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With Mitch and Amanda
67 Plays3 years ago
Today on PEP Talk we hear from an inspiring couple in evangelistic ministry together. Andy and Kristi cover all sorts of ground with them, from experiences in street evangelism, the gospel opportunities across Ireland, to the joy of working together.
Mitch and Amanda have been married for 22 years and together they lead Crown Jesus Ministries in Ireland. Their passion for evangelism drives the ministry to fulfil its vision; to see the people of Ireland Crown Jesus Lord of their lives. They have two teenagers, Noah (16) and Megan (13) and two border collies, Mollie and Max. Mitch loves eating curry, drinking coffee, cycling and supporting Chelsea FC while Amanda will either be found out for a long walk, watching a gripping crime series or cheering louder for Tottenham!
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Transcript
Podcast Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to another exciting edition of Peptalk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Bannister from the Sola Centre for Public Christianity in Dundee and joined as ever by my energetic and enthusiastic co-host, Christy Bear, all the way from Oak Hill College in London. Christy, how are you doing today? All right. Thank you, Andy. Thank you for calling me energetic.
00:00:32
Speaker
particularly after my little health kick in January. I'm feeling a bit worse for web, so I'm going to take that. I'm feeling fine. Thank you. How are you getting on? I'm doing spiffingly today and joined by, we've got, well, actually, listeners, we have a special loan to speak today because we don't have just one guest.
Introduction of Guests: Mitch and Amanda
00:00:50
Speaker
We have two guests. We have a double act. We are joined today by Mitch and by Amanda.
00:00:56
Speaker
from Crown Jesus Ministries in Belfast. So the privilege of meeting them kind of last year and doing some stuff over there. So, Mitch, Amanda, welcome to PepTalk. Thank you. Thanks for having us. Yeah, thank you. Privilege to be part of your tag team. It's a bit of a wrestling thing here going on, isn't it? It's like, you two guys against us, we're going to have some fun. Yeah, exactly. We could have, well, we could, we got three nations here. We haven't got Wales, but we could do. We could have a kind of, you know, English, Scottish, Irish,
00:01:24
Speaker
kind of face off but the first question i have to ask because we were chatting about this before we press the record button guys is that i already only know you as mitch and amanda especially mitch who's more public with the blog and so on it is just mitch and there's this mysterious missing surname so what is going on is it very embarrassing surname have you got something so long and complicated nobody could spell it is it a deep dark state secret what is with the whole mitch thing
Why 'Mitch'?
00:01:48
Speaker
No, it's really simple. Actually, my mom and dad, they called me Keith. So my name is Keith Mitchell. And no offense to any Keiths here listening. And I was never a fan of the name Keith. I kind of thought, what was my mom and dad thinking about when they picked that name? Well, actually, it's a nice name. It means forest or whatever. But my dad's nickname was Mitch. And my two older brothers got Mitch.
00:02:14
Speaker
And so because I wasn't really a big fan of Keith, Mitch tended to stick with me. And, you know, as younger, I wanted to be a footballer. I could never envisage anyone with a scarf with Keith written on it. So I thought Mitch probably sounds a bit better. And then it really took evolved into something bigger whenever social media started. So it's probably like 15, 16 years ago, very early on Facebook.
00:02:39
Speaker
Uh, my, uh, my brother-in-law was in Australia, started to talk about this thing, uh, Facebook. I thought I'm going to jump on. So, so I jumped on his Keith Mitchell and no one would accept my friend request cause they didn't know who I was. So I thought, right, I have to change this to Mitch and then you have to put in a second name. So I just thought, well, I'll put where I live Belfast. So social media, it's all Mitch Belfast. And sometimes, you know, I go to speak in churches now and they go, let's welcome Mitch Belfast. And I'm like, yeah, just whatever, but it doesn't matter.
00:03:08
Speaker
I love that. I think, Kristy, you should rebrand yourself, you know, because you've got a kind of sort of short, you know, sort of sharp, unique name. Kristy London. I mean, that is a name that is going to pack auditoriums out. I was going to say Kristy Mitch. Kristy London. Yeah, I like that.
00:03:30
Speaker
It's great to have you two with us. Thanks so much for joining us. Tell us, what are you up to? What do you get up to on a daily basis in Belfast?
