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00:00:01
With Tim Beougher
64 Plays2 years ago
Fear. Lack of knowledge. Busyness. These are some of the top reasons given when Christians are asked why they don't share their faith. How do we address these issues within the church? Today's guest has years of experience teaching seminary students, and shares how he prepares them for a life of confidence in sharing the gospel.
Tim Beougher (pronounced Boo – ker) has served as the Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and Associate Dean of the Billy Graham School at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, in Louisville, Kentucky since 1996. Tim is the author of numerous materials on evangelism, discipleship and spiritual awakening, including Invitation to Evangelism: Sharing the Gospel with Conviction and Compassion and Overcoming Walls to Witnessing. In addition to his seminary responsibilities, he currently serves as Pastor of the West Broadway Baptist Church in Louisville. He is married to Sharon and they are the proud parents of five children and the extra proud grandparents of eleven grandchildren. The Beougher “family” also includes a Golden Retriever named Crockett.
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Transcript
Introduction to PepTalk Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to PepTalk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. My name is Kristy and I'm joined as ever by my dear friend, Andy Bannister. Hello, Andy. How are you doing? I'm doing well, Kristy. I'm doing well. Well, I'm doing relatively well. I turned 50 last week, so I'm slowing down and life is tougher than it was. But apart from that, no, I'm great actually.
00:00:35
Speaker
He says from this amazing hut in the back of his garden. It's incredible, isn't it, Andy? Yes, this is a little wooden hut. The family have managed to be two, so I make less noise when podcasts recording. So, Chrissie, who is our guest today?
Meet Tim Booker: Evangelism Expert
00:00:48
Speaker
Who have we got in the hot seat? Well, today we are joined by Tim Booker. Tim, it's so great to have you with us today. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you. My privilege to be with you.
00:01:01
Speaker
And Tim, if I've got this right, you are a Billy Graham Professor of Evangelism and Associate Dean at South Baptist, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. That's correct. In Louisville, Kentucky. In Louisville, Kentucky. Well, so for those of us who don't know then, Tim, what does an Associate Dean do precisely?
00:01:23
Speaker
Andy, an associate dean has a very simple job description. He gets to do whatever the dean doesn't want to be associated with. Oh, I love it. So the dean gets to go out and play golf and you're the man who carries the can. He'd do all the work like an associate pastor. What kind of stuff do you actually get up to every day, Tim? What things are you teaching at the moment? What are some of the themes that come up for you in evangelism?
Exploring Evangelism: Courses and Barriers
00:01:50
Speaker
Well, I do teach a course here, Personal Evangelism, which is a required class for all of our students in all of our degree programs at the master's level. Our president, Dr. Al Mohler, says when he hands a student a diploma, he has to know that that student not only knows how to share the gospel, but has done it multiple times.
00:02:13
Speaker
we send them out with our stamp of approval on them. So, within the personal evangelism course, students are required to have multiple gospel conversations, and then they report on those. I love the fact that you're actually, as you say, getting them out the door rather than just kind of sitting in a classroom, because I think they're
00:02:34
Speaker
There really is something about evangelism that can only be learned through doing it, right? I mean, the theory is helpful and, you know, learning a bit is helpful. But the other day, you've actually got to get out there and be talking to people, right? Absolutely. And I always start the class by asking my students how many of them know how to swim. And typically it's above 90 percent. Still a handful who don't. I say those of you that learned how to swim, how many of you learn through a correspondence class?
00:03:03
Speaker
I've been asking that question for over 40 years and the answer is still zero. Only way to learn how to swim is to get in the pool. Only way to learn how to witness is to get out and do it. You can learn a lot of the basics in a classroom, but you actually have to get out and share your faith to learn how to do it. This sounds, this is such an important area, isn't it?
00:03:27
Speaker
Even as we go out and share our faith, there are so many things that come up as potential hurdles or barriers to how we best do that. And I think I'm right in saying that you may have mentioned before, possibly, that one of the chapters in your book is on overcoming barriers to witnessing. Could you tell us a little bit about that? What are some of the big things that stop us and how might we move through them?
00:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, this was actually the result of a survey that was done at a Billy Graham School of Evangelism asking people there, what's your greatest hindrance in witnessing? The first thing was fear. Over 50% of the people said fear is what kept them from witnessing. Others said it was not knowing how to share. In other words, a lack of knowledge.
