Today on the Evangelist Podcast we talk about being above board in our evangelism.
SPEAKER_00The Evangelist Podcast from Revival. Find out what's new in telling people the good news about God, the world, and you with Andy Brinkley and Glenn Springer.
SPEAKER_01Welcome back to the Evangelist Podcast. I'm Andy Brinkley, and this is Jerusalem Awards Finalist.
SPEAKER_03I say that. Nobody even knows what that is, but uh yes, hello. Hello.
SPEAKER_01Jerusalem Awards Finalist. Oh, what are you- Oh yeah, okay, hello. Yes. You've entered the Halloween video.
SPEAKER_03That's right, the Halloween video we did last time. So uh I don't know, we can put it on the show notes. Little uh little bit of fun we made uh this time last year, and uh just a way of engaging uh uh with the issue of Halloween and how to preach the gospel off the back of it. So we made that video last year, and because Sam Quan uh made it so very prettily, and uh because Josh Lucas did such great music, uh it's up front of wood. So um yeah, we'll go up and see if it wins. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01It would be a good resource perhaps to share around uh Halloween time and just uh put people talking about it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, we'll put on the show notes because we produced last year some little uh flyers that you can kind of cut out, you can print them off yourself, and uh it'll have the um the web address of the video that you know the kids can watch and got a QR code that that you know you can scan on your mobile phone. So maybe that's something that you can hand out at Halloween along with lots of candy.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, excellent. We'll put that definitely on the show notes. Uh so also an announcement to say that uh the results are in from our evangelist podcast giveaway. I gave away six books. Um we'll give the details at the end.
SPEAKER_03You'll have to listen. But it was it was a genuine pull a name out of a hat. Yeah. Yeah. I was there, I was present. Yeah. Our lovely assistant Linda did it. And we actually yes, are we actually prayed? Yeah, from the from Proverbs. A lot is cast into the lap, but it's every decision is probably law. You know, and then out it came.
SPEAKER_01So uh today we've got a couple of guests joining joining you.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01Um who are they?
SPEAKER_03So uh they've been on the podcast before, Barry Cooper and Nate Morgan Locke. Uh they both work at Christianity Explored Ministry, uh uh, but they've also uh contributing members of their own sort of home churches. And um so yeah, great evangelists in their own right. And uh we wanted to talk together uh about being above board in our evangelism. Uh 2 Corinthians 4 talks about secret and shameful ways that evangelists can buy into. So we talk about that, talk about ways, ways that evangelists can abuse power, perhaps if you know you're doing youth evangelism or kids you're talking to, um, and ways where you can kinda not uh not be above board in what you're saying you're going to do and sort of almost do a bait and switch on people. Yes. So that kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Okay, well uh let's take a lesson.
SPEAKER_03Well, welcome, welcome, welcome to the evangelists podcast. And uh we have a very special episode uh this week. Uh I am up in the big smoke in London Town, and uh we're at uh an evangelist conference uh full of lots of people uh thinking about how to make Jesus known, and I'm joined uh by Nate Morgan Locke. Hello. And by Barry Cooper. Hey everyone. Really pleased to be here.
SPEAKER_04This is one of the best things that could possibly happen.
SPEAKER_03I'm really excited, it's great. Thanks for having us, guys. We had to drag Barry out of a cafe. Um Nate and I had uh arms under his uh armpits and just dragged him out backwards. And not only that, but I was in the only sack over his head.
SPEAKER_04We have an underdog there right now as well. It's a real bunker. I think we'd be the last people standing if there was an all-out nuclear assault. Yes. Um but I also managed to find the only cafe in London that didn't have Wi-Fi. Yeah, which is a strange thing. But there were people in there. They obviously wanted an oasis. They didn't seem it was as if they weren't interested in social media. Who are these people? I don't I don't get it. I don't pretend to understand it. In a coffee shop. Yeah. So they what just drank coffee? It was as if they cared about the coffee and didn't care about what people were saying on Twitter. And I'm not sure that's yeah, I'm not sure that's the kind of world I want to live in. They weren't Instagramming their cuts. They weren't doing anything much, they were like talking to each other and everything. A bit like we're doing now, yeah, in many ways.
SPEAKER_02Without Wi-Fi. And coffee. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But who would who would be listening in? What's the point of that?
SPEAKER_04That's a really good point. So if a conversation happens in a coffee shop and there's no one there to hear it, yeah.
SPEAKER_03What's your clout?
SPEAKER_02Jean-Paul Sartre is still angry.
