Today on the Evangelist Podcast, we talk to Clive Storm about sharing the gospel with speaks.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast. Encouragement to speak live to a needy world. With greatest grip and anti-brain.
SPEAKER_05So again, it's time for the evangelist podcast.
SPEAKER_02It's gospel time. What do we need about Empty Hammer for the first time? But we're not going to talk about Empty Hammer. Clive Thorne. We are going to talk about Clive Thorne and uh and his ministry uh in Southampton there uh among people, especially from Asian backgrounds, uh introducing them to Christ. It's uh really encouraging. Um so I I interviewed him a couple of weeks ago, and uh yeah, you're gonna hear the interview in two parts as he talks about some of his story and the story of the uh Southampton Lighthouse International Church uh which he runs with some others and um just incredible uh stories of of really how uh they pray and they proclaim Jesus in every way, shape, and form imaginable, and and they're seeing uh fruit uh lots of it. And so we can be encouraged by that, and then we can learn from uh some of his wisdom about how to reach out to people from Sikh backgrounds, Hindu backgrounds, Muslim backgrounds, but many from Sikh backgrounds.
SPEAKER_05We're gonna learn about uh this is part of a sort of a wider series that we're we're covering um for those that haven't listened to the last few. We're doing a series on how to out to reach out to those of uh other beliefs um and uh we've done Mormons, Muslims, uh Jehovah's Witnesses and pagans. Yeah, anyone else? Yeah, that's yeah, so you know there were there are lots of beliefs out there. It could be a really big series.
SPEAKER_02There really are. And uh yeah, it's very interesting. I was uh uh speaking at an alpha suffer um in Brighton a couple of weeks ago, and uh there was a um a guy who was very firmly um atheistic in his beliefs. And uh at one stage I just kind of dropped into the conversation. Um you know that uh you know that atheism is actually shrinking in the world, don't you? And he got really angry and said, What are you after? Like, you know, in the in the British attitude to religion you know survey here, you know, only 57% believe in God. And I was like, this is Britain. What are you talking about Britain for? I'm talking about the world. And I was like, Oh, why is that atheism is shrinking? And I said, Oh totally it's shrinking for it. Since the 1970s it's been shrinking, and it and it will continue to shrink. And why is that totally angry? Oh, why is that true? Because the whole story he's been telling itself for so many years is that you know religion is dead and the future. And on the right side of history, and all that kind of stuff. So I think even Christians are the ideas of because there's so much publicity of the new ideas and that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_05We live in a few minutes kind of culture. It looks like that.
SPEAKER_02And yet, you know, there's um you know there's a documentary on Channel 4 um just on uh Wednesday night about sort of mediums and sciences and that kind of stuff and and Halloween we've just had, and there's lots of people who are interested in spiritual stuff. Um so even in this very secular modern kind of Britain, there's all sorts of people with all sorts of spiritual beliefs that certainly do not fit into the category of atheists. Um and but I think I think that's news. That is news to atheists, that's news to Christians even. Um that out there uh the world by and large does not believe atheism, that the world by and large kind of believes in various religious worldviews. So we've been trying to tackle some of them and and uh Clive will be particularly helpful for us uh as he reaches out to Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. And in particular, I was asking about uh Sikhism because I think that's sort of uh probably the the religion I know least about, really. But he's very helpful in that.
SPEAKER_05So yeah, good. Okay, well we'll get that get to that in a moment. Um just wanted to uh give a shout out for our remembrance video. Oh yeah. Um it uh won an award recently. Remembrance video, remembrance video, yes. Um do do uh look that up. We've got it on the show notes, which is speaklife.org.uk slash tep117. Uh that's the show notes for for today. Share it, download it if you want. There's a link on the video to download uh if you want to show it at your church or display it in some way. Uh also look out for our Christmas video coming up.
SPEAKER_02We're filming in the next couple of days. Building sets as we have three different sets that are sets within sets. Uh, sorry, sorry, and it's an explicit to the Evangelist podcast.
