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With Glen Scrivener
163 Plays1 year ago
Equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom and progress. Beliefs that are the air we breathe as a society and values that most people hold dear. In that sense, nearly everyone we meet is already a believer! But only one Person makes real sense of these beliefs, and it's our privilege to introduce Him to them. Andy and Kristi are here to chat with Glen Scrivener this week on PEP Talk.
Glen Scrivener is an ordained minister and the Director of Speak Life, an organisation that exists to share the love of Jesus through creative communication. An author, speaker and media presenter, his latest project is The Air We Breathe. He has also authored The Gift, 321, The Story of God, the World and You and Long Story Short: The Bible in 12 Phrases. Glen is married to Emma and they have two children.
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Transcript
Introduction and Hot Tub Anecdote
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Perp Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Kristy and I'm joined by my wonderful co-host Andy Bannister. Andy, hey, how are you doing? I am doing well, Kristy. The sun is shining, summer has arrived. We've installed a hot tub in the garden. What is not to like? Yeah, my kids taught me into a hot tub, so let's not go there. They're loving it, my credit card isn't, but you know, there we
Guest Introduction: Glenn Scrivener
00:00:32
Speaker
are. But hot tubs aside, who have we got on the podcast today?
00:00:37
Speaker
I'm very pleased to be able to welcome Glenn Scrivener. Glenn, welcome to the show. Joining you live from the hot tub, this could be a new feature for the podcast. I was thinking this was the hot tub movie, isn't it? So we could do the hot tub politics podcast.
00:00:57
Speaker
It could just get hotter and hotter as the episode proceeds. Whoever's left wins.
Speak Life and Media Evangelism
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah. Well, I was thinking we could do a debate show. We put an atheist in one hot tub, a Christian in the other. We hook it up to the internet and people can vote for the temperature on the two hot tubs depending on how they feel people are doing. Boiling Frogs podcast. But pulling it back to reality.
00:01:21
Speaker
Kristy, tell us, tell people who don't know who Glenn, who Glenn is. They've already made their own assumptions. Well, I'm very pleased to share that.
00:01:37
Speaker
Glen, you are, if I've got this right, you are the director and evangelist at Speak Life. And you've been at Speak Life for many years, haven't you? How did that come about? 13 years. So it's always been a charity since 1952. It was the Hour of Revival Evangelistic Association.
00:01:54
Speaker
So, they meant business back in the 50s and it was founded by a great Billy Graham kind of a guy who was Eric Hutchings and he did the big crusades thing back when they did those kinds of crusades in the 1950s and 60s and he would sort of preach and Cliff Richard would sing and give his testimony and then Eric Hutchings would preach and the choir would sing just as I am and people would come forward and get their lives to Jesus and that sort of thing.
00:02:16
Speaker
And he had a radio show called The Hour of Revival, and it was a ministry of preaching and media. And he died in 1982, and I'm the second evangelist to be employed by the Evangelistic Trust. So, interestingly, we are still doing the same thing, that mix of preaching and media. It's just that media is a little bit different these days, and we're much more onto YouTube and podcasts and that kind of thing, but it's still a preaching and media ministry to make much of Jesus.
00:02:44
Speaker
And do you have Cliff Richard Singh before you do your events, or is that not? If only, wouldn't that be astonishing?
The Air We Breathe: Book Discussion
00:02:51
Speaker
If only. So, Glenn, one of the things you're also known for is you're also a writer. You've written many books. We've talked, I think, to you before about one of the previous ones. People can check out that conversation. But one of your newer books, I can't say new, it's been a while now, but probably newer books, is The Air We Breathe, how we all came to believe in freedom, kindness,
00:03:13
Speaker
progress and equality. And what I like about that book, which we're going to talk about for the next wee while or so, for a long time, there's been a book kicking around, but a lot of sort of more, perhaps, you know, intellectual, perhaps heavyweight academic type Christians have lent into, which is Tom Holland's book Dominion. Brilliant book looking at the history of the West and how, you know, so many of the things we appreciate and take for granted, human rights and whatnot,
00:03:36
Speaker
Thoroughly Christian, but that is not an easy book. You know, some people struggle with it. Tom writes long sentences and uses long words. And then along you've come. And in one sense, this is the bluffer's guide to that book, but that doesn't do it justice because it's brilliant in its own right. But maybe start by telling us, why is this conversation important? Why is it important to help people think about how these things that we appreciate, you know, here in Western democratic culture are so profoundly Christian? Why is that helpful? And how does that help set up spiritual conversations?