Evangelism Focus in Ireland
00:03:40
Speaker
So we both work for an organization called Crying Jesus Ministries. Mitch is one of the founding members. The ministry's been running for 20, 21 years, coming up to our 22nd birthday. And I've been in the background for most of that time since we've been together, really. So as a ministry, our passion, our vision is to see the people of Ireland, Crying Jesus, Lord of our lives. And so what we do is evangelism.
00:04:09
Speaker
We want to see people equipped in evangelism, we want to inspire people to share their faith, and we do that by working in partnership with local churches and other Christian organisations across Ireland.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, so Amanda then came on to the staff a few months into the pandemic, so she worked 20 years in management and retail. And we had a position that needed to be filled here in terms of a COO of operations. Because the staff is growing with 16 staff now, and I'm not a manager.
00:04:40
Speaker
I can just about manage my own world. In fact, that will be a debatable point. So I really needed some of the credit help manage operations facility staff and and Amanda came in. And so we're a bit of a team, but we're part of a broader team of there's five and the senior leadership team in here, board of directors. And then we have an awesome team who are doing a vandalism with children, youth, adults, special education. We've got
00:05:08
Speaker
staff in the Republic of Ireland and in the North. So basically, as Amanda said, we do evangelism. If there's a way of doing evangelism, we either do it or we're giving it a go. We just think, let's not be afraid to communicate the good news of Jesus in a real and relevant way. And we've got to take some risks enough, but that's what part of church organizations do.
00:05:30
Speaker
So obviously every context, every part of the UK, every part of the world is different, has its unique challenges
Cultural Context and Challenges in Ireland
00:05:37
Speaker
and opportunities. So for where you focus on ministering in Northern Ireland or so, as you say, in the Republic, what are some of those cultural specifics? What are some of the things that maybe make evangelism easier? And what are some of the things that maybe make it tougher that you have to overcome when you're engaging with people? Yeah, sure.
00:05:57
Speaker
It's an interesting journey of where we've been as an island. Northern Ireland is only 100 years old now. So there's lots of stuff in terms of historically, there's been a strong evangelical footprint in the north of Ireland. And the Republic of Ireland has been seen more as a Catholic.
00:06:12
Speaker
country, but so much has changed than that. I mean, we lived in a, I call it the troubles bubble, where for like 40 years inside that sort of tension of the troubles in Northern Ireland, we were kind of isolated from a lot of that kind of postmodern stuff that was crossing around the rest of Europe because people's identity here was in, you know, pretty much you Protestant or Catholic. Now, let's remember the conflict of the war over here.
00:06:42
Speaker
what was not about religion, it was about nationality, but it just so happened that the British people in the North tended to be Protestant by and large, and those who were more of a Republican agenda were from a Catholic tradition. So that caused a lot of tension, but it kept us from this kind of postmodern thing. And then from the Good Friday Agreement, then really what's happened is you've had this whole
00:07:08
Speaker
tsunami of a different way of thinking of young people here checking out from church and saying I don't need my identity to be wrapped up anymore on what side of the fence I belong to because that is gone. And at the same time you've also had the Republic of Ireland which is much more
00:07:27
Speaker
multicultural now and as a huge influx of immigration and for most people down there now the reality is they would not see it anymore as a Catholic church. I mean I remember some of my studies a few years ago were the Catholic church in the north of in Republic of Ireland where in the early 1980s 96% of people attended mass regularly and that's now down to 16%
00:07:55
Speaker
Now that's a huge change in like 30 years, huge. So we're in the middle of that, but we see it as a tremendous time for opportunity. I think we had to bear in mind also like just the strategy of where we missed things in the past. So if you had Northern Ireland, you know, you've been over here before, some would say, I know some evidence to back it up that
00:08:17
Speaker
You know, we have more churches per square foot than arguably anywhere else in the world. I mean, every street corner, East Belfast alone, our last kind had 56 churches just in like inner East Belfast. There's a church everywhere. By the same token, the Republic of Ireland is the most unevangelized English-speaking nation in the world.