SPEAKER_05Just before we jump into the interview, can you tell us a little bit about Sikhism? What do you believe just give us a map?
SPEAKER_02So Sikhism um is probably the youngest of the major world religion, and and really it came out of uh an Indian background where um uh massive conflict uh uh between Islam and Hinduism. And so uh Sikhism was was uh in in a sense a kind of a hybrid, taking some of the monotheism from Islam, uh but also some of the beliefs about uh reincarnation and that kind of thing from from Hinduism. And uh and uh yeah, creating creating this uh religion that's that's very uh very focused on on uh good clean living and self-effort uh selflessness and that kind of stuff. But very uh very limited really to Punjab state in in India. But but also because politically of how we uh help the British and then how immigration has happened to this country, uh probably in the UK form a much larger proportion of the Asian population of of Great Britain than would be the case back in India. And so actually meeting uh an Asian background brief you're probably far more likely that they are speaker than if you uh meet an Asian in uh India, for instance. But uh yeah, so so lots of uh lots of speak uh around in the UK, lots of speaks in Southampton, which is where Clive is from, and uh and he gives uh um some great some great wisdom on what are the fruitful areas of uh of discussion that you can engage with uh with a Sikh, but also with a Hindu and Muslim. He mentions all those sorts of people as well.
SPEAKER_05Okay, well uh let's let's hear then.
SPEAKER_02So I'm joined by uh Clive Thorne. Uh thank you so much for joining us from Southampton. That's where you are, is that right?
SPEAKER_01That's right, yes, Southampton.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. And you are part of uh Seiko, Southampton Asian Christian Outreach, is that right?
SPEAKER_01It was started as Seiko, Southampton Asian Christian Outreach. Now we've actually changed the name to unfortunately it comes out of SLIC, Southampton Lighthouse International Church, because the mission has become a church and we're the only church in the the Asian area of Southampton, and because we're now the only church, we've widened the mission from just reaching Asian people to the whole community, although that is the main Asian area in the city.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So tell me how you got started with with Seiko.
SPEAKER_01Well, um in the beginning, one of the things that uh was really important, I think, was to gather in the city all the people who had it on their heart to pray and reach out to uh Asian people, largely Hindu, Sikhs and Muslims, with the gospel. So it was uh a mission started with the backing of numbers of churches in Southampton, and we had a monthly prayer meeting, and people from different churches with that on their heart would come together to pray, and then we started outreach in terms of door-to-door, and we had a charity shop with Third World Goods, which became a drop-in center, and we would get uh although it didn't look like a a Christian shop particularly because that might put off Hindu, Six and Muslims from coming in, it was largely selling Third World Goods. We had Christian literature on display uh in all the different Asian languages, um, and uh maybe twenty, twenty-five pieces of that would just get taken uh every week, even without us saying anything very much. And people we had a room behind the shop for tea and coffee, people would come in, chat. Um we've built friendships uh through that, through meeting people on the doors, through uh a finding Asian believers in the city and then uh getting to know their families and friends, networks, and then w in nineteen eighty-three we started just once a month to meet together um as a group of Asian believers, and that then became every fortnight in eighty-six, every week in eighty-nine and gradually other people were coming to faith and it built up and built up. And uh what we've always found is that when there is a breakthrough and someone puts their faith in Jesus, there's there's a whole network of people that they know and we've always tried to um then reach those people. And if there's a real transformation in someone's life, if they stop gambling, if they stop drinking, if they're no longer depressed, they're transformed by the Holy Spirit, uh changing their life, then these other family and friends are gonna be moved by that and more open to listen to um the message of Jesus.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Amazing. And so so how did it develop from being this outreach into becoming the church?
