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With John Kirkby
280 Plays1 month ago
Taking an entrepreneur's approach, one man has been challenged by God to start sharing Jesus in his own life, and then expand it to the whole church. Can he do it? He's done before with poverty, so we are audaciously believing it can happen with evangelism!
Check out the Isaiah 61 Movement website and search for "i61" for your mobile app store.
Dr John Kirkby CBE (prefers 'Johnny Boy') is the founder of Isaiah 61 Movement (i61m) and Christians Against Poverty (CAP). John had a tough life after his father died. His marriage ended, with huge debt, he had lost everything. Now with a doctorate & CBE, John was healed and transformed because his friend shared life with him, shared faith with him, then shared Jesus. 30 years on, John has founded i61m to to see every Christian confidently doing the same for their friends, and build Jesus-sharing culture with churches everywhere.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Pep Talk' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Well, hello, everybody, and welcome to another exciting edition of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast from Solas. If you're a regular listener, you will know that every time we meet together in this format, we have a different guest for you who has got something to teach us, to share with us and inspire us about sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. Now, I'm joined today by my co-host, Andy Bannister. Are you you there down the other end of the country, Andy? I am indeed, Gavin. So we've got it covered. You in Scotland and me and luck me down here in Wiltshire. Absolutely. we've got a really interesting guest for you this fortnight. We are joined by John Kirkby, or to give him his full title, I believe, Dr. John Kirkby, CBE, I think that's right, who is well known to many people up and down the country for his work with Christians Against Poverty, which he founded in 1996 with his wife. And we've got a Christians Against Poverty ah debt centre, our town, and down where I grew up, there's a centre there, they've spread across the country.
00:01:04
Speaker
But then a few years ago, he surprised everybody by leaving.
Transition from CAP to I61
00:01:08
Speaker
He was the cap guy, well known for that around the country on telly for it, left and is now doing something completely different, which he's going to be telling us about today. John, welcome. Great, fantastic. Yeah, I'm not surprised. We've been in Scotland, you're starting to tell us it's snowing and we're all wondering where we live because it never snow. So good to hear that there's no snow right now in Scotland. Well, do you know I scraped ice off my wife's car this morning before she went to work, so we we're heading there. there it goes yeah great yeah yeah This journey you had of leaving CAP yeah and moving across to your new ministry, tell us very quickly about how that happened. Okay, well, first of all, when does a founder leave is a question that every founder should be asking. I've been handing it on since I started it and basically it was running five countries around the world, incredibly talented people. and
00:01:56
Speaker
I knew that the moment would come when I knew it was time to, yeah, time to hand it on. ah New wine, new wineskin and all that stuff. And it was very gentle and kind. God was very gracious. I got to know a long time before anybody else did, which enabled me to do it really well. Cap were fantastic, gracious, kind, generous, unbelievable the way they dealt with my leaving and just honored me and all the rest of it. so And I basically then said to God, um if you have anything else for me to do, please tell me, but it'll have to be probably where I already sit, which is church, the poor, and sharing Jesus. But I also did say, if you haven't got anything, I've been working since I'm 15, I'll be very happy yet to not have and another gig. But as it happened, he started to ask me about why I wasn't sharing Jesus and it got out of hand. And here we are four years later.
00:02:47
Speaker
And so the result is I61.
Empowering Faith-Sharing through I61
00:02:51
Speaker
Yeah. So tell us a bit about I61. The name to kind of start with, I think, I could have a good guess, but hopefully who are sort of racking their brains while they're driving listening to this. Why I61?
00:03:03
Speaker
Is this Matthew 5 verse 6? It's the Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon us to preach good news and yeah it's yeah it just says where it is we believe the Spirit of God is upon all everybody everybody who knows Jesus has anointed to preach good news and it all came out of God asking me a really awkward question which is in particular like at the time Which was, John, I know that you've seen tens of thousands of people saved around the world in six countries with Christians against poverty after starting in a bedroom office with a tenor. But what about you?
