Dr. Sean McGever has a PhD from the University of Aberdeen. He is an Area Director for Young Life in Phoenix, Arizona, and an adjunct faculty at Grand Canyon University. He speaks, teaches, and ministers across the United States, Canada, and the UK. He joins me to talk about his recently released book, Evangelism. It is a part of Lexam’s The Care of Souls Series.
The Lexham Ministry Guides, edited by Harold L. Senkbeil, are designed to offer practical, proven wisdom for the church.
Dr. Sean McGever has a PhD from the University of Aberdeen. He is an Area Director for Young Life in Phoenix, Arizona, and an adjunct faculty at Grand Canyon University. He speaks, teaches, and ministers across the United States, Canada, and the UK. He joins me to talk about his recently released book, Evangelism. It is a part of Lexam’s The Care of Souls Series.
The Lexham Ministry Guides, edited by Harold L. Senkbeil, are designed to offer practical, proven wisdom for the church.
You're listening to episode 201 of the Pastor Rider podcast conversations on reading, writing and Christian life. I'm your host, chase Rep, local. A couple of times now I've had the privilege of having Harold Sinkbell on the Pastor Rider podcast. His book, the Care of Souls, won a ton of awards and is a book that I constantly return to and recommend. Well, it's been fun to watch. He's currently serving as the general editor of a new series that Lexham is producing entitled Lexham Ministry Guides. There are books on topics that are related to pastoral ministry, pastoral work. Well, today's is one that I got a chance to read and I'm excited to be able to cover. Sean McEever joins me to talk about his book. In the series on evangelism, we discuss how to think about evangelism, what the task is, how to practice evangelism as believers and also how to incorporate the task of evangelism within the work of the church. The Care of the Souls book is great. It's producing a great series and this one's no exception as well. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 1:Well, i'm joined on the podcast today by Dr Sean McEever. He has a PhD from the University of Aberdeen and he is an area director for Young Life in Phoenix, arizona, and an adjunct faculty member at Grand Canyon University. He speaks, teaches and ministers across the United States, canada and the UK, and he joins me today to talk about his recently released book, evangelism. It's a part of Lexham's The Care of Souls series and I got a chance to read an early copy of it, so I'm really excited to have him on to be able to talk about the topic of evangelism and also to draw your attention to what I think is a really great series that Lexham is doing. Sean, it's a privilege and honor to have you on the podcast. Thanks for joining me today. Yeah, thanks for having me. Chase, appreciate it. Well, maybe for a little context, i'd love to hear a little bit about yourself and the work you're currently doing in ministry. Yeah, yeah thanks, chase.
Speaker 2:I live with my family here in Phoenix, arizona. I'm born and raised. I'm one of the few people here that has been here pretty much my whole life. A lot of people move here and then leave in the summer, which we're heading into here.
Speaker 2:That, yeah, i didn't grow up a Christian, it's just me and my mom growing up Occasionally talked about it but wasn't a part of our life. And then in high school a Young Life leader reached out to me at lunch, was kind of hanging around and using them on my friends. One thing led to another. I went to a retreat where I came to faith and turned my life to Christ. Then I got plugged into a great church that my leader and my friends were going to and volunteered with that, with Young Life, throughout college and also got really involved with my church and the worship team, those sort of things.
Speaker 2:After college I went and worked in the business world for a couple of years but felt a call to go work for Young Life. So I've been doing that in the same community since 2002. So I guess I'm going on 21 years at being Young Life leader at the same high school, like our high school basketball, and just really involved in the same community, so deep roots in the same place. And then for the last 13 years I've been teaching adjunct at Grand Canyon University And it's been really exciting to see how that's grown And the student base is just enormous. I think we might be the biggest Christian university out there. It's a very exciting place, very big place now, but it's a great opportunity. I love being kind of in the trenches, being very active at the school, connecting with kids that sell their Christian some far from that as well as being able to teach theology and things related to that at Grand Canyon, in the Honors College and at the College of Theology there.
Speaker 1:Well, I know in your past you've written quite a bit, both academically and also for the church. I'm curious what drew you to the topic of evangelism? Why evangelism? Why a book on evangelism now?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, the short answer is that Hal, st Bill, asked me. So I'm a big fan of the Care of Souls series, the idea of the pastoral work of Caring for Souls, which is ancient, and I know that you've done an excellent interview with Hal and I just want to recommend it again to anyone that has bumped into the Care of Souls book. But the short answer is that Hal, in my editor, todd Haynes, who's also a good friend, asked me to be a part of it, of which I was shocked that they asked me, really honored that they'd asked me. So that's the short answer, but maybe a little bit more behind the scenes And why I said yes, is I really care about this topic personally.
Speaker 2:Evangelists essentially reached out to me. I've been doing this work for a few decades now And my PhD work was on John Wesley and George Whitfield on their theology of conversion. So it's a work of historical theology that I did at Aberdeen And in the course of doing that obviously I came really interested in the theology, the nuts and bolts that are going on theologically, end of that. But I'm also just fascinated by the task and the process and the history of evangelists like Wesley, whitfield, edwards, many others who've kind of led up to what I received. I mean, in some ways, like many of us, something came to me And then after a while I got really interested in kind of the path or kind of the ancestry of how did I end up hearing about this? Where did this come from, what are the methods, tasks and those sort of things. So I've been a student of that for a long time in a practitioner And there's great books out there.