00:04:06
Speaker
Yeah, well, this is Dominion for Dummies, and I'm the dummy. So I bought Tom Holland's Dominion in 2019, and I even got Tom Holland to sign it for me so I could give it to my father-in-law as a Christmas present. And I thought this is the ultimate Christmas present because my father-in-law is a real history buff. He wasn't a Christian at that time. And it sits on my father-in-law's shelf to this day unread. And I remember thinking, I'd love to put into his hands
00:04:35
Speaker
a book that is of a length that he might actually crack open and give it a go. As the title suggests, it's just doing a little bit of analysis of where our beliefs come from. These beliefs that we have, inequality and compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, progress, they are what we assume to be universal
00:05:02
Speaker
and obvious and natural. And what I want us to do is just notice that even though these things are the air that we breathe, they are very peculiar ideas actually. And they are not common, they are not universal across all civilizations around the world and down through history. And that Christianity itself is behind these values that we already have.
00:05:25
Speaker
That was the great benefit of Tom Holland's book that's over 650 pages. He's taking you through 3,000 years of history and showing how historically these ideas have percolated down and they've become the air that we breathe.
Connecting Values with Christian Roots
00:05:38
Speaker
My book is doing that sort of job, but instead of really being shaped by the historical timeline, it's shaped by these seven values, equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, and progress, and telling the story of
00:05:53
Speaker
how we've got to where we are because I kind of think that my friends who don't think of themselves as believers, they really are believers and they need to recognize that their beliefs in things like human rights and human equality, the sanctity of life and
00:06:11
Speaker
the progress of history and all these sorts of things, I want them to see that these gut intuitions they have are not the results of scientific experimentation or logical deduction. They believe this stuff, and I want to show them where this stuff actually comes from so that when I tell them about Jesus, they'll start to put two and two together and recognize not only are they a believer, but they can meet the one who makes sense of the beliefs they already have.
00:06:41
Speaker
I mean, it's a phenomenal project, Glenn. And I think that the way in which you write the book, you do it with such a light touch as well. It's a really beautiful thing to read. Could you give us an example of what it looks like to talk about one of those values? I mean, maybe compassion or equality. What would it look like to, if I'm thinking about my friend who's been a vegan for about 10 or 11 years and compassion, the value of compassion,
00:07:10
Speaker
comes really highly for her, particularly as she extends that to all living life forms and creatures. What would you think it would look like for me to kind of talk about some of that borrowed capital or the links into Christianity through that particular value and really value help?
00:07:31
Speaker
Yeah, my neighbor has come to faith quite recently and one of the things that really helped him was just a conversation about like a Facebook feed that he was scrolling through and there was a video about this profoundly autistic kid in America
00:07:53
Speaker
who didn't play basketball on the team all through the season and in the last three minutes of the last game of the season this high school coach puts the kid onto the court and even the opposition are kind of handing him the ball so that he'll kind of score the last basket in the game and you know he misses the shot and then even the opposition are handing him the ball again and he misses the shot again and then they hand him the ball and then like they kind of lift him up
00:08:18
Speaker
And then he kind of scores this final basket and the roof is just lifted off in this high school gymnasium as this kid is treated like an absolute hero. And my next door neighbor was watching this and he said, what do you think of that? And I was like, that is spine tingling, don't you think? And he was like, yeah, I've got goosebumps.
00:08:37
Speaker
Of course, everybody's got goosebumps. We love this scene of the little guy lifted up, right? And there's something profoundly supernatural, I think, about something like that. And over a long series of conversations, we kind of talked about how, by nature, nature doesn't teach you that. Nature teaches you that the weak get squashed so that the strong survive.
00:09:04
Speaker
And if it's the sacrifice of the weakest and the survival of the fittest, that's the way nature goes. And then it's a
Addressing Church's Past and Present Failings
00:09:12
Speaker
really natural part of the conversation to kind of say, well, with Jesus, he is the fittest who is sacrificed for we the weakest so that we the weakest can not only just survive, but thrive and pass on this compassion revolution. And like telling him, we both share a belief in compassion.
