Just go to revivalmedia.org/slash iTunes or RevivalMedia.org slash take you directly to the podcast page weekend. We'd be very happy to get a few.
SPEAKER_02I first met uh Graham online on Twitter. And uh got me thinking about uh speaking to him about online witness. And then uh when he uh said yes we'd love to talk about online witness, I thought well let's talk about uh his work at London City Mission because it's a terrific organization with a proud history. And uh they they're on the cold face, so they're they're talking to people day by day and uh seeing folks come to Christ. So it'd be great to talk to him about uh yeah, uh the evangelistic challenges and and some of the blessings that that they're seeing. So, Graeme, great to have you with us on the show. Um you are the CEO of London City Mission. Can you just give us a brief history of the organization?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, thanks. Nice to speak to you, Glenn. Um London City Mission uh was kicked off about 180 years ago during the Industrial Revolution to reach out to the masses that were flooding into London at the time. What was what was happening is that people were coming in from the from the countryside to work in the factories and the parish system was breaking down. They couldn't cope with the numbers. Um and so churches uh uh churches were kind of sticking to their knitting. You had the Anglicans uh dealing with the middle classes in their uh in their cathedral churches in the centre of town. Uh the there were newly formed dissenting groups who were planting churches right next door to them to try and compete. No one was really getting out to the masses. So a young fellow called David Negsmith, he was a missionary, he returned back from overseas, and he had the bright idea of going out to the masses, knocking on their doors, and saying, Well, you know, get along to church and go to the nearest, nearest one that we can find. We don't care if it's a a Baptist or uh an Anglican, just get along there. Here's the good news of Jesus. And uh that that's how it started. And in fact, very to quite a large extent, that's still exactly what we're we're doing today. We're reaching out to the masses in London.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. So that whole sort of nineteenth century missionary movement kind of applying it to the the the home t home team, uh applying it to London itself. Yes. Yeah. Yep. So what what kind of areas do you focus on today?
SPEAKER_04Well, we're we're still we're still trying to reach out to the 90% of people who just never go to church. You know, if you go along to a New World Alive conference, the look at the the audience there, it will mostly be 20 to 45 white people who've been to university, and then there's a there's a whole mass of people who are who are rather underreached or or even unreached by the church. And they're the people that we that we're bothered about. So people who aren't 20 to 45, we we we have teams of people who who work with the elderly, we're we're bothered about the the very young, we're bothered about the the foreigners, uh the people, the working classes who who haven't been to university. London is jam-packed full of all kinds of people. Very few of them are going to church, and uh we want to get the good news of Jesus Christ to all of them.
SPEAKER_01Hi, Graeme. Uh I wonder if you could perhaps uh outline for us the main areas uh that your work focuses on today. I mean you've you've mentioned sort of uh getting people to church and things. What are the main things that you broadly focus on today?
SPEAKER_04Yes, we will have an ethnic ministries team who will go out and have conversations with perhaps specific groups, maybe uh Bangladeshis or Somalis or the South Asian community, and we'll have r evangelists reach out to those areas, we'll knock on doors, we'll have book tables in the cent uh in the town centre, we've got a couple of dozen uh community centres, DOSs around London. Uh we'll be running kids' clubs, youth clubs, and we'll share the good news with people. Um and yeah, and uh we still see as the end of it is getting people to faith in Jesus and getting them stuck into a local church. So yeah, we have we have lots of different ways of meeting people. We go out where people really are. So uh to the homeless people, we'll we've got a homeless shelter, we have chaplains who uh go into Brixton prison or Holloway prison, we have people going into old folks' homes. What we really want to do is encourage the churches to get stuck into this work.
SPEAKER_02And so is this mainly a sort of a volunteer army? Uh most people paid, unpaid, and and and how many sort of workers do you have for you?