Speaker 2:In fact at the end of my book there's an appendix which lists and explains why I think they should be included, the top 10 books that have influenced me or that I think that folks should consider.
Speaker 2:So obviously there's a massive amount of excellent evangelism books out there. But this project was interesting to me because of the Care of Souls series. I don't know if I had a lot to add to just kind of a general topic of evangelism, but through the lens of caring for souls I didn't think there was as much out there And really that was kind of getting at not only what you do with people, those tasks, but also the emotional roller coaster that is pastoral work and especially with evangelism, where you're hoping many times in evangelism that someone will make, perhaps a decision to follow Christ And that comes with some emotional, i guess, weight with it and pressure, and just it can do a lot of things to you. So I wasn't super aware of many books that addressed it from that angle And so for that reason I thought I think I'd like to add to the conversation about evangelism and hopefully put a book out there. And here it is. So that's the backstory.
Speaker 1:I would love to hear you describe what evangelism is, And that seems like such a basic question. But I think what you've already alluded to is, for many, when they hear the word evangelism, they imagine I'm sitting by somebody on a plane and I've got a two hour flight to win them to Christ right. Or I have a conversation over the fence with a neighbor and he's talking about some challenge in his life, And this is the moment I've got to take advantage of it And it's not to make little of those situations. I mean so many times it is in a context like that. But what is the scripture's contextualization of the task of evangelism? How are we supposed to think about what evangelism is?
Speaker 2:Sure, sure. Yeah, that's thanks for asking that. Because I think when we do that and what I try to do carefully in there is if we do it precisely, i think we understand better what our responsibility is and what our responsibility is not. And so that's a great question to kind of define this carefully. So I repeatedly come back to the statement that evangelism is the task of announcing Jesus. So obviously there's a lot to expand on there. We could go to the etymology of it.
Speaker 2:Evangelism ends up coming back to like oh and Galleon announcing good news, kind of like on Galleon, like on Galleon, like an angel has an announcement and that announcement is good. It's a good announcement And we know that every good announcement in the gospel, the kingdom, etc. Is about Jesus. So precisely we are announcing Jesus. When we do evangelism We're not necessarily. Our job is not to convince or to convert people, we are announcing. So yeah, a rather narrow definition of announcing Jesus that I can expand on any part of that, but I really want to kind of keep focused on the announcement of Jesus.
Speaker 1:Yeah, i think the book as it you do. In the book we'll get into more detail on what that ends up looking like. But I think part of what you're doing with that that task, that definition of evangelism, is recognizing that there is more going on than just the demand of a conversion moment, right. So you often write in the book about the pressure of winning souls or the competitive side, maybe how your view of evangelism actually helps broaden what evangelism is beyond just that moment or that single pressure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i think when I imagine evangelism, i talk to people. They think of the pivotal moment, maybe with you know, i'm thinking of the Romans road or a gospel track or something like that, where someone will, you know, pray to receive Christ, and clearly people do that, you know. I mean God does bring that moment up, you know, in many people's lives. So so certainly there is that moment. But when we think that, when we when that's the picture that comes into our mind about evangelism we are perhaps think about the wrong thing. Similarly, like you know, i talked to a lot of younger Christians and they don't have the get this reference, but older Christians might get it that, that the, when you think about prayer, i think of the precious moments, doll, or the little figurine that's on its knees with its hands, class of the eyes closed in a solemn moment, and many of us know that's not really what prayer is. So it's much broader, it can include that picture that comes to mind.
Speaker 2:But when we think of evangelism, i feel like it's a lot of people think it's that seal the deal moment that hopefully is successful, if you will, and while many, of course, it could include that moment and by God's grace, sometimes does that, that that isn't really the focal point of what evangelism is.
Speaker 2:So if we say that could be one picture of evangelism, but to focus on that is to like over focus on one pixel of a very large image of which the task of evangelism is from beginning to end, after someone might recognize or put their faith in Christ, it continues. So this, this kind of pivotal moment that, especially in American evangelicalism and you know, thank God, many people have experienced or seen that moment, many people have might have a testimony like that. So it is a part of it. To become over fixated on that one like pixel of the broader picture of evangelism is to set us off in a course where we end up, i guess I guess just misdiagnosing or thinking that we're failures or that we haven't done our job if, unless we're doing or experiencing that moment, we're not stepping into that and kind of being that person which, to be honest, is just really rare And we can talk more about that.
Speaker 1:But yeah, one of the things you write about, I think, really well in the book too, is that the the task of evangelism is not just for the unconverted. You say that there's a false divide between evangelism and discipleship, and at one point right about what you describe as the devil's trick of leading us to believe. We only need the gospel at one moment, sort of that beginning moment, and then we're on to other things. What is that false divide between evangelism and the work of discipleship? as so often, the church frames those as two separate things.