00:04:17
Speaker
Others said it was busyness or apathy or some said it was introspection, you know, that they needed to get their own life in order first. So what I seek to do in that chapter is address those five plus a six that I found increasingly, at least here in America, is people saying, I don't have the gift of evangelism, therefore I don't have to witness.
00:04:44
Speaker
Yeah, that last one, Tim, is fascinating. Tease that out for us, because I've run into that. I've run into that too, that I think, you know, sometimes, sometimes I think people are using it, you know, quite deliberately as a sort of smokescreen. Sometimes I think people genuinely
00:05:00
Speaker
But believe it. I remember somebody the other month saying to me, well, God's given me the gift of hospitality. But I don't have the gift of evangelism, which I found bizarre, because actually, those two things actually go here for me. But dig that a bit deeper for us. How do you help people think through? Because clearly, there is a gift of evangelism. Clearly, some people are very gifted. I've got a friend who seems to just have to sneeze and people become Christians. But that doesn't get us all off the hook, does it, surely?
00:05:30
Speaker
No, it doesn't. I make parallels between that and the gift of giving and the gift of serving. We know there is a gift of giving. Most of us don't have that, but that does not exclude us from practicing Christian stewardship.
00:05:45
Speaker
We know there's a gift of serving, the Bible's clear about that, but those of us who don't have the gift of serving, that doesn't mean we can sit on the sidelines and just let those who do have that gift serve. We're all called to serve. And I believe in the same way we're all called to share our faith. Some may be more gifted and natural at it than others, but that doesn't exclude or excuse the rest of us.
00:06:10
Speaker
What do you think are some, what ways do you encourage those students to actually then go about sharing their faith? What have you found are good kind of entry points or ways to start those conversations?
Engaging in Spiritual Conversations
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, I use a process that I call bridges to the gospel. How do you bridge from normal everyday conversation to talking about spiritual things? For example, most people have no trouble talking about the weather.
00:06:38
Speaker
I say to my students, we shouldn't be so critical of the weather. If it weren't for the weather, nine out of 10 of us could never start a conversation. So how do we go from talking about the weather to spiritual things or sports to spiritual things? A simple three-step process that I encourage is explore, stimulate, and then share.
00:07:04
Speaker
Explore, stimulate, share. So how do we explore? Two ways. First, we simply observe. We see what we can see about that person, or if we're in someone's home, what books do they have on the bookshelf, what pictures they have on the wall, maybe what they're wearing on their t-shirt, maybe their tattoos.
00:07:25
Speaker
We just observe and try and learn what we can about the person. Then we ask questions. I think one of the keys in evangelism is asking good questions and then listening. If we will learn to do that, people will tell us a lot about themselves. So I tell my students, evangelism is as much about learning to listen as it is about learning to talk.
00:07:50
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's some real wisdom in there, Tim. I mean, I teach a semester-long course on evangelism for Wycliffe College at University of Toronto. And one of the exercises we've done there with the students is fascinating, is we get them to go out.
00:08:06
Speaker
and an interview somebody of a different faith or no faith and their task is to interview them for 25 minutes half an hour about what they believe or don't believe to ask lots of questions and then to write it up and then to pass that part of the course the person they've interviewed has to be willing to read it and go you've got me you've captured well what I said and what I thought and what I believed because that listening exercise because so often as evangelicals I think we like to move straight to the proposition
00:08:33
Speaker
phase, don't we? Because we believe in truth. We're passionate about truth. But sometimes if we just slow down a few steps, maybe we create more of a receptivity for that truth. Absolutely. And specifically when talking to an inherent of another religion, here's what I encourage my students to do. It's what I call the equal time approach.
00:08:55
Speaker
I say talk to this person and ask them, how do you believe that we can have our sins forgiven, that we can be made right with God? I will listen to your answer. I will not attack it. I will not criticize it. I'll only ask a question if there's something I don't understand. And then I'd like the privilege of sharing with you why I believe Jesus is the way to salvation.
00:09:19
Speaker
I found that equal time approach, I always let them go first, that way it helps me to understand what they really believe, because as we know, you have some Muslims who can really articulate Muslim theology, while others, they couldn't even fill a thimble with what they understand theologically about their own belief system.
00:09:44
Speaker
What else are we engaging in these conversations? Have you noticed any Christian trends in response to the culture that continue to prevent us from sharing our faith?
00:10:01
Speaker
Is there anything else that you've noticed that, particularly as you look at culture and it's changing, it feels like it's changing quite dramatically in particular ways.
