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With Kiri Jane Erb
130 Plays1 year ago
This week on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi chat with Kiri from British Columbia. She shares her story of conversion from a non-Christian household and journey through different cultural landscapes ministering to young people. An emphasis on discipleship shows how the gospel touches our deepest longings, sufferings and hopes.
Having Co-Lead Soul Edge Ministries (Canada) for over 12 years, Kiri Jane Erb has had the privilege of investing into hundreds of young Christian leaders, equipping them for resilient church leadership. With a multidisciplinary approach to apologetics, she is passionate about the clarity, beauty and relevance of the Gospel message gaining traction in human hearts. Her upcoming novel carries this same heartbeat, nestled in historical fiction. She is currently completing her MA Systematic and Philosophical Theology at the University of Nottingham and is also an adjunct speaker for Apologetics Canada.
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Kristy Mayer and I'm joined by Andy Bannister of the South. I mean, is Swindon in the South? Whereabouts are you, Andy? I'm definitely the South. The debate is whether it's the West. I think it's West because I'm a Londoner, but I talk to people here and I talk to people in the West in Somerset and such places. I mean, that's not West, mate. So South anyway.
00:00:36
Speaker
South, south, but you do have like a lovely like, you know, Somerset kind of accent. We can do the Somerset accent. To be sure. But the guest we've got today is definitely West though, isn't it, Christy? So West actually. Kiri, we are so pleased to join, for you to join us, for us to join you is what I was going to say. And you're joining us today all the way from beautiful Canada. Yeah, welcome to the show, Kiri.
00:01:04
Speaker
Oh, thank you so much. It's good to join you guys. We're really pleased to have you and there's so much that we're looking forward to asking you as well today about your experiences and the way in which you've been training others to talk about Jesus and how you talk about Jesus as well. Just to get us started thinking about geography is now I'm not going to be able to pronounce the places in which you've lived, but I take it that you've lived somewhere beginning with an S in Canada and then you moved.
00:01:31
Speaker
somewhere else. That's right.
Kiri's Journey to Faith
00:01:34
Speaker
So I originally born and raised in the UK, but I spent a little bit of time in Eastern Canada, but then finally moved to the center of Canada in a place called Saskatchewan. So yeah, Andy was chatting earlier, I guess it's like the test of whether you know Canada is if you can pronounce Saskatchewan.
00:01:55
Speaker
Um, yeah, but right now I'm all spell it. Yeah. So let's catch you. Um, that's, uh, what's kind of going on in my brain. Um, but now I, uh, live on the west coast, literally. So you get to Vancouver, go a little bit further. You get to, uh, Vancouver Island. Um, so, so yeah, very, very blessed to be located here.
00:02:15
Speaker
Amazing. And you were saying before that there are very different approaches to kind of sharing Jesus in those two different cultures. I mean, we'd love to hear a little bit about some of the similarities and differences as you've moved across Canada and how that's impacted your ministry.
00:02:32
Speaker
Thank you. Yes, like, I think to begin with, it's maybe helpful to know that I didn't grow up as a Christian. So I came from a non Christian family. My mom was very anti Christian things, she would have kind of the Dawkins books kind of on the shelves. That was kind of what I was kind of cultured in educated in so very kind of post kind of Christian culture. And it wasn't really until university that I really encountered, like
00:03:00
Speaker
gods, like the spirit of God, and that really changed everything that became day, day,
Experiences in Campus Evangelism
00:03:05
Speaker
and night. I almost explain it as, you know, there's a world map, but you still have these like topographical, geographical features on it, but it's almost like the ocean became the land and the land became the ocean. Like it was a complete pivot when I met the living God. And so that was at university, like properly, when my life actually pivoted around that.