Speaker 2:Right, right, right. So, and you know well, well, i'm going to define it in a way that I think is helpful I'm sympathetic to. I get the idea that there's there's young Christians. They come to the church and then we want them to have a more thorough, you know, larger breadth of understanding of what their faith is. I mean, that is the historical path of the church, going way back, you know entrance into, to be catechesis, to be a catechumen, to be baptized, then to learn more about the faith. There is this process where you do, you know, obviously you learn more. So, while there is this kind of growing understanding and growing awareness and teaching etc. That should definitely follow an initial entrance into the faith, recognition of faith, the idea of first we do evangelism, then we do discipleship, or first we, you know, convert people and then we do discipleship, i think it's a false divide. The first reason I think that's a false divide is it's a really poor understanding of discipleship.
Speaker 2:So discipleship at its core is following someone, it's learning from someone. This is why, in a talk about this briefly in the book, this is why you can have disciples of John the Baptist. This is why you can have disciples of Pharisees, this is why this was just a thing that happened in the ancient Near East. You have people who have disciples. It in mathitase means you know, learner, so you're a learner, follower, or you know in more modern parliaments, like an apprentice of someone who you have a relationship with. It does not. Discipleship is not intrinsically religious or even Christian. It is this relationship that goes on where someone is a step ahead of you or something or at least you see it that way and you're following their lead. So when we think about discipleship in that way, you could actually have a discipleship relationship with someone before they're a Christian And often this is the way it works, where someone who's not a Christian becomes curious or you have a relationship with them in some way and they're kind of following your lead And you could say, in one regard, that person is already a disciple of you because you have a relationship with them, maybe you're a step ahead them in some aspect, maybe it's in faith or what have you. So there's this kind of you know, learner, apprentice, master relationship that is at the heart of discipleship. What discipleship isn't? it's not a class. Now you can have a class. Many classes are helpful Bible study, theology, all sorts of classes are wonderful, but a discipleship class itself is an oxymoron, because discipleship itself is a relationship And we have, you know, i'm aware of like a lot of classes and I'm not aware I mean, there's more classes that I know about than I do of deep mentoring, apprenticeship relationships.
Speaker 2:So anyway, broadly defined, the task of discipleship is, can even be a non-Christian one. It's about this relational leadership that comes from someone. One is the task of delivering the news of Jesus. So in some ways you could, you can almost think about both of these like, maybe like a Venn diagram. He used to be an engineer, so I like those.
Speaker 2:But you know you can have them where they don't relate at all. You can have the task of delivering Jesus without a relationship. That does happen. So you, so they're, they don't intersect at all, they're totally different. You could also have it where they are completely like the circles are, are, are united, so they're over each other. So it's the person who is their, you know, leader that they're looking up to is the one that delivers it. Or you could have some sort of other version where there's, you know, a partial union, where, where there's other things, there's other people announcing the gospel. There's other, you know, mentorship. So anyway, all that to say. I think that thinking, okay, now the person's converted, now we're going to disciple them, typically it's more like we need to get them into class and I'm all for classes, but I would want to avoid this kind of false divide of of of evangelism, evangelism, deception.
Speaker 1:Because of those reasons, I think part of what you bring to light in the book as well is the idea that even as a disciple of Christ maybe I've been serving the Lord for 15, 20 years oftentimes where I began to go astray in following Christ are are matters of evangelism. They are matters of remembering or proclaiming again the gospel and who Christ is. And I was thinking as I was reading about the Jesus's rebuke of Peter. When Peter pulls him aside and his challenging, he stopped talking so much about suffering. You get Jesus this really strong words back to him.
Speaker 1:Get behind me, satan, which is a kind of position of discipleship. You're not, you're no longer following me. Get back into the position of following me And he'll say you've become an obstacle to me because you've. You've taken your eyes off the Lord. You're no longer thinking about things of heaven, but now you're thinking about things of earth. That, in a way, you know the disciple Peter, you know he's been following for so long. He's right there with Jesus that even in the midst of his discipleship he can step out of that role. And Jesus's recommendation to him is you've misunderstood my talk of of who I am and the suffering that is to come that there's an evangelistic moment there in the midst of that discipleship moment as well. Those two are really related.
Speaker 2:Right, i agree with you, because a lot of us see the repeated call for Jesus to calling people to the kingdom of God. At the core of the kingdom of God is who is the king? and it's Jesus. In that moment, peter is wanting to be a part of a different kingdom, a different plan. He wants to follow the plan of the world, which is a different kind of savior, essentially. So I want to be compassionate easily been me, but in that, yeah, you're right, jesus is calling him back to himself and to recognizing Jesus as Lord rather than anything else, as Lord, including Satan's plan for the way that people think of glory in the world, or the type of God that we might expect, or himself that Peter is a whim to be in charge of the way that the kingdom should be, rather than Jesus's way. So, yeah, i'm with you with that. I think that that is a re-announcement of the good news that Jesus is king and no one else is. So, yeah, yeah, i like that, that's good.