00:03:38
Speaker
Ouch! So, I had led people to the Lord and some amazing testimonies of God using us and still friends with, you know, like an adopted daughter almost that we led to the Lord, you know, 15 years ago. But the truth was, I was in a massive Christian bubble ah family church, the whole thing. I mean, I was in the most blessed, I still am, in blessed bubbles. And God just said, not good enough.
00:04:01
Speaker
So that began my journey to find out why I wasn't sharing faith. And as an entrepreneur, a kingdom entrepreneur, I just go straight in, dive the problem, take it apart, look at it, look at what everybody else is doing and go, okay, God, if you've got anything new here, you can tell me and I'm listening, I'll have a go.
Addressing Faith-Sharing Challenges
00:04:19
Speaker
um And that's what happened. I started with me first. and So if someone goes to your website, which is i61.org, so They will see your your organization yeah and a strapline that says become a Jesus sharing church. Now that's a really interesting strapline because I think if you said that to the Apostle Paul or the the Christians in Acts they'd go what is there another kind? what What's gone wrong here? How have we got to a stage where we need someone to tell us to become
00:04:47
Speaker
a Jesus sharing church. What's the number of this problem that you're addressing? So basically, so I reflect, I i was the problem, my wife was, um just the research is is's just catastrophically true that we think about eight out of 10 Christians have not significantly shared their faith in the last five to 10 years. Research, evangelical alliance, 44% of any non-Christian friends, if you can get through that, 44% of those that are left I don't know what to do. So if you've got Christian friends and you know what to do, there's another 25% of what's left are scared. So you put those three together and it's more than just research. you know Every single time I sit and speak with any pastor leader, stream leader, anybody, and I say eight out of 10 Christians are not significantly sharing their faith, everybody goes now. before everybody writes in and tells me about a church that is really doing well and is really sharing Jesus. Listen, there are exceptions to that. There are many Christian churches that are doing wonderful stuff, but across the board, there's just not enough Jesus sharing going on when that should be the number one thing that we're about. So it's actually, that's why we've put that on the website just to say to people, let's just get it out there. It's true. We're not sharing Jesus enough. Stop kidding ourselves.
00:06:06
Speaker
And that me kidding myself, I'm changing now. Praise God. But yeah, so that's where it comes from. And it's meant, product it's actually meant to be provocative. And if anybody wants to have a chat to me about that, just get in touch with me, happy to go and talk about it. But that's the truth and we can't stop pretending it isn't. And that's what. Diggy a little bit deeper into that.
00:06:26
Speaker
would be really interesting for a moment, John, and then sort of think about what what you've what you feel the Lord's called you guys to do in terms of being, you know, that some so helping with, address that. what What are some of the causes that's got us into that ah position? I mean, we see a lot of this to too at Solas, so we obviously overlap slightly, but I'd be interested to hear your you know if thoughts, whether both personally, what was holding you back, but as you talk to churches, what what is the roadblock?
00:06:49
Speaker
I mean, so many things. I think, and and again, this is both research experience now four years later and personal reflection of where I was four years ago. It's all a bit jumbled up, but basically it goes something like this. um You know, churches have got really busy doing church.
00:07:04
Speaker
or being church, or looking after church, or whatever. you know just It's so complicated, so much to do. And somehow, because we started being unsuccessful about sharing Jesus, it just kind of got into the culture. you know Just asking church leaders, in fact, I would ask any church leader, have your last two church leadership meetings, what percentage of your time did you talk about encouraging your people to share Jesus?
00:07:30
Speaker
What percentage of your time did you put into the finance, percentage building, ah cleaning, um food on Sunday, drinks, welcome team, youth group, kids church, pastoral support? And what percentage did you personally talk about? Are we sharing Jesus? And the truthful answer is heads bowed.