00:03:24
Speaker
And so that actually happened when I was at McGill University, which is really funny because, like everyone says, you know, Quebec, the amount of Christians in Quebec is very low. So I'm very, very thankful that there's just amazing people on campus who are introducing people to Christianity and what that actually meant. And so actually, I
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah, encounter the spirit of the living God and then started sharing my faith on a university campus that was again very hostile to the Christian faith. And so that was through power to change. I was discipled and started to share
Cross-Cultural Evangelism: UK, Switzerland, Canada
00:04:03
Speaker
my faith. And so
00:04:05
Speaker
it began as like, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know how to say grace. I don't know what this looks like. And so I was really reliant on other people kind of teaching me, giving me a bit of a framework to do that. And so the initial framework, the power to change we're using was the four spiritual laws. And that became a bit of a backbone, obviously, to, to show my faith. But then later on in life, I moved back to the UK, finished my degree,
00:04:32
Speaker
was doing some ministry in Switzerland and various other places for a while, but then ended up properly moving to Saskatchewan, which is the Bible Belt of Canada, which is a completely different context because now you have people who firmly believe
00:04:49
Speaker
And they're a Christian because they've been brought up in a Christian home and they have a lineage, a heritage, which doesn't mean that they're not necessarily, but also doesn't necessarily mean that they have a living encounter with God. And so speaking about faith, sharing faith in that context is very different. It's almost as if you're almost discipling people kind of into
00:05:19
Speaker
their faith, which is a very different posture in which to do that.
Challenges in British Columbia
00:05:26
Speaker
Now, we've moved to British Columbia, which is especially the island is known as a very fairly leftist kind of fairly hippie like kind of
00:05:38
Speaker
context, which is, again, very, very different than the university campus that was very highly academic, like people were very much like, you know, science is defeated. God, tell me about it. Versus, like, and again, with Saskatchewan, which is more like, how does God actually engage with kind of my situation and my, my felt reality of suffering? Now we're very much in this, you know, how is God different than, you know, the
00:06:08
Speaker
you know, why should I go to church on Sunday when I could go to temple dance, right? When I can experience spirituality in a different way, which is, you know, a legitimate, you know, choice for people on a Sunday. And so speaking and sharing faith in that context is entirely different. We're kind of scraping and revealing different parts of the gospel and how it's relevant to lives, which is a fun challenge. Excellent.
00:06:37
Speaker
So picking up on what you said that I'm really intrigued, Kiri, as part of your story, say non-Christian background, then get thrown into evangelism quite quickly. Is it easier in some ways, perhaps coming into evangelism, when you've come from a non-Christian
Impact of Non-Christian Backgrounds
00:06:50
Speaker
background? Because I think sometimes the challenge can be right. For those of us
00:06:54
Speaker
listening to those who have grown up in a Christian home. That was my journey. I was raised in a Christian family, very grateful for that. But the challenge then is you don't know anything outside of that. So how can we help those who perhaps stories more like mine, who we've always had a Christian background, recapture some of that freshness that you had when you knew something different? Are there other ways that we can, as the church, kind of do that a little bit, you think?
00:07:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's really interesting. And I felt that I think to be true for people, like in Soul Edge, a number of the students that we have do come from Christian backgrounds. And so I think part of the challenge in discipling them in terms of helping give them tools for evangelism looks like maybe revealing some of the ways that
00:07:42
Speaker
you know, a non-Christian worldview might mean that they interact with the gospel in a different way. And so I think
00:07:53
Speaker
I quite often like share with people like part of my story, right? That, you know, I fully bought into a worldview that basically said there's no room or needs like for God. And so I guess backtracking people slightly from maybe where they're at and helping them
00:08:16
Speaker
think how might somebody who isn't starting at a Christian worldview conceive of the world and how might you then share with somebody that's starting at that place, you know, the goodness of God or that actually tangibly means for them. I think that's part of the challenge and the joy there.
00:08:34
Speaker
And that is such a challenge, isn't it, when you're trying to kind of think about different cultural approaches to life and who is God? And it's just, you know, it's the air we breathe, isn't it? According to one recent very good book, what would you go about? How would you go about helping them to actually then engage? So what would be the tools that you'd equip
Gospel's Role in Suffering and Trauma
00:08:58
Speaker
them with? How would you help them to go about to communicate the goodness of God that you mentioned?
00:09:03
Speaker
Hmm, that's great. Yeah, because I think, especially if we're starting it, like you say, it's the air that we breathe, then it's like we can, it could be a challenge to take that step back. And so we have to do that very intentionally, and come back afresh to be like, okay,
00:09:20
Speaker
What is the gospel? How does the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus tangibly engage with our felt reality, Christian or non-Christian, in terms of suffering, pain, death, joy? So part of that will be just head on engaging with the problem of evil, especially because I think it's one of the biggest
00:09:46
Speaker
frustrations and maybe stumbling blocks to receive in the gospel. But there's some great ways in which we can talk and engage with that subject.