Speaker 1:One of the things you said you wanted to do with the book as a part of the Care of Souls is really try to get at some of the motivations, the emotions that we experience as a pastor leading people into evangelism but, honestly, as pastors ourselves trying to practice evangelism. How do you think about the Christians motivation for the work of evangelism? What is it that should be moving us to take up this work, reminding us again of the importance, what are the motivations we should be seeking, as believers, to evangelize Right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, obviously there's a scriptural aspect and make disciples, of which coming to faith would be obviously a great first step in discipleship. Baptizing the name of the Father, son, holy Spirit, so begin your walk with Christ to be a disciple, as it says in the Great Commission. So there and other places, we obviously have a scriptural mandate to be motivated for this. So responding faithfully to scripture would be one thing. The thing that I would want to add to that because I would hope that that would already be on the table and we'd be familiar with that the part that I want to add that maybe we have done less of, is that sometimes our motivation for evangelism comes for a lot of other reasons either guilt because we haven't been doing it, or maybe because we want our church to be bigger. Not necessarily because of the right reasons, maybe for other reasons, and they're never binary. Obviously they're intertwined with really good motivations and instincts from the spirit and all that. But many of us tend to think that more people is better in the way to accomplish it is evangelism And, like I said, it's always mixed motives on that. So obviously there's a good motive behind that, but if I'm, if I was going to confess I, you know, sometimes that's about the raw motives wanting numbers to go up, and we think that evangelism is the mechanism and tool to do that. So there's that. I think that one of the one of the tasks that I encourage us to do in hopefully it's not a new one, but I really try to kind of like underline this one a whole bunch is listening, listening to scripture, or motivation for evangelism would be listening to scripture and also listening to our own lives, and it's in that, listening to our own lives, where I think that our, our motivation for evangelism could be refreshed. So when we listen to our own lives, i think that it's super easy for us to become numb to the gospel And it's super easy for those of us that proclaim the gospel and that our ministers to become done to our own sin.
Speaker 2:I'm not here to, you know, talk about anyone else, i'm just talking about myself. I, when I say the gospel many you know over and over which I do I'm an evangelist, so we're free in life. I do it in my classrooms, i'm always talking about it. It does sometimes lose a freshness if I, if I'm just to confess that, because I've become familiar with the words. I become familiar with kind of the process of explaining it. It's something I've done a bunch of times And so with that I become a little bit numb. I think I have like a subheading in one of the chapters. I comfortably numb, you know, and I become comfortable, or I don't even know that I become a little bit numb to the gospel.
Speaker 2:And one of the ways that I can kind of scrape away at the calluses of my heart to the gospel that I can, i can, i can reinvigorate my motivation and heart for the gospel is to go to confession, and not even confession about that I'm not motivated for evangelism. Well, that might be one to really deal with my sin. And I know that many of us in ministry are in a tough spot when that that coming to that right, because we're obviously a spiritual leader, we, you know, it's just a tricky balance. We, many of us, are isolated, don't have a lot of people to talk with about our sins, about our own confession. I probably don't need to explain that to you know, audience here a lot of Christians and pastors and such. So with that becoming aggressive and confronting our own sin and letting trying to be just, you know, go on our knees, close our door, ask the Lord to expose us to our own sin and for us to grieve over our own sin. Now, i'm not, i'm trying to just, you know, manufacture some sort of fake guilt or anything like that, because, but to really come into contact with our great need for our savior, of which we respond by thanking the savior for our salvation and for our baptism and for our ongoing communion with him and for all the gifts that he's given us, but, but really kind of maybe peeling away.
Speaker 2:So, if we want to, you know, have a motivation for evangelism, i think, kind of deal with our own sin and find ways to engage with it. Some of us, you know, wow, that's great, sean, aren't you guilty enough? Well, okay, maybe you need to find the joy of forgiveness. Maybe you need to confess to a brother or sister and, you know, have them, speak words of, you know, forgiveness over you in the name of the Lord and read scripture over you and for you to receive it. Whatever it is, one motivation for evangelism would be to deal with ourselves, to reckon with our own sin and to remind us of our own forgiveness in Christ, in which we are hearing the gospel. We're essentially re-evangelizing ourselves or letting someone else minister that to us. So, yeah, that's what I would say about our motivation to evangelism. Yes, it's the scripture, but also listening to our own lives and turning inward to see our great need for our Savior.
Speaker 1:I think it is really helpful to think about the motivation of evangelism as coming from my own joy, my own worship and response, my own humility. that my own interaction with the gospel is part of the overflow of what evangelism is, And it helps offset two of the warnings that you write about in the book are an overzealousness and a pragmatism. Maybe you could unpack a little of why those are warnings when it comes to the work of evangelism.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, i'm glad you brought that up. So when it comes to overzealousness and I hope this isn't too spicy of a phrase here, but I talk about evangelistic ambulance chasers So there is this instinct that when it hits the fan in other people's lives, we run to that situation with telling people the good news. Now, god can certainly use that and often does, but we see that as perhaps, like, this is our chance. Now Let's go in The person's in incredible pain and suffering. Here's what we're going to do. Well, if they don't know Christ yet, they need to turn to Christ and start the relationship with Christ.
