Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
With Anne Witton
76 Plays4 years ago
This time on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi speak with Anne Witton about Iranian home-cooking, discussing aliens and giving out donuts in your front garden. It's all part of reaching out, building community and sharing the love of Christ!
Anne Witton is based in Newcastle, UK and is one of the leaders of Living Out and heads up mission at her local church (Durham Road Baptist). She also speaks on behalf of True Freedom Trust and is studying for an MA in Contemporary Missiology at Redcliffe College.
Anne loves to help others know life in all its fullness in Jesus. She is happily single and loves Christian community, books, and playing her ukulele.
https://www.annewitton.uk/ | Twitter - @MissionWitton | YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/user/bluemackerel
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Life in London
00:00:09
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pet Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. My name is Kristy and I'm joined by my marvellous co-host, Andy Bannister. Andy, hi. Hi, Kristy. It's great to be with you. How's life in London today?
00:00:23
Speaker
Still in lockdown, starting to forget the days of the week. But apart from that, you know, weary but well in heart, thanks. Yourself? Pretty good. Pretty good. Can't complain.
Meet Anne Whitten
00:00:33
Speaker
So, Christy, who have we got on the show today? But we are very thankful to have the marvellous Anne Whitten with us. Hello, Anne. Hello. Thank you very much for having me. It's great to be here.
00:00:44
Speaker
We're delighted you could
Anne's Role in Church
00:00:45
Speaker
be. Now, Anne, I understand you're on the leadership of Living Out and you're also heading up a mission at your local church. Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, amongst other things. That's what I'm supposed to be doing. That's a great description. Yeah.
00:00:59
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about that? What does that look like for you? What does your day-to-day kind of rhythm week look like with local church life? Because you're based at, is it Gateshead Central Baptist Church or as it will be in June anyway? It is, yes. So we're kind of right at the heart of the community in Gateshead. I kind of wish I did have a day-to-day rhythm, but as a lot of people that are kind of involved with it, exactly.
00:01:24
Speaker
A lot of people who are involved with their church ministry will know that there are no two days that are the same really. But I guess what my role is is to try and look at how we can build community together and how we can reach out to the local community in Gateshead and beyond with the good news
Building a Diverse Church Family
00:01:41
Speaker
of Jesus. So thinking about what it means to share our faith with other people and how we can do that effectively. We're quite an interesting church community because we're very diverse.
00:01:54
Speaker
we're about kind of a third elderly Geordie pensioners, about a third Iranian refugees and about a third kind of African families and then there are a few people like me who don't fit into any of those categories so it's good fun working out how we do church family together
00:02:13
Speaker
and how that spills out beyond our church walls, I guess.
From Student Ministry to Community Events
00:02:18
Speaker
Glad you said there were others like you, Anne, because thinking which those categories do you fall into? I haven't got you pegged as elderly Geordie pensioner.
00:02:26
Speaker
As we were chatting before the show, Anne, I know you were talking about a lot of the ways that you and the church are reaching out, and a lot of those center around community, about trying to build relationships with those around you, whether in the wider community or immediate neighbors. Tell us a bit about how you found that and why you think that's been so effective.
00:02:47
Speaker
Yeah, so my background is before I did this, I was working in student ministry, so campus ministry with university students. And one of the things that we used to do there was called the Hub, which was a weekly gathering.
00:03:02
Speaker
of students to get together around food and sharing discussion and games and that kind of thing. I think one of the things that we noticed was that community is such a key need for people. I think that a lot of students really felt quite isolated and didn't have anywhere that they could go that was just a place where they were known and cared about and could talk about stuff that matters as well.
The Power of Shared Meals
00:03:29
Speaker
So what we're trying to do now is to expand that idea with a bigger group of people, not just university students. So recently we've set up something called Food for Thought, which is a weekly, pretty much we've stolen the model that we were using on campus and just expanded it to people who aren't necessarily students. So we've now got a mixture of people of different ages and different backgrounds, different nationalities,
00:03:56
Speaker
coming together once a week to have food together, which I think is it's such a community building thing, isn't it? There's something about eating food together that bonds people and helps people to sort of let their guard down, build friendship, get to know each other. And then somebody will share a short talk. We usually do kind of 10 minutes or so, nothing more than that on a particular theme. So it could be anything from
00:04:19
Speaker
from friendship to death to Easter. It could be literally anything. We had aliens once, so that was interesting. And then we'll split into smaller groups and just discuss it. We'll have some questions that are designed to kind of get beyond the superficial so that we really share what it is we think about these different topics. But the key thing is that it's a community of believers and non-believers getting together and sharing ownership for this thing.
