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With Nay Dawson
78 Plays4 years ago
Today we hear from Nay Dawson who leads Passion for Evangelism, a mentoring and networking group for women evangelists. She speaks with Andy and Kristi about her own passion for evangelism, building community and how we can encourage both men and women to develop their evangelistic gifting in their local church context.
Naomi (Nay) Dawson is the Regional Training Coordinator for IFES Europe. She has been one of the writers behind the UCCF Uncover project and is part of the UCCF Leadership Network. She is the founder of Passion for Evangelism and Community in a Crisis, an initiative to help churches get online during COVID19.
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Transcript
Supporting the Show & Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and thanks for downloading this episode of pep talk. If you're enjoying the podcast, why not get a free copy of my book, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist, or Christy Mayer's book, More Truth, by becoming a regular supporter of the show. Just visit our website www.solas-cpc.org and donate as little as £3 a month and we'll send you a book as a thank you. Thank you so much and for now, on with the show.
00:00:34
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. My name is Kristy and I'm joined by my fabulous co-host, Andy Bannister. Hello, Andy. Well, it's great to be out with you, Kristy. Fabulous is the word. I feel fabulous today. It's the coffee and the sugar, I think.
00:00:50
Speaker
Didn't you say you were having some jammy dodges earlier on as well? Is that in the mix? I did. I wrote a chapter of my book this morning and I've celebrated with jammy dodges and coffee. So the sugar levels, the caffeine levels are probably higher than they should be. What could go wrong? You are living the dream, mate. Living the dream. Living the dream.
Introducing Nae Dawson & Passion for Evangelism
00:01:06
Speaker
Anyway, this week, we are thrilled to be joined by Nae Dawson. Hi, Nae. Hi, Kristy. Hello, Nae. Just to give you a little bit of info about Nae. Nae is the IFEE's Europe Regional Training Coordinator, and she's the founder of PFE, which is Passion for Evangelism. I'm going to hear a little bit about that during this episode. But the wonderful thing about Nae, I think there are many wonderful things about Nae, is the fact that she's such a long suffering friend of mine. We've known each other for quite a while, haven't we, Nae?
00:01:36
Speaker
Yeah although i don't actually remember when we met but i certainly know that i'm your friend now always good to always good to have a friend of christia christia on the show because we hope now that you'll keep her
00:01:54
Speaker
You'll keep her under control. So look at the pre-show talk. You threw that little acronym at us, PFE. And acronyms left my strong point. I innocently went, what is that? So what is PFE and why are you excited about it? Yeah, thanks, Andy. So PFE is a network called Passion for Evangelism. It's a network of female public evangelists. And we're really excited about helping women grow and equip them and give them opportunities
00:02:23
Speaker
in creative public evangelism. It's absolutely brilliant. And I know one of the things that Christy and I have noticed on this show, so looking for guests on this show is there are not, they don't seem to be as many women involved, certainly in perhaps the more apologetic end of evangelism as guys. Is that true? Is that just my perception or is it, you know, there is a bit of a need here that you guys are really trying to fill in getting more people through?
Challenges & Opportunities for Female Evangelists
00:02:46
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. There's very few female public evangelists. If you have a think about them, there's probably
00:02:52
Speaker
less than 10 that you can think of in the UK that are well known. But also there's a need for men and women to work together in sharing the gospel and
00:03:01
Speaker
I think as men and women do that, they communicate something of who God is as they work together. So yeah, there's a need for women advantages, but there's a need for women and men to work together. And so what do you think, Nae, that are the big challenges then that have kind of prevented more kind of women or particular minorities coming through to be able to kind of publicly speak and share their faith in the public arena?
00:03:28
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I guess there's many opportunities, both for men and women, many problems as well, just lack of confidence, lack of opportunities, thinking that somebody else could do it better, hoping to be asked to give an alpha talk or Christianity Explored talk, but not being asked to do that. So I think there's a real mix of problems for men and women, but more obviously for women, I think that's just really clear, both in personal ranges and also in public.
00:03:58
Speaker
And I imagine that the personal evangelism side of stuff is where most of our listeners will be.
Equipping Women for Evangelism
00:04:06
Speaker
I mean, I know before I joined UCCF and other organisations, I just thought the idea of even just talking to my friends really on a low scale level was exciting. I just had no idea really what to do.