Speaker 2:Now, i'm sure you know amongst your audience there's many people that do have an encounter with the Lord in the midst of a very difficult, dark, low spot in their life. So I'm not saying that we can't do that. The thing is that when we only do it that way, what we turn Jesus into is a fix it person. So we train people if we say, oh, do you see someone going through a really bad time? You know, get them the gospel, tell them about Jesus. When that's our only kind of method or something not only method, but when that's our instinct is this is ding, ding, ding. This is an evangelistic opportunity. We get into the habit of thinking that the gospel is a fix it. We use it when problems arrive and it's a bandaid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the gospel is good when I need it. So it sort of becomes this response to whatever bad is happening, then Jesus is king, then Jesus is king.
Speaker 2:So obviously we know that the Lord does minister in those. But I would just say, watch being overzealous about our instinct to only announce the good news of Jesus when bad stuff happens, so that I'd warn us to just be aware of that pastorally. And then the pragmatism is I've done evangelism long enough. I've spoken with lots of people one on one. I've spoken, you know, to hundreds and thousands of people's and different gatherings over 20 years. I've learned that there are things that I can do as a speaker in front of a group or in a conversation one on one that can get a response, and the Lord in his mystery can use that and does use that, because God's greater than any of that. The work of the spirit is. We can't control it. So there's that. At the same time, i'm very wary of learning tips, tricks, tactics, fine-tuned to get a response. And part of this is because some people are really good at it and can confuse the work of the Spirit, god's mysterious work to provide faith and repentance, which is a gift and miracle of God and not from ourselves. They feel like they can manufacture that. Some people are really good Now it might be that they're gifted and that God uses them in some special way, but I'm sure there's enough people out there that know that there are certain things that you can do in the midst of speaking or in conversations that are more like tactics, and we could go there. And then what also happens is that some people aren't good at those things, or they're not experienced, or they try to stay away from what might seem like manipulation, sometimes whatever. So we start to idolize or think, well, what if I just did some of that? Or I'm brand new, i'm going to study the people who seem to be the most effective. I'm going to pay to maybe go to conferences, or what have you to learn from people who are really good because they get results? So our draw to people who seemingly get great results sure, maybe, of course we could learn from them. But I think that we really need to be careful that we aren't just trying to develop tactics that are pragmatic. It's because they just flat out work that I'm going to do those things. Instead, it would be peeling back.
Speaker 2:Okay, is this right? Is this scriptural? Is this how God normally works? We can talk about it in a moment, but, as it turns out, usually a person's conversion experience is a long-term process. Sociology studies show this. We can talk about our own testimonies and things like that. We like to package things as if it came into one key moment and God does use a key moment, but usually with a little bit more longer-term view. You see how God was working over a long period of time And even if we go back to the early evangelicals, who are kind of my academic focal point of studying Wesley, his own Altersgate day, how he thought about that change over the course of his very long life. So there's a bunch of different takes on this. But anyway, overzealousness, avoiding just thinking those are the only opportunities for evangelism when it all goes bad, and pragmatism, kind of just idolizing people who seem to just be so effective in a blind way and just kind of following that. So yeah, i warn against those.
Speaker 1:You instead describe a kind of patience and a pace that's necessary for the work of evangelism, which is, i think, what made this book. It is a part of the Care of Souls series. If you've read any of Harold Sinkbull's book, the Care of Souls, or the other books in the series, there is a kind of we're looking for a longevity, we're looking for a sustainable pace, we're looking for something that represents a God, both of Sabbath, sabbath and relationship, and this is something that we're contributing a life to, not just a momentary task set in front of us. So how is it that, when we're thinking about evangelism, we can take up that lifestyle of patience, of pace, of faith in the process of evangelism?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. Well, here's a story I think I tell in the book, i forget, but when I was a kid I used to ride my bike around the downtown area. I don't know, some people have seen like stranger things, but I was an 80s kid riding my huffy around kind of at night day all over the place and I was getting to trouble, but kind of low grade trouble. And one of the things I would do Lord forgive me I would sneak into movie theaters in the back door. I didn't have anything going on, i didn't have a lot of money, it was easy to do And so I would just stay. I would kind of go when the matinee started and I would just stay at the movie theater, popping around from one movie to the next, just checking stuff out. And what I learned as I did that was that I would walk into a movie and it would already be in progress And what I would have to do is kind of figure out what happened before. So you know, i walked into our movie and if you walk in 45 minutes and you've missed part of the story, and then sometimes also the theater, people would come in with their flashlight to count how many people are there Or you know, i kind of was, you know, a pretty good suspect of someone who probably shouldn't be there, so I would find ways to sneak out, okay, so there's that. So what I would do is I would enter in late to a story, a two hour movie, and then sometimes I need to leave early And with that I walk.