00:07:53
Speaker
1% or less would be what is normally, what resources do you put, what percentage of your money do you put into it, what percentage of your pulpit time. It's just factually overwhelmingly scary. But it's good because there's a problem to solve and there's something to change and there's a great need for it. So it's it's kind of both challenging
The I61 App and Its Impact
00:08:16
Speaker
and yeah. so that was So leadership basically, most things come from leadership and unfortunately, yeah, it's got where it's got and monkey see, monkey do. So if you join a church that doesn't share Jesus, you'll soon have your excitement squeezed out of you and you'll join the coffee rotor and that'll become the main thing. When it isn't, the main thing should be sharing Jesus.
00:08:36
Speaker
yeah And urgency can be a tyranny, can't it? Just so much to do. An admin can become a tyranny. And so many of the the essential things get squeezed out by by the just that the deluge of stuff. And it's it's a real problem. So what are you doing to help people to break out from those sort of the social bubble you've talked about? You've talked about that the busyness bubble and the rotors and all the rest of it. What what is I61 doing to help break us out of that and to help us to get back to what we're really cool to do, which is to share the gospel. Okay. Well, I think we're sort of 10 minutes in now. So let's bring some encouragement. um Okay. but Majority of Christians know they should be sharing in Jesus. vision And if they don't, that's not my job. So that's easy.
00:09:23
Speaker
The vast majority of people know they should want to. Praise God. You know, we're not fighting apathy around where we should, but we're certainly fighting apathy around actually doing it. So good intentions wanting to know we should is the ground base upon what we work.
00:09:41
Speaker
And basically it's about working with churches to change church culture. And how do you change culture? You do seemingly small things repetitively for a long period of time led by leadership. That's how you change anything. And ah my experience is in what I would call systems creative behavior. So that's all I've done since I left school at 15, started yeah flogging stuff at a car boot sale. I've just designed systems that help people do initially and not what they want to do, but what I wanted them to do.
00:10:09
Speaker
But having been redeemed at 32, I changed and decided I'd use the skill to get people to do what they wanted to do and what Jesus wanted to do, hence the 25 years it kept. So systems create behaviour. So I took the thing apart. So we've got no friends. 44% have got no non-meaningful friends. Okay, so if you've got no friends, what do you do to make friends? Number one, you decide to share your life. You carve out a small percentage of your week and put that into building or deepening friendships. So that sounds very simple. I'll go through all three. The third one is, the second one is that people don't know what to do because they see evangelists and it it frightens a life out of them as it does me. You know, if you see an evangelist at the front of a crowd that they didn't know anybody,
00:10:50
Speaker
and and does this thing and people get saved that's first of all very humbling for you and you think that's how to do it and i'm screaming from the back that's not how to do it unless these people came with a friend where they're going to be next week so you know the people people see that um so we have developed something that helps everybody do it and the third thing is It's not about you, it's about the Holy Spirit. All we need to do is build friendship, share our faith, and invite others to know Christ and trust God. So all that is not particularly dramatic. So got lots of things have got three things in them. All, not okay, nothing new under the sun. We've done well to get into a share life, share faith, share Jesus, da-da-da. But basically, so what?
00:11:33
Speaker
was my own question to myself. So what you've thought of that. So basically devised a system and basically um you take good intentions and turn them into actual action by setting a act. So basically, the harder of something is, the less likely you're going to do it. So that's just in anything in life. If you're going to run a marathon, it's hard, you're not going to do it. If you're going to share Jesus, you're frightened, you're not going to do it. So we basically broke it down. If you ah write a person's name, you say what you're going to do and you date it and you tell someone else.
00:12:03
Speaker
You're five times more than five times more likely to do it. It's just psychology. It's just people want to act in line with their commitments. So we decided to build an app. um Not done that before, but did it really easily and cheaply with some new technology. So it's not actually an app of ours. It's just based on someone else's. And we've designed it to make it look like it is. So it's cheap and flexible and really now is honed to set acts. So we encourage people to set acts. So, you know, I'm going to go and see man. Man.