SPEAKER_03You're gonna have to explain that one.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, gone. Isn't that the whole thing about he was sitting in a coffee shop and someone just stared at him and on the banks of the Seine and in a coffee shop, sort of just stared through him, and he just realized that the world was utterly meaningless. But you see the fundamental reality of of all things was just bleak.
SPEAKER_04So you never would have come to that conclusion if they'd had Wi-Fi in that cat. Because no one would have been staring at him, they would have been staring at his phones with nothing. Yes, he would have seen Instagram. Photo of a cat and it would have seemed a lot less bleak.
SPEAKER_02Or at least just kept him from thinking that for a while. Distraction.
SPEAKER_03Precise. I'd like to see the cat photos with just Satra lines on it. I think there's a Twitter account right there. There's a meme there. It's a meme that's gonna happen. Now, uh this is not the reason I brought you all here. Uh we thought that we could uh speak of some evangelistic hot potatoes as we look to lift up the name of Jesus. Uh we thought we could talk about a couple of things over a couple of different episodes, but why don't we start with the issue of authority? How do you speak uh to other people about the Lord Jesus uh when you have some kind of authority over them? And I guess that could happen in a number of different scenarios, um, but one key thing might be kind of youth and children's work and that kind of thing. Now, Nate, tell us a little bit about yourself because you do a bit of that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I am a um I'm a candy man, um, and by that C and Y man, children's and youth uh man. I'm I'm trying to popularize this uh abbreviation. Not great. Um but there we are, Candy Ministry, uh if you will. Children's and youth ministry.
SPEAKER_03Because isn't there a really disturbing horror film of the same name?
SPEAKER_02There could be, but what we're trying to try to reclaim. Don't pretend you've never seen, if you will, to a new thing. A candy man, or indeed woman. Potentially, yes. I'm not one of them. Uh hopefully that's obvious. Uh so I'm involved at Children's Youth Ministry, have been for the last, I suppose, 10 years. Um so that's working with kids from you know mums and toddlers groups all the way through to uh spotty teenagers. Um and so the issue of authority in evangelism, you have a natural authority with those who are younger than you. Um you know, you're the leader and they are the kids, and you know, you have to set certain boundaries and rules and all that sort of stuff. Um, and so not only am I involved just in ministry with children and young people, I'm specifically the youth evangelist for Christianity explored. Um so not just working with the kids who are brought along to church by the parents, um, but also seeking to go out and evangelize those who are potentially uh under my authority in whatever context it might be. Yeah. Um so it's a pressing issue, and particularly from you know, I work with Christianity Explored, um we we're just about to bring out Epic Explorers, which is a holiday Bible club based on Mark's gospel, using lots of the same ideas as Christianity Explored. And so the issues with that about you know, if you're advertising for people to send their children at the primary school age to a club and you're gonna evangelize them, yeah, then there's all sorts of questions that come up um about you know like what can a child agree to? Are you coercing them? Is the manipulation? Yes. Are they just saying, Yes, I'll believe in Jesus because you know they want to go and claim or capture the flag or something.
SPEAKER_03And I've heard you put it in a quite provocative way before. Uh you know, are we climbing in sort of the back window of the house to reach Johnny and Mary? Yeah. And not actually address the parents on their own levels. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02There is there is a a big sense of that. If and the statistics, which I don't have, um maybe if I'd had some time to make crap. Um let's make those statistics up. Uh or at least to just to say um if if you evangelize the child, the potential to get the mother is there. If you evangelise the mother, the potential to get the children is there. But actually, if if you convert dad, yes, then actually the others it's more likely that.
SPEAKER_0393% of the time. I do know that statistics. Yeah, yeah. So Christian vision for men is always sort of using that stat. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So it just feels like you can easily you can get the kids in, you can get the youth in, because they're all bored. And so you put on some activities, and then they come in and then you s you sort of, you know, you put in a bit of gospel, yes. Sneak it in there into their diet. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So how are you seeking to kind of counteract that? Because that I mean, as you say that, you know, I'm I'm thinking every you know church in the country will put on a kind of a well not every church, but loads of churches. Yeah. Put on a holiday club, sort of it's a great thing to do, I'm sure you'd agree, but but how do you actually counteract that and and go after mum and dad as well and not use your authority badly?