Challenges for Christians in Modern Society
00:10:11
Speaker
The temptations think that, oh, I've just been left behind. I'm not sure how best to speak into this. Are there any trends that you've seen in Christians as they look out on culture and think, how do I communicate?
00:10:24
Speaker
Yeah, let me try and answer that with a sporting analogy. I grew up playing sports, and we loved home games. It's what we call a home field advantage. When you're playing on your home field, you've got fans cheering you on. Whenever there's a judgment call, a close call, the officials tend to give it to the home team. Here in the States, we call that home cooking.
00:10:50
Speaker
And for the first 200 years here in America, Christians had a home-field advantage. The culture was at worst neutral at best. They were cheering the church on. They thought the church was helpful and a good thing. That has all changed now. Now Christians are viewed as the problem, not the solution.
00:11:11
Speaker
We've lost that home field advantage. So what I say to our students is every game we play now is an away game. We're in front of a hostile crowd, people hoping we fail, not that we succeed. But back to the sports analogy, when you played away games, you just had to put on your game face. You had to realize, yes, it is going to be more challenging, but we're still called to do this. We've got to go out and give it our best.
00:11:38
Speaker
I think one of the other questions, I guess, Tim, that flows from that, as you say, the culture has changed. I sometimes encounter Christians, far too often, actually, sadly, encounter Christians, who I think have seen that cultural change. And it's always led to panic, right? Because as you've nicely put it, we had a home-filled advantage. It was comfortable. There was a time in the USA and Great Britain too. It was actually really easy. I remember growing up in the,
00:12:06
Speaker
in the late 70s early 80s it wasn't difficult to be a christian it's much harder and thus you can now look out and if you're not careful you can start thinking the whole things you know there's just this despair right the culture has changed the moral values have changed the church's influence has changed people aren't interested you know they're hostile they're apathetic and so this sort of real sort of fear almost panic in the face of culture
00:12:29
Speaker
sets in. You know, you're nodding, which suggests to me you've seen this phenomenon too. How do we help people not end up in that mindset? Because terror is not a good place to do evangelism. So how do we help people feel a bit more joy and positivity and excitement?
The 'Post-Christian' Debate
00:12:44
Speaker
Because I think there's lots to be excited about actually.
00:12:46
Speaker
Well, and there's a term that I absolutely despise, and it is the term post-Christian. People use it all the time, but that term is a term of defeat. You know, we're post-Christian. Christianity has had its day, but it's now over. Game over, take your ball and go home. I absolutely despise the term post-Christian.
00:13:11
Speaker
We're not post-Christian. There may be a lull. There may be a trough in the wave. But I've read the final chapter. We do come out on the winning side. There will be people from every tongue and tribe and nation. So the whole mentality of just realizing that, yes, circumstances has changed, but the gospel has not changed.
00:13:34
Speaker
Gospel is still the power of God unto salvation to everyone who believes. Our task has not changed at all. In fact, I really believe we're in a situation now in most of Western culture that the early church faced. They were in the minority. They were hated by the culture. They were seen as the problem, not as the solution. We're really sort of back to the future of experiencing what the first Christians experienced.
00:14:05
Speaker
You also mentioned earlier on and the different things that you identified as barriers to witnessing was the lack of knowledge. What are some
00:14:19
Speaker
Do you think like essential ingredients that someone can go out there with to kind of talk about and talk about Jesus? So once they've explored things and they've stimulated the conversation a bit and they're still sensing this fear in this kind of cultural climate, what's it like to share Jesus in that?
Sharing the Gospel without Formal Training
00:14:40
Speaker
Yeah, I think when someone says, you know, I don't know how to witness, I always
00:14:47
Speaker
follow that up with a question. So if a neighbor came over, pounded on your door and said, the doctor said, I have an hour to live. They just got my blood work back. Don't worry. I'm not contagious, but I'm going to be dead within the hour. I know you're a Christian. Can you help me know how I can have my sins forgiven?
00:15:10
Speaker
could you answer that person? And this Christian goes, well, of course I could. I know the gospel, I could share it. When they say, I don't know how to witness, they're saying, I don't know how to get started. So I think the best way to get started, back to the Explore Stimulate Share, explore, ask questions, listen, typically as you're asking good pointed questions,
00:15:35
Speaker
What's your philosophy of life? What are you living for? In your personal opinion, what makes a true Christian? Just some general questions like that. I have a list of 15 of them in the book that I found to be very helpful.