00:09:30
Speaker
Can I show you how it doesn't make sense on other worldviews? But it totally makes sense of this Jesus figure, the one who went to the cross as the fittest to be sacrificed for us. That was part of a whole lot of conversations that is led into church and led into faith.
00:09:50
Speaker
That was absolutely brilliant. And I guess with your friend who's vegan, again, this desire to show compassion to every creature, I don't think she probably doesn't have a purely evolutionary worldview. But if she did have a purely evolutionary worldview, it wouldn't really make sense because evolution is based on competition. Yes, we cooperate, but we cooperate in order to compete with
00:10:18
Speaker
other populations with other species. And therefore, she's already believing in something quite supernatural, if she believes on compassion and extending the circle of compassion right to the very fringes. But as you start talking in those terms, I think you can very helpfully talk about here is Jesus, who comes and flips the way of nature on its head.
00:10:41
Speaker
so that he the fittest is sacrificed for we the weakest. And I think you can contextualize a preaching of the cross into that situation. And I think it can have some real traction.
00:10:52
Speaker
I love that answer Glenn, I love the story and that video too, as you say, everyone gets goosebumps with it. But look, one question I have around this approach, I think it's a phenomenal approach and so helpful, especially to those I think who would call themselves not religious, you know, the nuns out there who are, you know, if you sort of lead with, here's an argument for Christianity, you're going to run a mile. But if you lean into things they're already engaging with,
00:11:18
Speaker
you can draw them in. But the question I have, though, how do we how do we avoid triumphalism here? Because the danger in this approach is even not careful, you can go, ah, yes, look, isn't Christianity amazing? Look, all the things it's given, you know, even those even those views say you're not Christian, you're living on borrowed capital. And that
00:11:36
Speaker
While that's true, it's not very winsome. So what would be your advice on how we can do this in a winsome way that doesn't look like we're pulling gotchas on people? I think it's just so important to own, for instance, on the value of compassion, to own the cruelty of the church down through the years. And to talk about, well, goodness, therefore, doesn't that make it triply heinous?
00:12:02
Speaker
when, for instance, the Crusades happen and under the banner of the cross, here are a whole bunch of people instead of dying for their enemies or killing their enemies. Or you can talk about any number of colonial sins of in the name of Jesus. Here are some of the evils that have been done. And I think we recognize that actually
00:12:24
Speaker
it is a more heinous crime when the church is cruel than when anyone else is cruel because we ought to know better. I think there's still some residual knowledge that the people of Jesus ought to be compassionate and that it is horrific when they're not. I find that actually really helpful when you're answering questions that people have about the faith.
00:12:47
Speaker
especially when they're critiquing the church, whether it's historic abuses or contemporary abuses, or they've experienced church hurt in the here and now, to stand with them shoulder to shoulder. Often, I find myself even increasing their lament and increasing their critique of the church and saying, oh, it's even worse than you think.
00:13:10
Speaker
But then at some stage, is there a way of pointing to our feet, pointing to what we're standing on, as we're both agreed that the church in this historic instantiation has done great evil? What are we standing on? What are we assuming about the ways we ought to be? Because, for instance, the Crusades, when they are conducted under any other banner, are just business as usual, aren't they? It's precisely the fact that they are
00:13:38
Speaker
under the banner of the cross that makes their wickedness so evil. And so, yeah, certainly in my book, I press into all sorts of heinous crimes of the church down through history. And it's not that the church comes off glowing. It's that, in the words of John Dixon, Jesus has taught us a beautiful song to sing. Christians have often been way off key.
00:14:02
Speaker
But that doesn't take away from the beauty of the song.
Church as a Model of Christian Values
00:14:05
Speaker
And so when we're talking about these beautiful values that Christianity has given to us, that doesn't mean we're always brilliant singers of the song. Sometimes our version of the song makes people, you know, cover their ears and howl in derision. So, yeah, it's not a triumphalist thing. It's not a West is best thing. Certainly not that. It's actually holding the church to a higher account because we ought to know better.
00:14:30
Speaker
Thanks so much, Glenn, and I just love what you were just saying there about singing this beautiful song of Jesus. I was reading just yesterday, I don't know if you've probably both read it, The Singer by Calvin Miller, which is just this beautiful story, like a retelling of Jesus' life and death through the analogy of this song that he sings.
