeah. I'd love to ask you about how um, just briefly going back into the open air stuff, how do you involve church? Because because so often um the crazy guy with the megaphone, um, you know, you ask that street evangelist, you know, so what church are you part of? Oh, you know, the the church is dead, that's why I'm doing what I'm doing. Yeah, that's you know. Um so how do how do we not be like that? How do we honour the fact that you know church is God's mission strategy for the world and and you know that that we reach out with church and through church and for church? How do you how do you maintain that as you go out into the streets?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I think the starting point always has to be say we love Christ and we love his church, therefore we have to work with the body of believers that Christ has established in each community. And something that we do is when we go into do an outreach into a certain area, uh, is I'll get around and visit a lot of the pastors. I'll ring them up, say, hey, let's let me take you out for a coffee, let's chat, let's talk. I get to tell them a bit about the ministry, we tell them what we're up to and how we're doing it, and then say, look, you know, we really want to be able to refer people back to your church. How can we do this together? How can we serve together? Because we're not the church, we're merely proclaiming the gospel. And that seems to help a lot of churches because they have the mindset that the evangelist is out there doing his own thing and the churches are left behind. So we're very big on working of local uh congregations. So in Brisbane, um, we have multiple churches that we'll refer people to. Uh another place that we do outreach is just tracks from one to one. We actually have two pastors from local churches that come out, and these two pastors openly admit this is not their area, but they go, We need to be in the community as well. So they'll come out just to support us. And it's been a blessing having local pastors with us because you know, we could have a conversation and someone says, Where can I go to church? So, well, come with me, let me introduce you to the minister. Yeah, perfect. So we always work in the churches, we have church lists, the churches know what's going on, and uh you know, anyone that presents themselves says they want to preach and do open air ministry. Uh, myself and other guys I work with, we're very strict on if they go to a church or not. And if someone says, No, I I don't go to a church, then you're not going to be preaching with us. Yeah. Um, we don't want to work against the church, we want to work with the church. Yeah. And ultimately, uh the only time I believe in euthanasia is when churches step up and take over these sort of evangelistic ministries, I'd happily pack up tomorrow.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00And say, We'll shut down this open air meeting if the local church took over it. Yes. Uh, I'd happily do that. Yes. Um and you know, some people get a bit uncomfortable at that point, especially you know, when you work by faith missions raising supporters, saying I'm happy to give it all up if local churches will take over. Um, but I think that's what we need to do. If if a local church says, I will take this ministry on, we will take on doing this regular outreach, that uh we can say, Great, let's either move on to new territory or say, How can we help you? How can we serve you as you reach out to the community?
SPEAKER_02That's very heartening to hear. Um tell me, who who are your influences evangelistically and and theologically? Who's who's shaped you to be the evangelist that you are?
SPEAKER_00Well, there's a few uh old dead guys that uh have really shaped me. So people like Whitfield and Spurgeon and even Wesley. Um, these sort of guys, you know, you read like Whitfield's or Wesley's journals and you feel lukewarm uh going, you know, today we've had a small crowd, only 20,000 people showed up. Small day, mate, don't worry about it. Uh but you read these guys and you're encouraged, and uh you read Spurgeon. Uh so old dead guys, they really encourage me and have shaped my theology. People who are living that have impacted me, uh people like Ray Comfort, uh, he he probably really got me going and gave me the tools I needed for evangelism. Uh just listening to his sermon, I think Hell's Best Kept Secret, it blew me away. I'm just going, oh, that makes so much sense to how to talk about sin, holiness, and the gospel. Yes.
SPEAKER_02Uh in that sermon, he's he's he's basically saying law, gospel. That's what we we yeah, we need to preach the law and the gospel.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Explain what sin is, then explain the need of the saviour. And uh he he captures a lot of what's missing in today's evangelism. You know, we don't want to talk about sin, yet we must. The gospel makes no sense if we don't have sin that we need to be saved from. And so that's been a big influence. Uh, other influences would be people like uh uh Billy Graham, uh, even though you know there's certain areas of theology we disagree on. He has influenced me, and I'm encouraged by his ministry. Um there's local evangelists as well. There's a guy in Australia named Bill Newman, which is basically Australia's version of Billy Graham, the Old Crusades. Um I was blessed to have him take me under his wing and to mentor me. So it's fun when we discuss we've got different theologies, but we're brothers in Christ, and you know, we have a bit of bit of banter between each other. But just to be able to come alongside him and say, you know, brother, teach me everything you know. I don't want to make the same mistakes you made. And he's like, Oh, I've got plenty of them, mate, so let me let me let me teach you. And that's been really encouraging and uh yeah, to get around older evangelists. There was one guy I worked with uh straight out of college who who I still see quite regularly, he told me that evangelism is more caught than taught. And just being able to follow these guys around with a notepad and pen off and just going, mate, I didn't think of that, you know, just observing them and working with them i it it influenced me more than I probably realised. Yes. And and of course I'd have to say the pastor that trained me um when I you know re entered college for the second time, he's had a massive influence on my preaching and teaching and theology.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Tell me, how has street preaching shaped your church preaching, do you think?