SPEAKER_02It is difficult. I think it's very difficult. Because and and there are a number of reasons for that. So one of them is that um this idea of you know, you're there are impressionable young kids who are having something forced upon them. Um I mean, clearly there have been abuses of power in apparently evangelistic uh just for the sake of those listening. I just did little bunny ears for quotation marks. Um that evangelistic efforts have taken place where people have been forced into agreeing to things by someone in the parallel through. So there's that idea out there, um, there's also this kind of logic which seems to run uh with underlies a lot of the work we do with children and young people in the church, which is young people are engaged in X, church adopts X, young people engage with church, or or just X, really. Or just well, that's but that's that's the idea is that they're all into you know Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Fault in Our Stars, Game of Thrones, whatever it might be. Yes, so therefore we do a thing which is church X, it's like church Game of Thrones.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I was just thinking I would love to see a Game of Thrones holiday club.
SPEAKER_02It's I think it will be appropriate, it will be a relevant. And so, and then the idea is that they they kind of come in to that level, but yeah, um so you've you've got that all the time, and and the way I suppose you you've got to mitigate against that is just to be to be aware that that's what you're assuming is gonna happen. That's one of the first steps is just to say, hold on, this is a way we can get some people in, but actually are these the people that we want to get in. If we if we are you know trying to reach dad or and then the rest of the family, uh are there better ways of doing those things?
SPEAKER_03So that's kind of an issue of contextualization as well, in in terms of you know, whatever you want to grab them with is what they'll come for. Do we actually offer people Christ? Yeah, or do we offer them the latest zeitgeisty thing in the culture and that kind of thing? Now, Barry, you are involved in a church plant in sort of West London. That's right, Shepherd's Bush. Shepherd's Bush. What's the name of your church? It's Trinity West Church. Trinity West Church.
SPEAKER_04And you also work for Christianity Explored. I do. Yes. Um so I've been working for Christianity Explored now for about 13 years. Um officially, a little bit more beyond that. And so my official title would be director of um product development. Is that right? I'd have to look at my own business cards to know.
SPEAKER_03Once you say directorate, whatever follows after that, people are like, oh, you're a director.
SPEAKER_02Really? Oh, you direct.
SPEAKER_03Unless you end the sentence on that sort of upward inflection that Barry just did. I'm director of director.
SPEAKER_04I'm director of complete certainty. Um so that's what I've been doing. So it's my job basically to um work out the sorts of resources that would be helpful to equip the church and then point us in a way which is hopefully a useful way of developing those resources. Nate and I work very closely on um products and we're working on Bible Explored right now, which is an evangelistic course, which is hopefully coming out sometime next year. And Epic Explorers has been a big focus for us over the last uh well, over the last year, really, um as we think about reaching youth. It's not a massive area of expertise for me. I'm really just here to heckle Nate as he talks about the situation. You know, um and I don't have any children myself yet, so you know but um I think that's a key thing. One of the things that as I think back on my own um conversion as a as a teenager when I say a teenager, I was at university, so I basically was only just off the cusp of of being a teenager, I was twenty. And um I had considered myself a Christian up to the point of probably about the age of uh I guess 18 or 19. Um but the way that I was uh quote unquote evangelised was not actually with the good news most of the time. It was with come to the youth group, come and play football, come and just kind of meet up with lots of other fun people and we'll kind of eat cake and we'll throw jelly at each other, it'll be great. And of course that was great. I mean who doesn't like to do that? Um, but at the end of the once you get a little bit older into change, you think, well, what this church is offering me doesn't even come close to the sort of entertainment value that I can get outside the church.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Um so there's one reason for leaving. The other reason for leaving I felt was um that it felt like bait and switch to me. It felt like okay, you say that Jesus is absolutely wonderful and brilliant and glorious. Well, if he's so great, why do you keep plying me with cake? As if that's the thing. Yeah, cake or Christ. You decide it just felt a little bit like people weren't as sure as they claimed to be about how beautiful Christ is. Um because they seemed to be um relying on these other things. I don't think I could have articulated it that clearly as a teenager, but I certainly at a gut level I was aware of that, and I felt like I was being duped a little bit. So um that was why I stopped going to church when I was sixteen.