SPEAKER_04We will have about a hundred full-time ministry people across London, uh supplemented by maybe a hundred and seventy volunteers. Uh so i it's a significant effort that we're that we're doing. Of course, what I w in fact to reach out to the seven million people who never get to church, we could really do with a hundred thousand, not not just a hundred. But uh and those those resources are there, they're sitting in the pews of the churches across London, and that that's what we we want to do. We want to equip those people to be able to do what we do.
SPEAKER_02Wonderful. Yeah, I I I see on your on your website you've got a mission statement that says uh London City Mission exists to share with the people of London. I love these uh adjectives, patiently, sensitively, and individually, the transforming love of God in Jesus Christ. Um how do how do you in particular seek to be patient and sensitive and individual?
SPEAKER_04Well, in terms of being patient, what what that means is we're not necessarily looking for the quick win. We will send our missionaries into an area, so we'll we'll send a man David Bauer, he's gone down to Forest Gate, he's there for decades, decades and decades. He knows all of the shopkeepers, he runs a kids' club for the school kids, uh, he's seen people grow up, he runs there's youth clubs, there's mums and tops. Uh uh he knocks on all of the doors, and so he knows where the old grannies live who can't get out of their house, and uh he's pay he's patient about it. He uh he's sensitive as in culturally sensitive. Um so there's d different approaches needed for different people groups. The um the using a a kind of hard-hitting anti-materialist view with the Buddhists won't be so effective because they'll think, oh that's great, you're just uh you're just like me, aren't you? Uh the same thing. Uh actually using relationship evangelism with uh with a 20-year-old Muslim lad will be less effective. He will want he's got specific questions about the validity of the Bible that need uh hitting off. But we we try to leave the door open with people, so we're sensitive with them. But finally, in individually, we we think that you can't really have a one size fits all evangelism. Uh you can have one size fits most white middle class people, um but in in fact uh you probably need something else to reach the Bangladeshis, and something else to reach the 80,000 Somalis, something else for the 600,000 Indians, and and yet yet another thing uh on the council estates, and so actually trying to think what how do I get the gospel message of Jesus Christ died and risen again communicated effectively to this person, we we do it not as a one-size-fits-all, but individually.
SPEAKER_01Graeme, do you find there is a balance you have to make between say serving someone's needs and telling them the gospel?
SPEAKER_04Well, I you see, I think as a Christian, what I need to be is a hundred percent Christian, um which means I'm gonna be uh loving, caring, I'm gonna tell people about uh Jesus. I think we can draw a a false dichotomy between the two. So we we get out and we love people and we'd encourage all kinds of churches to do this. You know, the old lady who's across the road, on the day it's blowing a gale, you go and knock on their door and say, Can I help do some shopping today? just because we're a loving person, not I'm not thinking, oh well, I'm doing this hoping that she'll flip up and let me tell her the gospel. I just love her. So it's at the same time, I want to I want to share the good news with people.
SPEAKER_01Sure. So it's not so much of a of a balance as a holistic approach to it.
SPEAKER_04That's right. London City Mission, we don't talk about uh things like incarnational mission. What we're talking about is just getting on and being uh being Christian.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that.
SPEAKER_04And we don't hide our our faith under a bushel. Uh there's a lot of organizations now that are giving all their food out to people, but they think, oh, we don't want to make rice rice bowl Christians, so we hide the fact that we're Christians. I think that's a that's a pity. I I feel like the church should be reaching out into the community, uh doing all kinds of good stuff and saying, Yeah, well we're we're Christians, this is just what we this is just what we do. We give people unconditional love and we share the good news of Jesus with people. I don't want to hide the fact I'm a Christian when I do it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I love that. Just just be Christian. Just be Christian. Yeah. Love them and share the gospel because that's that's what it is to be Christian. Brilliant. Um so I mean, how does how does church fit into you know your mission? You know, why why not just plant a hundred new churches in London? Why have LCM?