SPEAKER_01Well, God gave us a target back in January ninety to see at least one person a month come to faith. And uh that seemed pretty uh challenging at the time because I had previously worked in in Coventry for a whole year with a team of people and not seen anyone come to faith amongst the Asian community. So uh one a month seems very challenging. But within a week, uh there were uh five people came to face within a week of using that pressure target. So it was really something I was saying, okay. One a month difficult and five a week. And so we've been praying for that ever since we made a specific target. In fact, we increased it um to two a month in recent years. Um and we make that specific target impressive if we go for a period, as actually we are now, where we haven't seen anyone in the last month, we really start to pray more, pray and fast more. Um for God to lead us to people with open hearts and that's the kind of thing that happens. Um that first on that first occasion, all those years ago, when I first started praying that uh prayer, uh I went to um um morning church as we call it because we meet in the afternoon and uh two arena's ca came in and sat next to me and came to face after the service. So um God of obviously he's the Lord of the harvest, so he brings people with open hearts um to us and uh and that's how it works. We're not doing anything uh amazingly special or different.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_01Um it's really if if uh anyone was to ask me what is it and how do you see these people coming to faith, the answer would be prayer.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_01And hard work. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And you keep saying we who who's we?
SPEAKER_01Well, uh from the beginning, uh there was a a team of people who um God had called and put on their heart to reach Asians, as I said, from different churches, numbers of them. And um for example, when when I first came to the city as a as a young single guy uh uh thirty odd years ago, I was asking God specifically to send women with uh a heart for Asian outreach. And with within uh six months, uh there were three that weren't even in the city when I started to pray, who then got involved long term with uh with our outreach team. And uh then slowly of course as people started coming to faith, we've been um encouraging training up the Asian believers themselves to be involved in evangelism. So now as a church, uh evangelism is in our DNA in that sense.
SPEAKER_03Amazing.
SPEAKER_01Um because uh I guess if you come from another faith background it's pretty obvious uh if if you've been come to faith from that background that you want to see your uh rest of your family, friends, neighbours, um to find salvation, not to end up in hell, but to find salvation in Jesus. So it's uh yeah, DNA uh our DNA really um has evangelism in it everything we do, even our house groups seek to be evangelistic as well.
SPEAKER_02Incredible.
SPEAKER_01Um yeah.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. And you uh I've heard you describe your approach as the blunderbus approach. Uh tell tell me about that.
SPEAKER_01What I mean by that is we sort of try everything and see what works. Uh over the years we've covered every Asian door in the city door to door, maybe about a dozen times with different different approaches. In the early days it was with Christian literature in the Asian languages, although that's less uh appropriate these days when um most of the people uh read English. Uh we've had the Jesus Video, we've had Christian magazines, we've got questionnaires, we've done all kinds of things door-to-door. Uh we had the shop, which was a drop-in center, and made friendships that way. We've had a boys' club, girls club, we've got an annual barbecue where we could get sometimes up to a hundred non-Christians come to that way, make uh uh deepening friendships. We've had Christmas parties with similar numbers of non-Christians, we do English classes, um we've helped kids with their homework, we've got a football team, we uh I used to visit Indian restaurants and talk to the waiters uh it's a hard life class. Um all kinds of different ways, really. So uh we we have something we call life evenings, which are similar to the sort of alpha idea, um, but with questions that Asian people would would really find significant, like uh, why do Christians say Jesus is the only way to God? What about other religions? Can we trust the Bible? What why do uh Christians call Jesus the Son of God or think that he's God and and and so on? Um and uh it's a sort of alpha format, um a meal, uh talk for about half an hour and then just open for questions. And again, by God's grace, almost every time we run a series of those, people have come to faith. Um and uh yeah, so and is that where discovering Jesus through Asian eyes came from? That's where um I got the idea for a course. Uh it started actually with an initiative from the Evangelical Alliance which was to write a booklet covering the main frequently asked questions that that Hindu Sikhs Muslims and Buddhists have about the Christian faith. And a group of us were got together by the EA to write the first Jesus to Enigenized booklet. And that was really well received. I think we sold about twelve thousand in a couple of years. Um because it was it's in between a tract and a book in a sense that it's a bit more than a tract, because it's got um sixteen questions and sort of bite-sized answers to those questions in what was a very nicely produced booklet. And it can be given out to folk who are show starting to show an interest. Um and because it's quite thin, it's not like giving a book or something which they might think they're not gonna have time to read. Um, it it was well received. So from that then I was praying and thought, well, we do these live evenings of similar sort of ideas, maybe in a second edition, uh, we could do a course as well. And then uh every time I prayed about that or started to write it, um the Lord would confirm it with someone phoning me up and uh saying, uh, how's this idea going? Um so in the end that became Discovering Jesus um which I wrote along with Robin Thompson of South Asia Concern. And um that's a course that's now uh available from the Google Book Company. Uh there's a website, uh discovering uh dash Jesus.com.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01People can get more information and training days are run um to help people start to use the course up and down the country. Um and the details of those can be found on the website.