00:12:32
Speaker
ah You've been in a house 20 years, and you're going to leave, and you go, I'm going to go and see my next own home and i have a coffee with them. You've been meaning to do that for 20 years. Why didn't you do it? Because you didn't flipping write it down, date it, and tell someone else you were going to do it. So we've created a system that takes good intentions and turns them into action, and then working with a church leader to change culture in the church. That's what we do. And it's taken three years to develop, and it's been the hardest thing I've ever worked on it in my life.
00:13:00
Speaker
I find that by the way fascinating showing that the that the the uphill struggle we have we have but you know there's huge encouragement here yeah too because I'd have thought if you'd sort of described to me when you set cap up on the challenges you were facing there the biggie but the fact that all lessons you learnt there ah this is in a sense the bigger the bigger the bigger piece.
00:13:20
Speaker
and I suppose, yeah tell me some stories, John. how is it How has it gone in the time you've been you've been doing it? Because we've talked about the challenges. We've talked about some of the mechanism and the app. And were again, just as Gavin said earlier, we're going to put a link to the website, into the show notes, so folks can come and check the website out and grab the app and start putting in some commitments. um So how's that playing out? how are what What are some of the stories you're hearing of this on the front line when people get into their DNA and start and start trying it?
00:13:46
Speaker
I'll do me first, me and Lizzie. go for it Okay. I've got friends. I've got some really good friends that don't know Christ. um None of them, three that I would sort of name three friends, I wouldn't name them, but um none of them have found Christ yet.
00:14:05
Speaker
um Two of them have been to church. ah They know about my faith and my life has been enhanced no end by their friendship. It's just been wonderful. um We've grown in confidence to share our story. It also inspired me to become a police chaplain.
00:14:23
Speaker
So, that I would basically work work in an environment completely different to the one that I've been in for 25 years. That's been the most rewarding thing I think I've ever done in terms of using my time and skills and ability and my past background makes me a really good frontline chaplain because I'm going into houses and breaking things up that I would have been involved in when I was a teenager early in my 20s. So, amazing. so i've got loads of new friends. I'm confident in sharing my faith. I've also realised that it's not me. I'm not the i'm not the hero here.
00:14:58
Speaker
You know, Jesus is the hero. um And really, really enjoying and seeing the changes in the culture of the churches that are partnering with us. That's the really exciting thing. um Every week, we see 75 to 100 acts set. We've got 2,000 people using it. It's been used in 37 countries. It's unbelievable the the amount of energy and interest in sharing Jesus is just exciting. But the apathy is also occasionally overwhelming. It's ah it's a double-edged thing. So yeah, my my life has changed. I've changed. And if I can change, trust me, anybody can.
00:15:38
Speaker
Imagine there's a pastor and he's he's listening to this, I don't know, somewhere in the south of England, and he's saying, you've just described me, you've just described my church. I've got the buildings committee, the admin committee, and I'm up to here. And you've just told me that my priorities need to shift. Where does he start? Or and another scenario, you can comment on that one. Imagine there's a lady listening somewhere in the north of England and she's saying, you've just described me. I'm stuck in the bubble. I want to get out.
00:16:02
Speaker
where Where do they start, these two characters? Right, I'll do the church one first, okay? So basically I planted a church planter, so I built a community church in Bradford over 15 years in my spare time. I no longer lead that, that's I'm still there but led by other people.
00:16:18
Speaker
Praise the Lord. So tell me about Complicate and tell me about church, tell me about rotors, kids work, buildings, got it all. So when we came at this, we came at this with a genuine understanding of church and pastors and church leadership because I've been one and I've worked with the church for 30 years. So I do understand. that So one of the criterias of what I was designing as an entrepreneur was that this needed to be done in a relatively short amount of time and a short amount of effort.
00:16:47
Speaker
ah Not that people's effort isn't, you know, isn't important, but just that it isn't overwhelming because we have overwhelmed churches with, you know, please do a 58 week series on sharing Jesus and, you know, and everybody goes like, really, we've done that 20 times and that happened. So we've made it that you don't have to commit vast amounts of time. So what we do is the church leader themselves themselves have to agree that they will lead the way on going through share life, share faith, Jesus themselves.