SPEAKER_03That's a real failure to believe that the gospel is good news, isn't it? It's a real failure to believe in your product. So true, so true. And if yeah, so if the cake is the bait. What is Jesus is Jesus the hook? Is he the nasty hook that kind of oh go to now? Yeah, yeah. I don't want to be. That's right. I find that sort of doing university mission and that and that kind of thing. Like so often, you know, a Christian union wonderfully will put on a week of events in February usually, or maybe in November, and and they'll come up with a week's worth of uh titles for uh you know interesting things that they think will grab people in. But what I've loved doing recently is um UCCF have produced these uh gospels, the the uncover Luke's Gospel, and now they're coming up with Uncover John's Gospel. It's just a really attractively produced uh you know, biography of Jesus, and everyone's got them in their hands. And these days, no matter what the title is, you know, and it's usually you know, is there such a thing as truth or you know, how can God tell me what to do with my sex life? Or you know, they'll they'll try and grab people. Um if there are students listening in, I don't really kind of you know buy into those kind of titles. I I just kind of think, oh, that's interesting, and I want to honor that because people have come to that. So I'll say a few things, but I'll just say actually that you know that is completely dealt with by Jesus in Luke chapter 18. Turn to page 100 of uh of your gospels. So you get straight in there. Just get straight in and you just you point to Jesus in the Bible and you just say, Look at him, he's great, isn't he? Don't you like him? Don't you want don't you want him? And then you're offering him, you're not offering a package, you're not offering a philosophy or a lifestyle, you're offering him. Yes. Um and and then you're much more front and center. It's not bait and switch, it's here's the bread of life. Um, this is what I'm offering, and isn't he great? Yes. But what I love about sort of Bible explored, I mean you're you're when you put on a course called Bible Explored, or Is it is it definitely gonna be called Bible Explored?
SPEAKER_04Yes, we we just found out actually a couple of days ago.
SPEAKER_02It definitely will be in Europe and it almost absolutely definitely will be in the States. Okay. Yes.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So that was sort of copyright issues, but we think we've sorted that out now.
SPEAKER_03Okay.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03But like that's not that's not trying to offer you, you know, the world. It's saying, like, if you counter this thing, you're getting your nose in the bottom.
SPEAKER_04That's Baton switch in reverse, actually. It's called Bible Explore, but people come and it's all about Game of Thrones. Yeah, yeah, which is surprising.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, we've got to get them in somehow. We're gonna keep but this is where this is where it's particularly uh pertinent for for children's youth ministry because you can't just get children to come along to a two-hour discussion or a listen to a 20-minute talk on you know, let me present Christ to you from the scriptures. Like people the the assumption is you need to have you need games, you need activities, you need icebreakers, you need sort of some sort of theme, and you're not just inviting kids and goes, Is this something that you're concerned about? You know, asking kids on the playground, are you asking the big questions of life? You know, what do you really think of Jesus? Oh, maybe you'd like to come to a holiday Bible club. Essentially, you're providing a service for the parents. They've got to look after, you know, if they've got a full-time job and then the holidays come around, they've got six weeks where they need to find childcare for you know little Johnny, and the church can then say, Hey, we've got a club all the mornings this week, you can send your kid along. So you get into this kind of weird sort of base which the kids want to come because there is something really attractive about you know, there being all these adults who want to play with you, there's a sense of community, there's um you're being given loads of attention and focus. So there's some really good things to be said there, but actually, the parents, well, I'm not actually signing my kid up to be you know transformed from the Dominion of Darkness into the Kingdom of Light. I mean I I need them to be busy because I've got to work and you know it it keeps them occupied, and I don't just want them playing on on the Xbox all day. So there's a there's a kind of a weird dynamic about bait and switch there, which is to what extent are we providing service for parents, and to what extent are we then you know doing something to their kids who impressed upon my kid this truth, they came home. Um I mean I I've particularly when I was working here at um in London, the number of times we'd have kids from uh Muslim backgrounds or Jewish backgrounds or just in general sort of uh I suppose you'd say non non-religious backgrounds, who would come and say, I sent my kid to your club and they came home and told us that we're going to hell if we don't trust in Jesus. Now, you don't say actually we didn't say that at all, oh silly, where did that you you rascal? We were talking about how God's kind as we came with thrones, you know. Um but how you you've then got to say, well, yeah, we did. Now, did you think you were sending your kid to something which was gonna be looking at at the Bible?
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I mean, we tried to we called it Bible Club, yeah, so it was hopefully, you know. Yeah, I mean we didn't get a lot of Muslims, I'll tell you that to that one. But then you know, we put on the you know, there's the football clubs on there, yeah, and we you know we want to we want some kind of gospel presentation of that. Yeah, so in the whole kind of power thing, people are so nervous about what you're gonna do to their kids, right? And you know, because it's thought of as sort of just indoctrinating for you know there's there's an extent you can really just go, yeah, absolutely. We are we are indoctrinated, we're taking the doctrines of Christian scripture and we are impressing them upon the hearts of these children. That's what Deuteronomy 6 uh verse 7 says, impress them upon your children. Yes, well your children the children of Israel, that's a good question. Yeah, yeah. But you know, the idea theoretically for you know a kind of modern, you know, sort of liberal, progressive uh you know, Western parent, that anyone would you know force their kids to follow the gospel is thought of as a power play manipulation. How do you do that? And you've got to say, well. There is no neutral way of raising a child.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And y the child comes comes to you without sort of, you know everything you do is impressing something upon that child.