SPEAKER_04The thing is, there are some specific needs of London. Take some specialist uh manpower. The average church planter will find it hard to think, how on earth do I reach these Bangladeshis in my my community? Because they haven't got anyone on this uh and a Bangladeshi on this. At the same time, the ministry needs to go on within the church. God's great plan is to create the multicoloured church that you know when it says manifold wisdom, it's the multi multicoloured wisdom of God is displayed within the church, and that's what creation's moving towards. So we're we're very supportive of local churches, but we want to bring some specialist manpower to that. So we we can provide training for mums who meet a lot of South Asian mums at the school gate. We can provide training how to share the gospel with a Bangladeshi or an Indian. Uh we can get on and do kind of pioneering work. If you think of the church as the army, and maybe the SAS going in first, getting into the council of state, leading the way, so we've opened the way into prisons, and then we can say, now, can we get a bunch of volunteers please from local churches? Because prison warden at Brixton uh is desperate to get more people in to do things like Christianity Christians against poverty courses. And then we have we have resources dotted across London. We have uh a couple of dozen centres who will provide evangelists who will knock on all the doors and get people along. We have evangelists who know all the neighbours because they've worked there.
SPEAKER_01Graeme, you must have some really uh encouraging stories from your time at uh LCM. Uh have you seen people come to Christ?
SPEAKER_04Uh there are there are many, many people coming to Christ across London, praise the Lord, uh, with London City Mission missionaries. Uh I've in fact I've just got back from China where I was with Crosslinks for the last decade, and uh I've only been here a month, but I can just a couple of things then that I've been excited about being here. I I went down to our homeless shelter in Waterloo, it's uh called the Weber Suite Centre, a couple of weeks ago. I sat down on a table, uh, a couple of Romanian men and someone else from um uh from East Africa. Now one of the Romanian men already had the Bible open and was trying to read it with with his friends, and uh I used Google Translate and I discovered, in fact, he was already a Christian. He'd been uh converted when his father died two years ago, and he was using our shelter as a place to try and convert other Romanians who were who are now homeless on the street. Uh you know, he he's pretty poor himself because uh he hasn't got a s social security number yet, uh so he's working cash in hand, but he he's coming into our centres and reaching out with the good news and uh we sang Amazing Grace, or we always have a gospel talk in the morning with breakfast, and afterwards we sang Amazing Grace. I I got it up on the on my phone in Romania and we sang it together in Romania and it was I just thought, praise the Lord, what an amazing place. The fact that here in London, you know, we have so many, we have so many people. We have we have like you want to go into Mogadishu, you'll be martyred within a week. But we have 80,000 Somalis here, 230,000 Bangladeshis, we have people from all over the place. Another one, uh Forest Gate where we have a mission hut sandwiched in between a mosque and uh and a Sikh temple. Now the the missionary there, been there for decades, he gets knocked back all the time when he's knocking on doors saying this is a Muslim area, you should uh you should get out, mate. But in fact, he has he has dozens of people coming along, people whose lives have been transformed by the good news of Jesus. Uh they have a fellowship group, fellowship group at the weekend where he's getting forty or fifty people there, and I think this is this is great, it's a multicoloured church of of Jesus. It's uh it's a kind of all kinds of people there black, uh, white, Asian, rich, poor. Uh how exciting to be part of that.
SPEAKER_02Hugely. Graeme, have you have you noticed a sort of a spiritual change at all in in Londoners, in the the fruitfulness of gospel work? I know you were last here in sort of 2004, and uh you were in in China, is that right?