00:08:40
Speaker
It's only 2% evangelical. So whatever you want to talk about, the troubles in Northern Ireland and the reason behind it, you've got to say there's just been a spiritual forces at work there. But we see now as a time of opportunity. It's not a time for us to be fearful. It's a time for opportunity to build bridges, to be courageous, have those conversations with people from all backgrounds and all cultures.
00:09:04
Speaker
of rich Catholic faith and those of no
Spiritual Awareness and Evangelism Opportunities
00:09:08
Speaker
faith. And I see it as days of opportunity. And because you guys in the world of apologetics have been working through this stuff ahead of the curve a little bit more than us, that's a win, because we just learned from your mistakes. This is great. And pick the best bits. So when you go to write a book about engaging with the Muslim country, we haven't been thinking about that.
00:09:32
Speaker
So we just pick the best bits. It's just a total win for us. We just pick the best bits. You've had to navigate that for the last 15, 20 years. We've only had a day with it for two or three. And believe us, we make lots of mistakes. Thank you so much. Speak for yourself. No, when Mitch said the best bits of my book, I thought, well, that's a page and a half.
00:09:57
Speaker
Honestly, for anybody listening, it is absolutely brilliant. It is brilliant. The checks in the post. That's wonderful. Could you both just ask, you mentioned, and thank you so much for that wonderful overview and entry into the context of
Connecting with New Age Practitioners
00:10:16
Speaker
Northern Ireland. You mentioned earlier on, before we started recording, that it's actually quite spiritual at the moment. The Northern Irish kind of
00:10:25
Speaker
context that just seems to be this kind of, I mean maybe you wouldn't go as far as saying spiritual awakening but there's a spiritual awareness. How do you go about connecting with that in your ministries and what does that look like?
00:10:38
Speaker
That's a really good question. One of the things about Northern Ireland, as Mitch has talked about, is that we've always connected to religion at some level. And I think because of that, it's either created this space where people are
00:10:55
Speaker
have it are able to embrace spirituality at some level especially those from Roman Catholic backgrounds or have completely switched off from it and said I want nothing to do with it. But for us we have just found that there is this openness to the things which are spiritual but
00:11:11
Speaker
But the challenge that comes with that is the influx of very much a lot of new age and other types of spirituality that seems to be out there. And so I suppose we're trying to communicate the truth, which is Jesus Christ, into that context. And we do that in such a variety of ways.
00:11:30
Speaker
one of the things that we've noticed recently, Mitch, you were reading the book that crossed your attention on the whole spiritual thing, and there's just such a challenge around that at the minute, isn't there? Totally. Going back to the point about spirituality, I think right across the world, there's still spiritual people out there, and it's how you connect with that. So I was in Waterstones Bookshop just before Christmas, and I got to the top of the
00:11:57
Speaker
the stairs. And I always, Christmas, buy myself a present first, you know, buy myself a book, go into the coffee shop, have a read. And there's a, there's a shop and there's books on witchcraft and moon worship and all Luna and all this kind of stuff. I'm fascinated. So watching the coffee shop, which is in Waterstones, seeing people lift in a particular book called Luna, I thought, right, so I can do one of two things here. I can like,
00:12:19
Speaker
put a blog up how terrible this is, or I can pick a book up and I can read it and go, right, what is it about this stuff? What is it that people are attracted to? So I bought the book and I read it and you start to, so now your options are right. Do you come out
00:12:35
Speaker
hostile against this or you go okay so she's talking about tarot card reading she's talking about you know charging your crystals onto the moon and she's talked about 11 different gods that are associated to the moon and how we can like make a sacrifice thing to them and pray to them and stuff so i can be very anti that or i can listen and learn and go how can i get you those kinds of people
00:12:57
Speaker
Now, is this topical or is it not? And then all of a sudden, yesterday, you had Holly Willoughby has launched this whole new branding thing, which is about Wild Moon, and it's based around the eight phases of the moon. So you go, right, there's a connection. So how do I connect with these people now? So in the book, you get a gist of they're not anti-religion. They're just openly all kinds of religions. So is there some way that people who are like,
00:13:24
Speaker
soft-language moon worshiping that I can introduce. Hey, I actually know the God who came up with that idea of a moon. And let me talk to you about him. And equally, as you can pull a tarot card out and read something, can I just give you a copy of John's Gospel? And you might just be able to pull something out of there that could really help your day as well.