SPEAKER_05Yes.
SPEAKER_02And so you are whether you want to or not, you impact that child every time you have an interaction with them. And so the question is not whether you will impress something upon them or not. It's what will it be? And of course, that's where we can go, look, let's show you parents how good the gospel is, because there's nothing better. This is the best thing for your kid.
SPEAKER_04And how upfront are you with with parents? I mean, obviously it's called Bible Club or whatever, so that should be enough in a sense. But do you do you share with the parents beforehand this is a kind of thing we might be doing? Any of that kind of stuff?
SPEAKER_02It it really the times we've done it most intentionally would have been uh if you take kids on a camp. Now, you know, you've you you the camp that I've been running for a few years, um we would take kids from sort of underprivileged backgrounds, take them away for the week, and a lot of these kids would come to us with no prior connection with them. They were referred by social services or whatever it would be. Um and so we would make sure we try and visit the families, visit visit the home, meet mum and dad. Okay, you can trust us, this is who we are, all this sort of stuff, and to try and be as upfront as possible.
SPEAKER_03Um because that's a classic example of where you can abuse your powers, right? The low protein diet and the sleep deprivation, absolutely the G chords, the strings, and everyone's swaying gently. And of course they'll get they'll give their lives to anything in that state.
SPEAKER_02I mean, when and this is the big thing. So youth evangelism is basically done in the most part, the most apparently successful harvesting of the of the crop, as it were, is done at festivals. Yeah, yeah, and what uh an otherworldly experience that is. 15,000 other young people, you know, whatever it is, the big top, you know. And and the thing I you know, I obviously went to speak to one of the leading um uh groups on this, um, went to their offices, they were very kind, they put up with me for a couple of hours telling them that you know this wasn't this was getting the wrong direction. Oh, to be a fly in the wall. It was tense, but um, I said it's what happens is someone stands at the front of that stage and they they will say um it's not all about the big ten. See these big speakers? Oh, it's not all about the big speakers. Do you see you know there being you know thousands of other young and uh exciting people around you? It's not about that, it's it's not about this incredibly beautiful worship band that we have provided. Outrageously talented faces projected 60 feet on these screens. It's not about that. What it's about is going back to your home church, a couple of little old grannies, that's what it's about. So every single time you go to those things, that's what will be said from the front. Yes. But uh the the image on this is it's like the difference between the tide and the waves. If you've got the tide going out, it doesn't matter how many waves are coming in a set. Yes, the water's going that way, the prevailing undercurrents is and so everything around you is saying it's about the big tent, it's about us doing crazy, you know, uh whatever the current dance thing, whether we're all gonna listen to the Macarena. Do you remember that?
SPEAKER_04Or whether we're gonna do that's what I love about making it.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Remember that bit in how it's all doing the icebook challenge.
SPEAKER_02No, but that's the thing. So how many festivals uh will have had the the icebook challenge would have been the thing that they're all gonna do.
SPEAKER_03You're baptized now in your face.
SPEAKER_02Um so it that whole atmosphere, it just it's like the tide. It takes takes everyone in one direction, and no matter how many times you say it's not about this, it's not about that.
SPEAKER_03It absolutely I was watching a there's a channel four documentary, uh, this is a few years ago now, about um some teenage youths from uh council estates in Britain who were taken to the states, and they were taken to this sort of festival. It was all it was the ring thing, the virginity ring thing, it was all about you know pledging chastity between now and marriage. And you know, here are here are these you know people like with extremely sexually liberal you know ideas and practice, and they were taken into this festival environment with the big screen and the big top, and that the altar call was not come to Christ, the altar call was sacrifice your sex life, you know, between now and and and getting married, which to be honest is is like a much more upfront call with not a not the same bonus to it as you know, have Jesus. It's just give up your sex life, and like half of them did in that moment, you know, and and but it was exactly the same methods that evangelists use. It was exactly the same kind of the music and the setup and the and you know Well, I don't know about you guys, but it was true for me in my my teams.
SPEAKER_04When I I I was a serial go to the frontist.
SPEAKER_02Yes, me too. I went a few times as well.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, I think it must have been like three or four times, which is why I thought of as a Christian, but obviously there was a massive. I was once crying in the front.
SPEAKER_02Which was absolutely that must have been.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, but you weren't leading the worship at the time.
SPEAKER_02Oh thanks for that. Yes, he's done that one. I was, yeah, yeah, that was that G chord really gets you every time it's C next, next C and then back to G. That's all you need. I often cry the front now to think just preaching.