00:09:55
Speaker
Well, let's say that as a good example, Kiri, because I mean, that, as you say, big question comes up a lot. One thing I've noticed in the last couple of years, I think it comes up more and more younger folks. It used to be a question, not exclusively, but asked by older people, right, when you're thinking more about death and aging. But I think the pandemic and all the associated stuff, whether it's people being faced with their immortality, whether it's people losing loved ones or it's the mental health stresses that
00:10:21
Speaker
lockdown brought. So how would you go about engaging with that question? Someone comes to you and says, you know, how can I take faith seriously? They call the crap in the world. How would you go about engaging that particular issue?
00:10:36
Speaker
That's great. Yeah, I think one of the first things that I'd be careful not to do in a ways is to kind of receive, you know, a heartfelt question and then just try to apply kind of this pre formulated answer right on top. I think
00:10:53
Speaker
if I if I do that and it looks regurgitated, then it seems it comes off as kind of uncaring and as if it's just kind of a memorize, this is what I meant to tell you, but do I actually believe it kind of thing. So what I'm not trying to do is address the problem of evil by necessarily answering the problem of evil as if you could explain away or make things necessarily okay.
00:11:20
Speaker
I think it may be naive to assume that we could do that. Instead, I'd like to address that heartfelt question that somebody has brought and show that while there's like a weight of pain and a depth of experience there that
00:11:45
Speaker
you know, holds these big questions, like these whys, these hows, that the gospel can come alongside that, not as an answer necessarily, but as a solution, as an engaging
00:12:00
Speaker
the life-death resurrection of Jesus engages to that depth. I really like some of the theology, for example, of Jurgen Mortman after the Holocaust, where he's talking about Jesus becoming a brother in suffering. So
00:12:18
Speaker
My approach, therefore, in terms of the problem of evil, isn't to just try to wipe it away as a hindrance to somebody receiving the gospel or the good news, but instead to allow the gospel to engage, to say that Jesus enters into the very heart of that. That almost the reason why Christianity, I believe, has lasted so long while the empires and thoughts have risen or fallen is because it can engage.
00:12:48
Speaker
with, you know, the human heart cry, and should, in the same way that even Jesus engaged, you know, with the crying out kind of on the cross. So, yeah, I love that the gospel is able to do that. So that's why I would approach it like that. That's a really beautiful and evocative approach to that question, thinking about the wider context in which that question sits.
00:13:15
Speaker
What would you say are some particular kind of touchstones that you'd want to say to someone? So who is experiencing emotional, personal suffering? Might not be the intellectual question of suffering, but how does Jesus engage with the question of suffering?
00:13:37
Speaker
That's great. Yeah, I think, at least for myself, I really resonate with the idea that suffering and specifically trauma, for example, which can be a very acute kind of engagement with suffering. In that sort of context, you have
00:13:59
Speaker
death entering into the midst of life, where you feel stuck and just oppressed kind of by death. And so you have death in the midst of life. And I really love the fact that the gospel is the inverse of that. It's the life of Jesus entering into the midst of death.
00:14:21
Speaker
And so trauma ruptures life, but the gospel ruptures death in order to bring life into the midst of death. That there is hope because he can enter in, he can change the story, he can change the narrative, he can enter into that pain and suffering and infuse it with the depth of life and freedom. And so I normally just bring some of my personal experience into that, like losing my dad,
00:14:47
Speaker
from a long battle of cancer, that kind of thing, not as just, I don't know, just as a witness, I guess, to, you know, that I think each one of us has their own, your own cup to drink, your own path to walk, but you don't have to be alone in that, that Jesus can be that brother in suffering and can bring your resurrection kind of life in and through the reality of that, not despite it.
00:15:15
Speaker
That's really helpful, Kiri. Thank you for that. I'm conscious that time is running rapidly out. So one question I would definitely wanted to get in before the clock hits 20 minutes is obviously, I mean, so your own journey is fascinating from a non-Christian background to, you know,
00:15:32
Speaker
getting thrown into the lines then of evangelism on campus and all the cultural stuff you've done. But I love the fact you're also working with young people.