00:04:21
Speaker
or how to go about it, other than say, would you like to come to church? And one of the things that I love about Passion for Evangelism is that you're trying to, I don't know, no, you tell us, what is Passion for Evangelism actually about? How is it meeting the need and those challenges that you just mentioned? Yeah, thanks, Christine. Christine's obviously part of PFE, so you could talk about it.
00:04:42
Speaker
Thank you. Basically, we're trying to just equip the everyday woman to work out who they are before God, the way he's gifted them uniquely, what talents they have and how they could use those to communicate the Gospels. So there's about 450 women in the network. We're all really different. So some women through lockdown have been writing evangelistic songs. Some have been putting evangelistic boxes at the end of their drive and giving away Bibles. Others have been using TikTok
00:05:12
Speaker
and creating videos on Instagram. So there's a whole variety of women that we're trying to encourage. And the way we do that is through an annual conference where we get women to bring a 10 minute evangelistic passion talk and they get feedback. But also we run regular book clubs where we invite the author to come and speak with us and it helps us learn and grow and read. So we've had Rebecca McGoughlin most recently, we had an interview with her.
00:05:39
Speaker
But also we've set up something called The Greenhouse, which is a new mentoring project where eight women for two months get mentored by a male and female evangelist. And the outcomes are producing a 60-second story of hope on Instagram, an evangelistic blog and an evangelistic talk.
00:05:58
Speaker
We're really trying to equip everyday women in the network. There are very few professional evangelists in our network so that they can then serve their friends, their communities, their local church in sharing the gospel in really creative ways.
Community, Hospitality, and Creative Evangelism
00:06:13
Speaker
One of the things I love about what you're describing there is it comes across as very grassroots. It's not, as you say, just the professional or not even the professional evangelists. It's people using all kinds of ways that God's given them to reach out to friends and neighbors and so on. I sometimes think that people feel that you can do evangelism if God gives you a stage and a platform and several thousand people.
00:06:35
Speaker
For somebody listening to this who's thinking, you know, I love to get more involved in evangelism. I've got a passion for it. I just don't know even where to start. What would be your advice to somebody from your experience of mentoring people? I mean, obviously women particularly, but even guys as well who are listening to this thinking, I'm nobody. I can't do evangelism. How do they get started? I think just for me personally in the community I live in, just really praying for my friends, praying for opportunities to speak to them about Jesus.
00:07:04
Speaker
And loving them so dearly that I don't only share the gospel, but I share my life as well. And particularly in lockdown, that's just become so true. The need for community, I think is a new apologetic and my friends are desperate for community. So for me, being salt and light in COVID-19 has been running Zoom calls for my school and for the different years.
00:07:29
Speaker
It's been running events. But I think this new apologetic of community is a really obvious one. And as Christians, we have the ultimate reason to believe in community because our God is Father, Son and Spirit. And there's relationship in community, even within God. And so I've just been embracing that as much as I can. And people have noticed, people have started asking, nay, why do you do stuff for other people? And I've been able to talk about the gods I believe in.
00:07:59
Speaker
So I think it starts at home, it starts with prayer, it starts with loving your friends and sharing your life with your friends and then seeing where it goes from there. So through lockdown I've led a friend to Christ, I've run Facebook watch parties, I've given out gospels, I've chatted and answered questions and I think lockdown's given me that opportunity because people are desperate and I've been able to be more vulnerable
00:08:23
Speaker
and share my life more with them. Sounds just incredible, Nate. One of the things that I love about you is just your creativity and the way in which you take bold risks and you really go for it. What do you think it might look like for those of us who are listening to this and thinking, oh, this sounds amazing, like this apologetic of community.
00:08:43
Speaker
I'd love to do something like this, but perhaps I've never done anything like that before. It's the first time we're thinking about it. What would be kind of like a small but significant step in the right direction to be able to generate some of those conversations and caring for others in the community? Yeah, I mean, I think it's remembering who you are, the people that God's put around you, whether that's family and friends that don't know Jesus, and learning to love and care for them.
00:09:11
Speaker
and also learning to bring them together and create parties or environments where you can chat and get to know each other. And then in doing that, you'll have more opportunities to talk to them. So for me, a friend sadly died at the start of lockdown and we've set up a GoFundMe to raise money for her family. And we've been doing cake sales and toy sales in socially distanced ways.