SPEAKER_03I mean, like 2 Corinthians 4 really comes to mind, doesn't it? You know. Um therefore, 2 Corinthians 4 verse 1, therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we don't lose heart, but we've renounced disgraceful, underhanded ways. We refuse to practice cunning or to tamper with God's word, but by the open statement of the truth, we would commend ourselves to everyone's conscience in the sight of God. That open statement of the truth. Gosh, that's so direct, isn't it?
SPEAKER_04That's really challenging. We do, it seems to me, I think we have a very patronizing view of young people as well, which means that we assume they won't be able to be attracted by um uh just Christ. You know, we think they'll be attracted by other things, but oh no, they're not ready to hear anything that might be described as theology or doctrine. Um it's just a tremendous I think it tremendously undersells um the intelligence of children. Um there's a there's a uh you know, somebody I heard recently saying, you know, that he had like an old three or four-year-old and um he said, you know, why why should I teach my three or four-year-old? Obviously this is much younger, but why should I teach them, you know, the words um collarbone when I can equally teach them the word clavical and then have the joy of completely freaking out guests at my dinner party when I say, Molly, what's this here? What what's this bit called? Yeah, you know. I just think you know, pe children I think, and then young people obviously are a lot cleverer than we we give them credit for.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And have capacities to really love Christ.
SPEAKER_03One of the other things that occurs to me is like the whole bait and switch thing assumes that God is a needy greedy taker who's trying to suck us away from fun and away from life into spiritual activities. Yes, yes, yeah. And therefore the church has got to kind of apologize for Jesus and say, sorry, he's probably gonna kill all your fun. But here, have a PlayStation.
SPEAKER_04Yes, yes.
SPEAKER_03But what if what if God is a triune, God Father, loving son, and the joy of the Spirit, sending the church out by that same spirit to offer Jesus to the world. I think at that stage you can then you can still do the holiday club, but it's not it's not have fun as the bait and then nasty Jesus is the hook. No, that's right. It's like, well, we offer you Jesus and we offer you a life of fellowship together, because this is what we're already doing. This is the this is the life of Christ that we just enjoy, and hey, come on in and try and emphasize.
SPEAKER_02Yes, yes. Well, I I think in some ways that so I I completely agree. I think that you know, lots of the stuff that you would say kind of is is actually very negative when it gets too big, you know. If you've got thousands of of young people at a festival, you know, um you might have just improved the local camping shop's, you know, revenue rather than actually done much for the kingdom of God. But the idea of just spending time with one another, being you know, in a sort of uh a loving like community of people who are just sharing food and chatting and all sort of stuff. And I think one of the dangers is we just get too we get too concerned with what we can organize. I mean I I say this as someone who doesn't really like organizing events and isn't very good at it, but what what can happen is that people get really, really good at all the logistical stuff, and then they say, now we can use these logistical things to serve the purpose, i.e., to help to illustrate, you know, that Jesus goes after you know the lost sheep. Okay, we're gonna get loads of cotton wall and we're gonna put that on a on a piece of card, yeah, because that will help to illustrate the point. But in one sense, you don't need to have an activity which which serves the point, you just have something that you do together. It's just it it doesn't need to be a kind of um you know trying to use multi-sensory um educational theory because your problem is not fundamentally one of you know, I don't intellectually understand, it's you know, faith comes by hearing, you just need to hear about Jesus, and that requires someone just to speak of him, and then yeah, go do whatever, you know, go and you know go on the slip and slide, go and do whatever. It's just once you get so big and so so concerned about your activities, yeah, you actually you sh you start to put your trust in the activity rather than in just the presentation itself. That's right, that's right.
SPEAKER_03Which will be a bigger and bigger temptation the more divorced you are from just the local life of church. So at the in the big top, you know, you've got nothing to do with church there, and so it's gotta be about the activity and it's gotta be about the big glitzy thing. But if it is the ongoing ordinary life of brothers and sisters together, then that's got a much higher chance of just being let's just invite you into a community that lives out of the first and um we're not try yeah, we're not trying to sell you anything. That's right. We're just saying come on in and try it on the science.
SPEAKER_04And I wonder if there's a connection between the these source of methodologies that you're being talking about and the fact that the you know famously high burnout rate for you know youth leaders and uh Yeah, and and the fact that the numbers of young people involved in churches not has not increased.
SPEAKER_02It's actually decreased with the increase of organised youth and children. Candy ministry. Actually, as that it is catching on, isn't it? It isn't it catching on. Um okay, two out of three of us now. So so like as that has increased, so you know the opposite has decreased, which is just you kind of go, well, now we're just kind of throwing time and money and and qualifications at something, yeah, where you just think, yeah, I'm not sure this is actually as complicated.