unknownUh
SPEAKER_00I think it definitely helps it. Um, because in the open air you've got to you're fighting to hold a crowd. Yeah, you're fighting to hold the attention, you're competing against what everything is going on around you. Yeah. And so you're you're being, I guess, more creative in your presentation, you're being more dynamic in your speaking, you're not doing the monotone thing. You've really got to, you know, change your voice, you've got to grab people's attention, you've got to hold them, and you've got to pretty much, you know, hold them to the scripture. And if you take them into that into the into the pulpit, you'll find you do the same thing, and the congregation will often be held to the scripture if you're engaging them in a similar way. Now, obviously, you change how you present, um and you're not going to deal with a heckler in a congregation. Um you're not going to call someone out and say, You sir, what do you think? Um that's not that's not gonna happen. Although that could be fun.
SPEAKER_02That could be fun, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, it'd it'd be it'd be fun. I don't know if you get invited back up. Uh but you know that but you're still using the same sort of tactics in engagement and something you do in the open air, you hear a lot of questions, so you work them into your sermons. Uh you know, and you might hear this and say, Well, what about this? And you just quoted you know a question you had you know last week night in the open air. Yes, yes. And people go, Yeah, that's a good question. How do you answer that? Yes. Uh however, if you do do that questioning thing, make sure you answer the question. Uh so people don't sit there in the congregation going, What is the answer?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I've seen preachers do that, bring up a question in regards to like an apologetic, yes, and then never answer it. And you walk away going, Well, can we trust the Bible? I mean, you you entered the question, you didn't answer it. Big tease.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So make sure you, you know, use those sort of questioning, those sort of um skills that you learn. And I guess it's similar to people who do children's ministry, do Sunday school. Yes. Um, you're constantly learning how to relate and to hold the attention of those you're talking to. Yes. Uh so I think open-air evangelism and children's ministry is uh a very good training ground for preachers.
SPEAKER_02It really is, and for theologians, because uh nothing reveals your theology more than evangelistic presentations and and and kids' work. Because if you if you don't understand it profoundly, you cannot explain it simply. Um so yeah, absolutely. Those those areas really expose your theology.
SPEAKER_00And and both kids and drunks on the street will often be the best theologians around if they'll ask you questions, you sit there going, What? Yes, they'll have to think about that since college.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, exactly. And they'll call you on your nonsense as well. Yeah. Yes, they will, which is great. Yeah. Um couple questions to to finish. I'd love to um ask, what do you what do you think ordinary Christians need to know? People who would say to themselves, Well, I'm not a Billy Graham, I'm not, and and people always say that because they don't want to think of themselves as an evangelist, and of course nobody's Billy Graham. Um, but they they they don't think of themselves as an evangelist, but they're a faithful Christian and they'd like to share their faith. What do you what do you think ordinary Christians need to know uh in order to be better better witnesses?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think the first thing they need to realize is that they're not expected to be Billy Graham, they're not expected to be an evangelist. Not everyone is an evangelist. Um they're just called to be Christians, to be witnesses under Christ.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And there's no one size fits all approach to evangelism. Um I'm not gonna make the error that some open air preachers do by saying if you're not on the streets, you're not evangelizing. That's stupidity, and that guy needs to sit down and shut up. Um, be faithful wherever you're at, you know, witnessing to your friends, your family, your colleagues, you know, just do something. I mean, if you can't verbalize the faith, invite them to church.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um, I think one of the best evangelistic fields and probably the hardest evangelistic fields is parents raising their children, and especially mothers who are at home teaching their kids, you know, that's slow evangelism, but it's vital. They're teaching their kids the scriptures. Yeah. That needs to be done.
SPEAKER_02Um well, just think of your bum, you know, in in in your story, the the impact that your mum has had on you, and then now through you to so many others.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And I mean that that's I often say, you know, there's no right way or wrong way to witness. As long as it's not sinful, do it. Um, you know, and and some people might be brilliant at you know, one-to-one witnessing or the relationship evangelism. Then do it to the glory of God. My wife, she hates open-air evangelism, she can't do it herself. She supports me in it, but she goes, I I can't do it. I just it it it grips her with fear. But then she's brilliant at reaching mothers and those whom I often can't relate to. You know, how can I sit down and say, Well, let me tell you, let's talk about how your child's feeding. I can't do that. Um, but she can sit there and do these things. And it's it's different horses for different courses. You know, some people can evangelize that way, other people evangelize another way. The question is, we just to be witnesses. How do you do it? Do whatever way you can to make Christ known. If that means leaving a track on a table after you've had a meal somewhere, do it. You know, do something, do something for the glory of God, and you know, that's what we need to be doing.
SPEAKER_02Yes. That's that's that's very liberating because I think people do have the the picture of the guy with the beard and the megaphone. Um everywhere I go, I find that once you get rid of that as the caricature, you can release people into actually the way that God's gifted them. Um which is very releasing. Um, and but what would you say, therefore, to the gifted evangelist uh of today? What would you love to see more evangelists doing these days?