00:14:52
Speaker
And just to ask this a little bit more if we can, just about that triumphalism, how do we go about singing that song really beautifully? That when we're talking about these particular values, that they hear that song and they don't hear us saying, well, you're wrong and Jesus got it right.
00:15:13
Speaker
How do we, I guess, what is that link between those two things there? So we've acknowledged that there's church hurts, that we haven't always done this right, that there's a lot that we are accountable for and how we've been hypocritical, et cetera, et cetera. But what is the link between the value and the song? How do we sing Jesus into those values?
00:15:37
Speaker
Well, I guess it's got to be embodied, hasn't it? It's got to move out of music theory and into the concert hall where people can actually hear the song sung in an embodied local expression. And I guess that means church. And so like what a travesty it would be if we became those who were very keen on the notion of compassion.
00:16:01
Speaker
and had a church and invited people into a church that was just full of the same cliques and power plays and abuse as people encounter out there in the world.
00:16:16
Speaker
You know, the local church is the great hermeneutic of the gospel. Hermeneutic means like how you understand something, like how you wrap your head around it, how it becomes meaningful to you. And so it's got to go hand in hand with an embodied expression of equality, compassion, consent, enlightenment, science, freedom, progress. You know, at the end of my book, I talk about how
00:16:39
Speaker
There are these values that are the air that we breathe, but really what we need to do is embed them in our lives in completely counter-cultural ways so that people, you know, in the words of one Peter, you know, though they accuse you of doing wrong, they will glorify God on the day that he visits us. How will they do that? Well, they will see it lived out in us, and that's when they'll really get it.
00:17:05
Speaker
That's helpful, Glenn.
Personal Experiences in Evangelism
00:17:07
Speaker
You mentioned church, and actually that leads to another question I think I had here. Obviously, we started this conversation talking about Tom Holland and how Dominion, fantastic book, but sort of quite high shelf, really quite highbrow.
00:17:22
Speaker
And then, you know, your book is really accessible. I can still perhaps hear some people listening to this game. Well, this sounds great for you, Glenn. You know, you do this stuff all the time. You're incredibly articulate. You know, you start your next door neighbor shows you a video, you know, instantly what to say. You're in there. It's great. How to how to more ordinary mortals who don't spend their time thinking about all of this make a start. Now, obviously, one answer is they come by copy of the air we breathe. We'll put a link to that in the show now. It's obviously an answer.
00:17:50
Speaker
But also, you know, you've, you've, you've worked up to this over the years. So where do you start? How would you recommend someone starts on this journey of looking for these connecting points, these things that people care about and take and take really seriously and value and build from there? What break up some first steps on that journey of evangelism?
00:18:07
Speaker
And it always begins with what you already love about Jesus and what you already love about the faith that you already have, because Jesus said, from the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. So, you know, if you're looking for sort of silver bullets from me that you can sort of fire out into your evangelistic conversations that will absolutely hit their mark, I don't have those for you. But Jesus does say what we fill our hearts with is what bubbles out of us in words of witness.
00:18:36
Speaker
I think just be alive to what it is that you love about Jesus. And if you do love the compassion of Jesus, I think that will bubble out of you such that you have a conversation with somebody who sees the value of compassion. And you can say, you know, that's what I love about Jesus, dot, dot, dots, you know. And what you love about Jesus today will be different from what it was a week ago or a month ago or a year ago. But there will be something that
00:19:07
Speaker
you latch on to. I don't give people silver bullets, but I do give people kind of sentences up their sleeve that they can use in evangelistic situations and what it is. That's what I love about Jesus. If the conversation is about one of these values, then you can say, I love the way
00:19:24
Speaker
Jesus was on his way to save a life in Mark's Gospels, his biography of Jesus, and everyone else thinks it's a race to save a life, but Jesus knows that he can raise the dead. And so he's actually unhurried, and then a woman comes and
00:19:40
Speaker
grabs hold of the hem of his robe just wanting to get healed and she has this almost superstitious level of faith that somehow he has magical properties to his clothing but even that level of faith is enough and he feels power go out from him and he brings the whole race to save a life to an excruciating halt just so he can have a face-to-face.