00:17:17
Speaker
And that takes about an hour a month to set a goal. And so it's not, you know, if you can't find an hour as a church leader to share life faith in Jesus, I would, I'd have a word with, I'd go and have a word with Jesus and say, is that right? So small amounts of time from the leader. Secondly, leadership group need to embrace it. We don't insist on all them do it, but they need to embrace it.
00:17:38
Speaker
They need to give at least 5% of their leadership time every month to talk about it in their leadership meeting. 5%, so 10 minutes in a two-hour meeting. And also we ask for 3% of the pulpit time. ah We don't ask for it. We encourage them to commit to give 3% of the pulpit time every month for 10 minutes to show an encouraging video.
00:18:00
Speaker
and an inspiration and a testimony of someone who's set an act in share life, share faith, share Jesus. And if you do that persistently for a long period of time, you will change your church culture. And also you run ah groups within groups that they do this once a month. So it's it's doable. we've got you know We've got some early adopters doing it. We've got our first annual testimonies from churches that are coming back saying a year in, you know, the kids church didn't fall apart. The the coffee's still okay. The worship comes right. Praise and worship is still being made. Okay, we're still doing 51 talks a year on other stuff, but every month we give 10 minutes. um Amazing testimonies from our church. One church hadn't had a visitor for so long, they didn't know what one was. And the pastor said, this is not good enough. And he became ah a partner church a year ago. His update on the year is that never a Sunday goes by without a non-safe visitor.
00:18:54
Speaker
and son He also says that not only has Jesus blessed him in that area but as he says Jesus is roaming around looking for people who were after his heart and his heart is to share Jesus and he's seen other amazing things in lots of other parts of his ah church. money, people, you name it, young people, growth. And he believes that that's the Holy Spirit saying, come on, these guys are on the main thing. They're giving it their best and seeing culture change.
Overcoming Initial Challenges
00:19:20
Speaker
So we're actually seeing the beginning of culture change. So it's about church partnership, predominantly. That's what about helping churches change culture into be more Jesus sharing. And that's all we've done for four years. And it's been tough. and We've had the most unsuccessful trials ever.
00:19:35
Speaker
Man, our trials were so bad. Oh my God. Failed so much in the first. Seriously. Anyway. Something I like about that though, John, is also as well from everything else, that just tells me that you're a true entrepreneur because a lot of other friends are entrepreneurs. so yeah it's It's the pushing through failures, learning something yeah every every time. yeah Exactly. It's Ederson who took 200 attempts to make a light bulb and every time he said, well, I've worked and you went on to do it.
00:20:04
Speaker
um but It's when you get the results back from you from your trial and somehow you've got about 30 seconds after you've got the results to somehow i'll remember that it's a really good thing it's failed. And then to inspire, by the way, we're only a very small team. We've got two employees, me part-time, my mate part-time. I've got five other people working a day, a week. So we're minute, small. I want it to be small. I want a high leverage, low. I don't want a big, I don't want big. um So yeah, but each trial we learn and yeah, we've we've got we've got what works now and we're beginning to see it grow.
00:20:37
Speaker
yeah And one question that occurred to me a few moments ago. You talked about pastors and Gavin, you gave those kind of scenarios of typical people. Do you do you see any scope for this? I think I know what the answer is going to be, but I'll just lob you the easy question. Do you see any scope for this with young people too? Because I think getting young getting young ah Christians too, not just those in the workplace. If we can get, I'm a great believer, John, if we can get a shared Jesus and evangelism culture into young Christians when they're teens and students, then that will carry through. So if you got ah is anything happening? You've got plans and hopes and dreamers that Just completed two focus group with these, you know, ah youth and young adult stuff. um And yeah, very humbling and yes.