SPEAKER_03Let's think it let's think about that sort of that youth aspect of it in a in a future episode, because I th I think that's a very worthy subject of uh discussion. Um our two principles four passage, it keeps going in verse five. It says, What we proclaim is not ourselves, but Jesus Christ as Lord, with ourselves as your servants for Jesus' sake. So just as we kind of come back to that issue of power and not wanting to abuse power, let's think about a couple of scenarios in which we could be tempted to abuse power in the way that we preach the gospel to those who have less power than us. Yeah. And let's think about how we actually are servants of those who we bring the gospel to. So we're running a youth club or something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um it it can be quite this is where it can get very, very frustrating because you naturally have um you you run the youth club on your premises, you set the agenda, you set the rules, it's your property, you're inviting them onto your sort of background. Um servants don't tend to set the rules. It's quite so you've got a there's a kind of weird kind of dynamic, and so you think, well, how do we serve you? Um well you know, we can we've made some poof for you, or we you know, we've like I've done loads and loads of prep for this activity so that you can just come in, come in and do it. Um I think one of the one of the ways we can realise that we can can serve people is by trying to remove the recreational aspect in a sense. So the the the the reason the church is in a position young people engage with ex, uh church adopts ex, young people apparently engage with the church, is because the church used to just run hospitals and schools. Now statutory government provides pretty much all of that in the West. So what's left for the church to provide to serve people, to be servants for the sake of Christ, and what's basically left is entertainment and free time, and so you get this really bizarre kind of situation where in order to try to fulfil that we want to serve you, we now need to put on a program of events and recreational activities, which you would be happy to do, which turns you then rather than kind of serving and master, it actually becomes sort of customer-consumer. So you've now got this state where the you know customers always write. Uh, the payment I give to this club to in order to play football here or table tennis or ping pong or whatever it is, um, is that you make me listen to a talk.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And actually, as you were saying, Barry, as I get older, I realise I can get this cheaper elsewhere. I can just go and play football and there's no tool. I don't have to stuff. Exactly. And so you get into this really weird, you know, that back into that bait and switch thing, precisely because people are trying to serve people in that sense. So I think what I'm saying is we need we need to rethink what what does serving young people look like, and it's something which involves a lot less recreational activities provided as a service by the church, and much more about um engaging with them as whole human beings, thinking about how how are we helping them educationally, how are we helping them you know socially, um you know, and and you've got a lot of organizations which are doing that actually quite well with um you know helping kids with CVs or whatever it is, helping with the homework and that kind of thing, where the kid is not thinking, I wonder if we can get this cheaper elsewhere. They're more thinking, This person really likes me and cares about me and loves me, and so when they talk to me about Jesus, you know, I'll I'll be in a bit of trouble. So I think actually, smaller the better, in terms of if you're gonna try to fulfill exactly what Jesus what Paul says there, ourselves as your servants, the bigger you get, the more you become the service provider who is then engaging their customers. So smaller.
SPEAKER_03And they've got a target on their back that's just purely an evangelistic target as opposed to loving them and what about in another context of you could possibly uh be in a position of power over the person you speak the gospel to? Do we have any wisdom about if you're in an office situation and you've got uh people under you in the organization, and yet you're a Christian?
SPEAKER_04Wisdom about how you don't what is interesting isn't I think 2 Corinthians 4 again speaks to that. It's such a powerful passage about God's sovereignty, and I think that is the key um truth that we need to keep in mind um as we're speaking to people. I mean, I haven't really been in a situation where I've been a boss in a sort of secular office over non-Christians, but what what I have done is you know, back in the day I was an actor and I was uh helped to run a theatre company, and of course we we tended to employ non-Christian actors. Um and we certainly had in mind as we did that that it would be you know great to use whatever opportunities the Lord gave us to to talk about Jesus when when the chance uh came. But I think the dynamic is very different if you go into it thinking um I am sovereign here. Um I you know the way that I, if I don't basically just kind of corral this person into the kingdom, then they're you know going to hell for all eternity is very different from me going in saying, God's sovereign over all this. This whole production, all of the actors that we we may think that we've cast them, but ultimately he's sovereign over that and the opportunities we get, and therefore I think my tone of voice and my love for the person is very different when I'm aware that um, well, first of all, they're creating God's image, but ultimately in terms of their salvation, God is sovereign over that. And therefore, I'm not seeking to try and manipulate things so that I just get the decision I want. I'm simply concentrating on being um faithful. So I'm renouncing secret and shameful ways. I just want to buy the open statement of the truth that says um in verse two, um, you know, commending ourselves to everyone's conscience. And hopefully, you know, the Christians who who went through our productions over the years would never feel that you know, would feel that we commended ourselves because we didn't we didn't seek to manipulate them, we were just you know quite open and hopefully we love them well.