Engaging Youth with Cultural Touchpoints
00:15:39
Speaker
And one of the things I'm quite passionate about is getting young people into evangelism. I see, I think, a lot of young people in churches who aren't equipping their young people, young people that know how to start. So we've got a lot of people listening to this show, to this podcast, who are church leaders, who are youth leaders.
00:15:56
Speaker
What are some of the things that you've learned, both perhaps from your own experience, but also through the ministry you do in terms of getting young people fired up and equipped for evangelism? There's a pastor listening to this thinking, yeah, I want to try and do things a bit better with a youth group. What would be your advice on how you would start young people on this journey? Because you've got all this experience, but I love the fact that you didn't start with that. You've gone through a journey. So how do we start young people on the pathway to evangelism?
00:16:22
Speaker
That's great. I think tools, we just need to be able to take away that scary kind of intimidating, like just go do this kind of attitude and give them tools they feel equipped to be able to share.
00:16:37
Speaker
with the acknowledgement that, you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be this whole unpatting of how God impacts everything. Like, just sowing those seeds can make a huge difference. So some of the tools, for example, that I like to equip kind of youth groups or some of my kind of young adults with are almost like cultural bridges into these conversations to make that kind of segue easier.
00:17:01
Speaker
So for example, one of my favorite, I just like use stuff in culture that people are already thinking about or using. So like the Ed Sheeran, like give me love song, like the video of that is so interesting. And lots of people would have like seen it like a bunch of times of a certain demographic. And there's this whole motif that's to do with like, love, but also like blood, there's like this whole arrow situation and etc. But there's this
00:17:30
Speaker
fascinating convergence of love and pain. And this kind of chorus, it says, love me, love me, love me. And so one thing I often do in a group kind of setting in terms of passing out the gospel is to share a video or something like that, that becomes a bit of that bridge into this wider conversation of, okay, what does this need to be loved?
00:17:58
Speaker
look like, why do we have that? How does the gospel bring a piece into that place? And it's, I love giving those sorts of tools and showing people how to do that, giving a model for how they might be able to make this cultural bridges, because then it's replicable, right? People can share a song or
00:18:20
Speaker
share a little video or something with friends, you know, everyone's got their device right there, and then jump off from a launching pad rather than kind of propel them into a very alien thought process.
00:18:34
Speaker
This is really good, Kiri. Thank you so much for giving me lots of food for thought here. It sounds like what you're saying is kind of use what is already there. So rather than introducing them into this alien space of come and hear a talk, for example, it's more of a what are you already listening, watching, reading, and why do we want this or why does this sadden us? Is that the
00:19:04
Speaker
the tools that you're talking about. Exactly. I think it's like unveiling what's already happening in our human hearts. Why do we function and work as we do? And therefore, how can the gospel come alongside and bring us life into that place from the inside out?
00:19:25
Speaker
I think it's showing the relevancy of the gospel because I think a lot of young people just think it's completely irrelevant. It's just something that's been passed down to us and has no tangible relevance for our lives. So starting at the place saying, hang on, we have a need, there is a relevance. Look at the beauty of the gospel. That's my preferred way of approaching things.
00:19:47
Speaker
Fantastic. Well, Kiri, this has been an absolutely fascinating conversation. We've touched on so many things that we could go deeper into, but thank you. So for people who want to have been intrigued by anything, the stuff that you've said, is there somewhere online that you can catch up with what you're doing and follow what you're doing? Mention Soul Edge a couple of times. Is there a website that people ought to go and check out? Absolutely.
Resources and Collaborations
00:20:07
Speaker
That's just souledge.org or on Instagram, Soul Edge gap here.
00:20:12
Speaker
fantastic and we also of course mentioned you're involved with Apologetics Canada and Andy Steiger who heads that up is an old friend of Solas so we'll put a link to that in the show notes as well and it only requires me now to say once again thanks for being part of this and Christian I've enjoyed the conversation and I hope all of you at home or wherever you're catching this podcast have enjoyed it too and you can catch Christie and I in two weeks time with another guest hope you can join us bye for now