Street Evangelism Success Stories
00:13:44
Speaker
Yeah.
00:13:44
Speaker
And we find in particular, like you start to see this on the streets. We do a street evangelism every Monday on the streets of Belfast. And we have a team here out there. And one of the things that we find is where people don't want to talk about religion. But when you talk about prayer and you talk about connecting to a higher being, people start to pay attention. And we find, you know, those conversations around prayer and can we pray for you? And then
00:14:10
Speaker
When people have given permission for us to pray with them, when the Holy Spirit comes in those moments, something changes and something shifts and it opens up conversations that you just wouldn't get whenever you're just chatting to your friends. And we've seen so many people come to faith through that.
00:14:27
Speaker
So there's definitely, and I think over the pandemic as well, you know, we've noticed that people are starting to ask questions, you know, what's life all about? You know, what is the meaning of all this? Where are we going in this? And in particular, young men, we've seen so many young men come to faith and engaging in conversations around that that we would never have seen before. And out of the pandemic from October to December,
00:14:52
Speaker
We've seen almost 100 people come to faith on the street and a vast majority of them were young men between the ages of 16 and 32. Fascinating. I think you're...
00:15:05
Speaker
I think you're right. I think, I mean, similar to how you're finding, I find if you, if you lead with things that sort of, you know, the spirituality question rather than directly the Christianity one, and then you obviously want to get to Jesus and the gospel, but actually there's a lot more openness out there right now.
Engaging with Catholic Backgrounds
00:15:19
Speaker
One thing you mentioned a couple of times in passing, I'd love to get your kind of insight on is obviously you're in a context you mentioned in the beginning where you've got, you know, obviously the traditionally, you know, large Protestant community, also a large Catholic community. And I often talk to friends who have,
00:15:34
Speaker
you know Catholic friends or family or neighbors who really want to find ways of having conversations about Christ with them but are so wary about how you approach those you know coming knocking on your next door neighbor's door and going oh you're a Catholic so you're not a Christian then it's not a good opening not a good opening gambit um
00:15:51
Speaker
You want to win people, draw them in, but also you want to, you know, help people sort of discover, you know, a saving relationship with Christ. So when you are engaging with folks who've got a Catholic background, Amanda or Mitch, them out, whichever one of you leaders. Yeah. How do you, how do you go? How do you lead into those conversations boldly, but also graciously in a way that's well, again, it's about finding commonality and common language and sometimes making some changes to your language.
00:16:16
Speaker
not evangelism on the street. We just ask people the question, excuse me sir, do you believe in prayer? Excuse me madam, do you believe in prayer? Say yes or no. So for most Catholic folk, yes. And then it's like, is there anything you'd like me to pray for? And they're very good at that. They're very good at like opening up to that and sharing a heart stuff. Maybe they're
00:16:37
Speaker
they've been amassed or they've lit a candle that week, whatever. So you show love and empathy and you listen to whatever that situation is. And then you say to them, kind of pray for you right now. And again, like people from a strong Catholic tradition, to turn that down is like bad luck. It's like walking under a ladder, seeing a black cat or something. So they're not going to turn down the opportunity for prayer. So you get that chance right there. And they understand like,
00:17:00
Speaker
You'll come Holy Spirit, you'll quietly just allow the Holy Spirit to come. And then you pray into that situation. Your mom's sick, whatever it is. And you, you mention her by name and you show love and you show empathy and you show compassion. And then it's like how you build a bridge after that. So again, it's language. So evangelization connects better with them than evangelism. And you might say, well, what they mean by evangelization could be different because they're just trying to like,
00:17:26
Speaker
evangelization for them is to get people into the church whereas we're trying to get people to Jesus and I'm like really? I know some Protestants and I think their agenda slightly warped on that idea as well but the beautiful thing is like for the Catholic folk is the idea of actually being a Christian and not being part of a church is ridiculous. They can't differentiate between the two and I go hey
00:17:48
Speaker
Good point. So that's what we need to do. We need to be like connecting people to Jesus. But as William Abraham used to say all the time is initiating people into the kingdom of God. So it's changing our language so that we can walk that gravel path together. Bottom line, there's some things in the Catholic theology I have big issues about. But
00:18:14
Speaker
But can Jesus work in people's lives through all of that? Absolutely. 100%. You know, I remember being in a Catholic church.