SPEAKER_02Brilliant. We'll put those on the show notes of the uh the podcast so people can uh can get hold of that information. That's uh brilliant to know. And uh yes, I highly recommend the Discovering Jesus course and and that material. Please uh Yeah, people check it out, check it out. And um can I just ask you, I've I've got a particular uh love of door knock door knocking myself. Um when you sort of go round on the doors, what's what's your sort of first approach as as you meet someone on the doorstep?
SPEAKER_01Uh well, it has, as I say, varied over the years. Just the latest um session we did uh in a week in May this year, we actually had the most successful um round of of door to door that we've ever had because two people came to faith directly as a result of that week uh which usually in the past it's it's been distributing uh sowing the seed of the literature and maybe getting some contacts that we could follow up. But this time a couple of people came to faith, which was great. And this time our approach was to say we're from Lighthouse Church, which um people don't think, well, where's that because it's quite a big area explain that and then we had um basically a questionnaire about what people thought about the area 'cause it's quite a tight knit community.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_01Uh r uh answers resulted from it's very friendly and tight knit to uh new kids with the variety of uh responses. And we also had um suggestions for what people might want to see uh us put on to serve the community. Um the uh so that was a way of sort of uh breaking down the initial barrier on the doorstep and having a a friendly approach that we could then we offered them uh Jesus DVDs, the life of Jesus in different languages that we have. And quite a number took those. Um and as I say, a couple of people came to faith who that week.
SPEAKER_02Amazing. Tell me what we would see if we ca if we came to your church on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_01Uh you would first thing you'd notice is we meet at four o'clock in the afternoon. Okay. Uh which is a bit unusual, and the reason for that is that when first started what was then called the Asian Christian Fellowship has now become Lighthouse International Church, uh, I didn't want to pull out any uh Asian believers that were already there from their local church. So chose a time that didn't clash with any other church services um and had the model rather like maybe the the Christian Union that um students would have their own sort of outreach program but they belonged to a local church as well. So for years the the model went on like that. Gradually more and more people came to faith and the congregation started to grow. And around uh nine years ago we got our own building. Um say we're the last place of Christian worship in the Asian area in Southampton. And at that point, uh I then said to the congregation, Well, we've got our own building now. Do you want to start meeting in the morning? But um because of all those years of meeting in the afternoon, but there's always been a slight majority to carry on. So we meet at 4 p.m. in the afternoon. It it actually enables people from other churches, if they have um Asian contacts that are interested in the gospel, to bring them along and see a congregation of largely South Asian people praising the Lord. So that's a big thing that you would notice straight away is that seventy-five percent of our congregation are South Asian. That makes a huge difference to people who are from those backgrounds who are thinking about Jesus. We have one Tamil Hindu young man who was showing interest in the gospel, and um he said at his baptism that it was when he came along and he saw other Salvations worshipping Jesus that he finally thought this message could be for me. Yeah. 'Cause up to that point he'd been interested. But he'd been thinking this is really a white person.
SPEAKER_03European changes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So actually seeing um a group of uh Asian people worshiping Jesus is uh a major witness in itself.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01And we have people from uh by God's grace, all the different major religious backgrounds of the subcontinent. So we have Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs that have come to faith. And groups that wouldn't have anything to do with each other in the subcontinent, and Sikhs and Muslims generally don't mix that well, high caste, low caste, yeah, yeah, Hindu backgrounds, and all together in Christ. Wow uh again is a major witness.