Speaker 2:I kind of the way it relates to evangelism is that's what we do with people's lives. There's a story that's already in progress. You know God knit them together in the mother's womb. So you know it began well before even anyone was aware of what God was doing in their life. And you know, when I encountered them, you know who knows, you know how old they are. But there's a story that precedes that And chances are I'm not going to be a part of all of the later chapters of their story. There's a few people in my life that it will be like that, but more precisely I'm going to be a part, perhaps in an evangelistic opportunities and relationships and pastoral care for someone. Or you know a chapter or maybe a couple that probably somewhere in the middle, and with that it's really important for us to get our bearings about what God's doing to when we walk into a situation. And this is what you know Housebook is so good And I think also in Christ in Calamity, which is a follow up book they wrote in the pandemic. It talks about these sort of things That what a good doctor does is they listen.
Speaker 2:First They listen to the patient, tell me what's going on, they put their stethoscope on and listen to different parts or heart breathing etc. Then they use the wisdom that they have and the experience that they have to say something. So this pace, honestly, like even just good medical care, usually is a longer experience right, and so evangelistic pace, i think, is best and most mature and probably most sustainable. When we get our bearings, we find out what God's doing by asking a lot of questions, we kind of pace ourselves and try to understand as best we can what the Holy Spirit's doing in their life And we talk about Jesus a lot And we wait patiently for the Spirit to work or to see what God does.
Speaker 2:When that medicine, if you will like a doctor that prescribes something, you come back in for another appointment. How's it going? Hey, you know you just patiently over time you keep talking about Jesus, you listen, you ask questions. Perhaps you could say something. You know have you ever, would you consider yourself a Christian? Have you started a relationship with Jesus? You know you could. Somewhere along that line. It'd be very natural to have that conversation. But everything that I'm explaining is a much slower, more pastoral, more, i think, in some ways caring pace than what a lot of us think when we think of evangelism, which is a short, sometimes confrontational conversation on which, if it goes well, you feel good and if it goes bad, you feel like a failure and don't want to talk about ever again. So, yeah, that's a little I mean, that's a story to kind of explain a lot of the pacing that I talk about. Yeah, it's a lot about listening and trying to understand what God's doing in someone's life.
Speaker 1:That is a really helpful image. I used to have this doctor that I went to, my kind of primary care doctor who was a believer, but he would always be in trouble because he was always. He always was running late. He was taking too long with each patient And he was, i think the hospital required them to do their charting on the computer, you know, in the room as you're talking, So the whole time you're talking to the doctor. You know they're there in the corner looking at the machine typing, but he would always wait and do his charting in the hall afterwards. So he was looking at you. He was never actually on the computer in the room And he would always, when I would go in, he would ask me what have you been reading lately and tell me what's going on in your life before we would get to anything medical.
Speaker 1:And I'd been having some symptoms related to something. And at one point later in that appointment he said to me well, you mentioned all the things you've got going on. How do you think that workload is contributing to this? And I thought, oh, he said it was a trap. You know he was those questions at the beginning that seemed like they were just personal. They were actually contributing to how he was thinking about me as a whole person and the whole medical issue. I was experiencing And I've often thought about that scene as a pastor that it is really easy in a moment, even when you do sense an opportunity, to sort of rush into it and try to immediately, you know, seize that opportunity while you can and speak that word And the willingness to be treat them as a whole person, to be a whole person, to sort of set in that moment in situation, not that you avoid the opportunity in front of you, but to treat it as more than just a moment or more than just an opportunity.
Speaker 1:Really is so much of what a great pastor does. But I think all of us are believers, are called to as well.
Speaker 2:Right, i mean, so many people obviously are drawn to counseling And the appointments are an hour or 90 minutes. You know you would never go to a counselor that says I have three minute slots. You know, like you'd be like there's a lot more going on, you know, than what you could do just in this, like, you know, short little thing. A lot of people are saying you know, if I'm going to sit down and talk through my problems, you know, or with a pastor, if a pastor said let's meet up, i've got three minutes for you, you know you'd probably want to not have that meeting with the pastor either.
Speaker 2:It takes a lot of time And, like your point is, a good doctor will sit there and listen and give you their full focus And he's always, you know, as a position And I think you know how they schedule him in rooms is he's been doing for decades is slower. You know he doesn't do as many like see as many patients per hour, some purposefully because of the type of care that he wants to give. And in my he's my father and I love him. But he's also just a top notch doctor in our community and everyone loves going to him. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, you actually bring this up towards the end, the last chapter of the book. you specifically write about listening, which really struck me, as you mentioned a moment ago that when we think about evangelism, most of us are thinking about speaking, but you recognize there's a critical task for anybody doing evangelism, that is, listening as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And part of this, part of this goes back to just a terrible experience I had when I was in seminary, which was I took a class on it was on counseling skills And we had spent we had read a book on on like listening, we had spent probably six weeks on effective listening and follow up questions and these sort of things, and one of the tasks that we had in the class was to turn to a neighbor and to talk about something that was going on. And everyone in the class was currently in ministry, including my partner, and you know we had read the book, we had lectured, we had written papers or we had listened to lectures, we had written papers, we had taken tests and our prompt for the these kind of interactive parts of the class was to explain something that we're going through and for the person to kind of minister to us or we'll kind of practice, like you know, just exploring further. So I think at that point in my life I had written down a situation where I was like, oh, you know, i'm young, married, my wife and I, we have young kids, i have these ministry responsibilities. It's really stressed us out in our home. We're, you know we're, we love each other. But it's really difficult right now.