00:20:00
Speaker
with this woman who would not have been allowed into the synagogue in the town where she was. And he wants to call her daughter. He wants to say, your faith has healed you. He wants to say, go in peace. And he has this precious face-to-face with this woman. And what if God is like that? What if this is what God is like? That he will
00:20:23
Speaker
bring everything to an excruciating halt just to have a face-to-face with this woman. And that's just a story that's been on my mind recently. And so that's how I can finish the sentence. That's what I love about Jesus. What's it going to be for you? How do you love the compassion of Jesus? How do you love the way he treats every individual as an individual? How do you love the way he sets people free? How do you love the way that he gives people hope when it seems hopeless?
00:20:49
Speaker
You can share different stories. That's what I love about Jesus... Or that's what I love about my church... Maybe the conversation is about how cruel people are online or whatever it is. That's what I love about my church. I know that when I'm out of the room, they won't gossip about me. They're just not like that.
00:21:10
Speaker
Oh my goodness, what kind of community is like that? Well, you can come along Sunday morning. That's what I love about Jesus. That's what I love about my church. Or I couldn't have gotten through X without Jesus.
00:21:22
Speaker
What kind of words of personal testimony can you give to the way that Jesus has shepherded you through a certain struggle that you're in? So, you don't need to know a whole bunch of philosophical arguments. You just need to know Jesus and the way that he has gotten you through. And when you're having these kinds of conversations with people, just take a deep breath, mention the name of Jesus, and away you go. Glenn, that's really lovely.
New Online Project: 321
00:21:47
Speaker
This is what I love about Jesus.
00:21:50
Speaker
There's a, that rests upon having a lively faith, doesn't it? That it's not a, this is what Jesus did for me X amount of years ago, but this is what he's doing for me right now today. And what I'm really, really thankful and grateful for. And, you know, sometimes in our evangelism, sometimes we do feel, and I feel this, you know, that sense of I'm trying to kind of
00:22:14
Speaker
communicate a concept rather than a living human God-man who wants to create that. I love how you said that excruciating halt so that we can come face to face with him. Thank you so much.
00:22:29
Speaker
And just as we just as we kind of draw to a close, we'd love to hear, Glenn, about your new project, because all of this, you know, your heart stems from I think was it was it your first book, 321? Yeah. And now there's some exciting developments in that area. Please share, share that with us.
00:22:46
Speaker
Yeah, so what is the way that people actually share what's important to them at the moment? Yes, you can pass a book on to other people, and that's a thing that a certain proportion of the population does. But also, don't you just WhatsApp your favorite podcast that you've got to listen to this?
00:23:07
Speaker
or you talk to people about what's on Netflix. There are multiple ways that from the overflow of your heart, you share with people. One way is definitely online. We want to create an online experience for people using the Gospel Explanation 321. That was my first book back in 2014. It takes you through what God is like, what the world is like, and who you are according to Jesus. It's life according to Jesus.
00:23:36
Speaker
and Jesus reveals to you what God's like, what the world's like, and who you really are. And so there's this immersive experience that we're kind of working on. We filmed the videos. It's a kind of thing that you can do on your own, a thing you can do with a friend, and it's a thing you can do
00:23:52
Speaker
you know, perhaps in a church halls on a Wednesday night, you know, the way that you would do an Alpha course or a Christianity Explorer or that sort of thing. But we are soft launching the new 321 in October. And we'd love people to sign up to go and do it. And we want thousands of people around the world to kind of go through this experience and to see the world the way that Jesus sees it. So people can check that out at speaklife.org.uk.
Episode Conclusion
00:24:19
Speaker
Fantastic. And you actually answered my very final question, which was, Glenn, how do people find you? How do they get into all the books and the videos and resources? There's the website address. There is speaklife.org.uk. Speaklife.org.uk. And we will even put a link to that in the show notes. And so people can go and peruse that website. And if they've been listening since the start, they can fire up their favorite music player and put a Cliff Richards song on while they do that, just to kind of
00:24:43
Speaker
Set the whole mood. Glenn, it's been an absolute privilege. Thank you. I'm getting a bit wrinkly from the hot tub, so it's time to get out. I'm getting a bit wrinkly from the hot tub, yes, exactly. Let's not go there. So anyway, it's been great having you on the show. Thank you for being our guest this week, and God bless all that you do. Thanks so much for having me. And Christy and I, we're back in a couple of weeks' time with another edition of Pep Talk and another guest on a different topic, so do tune in, check us out, and we look forward to being with you then. Bye for now. Bye.