SPEAKER_04Yeah, that's right. Uh I I've been in China the last nine years, and it it's interesting because it gives you a chance to see the change. And uh I do think Londoners have hardened their hearts to the gospel. Uh people in China are actually much more open to hearing the good news of of Jesus. Uh people like Richard Dawkins have been doing their work, and there were there was a a report from the Secular Society just last week criticizing the work that Christians do, helping out uh with school assemblies and uh kids clubs for uh uh for schools. Well, you know, what what I would say to that is that people like London City Mission, we've we've been working with London schools for 180 years. We we set up the first schools in the East End. We we had schools for 36,000 kids. We call them the ragged schools, up until 1870 when when they were nationalised by the government, and we've continued to pour resources into local schools, reaching out, uh running assemblies, running after school clubs. Uh I I'd like to challenge someone like Richard Dawkins to uh to just compare the record. Look look what Christians have have done in schools, in hospitals, in prisons, uh and let's have a look at what his atheist organization has done. And you know, the the the proof of the puddings and the eating, the fruit is there to see. We've we've been there loving people. Um now what in terms of what the difficulties are, I a couple of the worries. I I'm actually less worried about the the persecution and the secular stuff from Richard Dawkins. Certainly amongst the housing estates, no no one's bothered about what Richard Dawkins says. They're more bothered about what's on East Enders or um or Downton Abbey.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_04But uh uh what I do see is that churches compared to China, we leave things up to the paid staff. There's a kind of clericalism, it's like, oh well he's paid to do it. I'm so busy. Um and then the other thing is we're not very good at reaching out beyond our comfort zone. We've we've got this thing saying, Oh, you know, everything should be about relationship evangelism, so I'll reach out to people just like myself. Um the problem is that the church at the moment is is either white middle class or black Pentecostal, so other people aren't being reached. If you know if Paul had that attitude, we'd be uh we'd have been stuffed, we would have just been a sect of Judaism by by now.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so so very much that split between the uh a professionalized kind of clergy and and and uh your regular Christian. Um do you do you do you see a way of kind of equipping Christians? How how can we better um see a holistic mission that's taken up by everyone in in in the church?
SPEAKER_04Well, one thing is we need to challenge our idols really and uh and just get a lot more godly. So uh someone my age with kids, I need to challenge myself how many, how many after school clubs am I signing up for my kids for? Because I want the very best for them. So I've I've got them signed up for violin, piano, ballet, uh, tap dancing, and I'm I've become just a taxi driver taking my kids from one place to the other. I've got no time to get to know my neighbours, no time to go and call on the old lady who's stuck in her home alone across the road. Um, and a a different set, but a similar set for younger people. We've we've got to be careful that we don't get swept away with the tide and actually put time aside just to meet people and share life with them and be ready to share our testimony and then be ready to share the good news of of Jesus. So it's uh it's a challenge of being godly. I I would have thought most people could have a go at saying something about Christianity if they just had had the time. There's only a very short step from a meaningful conversation about anything, about divorce, about depression, to actually being able to say, and this is what happened to me, and let me tell you about Jesus. We need time for those meaningful conversations.
SPEAKER_02How do you how do you see that playing out in terms of church life as well? Because it's it's not just running around after our kids, it it could also be um church meeting after church meeting. I know I know as an evangelist I'm I'm sort of forever being invited to churches to speak um to the church and the and and church members are to uh uh bring their non-Christian friends, and of course uh you know uh quite quite often there aren't that many non-Christian friends there, and and then when the question comes um you know, do you make time for uh making these friends? And and and quite often people are sort of so so taken up with church activities. Yeah, is there a problem there, do you think?
SPEAKER_04I think I think there can be a problem. In China, what I noticed was the church leader was massively overworked and was just the cheerleader for all the evangelism that was going on amongst all the rest of the congregation. No one was expecting him to bring everyone along. Everyone was having to get out and do it by themselves, and it was a very outward-looking church. What I've come back to is you know, we'll often have a church, there'll be eight teenagers, and we'll have a special youth minister who's paid by the time he's got his salary and housing, it's fifty grand a year to look after these eight kids. It's it's actually a pretty expensive thing. What about the the 8,000 kids on the roads along the way? Can we be thinking, you know, I've got dozens and dozens of people in their 20s in the church? How about having a a knock-about football league for those local kids? How about meeting up with the old people? How you know what what are we doing? Then we think, oh, but we've got to get people the Bible because we're Bible-focused people. But yeah, so we we train up all our 20-year-olds to be able to teach Romans and Luke. Um, but actually, if you look at what Stephen was doing, Stephen had to get on and roll up his sleeves and uh and look after the widows and get stuck into the the community. Yes. Uh and he was a pretty good preacher.