00:04:49
Speaker
So it's not something that we as Christians, it's not an event that we as Christians put on and invite non-Christians to come along to. There's no kind of privileged viewpoint. It's a sort of communal venture where we all get to share what life is like for us, what matters to us. And we all get to learn from each other as well.
00:05:12
Speaker
It's amazing, isn't it, when you look through the gospels and just see how often Jesus kind of eats with people. He has a meal, he has this big discussion and he's able to share something about himself. So that kind of creating that kind of atmosphere and context of hospitality, that community that you can invite other people in.
00:05:32
Speaker
It's so significant. So how are you also doing this with the wider church community? Because it sounds like you're marvelously such a diverse group as you went through all those different kind
Community Engagement through Events
00:05:42
Speaker
of brackets. Is this for everybody or do you have different streams? What else is going on?
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, this particular food for thought thing, it's still in its infancy. Unfortunately, it's kind of postponed a little bit because of coronavirus. We're having to go digital on it at the moment. But yeah, the idea is that that is open for everyone. And actually, because it's not run just by Christians, because non-Christians are involved in the leadership and in kind of setting the agenda, they feel, well, it is their thing, too. So they bring their friends along. That's very natural.
00:06:17
Speaker
Yeah. And then in terms of the church community, we've also started doing this thing called Big Night Inn, which the idea was that often churches put on events and things and we publish brochures to advertise them and everything. We try to persuade people to come along to hear something. And we've been trying to explore how do we just do
00:06:41
Speaker
church as family, you know, what do families do when they get together? Well, they don't always sit and listen to a talk. Often they just hang out. So we've been thinking, how do we do that as a group of very diverse people?
00:06:56
Speaker
food seems to be something that is central. I think there's something very spiritual about food, as you just mentioned. And also we have the bonus of having a lot of Iranians in our church who are fantastic cooks. So I've put about two stones since we started doing this stuff, because they will just cook an amazing pot of stew with all these amazing herbs that I've never even heard of. I have to say, some of the elderly Jordies know how to put on a good buffet as well.
00:07:26
Speaker
We're never knowingly unfair. And I suppose the idea of the Big Night Inn is that rather than being by ourselves in our own homes, doing whatever it is we would be doing, we just open up the church and we all get together and do that together. So it may be bring your knitting along, bring your crossword, bring some games. If you're working on something on your laptop, bring that along.
00:07:53
Speaker
We all bring food to share and we just hang out together. So it's very low maintenance. Nobody needs to be kind of running the event. Nobody needs to prepare content. You just turn up and enjoy being together. And we all take responsibility for doing the kind of clearing up and that kind of thing as well. Like in a sort of nuclear family, you're expected to muck in and just all help out with the kind of hoovering at the end and that kind of thing.
00:08:22
Speaker
So it's something where we try to deepen our connections with each other, but it's also a very low barrier to entry. So people can just bring their friends
Challenges in Forming Friendships
00:08:32
Speaker
along and it's not come to a Christian event. It's just come out and hang out with me and some of my friends, which it enables then people who aren't regular churchgoers to come and experience Christian community without any kind of hang ups or expectations on their response or anything like that. They just come and meet friends.
00:08:53
Speaker
I love that whole approach, actually, in terms of the low barrier to entry piece, Ann. I mean, we do a similar sort of series of events at Solas, where we found using cafes and coffee shops could be really low barrier of entry. One thing we find, though, when we work with churches and evangelism, and I'd love to hear your
00:09:10
Speaker
your thoughts on this, that sometimes I think the struggle can be that Christians don't actually have non-Christian friends to invite to these things. So that however good and however low the barrier to entry is, sometimes Christians look around and they realise all of their friends are just Christians.
00:09:26
Speaker
Are there any lessons that you've learned, you know, maybe through the community and hospitality approach in terms of how you actually get to know people in the first place that then you could invite along to big night in or food for thought? How can we get to know our neighbors and the people in our community perhaps a bit better as Christians?
00:09:44
Speaker
That's that's a really good question and that's something that I mean I've probably spent about half my working life in Christian ministry as it were sort of full-time paid Christian jobs and that's a massive danger that you suddenly look around and think oh I haven't got any non-Christian friends left you know everybody I'm hanging around with is a Christian.