00:21:19
Speaker
Wow, how little do I know? um I'm a 62-old guy, so it's not me, but I'm not too old to know that the youth are not the future, they're the present. So yeah, we're particularly working with John McGinley on The Send. We've got some work going with them around their spot fires of really bringing Isaiah, because basically the Isaiah thing, what everyone else is doing,
00:21:41
Speaker
you're creating good intentions. So spot fires for send, you guys are lots of people creating great good intentions. And our thing links on to any good intention that any Christian would ever do. So and because we're confident in what we do, that's all we do. So we're very happy that we partner with and can and want to partner with everybody, because why would we want to do what other people are doing better than we ever would?
00:22:04
Speaker
and but we do this thing really well, so that's what we focus on. So youth, absolutely. um um We think it's ready-made for young people, um but the app is so simple, you know, all people can do it. In fact, the app, the great design of our app is can my wife use it?
00:22:20
Speaker
who is a a wonderful IT dinosaur. She's great. she's ah She's amazing. And she can do it. She can set an act in 30 seconds. So it's simple, easy. It's not made complicated, but young people, absolutely. They're the future, but they're also the present. So we're we're on that. and So looking forward for this movement that you've started, what's your big goal?
Envisioning a Cultural Shift in Churches
00:22:42
Speaker
What's your big vision? When you pray for I-61M and you're thinking five years ahead, what's your prayer? What would you love to see happen through what you're doing?
00:22:51
Speaker
Okay, I'm umm audacious for God because I've seen God do unbelievable miracles in my own life and in the work of Cap. I've seen him change the culture across church in 25 years when I first started. There's a lot of poverty work, but not much evangelism attached to it, and we proved you could do both. And so the UK church now, if you're a UK church and you're relevant, you'll be helping the poor. That's a culture change.
00:23:16
Speaker
authorized by Jesus and his spirit that we along with others made happen. So I've seen, I've seen it. So I'm full of beliefs. So I'm expecting in my lifetime to see the culture in the yeah UK church change so that Jesus sharing is simply an accepted part of what it is to be a church and not something that he's done as a going, okay, we'll talk about Jesus once a month, once a year, once every 10 years. So I'm actually believing in my lifetime, I am going to see a change in church culture.
00:23:46
Speaker
And that's a great place to, that's a great place to come in for a landing. I'm with you completely, John. So final questions, we wrap this up. We've mentioned it as we've gone, but give it one last plug. Where can people go to find out more about what the organization's doing and what should the next steps be?
Call to Action for Listeners
00:24:04
Speaker
I think I got an early answer, but I shall leave the last word to you.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yeah, so any church leaders listening seriously, seriously, seriously, have a word with yourself and have a word with Jesus and say, are we sharing Jesus enough in your church? And if your answer honestly is not, please i61.m ah dot.org. Just put i61m.in. You'll find us. Please click on church partnership. Come and be an early adopter and show us that this can be done wherever your church, wherever you're facing. If you're an individual,
00:24:31
Speaker
Please go on any app store, download the app I61M, you just put I6 and it'll come in, ah register and go look at the acts. But also, unless it's led from your church with others, it doesn't work. It's not a single thing. It's not an individual thing. It's individuals within others, within churches, within culture change. That's how it works.
00:24:52
Speaker
And basically, if you just want to be slightly frightened, watch and listen to some of our videos that really will inspire you, you really should be doing more. So please come on. We can change. and God understands we're all falling short, but that's why Jesus is here. Let's go and change church culture and let's see God use us. Amen.
00:25:12
Speaker
Well, John, thank you for that. There are all those links, the links that John mentioned there. We will put those into the show notes. So if you're listening to this podcast of the car or the bath or the gym or whatever and you think, what was it? Just put up the show notes, so you get home, click, go to the website, all that stuff there, download the app, do all of that and and get cracking. John, it's been absolute privilege and inspiration. talking to you thanks for being on the show and to all of you listening at home hope you enjoyed this episode join us in two weeks time for another episode of pep talk with another guest and we look forward to continuing these conversations and so bye for now