SPEAKER_02He's a good evangelist, wasn't he? Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. What I would say is anyone who gets past Stephen's level at preaching, I will say set those people aside and let them just focus on the Bible and the prayer stuff. The rest of us should be mucking in. And I I haven't actually met anyone who can preach better than Stephen yet, so I'm still I'm still waiting. So I I would like when we talk about these things, people say, Oh, that's social involvement, it's the mercy ministries, it's you're losing your focus, you're losing your edge graham. I think actually what we're doing is reaching out to the community. community around us, we're being we're being salt and light, we're being a gospel missional church, where everyone's getting on with it. Not just, oh, I'll bring my mates in. Hopefully the vicar can have a go at teaching them.
SPEAKER_01Um if someone wanted to be part of a London City mission or you know help out in any way, what what would they do?
SPEAKER_04I would say go on to the web, lcm.org.uk, we're about to advertise for a load of full-time missionaries, so they can apply for that. There's schemes for people who've just graduated from universities. I want to see hundreds and hundreds of extra volunteers getting involved in stuff and peop people can apply and we will uh we'll make use of them. We have um if someone wanted to come out and help with a kids club or come down to a homeless shelter there'd be opportunities to have a go at volunteering and I I'd recommend everyone to think about that. Have a go at volunteering first and if it's right for you then get stuck in. Someone who comes along and says well I want to do this for the rest of my life I'll ask them what what have you done so far? If you want to go to China, how many Chinese students have you been meeting with already so far in your life? Once you've had a go then and you've been tested then you're ready for the next stage.
SPEAKER_01And is it for those just in London or is it uh wider than that?
SPEAKER_04Uh our all of our mission work is based in London at the minute. Now if people want to uh want to apply from further afield that that's absolutely fine. We we have a whole group from Northern Ireland uh we have ministry directors from Scotland we have uh we have missionaries working for us from Uganda and uh Kenya and Pakistan so we to be honest anyone can anyone can have a go at applying for London City mission and uh I'd j all I'd say is it's not an easy it's not an easy job. We get on with the hard stuff we go where where uh others fear to tread and uh if you if people are up for it it is the most amazing challenge in the world.
SPEAKER_02And a love and a heart for for London I guess that would that would be a a real prerequisite.
SPEAKER_04Yeah a love and well a love and a heart for the for the lost. If you're if you've lived in a village and you feel like oh it's actually quite frightening being surrounded by uh concrete skyscrapers then that it would be all it would be difficult but I've seen people cope with that in China I've seen people come over from I Idaho or or I uh Iowa and have a go in Beijing people can make the change but if if you actually love that stuff then that's that even better.
SPEAKER_02Fantastic. Well Bram that's been that's been fascinating as a as an overview of of London City mission and and hopefully people have got a a better feeling for the work and perhaps can help out even if uh to pray and and think about uh your work a bit further we're gonna chat to you a bit more in in a further episode we're gonna talk to you about uh online evangelism and uh making making a witness on the internet but uh for now thank you so much uh for for spending some time with us and uh and we'll uh catch you again in the next episode thanks thank you very much well thanks Graham special thanks uh to Graham Miller the CEO of London City Mission stay with us for next week because we're going to be talking to Graham about uh online witnesses I think um he's got a lot of uh very interesting things to say about evangelism on the internet so looking forward to that if you have any comments about today's show or you'd like to share it you can go to this episode's uh webpage which is simply revivalmedia.org slash TEP31 thanks for listening to the Evangelist podcast just before we finish I want to tell you about our daily prayer bulletin it's a small 24 page booklet that tells 31 stories of what God is doing around the world.
SPEAKER_01Did you know that the Church in Egypt is uniting in prayer despite the recent unrest or that the WayU tribe in Colombia are enrolled in Bible training. You can hear more about it in our prayer bulletin you can get it free of charge by going to revivalmedia.org slash bulletin. Again the web address for this episode where you can comment on the specific show along with the link to rate and review it is simply revivalmedia.org slash DEP31.