SPEAKER_00I would say the first thing I'd say to the evangelists is know your Bible and know your theology. I've seen too many guys go off the deep end because they've had bad theological moorings. You know, know your theology, know what you believe. Also, I'd encourage them not to stagnate and not confine themselves to one area of evangelism. Um it's so easy, and this is something I've had to wrestle with, going, well, I do open air ministry, that's my thing. Well, no, if you're an evangelist, you should be a bit of an all-rounder. You should be able to, you know, someone says, Can you come speak at an over 50s group? You should be able to go and present the gospel to the seniors. And if someone turns around and says, Can you do a children's talk? You should be able to present there as well. So diversify your outreach styles, yeah, read widely, study. Um, you'll read books on evangelism that you'll think are absolutely rubbish, but have one sentence of gold in it. Well, use that gold.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Uh diversify your ministry, get around other men who are evangelists and say, I I just want to learn, I want to follow you guys, I just want to see what I can get out of you.
unknownYes.
SPEAKER_00And even if you disagree with them on you know non-essential theological issues, put them aside for a moment. Uh, you're not you're not called to convert the world to trule if you're called to preach the gospel so people can be converted to Christ. So put things aside and just say, Look, I have my theology, I have my beliefs, but I want to learn how to better communicate the gospel. Yes. So study, learn, read, know your Bible, know your theology, and uh be someone that ultimately knows Christ. Wonderful. Wonderful.
SPEAKER_02And I I think that people listening into this, uh, I think lots of what you've said will have rubbed off on many different people. Um so thank you so much for for spending time with us, uh Josh. Uh tell me, how can people get in touch with you or connect with the stuff that you're doing?
SPEAKER_00Probably the easiest way is actually to go uh through my own personal website, and that's joshwilliamson.org. Great. Uh so if they go to joshwilliamson.org, they can see my outreach updates. The website's you know still a work in progress, so we'll hopefully get some more um material up there soon. But that way they can see what we're up to, they can find out about my work with OAC, uh, my church-based work, missionary work as well.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant, brilliant, and we'll put that on the show notes as well so people can find that. And uh yeah, no, and I I love following you on Facebook as well and getting your encouragements there. And um, yeah, no, you you've been a great encouragement to me, Josh, from afar. So uh thank you so much for for being with us.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for having me and thank you for being an encouragement to me, mate. Hey, no worries. All right, catch you again soon.
SPEAKER_03That was Josh Williamson talking to you, Glenn, a week or so ago.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Okay, so if you uh want to get in touch with Josh, uh you can go to the show notes on this episode, or you can just go to JoshWilliamson.org.
SPEAKER_02That's right, joshwilliamson.org and uh yeah, updated with all sorts of stories about what Josh is up to and encouragements to evangelize and uh links to social media where you can follow him on Facebook and Twitter.
SPEAKER_03So, yeah, as we've been saying, you know, it's good to get alongside an evangelist and sort of get experience. We've also got an opportunity here for people anybody to to come and work with you then.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, to do exactly that. So um we've got two different kinds of offer. Um would you like to come and study with us? We are a uh union learning hub. So what used to be West uh has now been sort of re-imagined as Union, which is a uh a very exciting way of of doing theological education in your own situation, in context, uh so that we don't take you out of church life in order to educate you, but uh within your context you can study for a graduate diploma or uh or a BA or an MA or even up to a PhD with Union. Um here in Eastbourne we can offer uh a graduate diploma or up to a BA. And uh we've got a number of guys who've been training with us this last year, and and uh we'll start again in September. And uh maybe you'd like to join us. Um one day a week, we're gonna study on Mondays uh down here on the South Coast. If you want to get in touch uh with us about that, we'd love to have you along. And um uh alongside that we want to offer an apprenticeship uh with us in which uh you not only do that theological study, but also you follow me around and and uh uh as experienced, uh developed and expertise, um, you know, take on some of these evangelistic opportunities that are coming our way. Um it could be a great uh a great opportunity for somebody who wants to train as a gospel minister. Um so yeah, uh get in touch at speaklife.org.uk and and we can uh talk to you further about uh opportunities starting this September.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, excellent. Well, if if that sounds like you, do just go to the website. Now we've got our new website, it's quite uh easy to to connect with us um through the website. So what have we got coming up on the Evangelist Podcast today?
SPEAKER_02Uh we're gonna talk about how you um evangelize by pastoring people. Um it's a conviction of mine that evangelism is basically pastoring non-Christians and that uh pastoral care is basically evangelizing Christians. Um and with those kinds of convictions, um, yeah, how is it that we turn the experiences of suffering and and struggle in life into evangelistic opportunities and how we speak of the comfort of Christ in those situations um for evangelistic benefit.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Sounds good. I look forward to it.
SPEAKER_02You know, sound convinced. You will be Andy. I'll bring you around.
SPEAKER_03Right. We better leave it there. See you next time. Bye.