00:18:23
Speaker
And there was a statue up of, I think it was like St. Francis of Assisi's mother, whatever. And there was some candles being burned and a little prayer underneath it. And I read the prayer and it was really nice. It was just basically like, you know, pray for my children who are wayward, just like you prayed for your children, but something like that. And I watched a little old lady, I sat in a Catholic church. I watched a little old lady come in and she lit a candle and she kneeled on and prayed.
00:18:52
Speaker
and the tears were running down her face and I thought to myself, when she's praying to that saint, is God sticking his fingers in his ears and saying, I'm not listening to that? Of course not.
00:19:07
Speaker
We know how to pray as we ought, but the Spirit helps us in our weakness. She was using whatever she's been taught. And in that moment, she was broken for her kids. Who knows heroin addicts, whatever they might be. And in that moment, I think God can speak through that. So God can use an awful lot of means to connect with Himself. A good friend of mine, Father Jonathan Cotton, based in Nottingham, he wrote a book a few years ago called Evangelizing the Baptized.
00:19:34
Speaker
And we took that book and reworked it into a course and added some animations videos, some reflection times into it. He's actually using some of our stuff now in Nottingham. And we have ran that course in two Catholic churches over here, but very well received in terms of what does it mean for all of us to be active in the new evangelization? So it might be a long answer, Andy, but hopefully I'd help some folks.
00:20:03
Speaker
Well, that's really beautiful. Thank
Working Together in Ministry
00:20:05
Speaker
you so much. And talking about being active together in evangelism, obviously, the two of you are a married couple, and it's not very often that we have the pleasure of having couples. In fact, you are the first couple, I think, on pep talks of congratulations. Thanks. How do you find evangelism together as a couple? What does that look like?
00:20:27
Speaker
Yeah, it's something that since we've been dating and going out for many, many, many years, our faith has been central to who we are as a couple. I mean, I would call Mitch more of an evangelist than what I am, but I certainly have a passion and a heart for seeing people come into the Kingdom of God. And so I feel like God has worked in us and through us individually and as a couple for many, many years. And so
00:20:54
Speaker
working together in the same ministry, not how it feels like a natural progression of where we have been going. I mean, it has its challenges. We have to put clear boundaries in place. We have to be able to know when to not have the work conversations whenever it's maybe 10 o'clock at night. We have really clearly defined roles in terms of what we do and what we're responsible for. And yeah, we've managed to get a really good balance. But being able to do ministry with someone who you're so close to and who knows you so well allows
00:21:24
Speaker
you to be vulnerable and allows you to be able to pray for one another in a way that other people can't and support one another in ways other people can't. And I think that's the blessing of being able to do ministry together, even though there's the challenges that go alongside that. And we have two children, Noah and Megan, who are 16 and 13 and who both are Christian young people and even just trying to encourage them in their faith and lead by example in what we do in ministry as well as
00:21:52
Speaker
in parenting and all of that's really important to us. So we try to do that as a team as much as anything.
Episode Conclusion
00:22:00
Speaker
Absolutely.
00:22:02
Speaker
It's been great talking to the both of you about all that you're doing in Northern Ireland and ministry together. Gosh, we could have done another 20 minutes kind of really easily. We'll put a link for folks who want to find out more about what Mitch and Amanda, what you guys are doing. We'll put a link in the show notes to Crown Jesus Ministries where you can just dive in and find everything they're up to. But it's been a huge privilege sort of doing some things with you in the past that we'll have an opportunity to work together
00:22:29
Speaker
in the future and hope also what you shared is encourage people listening. I love the kind of, I love that the whole prayer on the streets thing that you're doing as a way into evangelism, I think is just utterly brilliant seeing how the Lord is working through you. So thanks for taking the time to join Christian today. Thank you.
00:22:47
Speaker
and Christy and I will be back in two weeks time with next time I'm afraid we only have a single guest, the double act we've had for you today is a rare occurrence, so it's been such a fun one, I'll have to do it again. But meanwhile, wherever you're listening to this podcast, whether you're at home, at the gym, recovering from the gym, we hope that this has been helpful and we'll catch you on the next episode. Bye for now.