Speaker 2:I turned to my partner in this class, you know, when I just gave you all the background and he talked for 10 minutes straight And I thought, and as I looked around in the class it was like it was like a you know do the song for like a horror movie. I said this is happening everywhere, it's not just with me. Like he should know better. We're in a class where what he should say is he should ask follow up questions. I mean, he should really like ask. It was just super obvious. I was like I'm literally told to do it And I was looking around and I was like people are giving sermons, people are giving uninvited advice in Bible verses to fix all their problems, and so I've been aware that that is, for whatever reason, pastoral or ministerial tendency for a lot of us. So I might be hypersensitive to this sort of thing, but I think now, having been an evangelist and in doing this work for a couple of decades, i've seen that it just generally doesn't work. I was here, i warned against pragmatism, but what I've seen is that when I say tell me more, a lot of things start coming up that I didn't see. Or I say, oh you, you said that when you you know, when you said that you seem just kind of sad about that. Why is that? Or hey, just follow up questions.
Speaker 2:One of the best kind of evangelists I know. She was great. And I said, how did you become such a great conversationalist? And she said my dad always taught me to ask a minimum of two follow up questions after someone told me something. And like, people didn't get why. Everyone just wanted to talk with her and be with her.
Speaker 2:And I think there's a lot of reasons, but one of it is she's just a really attentive listener, and so I think that, as if evangelism is the task of announcing Jesus, like, wait for when that's right And when you when, like like a doctor, does you know, listen, listen to what the patient's saying, listen, you know with a stethoscope what's going on for a while, ask some follow up questions, you know, and then you can, you can say something that's more helpful, like I think one of the analogies I give somewhere in the book is about if you have a destination on, you know your smartphone, you put in the address. Typically it will give you a couple of different alternate routes to all get to the same spot. There's not just one way to get to the same destination. In evangelism we want to tell people about Jesus and responding to Jesus. That is the destination, that's the hope.
Speaker 2:However, a good map program will say there's, you know there's like three or four different directions. You know like kind of routes that you could take and they all have their kind of pluses and minuses. This is the most direct, this has a few turns, et cetera. If you just kind of rush to, to to, you know the fastest way. That's not always the best way And we probably know that. You know we use our map programs all the time And that's what we do, like listening helps us deliver the news in a way. Honestly, it'll just probably you know land better And we'll set up conversations.
Speaker 2:After perhaps an evangelistic conversation, it'll set up a normative style of pastoral care for someone Like I just talked about, like the longer term task of discipleship. That you'll be trained in skills and in kind of the tactics of a pastor. That you're not doing something special when you do evangelism. What you're doing is you're just being human and you're ministering to people And this is the skill set I have that I use it all the time. I listen and then I deliver God's word. I listen and I tell them about the good news of Jesus, and this works for pre-evangelism, this works for evangelism, this works for ongoing pastoral care for everyone, and so I think evangelism is tempting to say it's all about give them this information. And so I think, for those reasons, just really highlight listening.
Speaker 1:I think that was one of my favorite parts of the book was connecting those dots as well too. And there does come this moment, as you're alluding to, though, where we are called to speak Christ, to bear witness to Christ Absolutely. For those who find themselves with a kind of performance anxiety I think that's the word you use in the book How can you find confidence, how can you overcome that anxiety? when it does come to that moment, you know the Spirit's leading you, you know you've reached that point after listening where we are there to say who Christ is and what Christ has done. How can a believer build their confidence for that moment of evangelism?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first step is to absolutely know that it does not depend upon you, like what I'm going to say next. How do you ask that question? How do you kind of probe to see what God's doing? The first step when you're nervous is to completely take your hands off of the results. I mean, that's just. It's a sin to think that you control someone's destiny. That makes you God. It's the Lord that loves them, that's called them and will be faithful to do God's faithful work in their life. And so the first step is to really double down on that. The results are not in my control. They're not in my next words, they're not in a tactic that I may or may not use. The Holy Spirit is mysterious and works in a way that is the Holy Spirit's way. So the first step is to release yourself from the results. The second step is, now that you've been released.
Speaker 2:It's kind of like Luther's freedom of Christian to be bold and to deliver the news of Jesus and ask them if they've responded Do you have your faith in Christ? Is your faith in Christ? are you a Christian? Have you confessed your sins to him? And just to ask that, just to find out what God's doing. Don't be surprised or scared of that. Many of us build a bridge and never walk across it. It's a very normal. If you've been having conversations about Jesus and they know you're a Christian, people are not going to be shocked if you ask them would you consider yourself a Christian and why Have you ever put your faith in Christ? No one's ever said to me, at least how dare you ask me that? Like usually, the nature of the relationship is they know I'm a Christian, i'm a person who talks about Jesus. I kind of figured you'd be talking about this.
