Peter Cavanna

In this episode we talk to Peter Cavanna.

Born in 1969 in Paignton, Devon, one time atheist Peter Cavanna grew up wanting to work in the world of entertainment, staging his own comedy revue shows in Torquay by the age of eighteen. Stumbling somewhat accidentally into an evangelistic meeting being held in the same theatre, Peter heard the Gospel of Jesus and was powerfully converted to Christianity overnight.

PeterCavanna.com

Opening The Scriptures - You Tube

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Nicola: Welcome to cold water Podcast. I'm Nicola Halton. We all know the importance of getting out there and doing a great work for Jesus. In this podcast we will learn more about the people who are involved in changing lives for good, for God. Thank you, Peter. Thank you for joining me. And I want to just, you know, it's just wonderful that you’re here and basically I know you was a lecturer, at Mattersey Bible college. I know you was a teacher at Hollybush and I know you as preacher at Renew and how did you get to do those roles, it a huge question I know and how has lockdown changed those roles for you. 

Peter: Ok well those are two big big questions aren’t there. I think a lot of people are very concerned about what their gifts are and callings and I think the best way to describe anyone's calling or gift is a spillage. I’m trying to think of how to spell that? S P I L L A G E like when you spill a drink and em all ministry should be really just be a spillage ie  I have got so much of God that more is coming out of me than I can  contain or I have developed , I don't know knowledge that I can share with others. So sometimes you find people who want to preach or do something in the ministry but you really are just looking at actors or those who aspire to be on a stage or something and I can understand that but real ministry is spillage and the way you get into any ministry genuinely is to be spilling over and of course you don't need to be on a platform on a church to spill over and I think that God wants us all to spill over and the other thing I say in that in 1 Corinthians 14  Paul talks about gifts that build other people up, or let me put it in a more simpler way again to be useful and so when people have said to me what’s my gift. I also I hope my gift is to gift of usefulness. I hope after I've ministered and useful and if it's not useful then it might be useless which case it's not really a good idea. So all I've ever done in my life is tried to be useful and I hope that's so true now. So I started, do you remember the days of the overhead projector

Nicola: I do yes.

Peter: Where you had to have someone on it to find the words and move the acetate on the slide so I did years on that and that’s how I started in the ministry and of course that’s as useful as the preacher is or was in those, in those days. So I’ve ended up preaching because I hope it’s a spillage of knowledge and spirit and I hope its what God has blessed me with because all I want to be is useful because I would happily go back on the overhead projector today if that would be helpful. 

Nicola: That is wonderful and that is a lovely, lovely attitude to have and we often want to be at the forefront don’t we. And that happens when we have the gifts that God has given to you, You have set up opening the scriptures and I have found it very useful and I’ve learned all about the new testament. Well not all about it but a depth of new testament that I didn’t have before . What inspired you to do that Peter?

Peter:  Well yeh that goes back to the lockdown again doesn’t it. Well erm if I’m really honest, if I’m really honest with you. Don’t tell anyone I’ve told you this but I was very worried about the lockdown, I was very worried about the virus and I was worried that I might not make it.

Nicola: Yes 

Peter: In the early days, it was really very very frightening wasn’t it.

Nicola: It was

Peter: And I had several people that I knew pass away. Yeah, including someone in their early 40s so I had taught the New Testament at Mattersey Hall for a number of years and I really liked the material. I thought it was useful and I thought it would be a shame if I passed away now with all the material so I thought I better film it. So I know it’s a funny answer but that’s actually the truth. Erm and then I realised that lockdown was a great opportunity for not, just me, but for thousands of people who had content could preach who could teach particularly who could teach because we all moved to or not all but many had moved to YouTube and Facebook for ministry and I saw it as an opportunity to erm er someone said were all televangelists now. So I realised there was an opportunity and there would be people who would be hungry for it and who would be transformed by it and I enjoyed doing it. And actually, what is online now is probably better than the material that I taught in the classroom at the Bible college. It's certainly longer in the Bible college. We were limited to something like 16 to 18 hours to teacher course. Well, I think the New Testament course online is maybe a third longer than that. So in my opinion, it's better. So, yeah. Yes, I'm really really pleased with it. But to answer your question I did it because I thought I might pass away.  I didn't want to pass away without without putting that material on tape anyway I’m still alive. 

Nicola: You are, you are! It was all a very fragile time for us. We all just counted our blessings didn’t we it was so important for us to.. The other thing was you did an online class and you taught about Acts and how., so what I want to know is .. so obviously your sermons are natural and you have preached in other countries how do find somewhere like Brazil as opposed to the UK. Because that is what we talked about in Acts. 