SPEAKER_02Wow.
SPEAKER_01And different ethnic groups Punjabi, Gujarati, Tamil, Maliali, Pashtun, Bengali, um, so uh so the other thing you would see is actually our language is English.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01With all those different ethnic backgrounds. Uh English is the only language we all know. And um we do have uh about twenty-five percent of the congregation that are not South Asian, we have uh English, and we have Iranians and uh uh a smacking of lots of other nationalities, uh people from Brazil, Spain, Argentina, Poland, uh and so forth. Um so i it's quite a mixture.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So the the actual service, uh apart from maybe one song in Hindi or or do, um would be like most other uh evangelical churches. Uh but the culture of the people um when you start to mix with them is predominantly South Asian, of course.
SPEAKER_02Yes. So what what sort of flavour does that give to sort of church fellowship both on a Sunday and and throughout the week?
SPEAKER_01Um well I think that one of the biggest differences in English culture, um, or you know, Western culture generally and South Asian culture is the friendliness of the origin of the first approach that you get from South Asians. Uh I went and visited one recent arrival in uh Britain, uh Tamil believer actually, and and I said, How are you getting on? And he said, Well, yeah, everything's fine, accommodation's fine, everything's fine. He said, But nobody talks to you. So if you come from uh South Asia, i it's a it's a very um uh demonstrative talkative culture. If you go on a train in India and everyone's talking to everyone else, yes. Uh if you travel from Waterloo to Southampton, uh it it's uh lit up by the iPads and they don't even look at uh in silence doing their own thing. Um and if someone spoke it would break the silence. Uh it's very different culturally. So a lot of people when they first come in would say, Well, what a really friendly church uh and so on. So I mean there's that there's the importance of extended family, which is a big aspect of South Asian culture, um and a lot of relationships within those uh family groups. Um as I say, and uh an outreach um that's very important in outreach. I'll give you one example, there was a Sikh lady who came to faith a few years ago and by God's grace her life has really changed. Um within two years I think it was about a dozen of her extended family had come to faith.
SPEAKER_04Wow, wow.
SPEAKER_01Um including um all her children, uh I think five daughters and two sons, and the married ones, most of their uh partners too, had uh had come to faith.
SPEAKER_02Um And would you point to I mean, obviously prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit going on, but but is there also a sense of because they've made such a marked transition from from their own traditional cultures and and now they're standing up for Jesus, which is just such a different thing that that their very conversion becomes a a witness in a way that it it might not so much in a in a Western context, is is that what's going on?
SPEAKER_01Because uh they usually face hostility of one sort or another from um their remaining family members who don't believe and uh the larger community. And that can vary anything from just disapproval uh to abuse, verbal abuse, um, to s sort of attempts to publicly shame them to even death threats on occasion. So, um in fact if it wasn't for the fear factor, which really does exist for those reasons, uh the church would be twice the size because of all those we see come to faith, it's over the years, uh I'm talking maybe thirty years or so, it's really only about half that get the courage to really come come along to the church. And we've got many, many who are in a situation where they're believers but they read their Bible uh quietly in their room so it doesn't uh set the family off in opposition to them. Um and we've had uh you know, d uh young adults that are the only one in their family facing huge amount of um hatred really from the community and disapproval from their family and uh they then get cowed into keeping things quiet, um wives with their husbands uh and so on. So yeah, the if if it wasn't for that fear factor, um it would be double the number.
SPEAKER_02That's amazing to to hear the the costliness of conversion but that that then becomes uh yeah, a positive witness to the family. Um now I th I think um uh w we'll we're gonna have to split this interview and so in the in the in the next episode we'll we'll talk a lot more about uh uh the distinctives in particular of of uh uh fakes and Hindus and and uh those particular beliefs. Um but I think uh just to round off this this half of the interview, um you know, I I get a uh a real sense from speaking to you. I'm I'm not in a particularly Asian area um at all here in Eastbourne, but I I can sense that you can teach uh uh you can teach me and you can teach our church uh a a lot about developing uh an evangelistic DNA that you speak of, you know, in the in the in the sort of the essence of the church. What what is it that you've learnt there in Southampton that can translate to churches whoever this they're reaching out to?