Speaker 2:Some people have said I don't know why you waited so long to ask me about this. So I would say step on, release yourself from results. That's God. None of us are God, only the Lord is the Lord. So release yourself from the results. Then, with that release, you are free. Freedom of the question to ask a question. You know where do you stand with Christ And I think, having been relieved of the pressure there's, you can just ask boldly and then listen and then ask a follow-up question and keep doing that, probing weren't to see what God might be doing.
Speaker 2:You know, and then, if God puts you know scripture on your heart, share it with them about. Hey, let's look at this, this passage. I mean, if you don't have good words, open up scripture and say, maybe, point to scripture. I mean, it could be as simple as things in Romans, but it might be anything. It might be Psalm 23. It could be, you know, god's Word speaks in mysterious ways. But yeah, i hope that's helpful. Release yourself from the results and then be bold and ask Don't beat around the bush.
Speaker 1:The book we've been talking about is Evangelism. It's a part of the Care of Souls series that Lexham has been putting out their ministry guides. Maybe a good place for us to wrap up is a lot of listeners or pastors. I'm a pastor as well too. You write in the book about how too often evangelism has been cut loose from the local congregation. What does it look like for pastors to not only take up the work of evangelism, but how can pastors incorporate evangelism in the work of the church, equip the members of their church to take up the task of evangelism? How is evangelism in the church related?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think, first off those of us who are ministers or leading a church, we need to be in touch, like I mentioned before, with our own sin, our own great need for a Savior. I think that that will come through in all moments if we are living in that place. So we'll be doing evangelism, probably when we don't even know it. So just being in touch with the gospel and trying to avoid callousness, numbness, i think that will just lead out through us, the gospel will. I think also and I talked about this in the book there are many repeated activities in the church where we can proclaim the news that Jesus is king and he calls us to acknowledge him as king and our Savior and to turn from our sins, put our faith in him. Obviously, anytime there's a baptism, renounce that. Every time that we take communion, we are absolutely instructed to renounce that. If you're in a tradition where you have confession or absolution, obviously that's a great place to renounce that At the end of a sermon. Go for it. Why not Announce and give the opportunity?
Speaker 2:I would say I would love to see more evangelism happening within the church. I think that it's been outsourced to paratroop ministries like the one that I work for. I'm very thankful and it has a place, but I hope it goes away. I would love to see it be re-owned by the local church. I know every pastor is going to say, of course, yeah, i want to do that. So partner with people who know how to do this and all that. I think there's still a place for many different kinds of ministries.
Speaker 2:I would say that look at your service and say what parts here that we do all the time are renouncements of the gospel, that Jesus is King, that we need a Savior, that we can turn to Him, and to do that over and over and over throughout every service. It's great to maybe have a short term in a church evangelistic campaign God uses those but to not say, oh, now is our season of evangelism, or we do this once a year, or we go on a mission trip to do all those things. But don't try to bifurcate that and say that now we're doing evangelism and then when we're not doing those things, it's kind of the switch is off. I would say, as much as possible, draw attention in the course of your church service, in the other ministries of your church, to highlight the gospel and opportunity for everyone to turn and return back. Like you mentioned earlier, chase, about Jesus' interaction with Peter, reinstating or confronting Him with the gospel get away from me, satan but also when He reinvites Him and restores Him at the end and John in other gospels from denying the Lord.
Speaker 2:So Jesus not only announces the gospel and says come follow me, but He reannounces the gospel. So find as many ways as possible to reannounce the gospel and the good news of Jesus Christ to the Christians and the non-Christians in your church as much as possible.
Speaker 1:Yeah, really helpful. Again, the book Evangelism. it's part of the For the Care of Souls series. Sean, really appreciate your time, Appreciate the hard work you've been living, but then putting it in a book form for us too, and I hope others will find it as much of an encouragement as I did. I'll have all the links on the show note. If anybody's interested in picking up a copy, or maybe following you picking up some of your other writings, what's the best way for them to just keep in touch with you and find your work.
Speaker 2:Yeah, i'm most active on Twitter at Sean McGeever and then the various others are kind of after that. But I do have a website. I don't really update it much, but it's Sean McGeevercom.
Speaker 1:Well, I'll have links in the show notes as well as information on the book and, Sean, thanks again. Really an honor and a privilege to have you on the podcast today.
Speaker 2:Right, thanks, chase, really appreciate it.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to the Pastor Writer podcast. As always, you can find show notes as well as links to the resources, the book we mentioned in today's episode. By going to pastorridercom, you can find more about the Care of Souls series that Lexham is producing, specifically the book on evangelism, as well as an opportunity to follow Sean McGeever's there. Just wanted to say thanks for those who have continued to be listening to the Pastor Writer podcast. I took a few weeks off. It was the end of the school year for my kids and trying to catch up on some school work myself, but I'm excited to be bringing you some great conversations coming up this summer. This is just the first of many more to come, so if you haven't already, consider subscribing, leaving a review, and I'll see you next week.