Peter: Well, yes, well I would say this that its not so much Brazil, got the difference between, oh, I don't again, I don't get to technical but the difference between a pre modern thinking audience and a modern or postmodern thinking audience, now, without going too much detail with that, but a pre modern thinking audience of a mindset a bit more like the new testament. So they believe very I  mean, is much more complicated than I’m making it sound now, but just, for example, they would really believe in the supernatural, right? In a way that its a western Europe people have been educated out of it. Also in places like Brazil or Eastern Europe, I’ve preached sometimes in Poland, Malta, catholic countries where if you talk about God, everyone knows what you mean. Now, I may not be a Roman Catholic, but for the sense that if you, if you preach in say secular Britain, and you mentioned God, somebody wants challenge you maybe there isn't a God, well, what sort of God and is God a he or a she or is it an eternal spirit and people have their own views where it's in, in Latin America, Roman catholic orientated, countries. You say God, and everyone understands is all about the God of the Bible. So, that along with their pre-modern worldview, means they're much more open at times to the gospel certainly It's much more open at times to miracles, things like that. So, when I travel around Brazil, just night after night of the most extraordinary miracles and it wasn't that I was more anointed there. It wasn't that I prayed more there. It certainly wasn’t that I was holier there. All I was all the time was tired but but there is that there's an openness to the supernaturally. In it, certain places that makes them very, conducive fruitful  they are ideal soil for powerful gospel ministries. So if you put one of these places, it makes you look like you're extremely gifted. And in fact all it really is is that God is the one who could do it. He do anywhere but of course people have to be open and I found places like Brazil very open to the power of the Holy Spirit. 

Nicola: That's amazing. Thank you. If someone was sitting on the fence of Christianity.  And to be honest, your teaching will definitely bring them off the fence what would you say to someone sitting on sitting on the fence 

Peter: Well I suppose, we'd want to know why they are on the fence. Some people are on the fence because they're not sure if they believe the claims of Christianity.  Other people are on the fence, because they don't like the moral demands of Christianity. I've met a few people like that. Well, I'd like to be Christian but it would mean I'd have to give up X. Y Z, other people are on the fence because to follow your metaphor, they were in the field once but they've been hurt by the church. And and so now I've now moved to the fence they haven’t quite got into the other field but this sort of half in and half out. So let me talk about these three things very very fast.  People have been hurt by the church. First of all if someone is listening to this and you've been hurt by the church can I just say how sorry I am about that and I know that I can be very real and I'm not gonna make excuses for that. Sometimes people get hurt in families, people get hurt in churches, sometimes things have gone on. I've been have really been poor and so I'm not making any excuses and if you're listening to me and you've been hurt by the church and whatever kind of church were ever scenario. Then on behalf of that church, I just want to say I'm sorry that that happened, but I would say this to you, that God is not the one who hurt you. Jesus did not offend you. It was the people that offended you and so I would encourage you to come back to Jesus who, who did you no wrong. To those who are on the fence, because they're not sure if they believe it. Well, as I said, I recommend my course online “opening the scriptures. Just have a look at some of those New Testament lectures, and you'll see there's enormous amounts of historical information there that, if you're that way, inclined will perhaps help you Christianity is not a leap in the dark. It's a leap into the light and you'll find plenty of good historical reasons to believe that Jesus came back from the dead. And anyway, don't take my word for it. Go and  listen to some of those and see what you make of it for yourself. Study it out find out for yourself. For those who are on the fence because of the moral demands of Christianity, the idea of giving things up. First say to that will happen. I'm not going to sugar coat that you will have to change, but it's more that you will be changed. We believe in, in the Christian faith we believe in a God works in the inside out. And so, God will come and live inside you. And as you slowly co-operate with him, your passions and desires will change. Let me throw in a funny one Do you remember years ago, the kinds of things maybe you liked on TV or the kind of food that you liked or the kinds of things you like to do as you got older, those things changed some of them did anyway. Some of them, sometimes we still like the same TV shows, but many of things in our lives, they change, we don't decide to change them, they sort of naturally change and that's what will happen with you as you become a Christian. The spirit of God will over a period of time. Not not compel you to do things, but you won't want to do certain things anymore. Your passions and desires will change. And especially if you attend a great lively and exciting church, the last thing it will be is boring and so the only thing you pick up when sitting on a fence, is you get splinters in your behind and so I would encourage to make a leap, not into the dark, but into the light. 

Nicola: . Thank you, Peter. That was absolutely wonderful. Lovely to see. Chat to you. Thank you. Thankyou for listening to the coldwater podcast. Please remember to subscribe and join next week.