00:10:02
Speaker
Me and my housemate sort of arrived at that point a couple of years ago
Engaging Neighbors during Lockdown
00:10:08
Speaker
and we were just sort of praying and thinking about how do we get to know people in our community. So we share a house and it's in quite a strategic position. It's on a main road by kind of pedestrian crossing and everybody walking from the Heaton area of Newcastle into town basically has to walk past our house.
00:10:26
Speaker
So we thought, well, why don't we just kind of set up outside our house and see if we can talk to people. So we're both introverts. So this was, this is an idea that we, we kind of thought it was a good idea, but neither of us want to do it.
00:10:41
Speaker
What we did was we invited some friends to kind of join in and we basically had a yard party and we put some tables outside. We don't have a very big front yard but enough space for a couple of tables and we invited some friends, a mixture of Christians and non-Christians to just come and hang out outside our house and we live right near the entrance to the park as well so we put a load of books from a charity shop and
00:11:06
Speaker
we it was again a mixture of Christian and non-Christian books and we said you know come take a book if you're heading into the park you know take something to read take a doughnut we had doughnuts and ice pops and when it was a bit colder coffee and tea and stuff so we were just offering some refreshments a chance to to borrow a book or take a book and a chance to just chat we had some music going on we had some balloons and things and
00:11:32
Speaker
And I must admit at first me and my housemate just thought we are going to look like idiots. We're just going to be sitting outside our house and people are just going to walk past and just say, what the heck? But we felt like God was asking us to do it. So we thought, all right, then let's go for it.
00:11:48
Speaker
And we were absolutely bold. We've done it a few times now. I mean, it's a kind of regular thing that we do. And we were just so surprised by the response. I think the thing that really got me was to start with, people would often go on too busy, you know, hurry past.
00:12:07
Speaker
and then quite often they turn around and come back and I remember this one girl particularly she was on the other side of the road and she said I haven't got any time and going to the shops and she got to the corner and she turned around and looked at us and she came back and she stayed for an hour and a half
00:12:23
Speaker
And we had a fantastic conversation with her. She was asking, well, why are you doing this? Have you just moved into the area? But we were able to talk about being Christians and just wanting to get to know our neighbors better and get to understand people in the community and what makes them tick and how we can serve people.
00:12:41
Speaker
It was really good because I thought, I don't want to sort of have a cheesy sort of shoehorn a conversation about God in where it feels really contrived, but actually people were asking loads of brilliant questions and the topic of faith just came up really naturally and I got to share my testimony with quite a few people.
00:13:00
Speaker
There was another girl who'd just moved from Germany. She was a couple of streets along and this was the first time she'd ventured out of her house since she moved to Britain and she was feeling really kind of lonely and isolated and she came across us and she felt like it was just something sent from God, you know, because we were like welcoming her and stuff. People were giving us hugs that, you know, they were just walking past and kind of, you know,
00:13:26
Speaker
connecting with us in that way that it felt like it was tapping into a need for community. And of course, you know, you then get to know people's names, you then get to see these people when you're out posting a letter or whatever, and you can carry on. So you can carry on the relationship. So I've now got friends that I know nearby that we've met just because we've hung around outside our house. And then of course, you can invite those people to stuff at church as well.
Maintaining Community with Digital Tools
00:13:52
Speaker
One of the things I really love about that is that it's such an easy thing to do, isn't it? Sit outside your house eating donuts. Yeah, enjoy the sun, have the donuts and invite people in because you mentioned earlier on that you live in community yourself and one of the things I think that really struck me, I was watching your testimony, is the role of physical touch and
00:14:15
Speaker
At the time of recording, we're in lockdown. I live on my own. We're now in our third day of lockdown. And so all these things, they sound wonderful. And I hope that we'll all be kind of taking these on board for when these sanctions are withdrawn and removed.
00:14:33
Speaker
But how do you think we can continue that kind of community or have a really good presence with our neighbours during COVID-19? Particularly when physical touch for many of us or even just sitting out in the garden enjoying the sun having these chats is
00:14:51
Speaker
is something more of a dream that we kind of look back to and, oh yeah, I remember when that was so, so good. You mentioned that you were involved online with your niece and you create all sorts of videos. How can we make the most of technology during this time, do you think?
00:15:07
Speaker
Yeah, that's a really good question and I think a lot of us over the last couple of weeks have been frantically thinking, how do we do church differently? How do we connect digitally when we're trapped in our houses and we can't wander around to each other's houses or get together in a big group and hug one another and everything?