SPEAKER_01Well, I I guess right from from my own background, when I came to faith, I was from a Roman Catholic background and um I had never read the Bible until I went to university and then I bought one and started to read it, um, just because I was searching for some more meaning in life really. And it gripped me and then um I read three out of the four gospels within a week. I came to faith at the end of that week and at the grand old age of eighteen I thought, I've wasted my life, why hasn't someone told me this before? And it I think the biggest thing that has gripped me right from the start is that what we have is that treasure in the field that someone would go and sell everything they've got to buy that field for that treasure. And if this is real, if we really believe that this is the living God who is perfect in absolute everlasting love, who came in Jesus to die for our sins, who uh is joy itself to know day by day, who has the answer to every problem i in our lives, who loves us beyond this world into the next, and that without him we're totally lost, and everyone else is too, then it always amazes me that that doesn't send us out. Uh day by day to pray to get on our needs. What I've always also been utterly aware of is that nothing's gonna happen to this guy, me. Um, because I was pretty hopeless, I was utterly depressive before I came to faith and uh was actually overwhelmed with joy at finding the Lord, but I knew there's no way I'm gonna be able to do anything. So what's driven me to is to get down and pray that the Lord would enter into my life and what I do and the church and everything else. And uh if Jesus is there that will draw people to him. And uh that's it really, as is I'd like to see it. And you know, there was there's a great Christian evangelist in India, a guy called Buk Singh. Uh he's probably uh one of India's greatest preachers, he died recently in around 2001. He founded, I think, over seven hundred churches and people used to come from all over the place and say, you know, what is it, what have you learned that you could pass on by the people from seeing all these and largely Hindus, I think he saw, on faith. And uh I read his autobiography and it really struck me because it's what has always been on my heart. You know, he when people came from all over the world to ask him that, he said, prayer, prayer, prayer.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That was it.
SPEAKER_02That's a good preacher. He's got three points and they all begin with P. Yeah, no, it's such a good word. Prayer, prayer, prayer. Uh and I love, yeah, if this is real, uh, then we throw everything at it, and if Jesus is there, people will come. Um wonderful, wonderful words. Well, we'll leave it there for this half of the interview. Um, but uh thank you so much for this half, Clive.
SPEAKER_05Okay, that was uh Clive Storm talking to you, Glenn, a few weeks ago now. And uh he's an author of a book Discovering Jesus through HIs.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's a book at the core uh and it's well worth checking out. You can get it online, perhaps we'll put a uh a link on the show notes. And yeah, very very helpful for talking about exactly what we're talking about. How do you proclaim Jesus when people have certain other worldviews? And uh this will this will help, especially if you're thinking uh uh about sharing the gospel with Muslims, speaker Hindus. So yeah, get that. And uh and yeah, I just hope that people are very inspired by by Clive and by his uh his prayerfulness. And his his faith just to think, you know, Lord send us uh you know a new believer from an Asian background every month. And now he's praying for two believers from Asian backgrounds every month, and they're seeing that happen. And I think that that kind of expectancy and prayerfulness is something that we can all learn from, whether we're ministering to people from Asian backgrounds or whatever background. So prayer is it's got to be a priority. So Clive really uh helped me and inspired me with that, and I hope he inspires uh the listeners.
SPEAKER_05Yep. Well we've split the interview in two, so we're gonna hear the next part uh next time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So he'll more um talk in the second half about uh what are the the particularly helpful areas of discussion that you can have with people from Snake or Hindu backgrounds uh in the next episode.
SPEAKER_05Okay, well we're pretty much done here.
SPEAKER_02So uh we are done. Just drop the mic, Andy. Drop the mic and walk away.