00:09:35
Speaker
But that's very much me. That's Nae. That's her community. But it's just loving and serving my friends. But in that, people do notice. And at the same time, I think being really bold and courageous. So through social media, all of us have an opportunity to speak. And through telephone and chatting to friends, we've got a chance to speak and be bold. And I think most of the time we're just scared.
00:09:58
Speaker
And we think we've got time to talk to our friends, but when time is short, it makes you realize, you know, with the Lord's support and with the spirit inside of us, you can be bold and courageous and invite your friends to come to know him and come home and to be in relationship with Jesus himself.
Balancing Humanity with Spiritual Outreach
00:10:14
Speaker
I think what interests me there about what you're saying there, particularly, you know, angling into the whole question of how we could share our lives with our friends, the community piece. You know, one of the things that's really struck me during lockdown is how actually maybe we've forgotten about the power of community and evangelism. We've forgotten about the power of hospitality.
00:10:31
Speaker
and evangelism. Now lockdown is opening up slightly. We're finding that as a family is quite an exciting way of outreaching. And I think what's interesting about community and hospitality and so forth, again, they don't need you to have a platform. You don't have to be an evangelist with your name in lights. You can be, I don't like to use the word ordinary person, but you can be an ordinary person with friends and a connection and a community and be prayerfully asking the Lord how you can use that and start where you are, right?
00:10:56
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, the conversations I'm talking about are just friends. Most of them are parents from the school where my daughters go. I've done lots and lots of friendship, hanging out with them, going to the things they organise and becoming friends. But it is in that time as you love people genuinely, often in a time of need, people start talking and also just trusting that the Lord's at work in his world.
00:11:20
Speaker
And so friends will, I don't know, send messages. So another, recently a woman wrote to me and shared a Corrie Ten Boom quote, and she's not a Christian. And so I wrote back and I said, you do know where this comes from? I showed her the bit in Matthew's Gospel where it came from, and she was really surprised that it was a quote from the Bible. But it's amazing how Corrie Ten Boom and what she knew of God was appealing to this woman, even though this woman doesn't know God herself. And so that reminds me, the Lord's at work in his world, evangelism is simply joining in.
00:11:51
Speaker
Jesus is praying for us and praying for our friends right now. And that's a huge relief to me that it's not on my shoulders. I can simply offer a relationship with the one that I know and love. And so yeah, be as ordinary as you can. It's in being human and remembering that that's a spiritual thing that we actually mix with people and get to know people better.
00:12:14
Speaker
I really kind of resonate with what you're saying just then about just being human, that that is a real spiritual thing. How do you keep yourself going with all of these wonderful different opportunities that you have and the challenges that you're facing in them? How do you keep going through all these challenges? What keeps you going? Well, it's a good question. It's quite a big question.
00:12:37
Speaker
I mean, on one level, I think it is really important to be human. So for me, I love outdoor swimming and I enjoy my family, I enjoy eating, I enjoy cycling, I enjoy work. And those things are all part of being human. Ultimately, I think lockdown has showed me really, really clearly that this is not the end of the story.
00:13:01
Speaker
So I went on this huge bike ride at the beginning of lockdown and was really deeply searching and asking God what was happening before the Lord really saying, I don't like this. I don't want to be part of what's happening in this pandemic. And also questioning what is humanity that's worth keeping on going for, if it was just about this world, if this is all there is. And in that bike ride, I really felt God clearly say, no, this is not the end of the story.
00:13:27
Speaker
chose self-isolation and rejection so that you might have life and community. And I came away from the bike ride, nothing had changed, but everything had changed and I felt different. So ultimately, it is knowing that the Lord's in control and that this is not the end of the story, what's happening right now. And my success or lack of success in evangelism is not the end of the story either, which is called to faithfully gossip and share and chat about Jesus as much as possible.
00:13:56
Speaker
and to co-labor with him and to pray for our friends. But it's not resting upon me on my shoulders.
Church Support & Gender Collaboration in Evangelism
00:14:04
Speaker
What I think is helpful about that day, I know when I first got started in evangelism, I think that sense that it did rest on my shoulders was almost overwhelming and crushing. And it took a sort of while to move beyond there and realize, actually, no, you're not the center of the story. It's God's story. And our job is to be as faithful as possible. So I think that's really, really helpful.