00:15:24
Speaker
It's certainly a challenge, I mean in our church it's a challenge because we've got quite a few people who aren't connected to the internet at all. So that's an interesting perspective. For a lot of people they are connected to the internet so we're really trying to use digital technology in creative ways and I'm sure like most churches in Britain we attempted the online service last week.
00:15:48
Speaker
We ended up kind of videoing it as a YouTube thing and having different contributions from different people which worked really well. I've been interested in digital technology for a while. Primarily because of my niece, she lives in Manchester and I'm up in Newcastle so we don't get to see each other as often as I would like.
00:16:07
Speaker
And so I've been thinking to people, how do I share my faith with her? And I guess traditionally I used to share my faith with people by giving them books. And it's become more and more apparent to me that a lot of my friends, and particularly friends who are younger, don't really sit and read books particularly.
00:16:26
Speaker
They're more likely to engage with things on the Internet and even long form articles don't tend to get read very much. But my niece loves YouTube. She's always watching little videos on YouTube. So I thought, well, how can I share my faith with her through that?
00:16:43
Speaker
We both have an interest in photography and so what I did was I've taken loads of photos and I've printed them out and I make a little three minute video talking about a particular photograph and how it connects with my face and then I just say a little prayer at the end. So I've called it picture this thought.
00:17:02
Speaker
And I now seem to have made 37 of these videos, I'm not quite sure. The production values are nil, it's me on my smartphone, in my house or in my garden or whatever.
00:17:17
Speaker
But I found that it's just a really easy way to talk about the difference that Jesus makes to my daily life and to reflect on a particular passage in the Bible or a particular theme. So, for instance, I took a picture of a fisherman that I saw in Cambodia and that particular picture, I used that to reflect on discipleship and how Jesus called
00:17:39
Speaker
the fishermen to follow him. But I've done all sorts of different topics from busyness and the future, God's presence, integrity, grief, humour, all sorts of stuff. Basically things that I think are human issues and things that people will be interested in.
00:17:59
Speaker
And at first it was just I just shared it with my niece and then a few other members of my family have watched them and I've shared some on Twitter and Facebook and then I've had people saying, Oh, can I share this at my church and so I'm quite surprised by, you know, some of the feedback in that that people have been finding these helpful.
00:18:18
Speaker
I guess I just wanted it to be a window into what does daily Christian life look like. And I think particularly at first I felt a bit weird praying on video, but then I thought, well, for a lot of people who aren't Christians and don't go to church, they don't even know what prayer looks like.
Creative Evangelism with Family
00:18:35
Speaker
So, you know, this is a three minute, just taste and see that the Lord is good. You know, this is what it looks like to have a relationship with Jesus. And that's something you can have too.
00:18:46
Speaker
So they're not always explicitly evangelistic. They're not always kind of, this is a summary of the gospel. They're more little snippets and little windows into what Christian faith looks like.
00:19:02
Speaker
I think what I love about that ad is we just draw the threads together and wrap this up. I think I love that idea that actually in our encounters with people, we don't necessarily need to feel we've got to package the whole gospel into that one
Conclusion and Gratitude
00:19:14
Speaker
encounter. But as you say, if we give people snippets, a snippet here, a snippet there, and it's consistent. I also love the idea that as somebody who's also actually, you know, photography is a hobby. I never thought about using that actually in evangelism and that idea.
00:19:27
Speaker
that idea about seeing what the Lord has drawn you to, whether it's photography or trade spotting or whatever it is. We did watch your video. I thought they were going to cut that bit out. I love steam trains. Someone has to.
00:19:45
Speaker
No, this has been a really great 20 minutes. There's just so much practical wisdom here. Thank you. Thank you for sharing that with us. Oh, you're welcome. Just helping us see just ways that we can bring God to work in the everyday sort of rough and tumble of doing community with people. And thank you so much for being our guest today.
00:20:06
Speaker
Oh, thank you very much for having me. I've loved it. And for all of you listening at home, myself and Christy will be back in two weeks' time with another episode and another guest. And I hope you enjoyed today's show. Thanks for listening.
00:20:24
Speaker
I hope you've enjoyed listening to this episode of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. This is a listener supported podcast. We can only make it with the support of our friends across the country and around the world. And if you'd like to be a part of that community, simply visit the website, thepeptalkpodcast.com and click on the support the podcast button.
00:20:42
Speaker
If you sign up to support Solas and the podcast for as little as £3 a month as a thank you, we will send you a free copy of my book, The Atheist Who Didn't Exist, or if you prefer, Christie's book, More Truth as a thank you. And through your support, we can keep making more podcasts like this one.