SPEAKER_02And and I think that's exactly right. So acknowledging God's sovereignty now, but also thinking that we do evangelism sort of in the rhythm that God does evangelism. So we're thinking about okay, so he's the God who comes out and reaches out. So you know it we we follow in that flow, and so you know, where where Paul says in in Philippians you know, Jesus Christ did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, yeah, yeah, but made himself nothing. Because why? Because he was in very nature God. And so that says something about Christ, he's divine, but it also says something about what it is to be divine, which is that you're humble. The nature of God is he didn't consider equality with God something to be grasped, because in nature God he humbles himself. Yes, yes. So that those who are in that position of kind of natural authority have to think, okay, so the the humility of of if I the more godlike I want to be, the more like Christ I want to be, the more humble I will be, the more I'll step down and take the nature of a service right.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Um you can't you can't manipulate if you're a slave, can you? You're not being a good slave, but that's that's right. That's that's right.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03Naughty. Very, very helpful. Okay, well, I think we might uh leave it there uh for that episode. What do you guys think? We'd love to hear your uh comments or questions. Please do get in touch through the show notes and uh and send in your comments or queries, and uh we'd love to follow up on those. But uh for now, uh Barry Cooper, thank you very much. Thanks, Glenn. Nice Morgan Log, thank you very much. Thanks, Glenn. See you later.
SPEAKER_01That's very interesting, Glenn. Uh you know, we we had a a youth club at our church, well, we still got a youth club, but uh people were quite surprised because we used to do quite a strong emphasis on Bible studies. We did Bible teaching and worship and sometimes prayer, and this is predominantly for non-church young people. So we did an hour and then an hour's activity after. People were sort of saying, You can't do that. But uh, you know, we had we had a good number of of young people, yeah, and it worked very well. And I think, yeah, what they were saying definitely about um you know, have it up in front, you know, it is itself the draw to uh to be enough to draw people to to God.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, no, I like that. And yeah, so you start off with yeah, here's Jesus, here's what he's like, and let's now enjoy life together. And that's what it is, rather than let's get them in playing PlayStation and then tack on an epilogue to the end of the evening. God slot the god slot slot god into your fun. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so the giveaway.
SPEAKER_03This is so this is so this is the giveaway for the TikTok just that uh my previous episode. So we're thinking about uh I'm drumming and trying to speak at the same time and I'm a man, so that's uh that's that's not gonna work. Um so there's definitely on the incarnation, there's uh Luther and is a Tabletalk, and uh uh Freedom of the Christian and Bruce Reed by Richard Sibbs and Christ Glorious Achievements by Charles Burton and Mike Reed's own book, Christ Our Life.
SPEAKER_01It's got an amazing memory club.
SPEAKER_03Eventually.
SPEAKER_01So the results of the giveaway go to Alison Bush.
SPEAKER_03Hey, well done, Allison.
SPEAKER_01Well done. Excellent. We will be sending you uh the books in the near future.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, okay. Sometime between now and 2016. Yeah, I thought. No wonderful books. What uh yeah, I can't think of 36 better books to kind of get your teeth stuck into.
SPEAKER_01And uh if anyone wants to order those books, having been thoroughly disappointed, well, we'll repeat them on uh this episode show notes again. So if you if you are desperately disappointed that you can buy those books.
SPEAKER_03You can get those books, you just have to enter your credit card details into Amazon or maybe not Amazon. I don't know. I d I I don't want to wade into those waters again. I've got into trouble too many times about Amazon. Anyway.
SPEAKER_01Okay, so the web address to go to uh for this show is revivalmedia.org slash tep72. You can leave comments on there, sign up via email or your podcasting client and leave us a rating of review if you wish to do so. Revivalmedia.org slash TEP72, and that's mobile friendly as well. You can do it right now on your mobile brilliant.
SPEAKER_03And we'd love to hear from you if you've got questions that have been stirred by the conversation that uh Barry Knight and I had. Yeah, how do we go about youth and children's evangelism in particular? How do we not fight and twitch with people? How do we not use power over people? Uh how do we be upfront in evangelism? Love to hear what you think and uh and keep the conversation going.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. Okay, well, thanks very much for listening and see you next time. See ya.