00:14:24
Speaker
Another question for a slightly different direction I've got for you. Through the PFE network, it's amazing to hear the sheer number of people you've pulled into this networking and mentoring environment for people moving into evangelism. But for those who are listening who are church leaders, and there are some church leaders who listen to this,
00:14:44
Speaker
Are there ways that you've seen, that you've learned, that maybe churches could be doing better at helping facilitate, encourage younger people to go into evangelism? Again, particularly women, but again, young people in general, because I think sometimes there aren't people coming through full stop. So are there ways that churches could be doing that's a better job of getting more of the laity into evangelism and seeing that it is something they can do?
00:15:08
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I think generally there's a lot that church leaders could do to find out what opportunities men and women in their church would like. I'm running a survey at the moment and sneakily looking at the results, but lots of people are saying they've got gifts and they just don't know where to use them in the local church. So I think firstly, surveying your church, finding out what people, what gifts people think they have and
00:15:33
Speaker
Do they have opportunities to use them? Are they frustrated? Would be a really revealing thing to do. But also just offering and gathering an opportunity to bring together younger or older evangelists and gathering them together as a group. You could do something similar that we do in PFE and Christian Persuaders do this as well where you give short talks and give feedback. That's excellent. But then you really want to help people find opportunities.
00:16:01
Speaker
So often women that come to our annual conference, they really love it, but they go home and they just don't know how to find opportunities because they're not church leaders or they're not confident enough to ask for them. So I do those things and really find out how people would like to be involved in evangelism within your local church, because it just might mean might be that some people just need to have a little bit more encouragement than they've got or
00:16:29
Speaker
an open door for them to speak would be really helpful. That's particularly thinking about surveying and seeing where people are at and how best the church can serve the wider community as well as those that are part of the church family in using their gifts. What do you think are particular ways in which you've seen that done really well? Are there any examples or stories you've heard of coming across men or women in that?
00:16:56
Speaker
Yeah, so I won first of all, a friend of mine, she's pretty high up at a university in the UK and she came to some training that we did and she must be in her late 40s, 50s and she said, no, no one has ever trained me to speak evangelistically before. And I just felt really sad because who am I, you know, I'm just, no, doesn't train someone like this.
00:17:19
Speaker
So that's a problem. But what I've seen that's worked well is when women have come to the conference and then they've gone home. In fact, women have been sent by their pastors to the conference. They then have come home and had a chat with them about where they can use their gifts and these newfound skills that they've got. That's amazing. And I know churches have done that because pastors have written to me and contacted me afterwards. And I just really firmly believe men and women have got to work together in communicating the gospel.
00:17:49
Speaker
It's really important in our feminist world that actually we can demonstrate on that platform how to love each other well and serve each other well, not to speak badly. So I think where people have opened doors, both men and women for each other, and where on platforms they've spoken well of each other and honored each other, that's amazing. And where they've actually understood what it feels like to be somebody of the opposite gender, got under their
00:18:16
Speaker
and then made the effort to support them. So you can really support people on social media by encouraging them with what they're doing. So yeah, I would say be encourages and really find out from the individual women, men in your church, how you could encourage them, what they would need in order to feel encouraged to get going in evangelism.
00:18:37
Speaker
There's some wonderful advice in there. Thank you for sharing that. We're coming to the end of our 20 minutes, but I guess the final question, you've talked so passionately about mentoring and you've given PFE a really good plug. For people who are listening who want to find out more about that or possibly get in touch with you, what's the best way for people to get plugged into it to what you're doing, if that's possible? Yeah, the best way to get in touch is either through Instagram, at PFE Women, or Facebook.
00:19:05
Speaker
So we've got an open page on Facebook and then a closed group for any woman that wants to join us. So get in touch. We've got lots of things on offer for you to get trained and equipped to serve your local church.
00:19:16
Speaker
We will put links to those in the show notes as well, so people can go and find those social media resources. Dave, thank you so much for taking the time. I know you're hugely busy with all that you're doing, pouring into the lives of others, doing evangelism, serving locally as well.
Engage with Passion for Evangelism
00:19:30
Speaker
Thank you for making the time to talk to Christi and I today. Thank you so much. And from Christi and I, that's the end of another show, and we will catch you in two weeks' time on the next episode of PEP Talk. Thanks for listening.