00:15:51
Speaker
Many of those will open a door for further conversation. So here's my basic thesis. If you know enough of the gospel to be saved yourself, you know enough of the gospel to be able to share it with someone else.
00:16:10
Speaker
I like that Tim, and you know that taps into something I was meaning to ask you about earlier, but the conversation went a slight different route. I wonder if the other is used too sometimes in the contemporary church. We separate that process of somebody becoming a, that moment of someone becoming a Christian from then empowering, encouraging them to share their faith. Whereas is there something about, look, if someone gives their life to Jesus today, the more you can encourage them as soon as possible to be telling others,
00:16:37
Speaker
Because otherwise, I think the longer it goes by, first you become a bit institutionalized the longer you're on the church. But also, when someone's just encountered Jesus, and they're so excited, I've seen this in people before, when they're just that wonder of that first encounter with Christ, that's when you want them to be immediately impacting friends and family. I always say like a good opportunity when you get baptized, you know, invite your non-Christian friends.
00:17:00
Speaker
But sometimes in the church, we've almost sort of fallen into this sort of mistake of thinking they need to be a Christian two, three, four, five years before they're ready to go. Yeah, absolutely. And I think that mentality is really hindering a lot of our witness. I believe potentially the most effective evangelistic time in a person's life is their first two years as a believer.
The Zeal of New Believers
00:17:23
Speaker
Interesting.
00:17:23
Speaker
particularly when I came to faith in Christ, I knew one Christian. All of my friends were unbelievers. But two years later, I'd pretty much replaced that circle of non-Christian friends with Christian friends. And if I had not started sharing my faith immediately, I would have never shared with many of my non-Christian friends. I was very fortunate
00:17:46
Speaker
The very first Christian book I read was a book on evangelism. I told people I started sharing my faith before I discovered Christians didn't do that sort of thing.
00:18:00
Speaker
Lastly put, so so by all means encouraging new believers and the analogy that I use is the man born blind in John chapter nine. Remember, he's brought in with an inquisition from the Pharisees. How could this man have healed you?
00:18:17
Speaker
We know he's a sinner. And this man basically says, listen, I don't know any theology. I haven't been to seminary, but I do know this much. I used to be blind and now I can see. And that's what I say to people. You don't need to worry that you can't answer all of these apologetic questions.
00:18:37
Speaker
Just simply share what you do know you can learn and grow in that but I think many times the best witness is the brand-new Christian Because they're they're so filled now. They know their sins have been forgiven. They just want everyone to know Dr. Howard Hendrix a longtime professor here in America once stated that the worst thing that can happen to a new Christian is to meet an old Christian and
00:19:04
Speaker
because the old Christian pours water on them. Don't talk about Jesus like that. You're embarrassing us. Many times older believers pour cold water on the zeal of new converts, which is such a shame. It should be the exact opposite. The longer we know Christ, the more excited we ought to be to talk about Him with others.
00:19:30
Speaker
Nicely said, and a great point to sort of wrap things up. We're about rapidly approaching the 20-minute mark. Tim, really grateful you've shared so much kind of practical wisdom and insight. I like the fact not just from teaching evangelism, just from years of doing evangelism. Look, one last question. You mentioned the book from which a lot of this is drawn.
Invitation to Evangelism: A Book Resource
00:19:51
Speaker
What is that? What should people who've had their appetite whetted by some of the things you said?
00:19:55
Speaker
What should they go read? And we'll put a link to it in the show notes too. The book is titled Invitation to Evangelism. The subtitle is sharing the gospel with compassion and conviction. I believe both of those elements are absolutely crucial.
00:20:12
Speaker
It's published by Kriegel here in Grand Rapids, Michigan, but it's available via Amazon and through actually 10 of those. 10 of those, Jonathan Carswell graciously carries that in his stock and so 10 of those UK has that book as one of their featured books.
00:20:35
Speaker
Well, we'll put a link to that. We're big fans of 10 of those. I know Jonathan. And of course, his dad, Roger, is a really well-known evangelist here in the UK. And Roger very graciously wrote an endorsement for my book. Wonderful.
Episode Conclusion and Next Steps
00:20:50
Speaker
Well, Tim, it's been a pleasure. Thank you so much for joining Christy and I on Peptalk. And for all of you listening at home, or on the car, or on your run, or in the bath, wherever you imbibe your podcasts. Hope you've enjoyed today's episode, and Christy and I will be back in two weeks' time with another guest and another topic. Until then, goodbye.