Transcript
Speaker: Well, it was back in 2019 that we trialed little podcast. We called it Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast, and we got different guests on every fortnight for a short conversation about how they share their faith.
Speaker: We have had some brilliant guests on over the last few years. People that talked about sharing their Christian faith with people from different religions, backgrounds, different lifestyles, children, youth, students, adults. We've showcased some fantastic, fantastic resources as well. And the episodes that I've had the privilege of being involved in, I've just loved talking to the guests, some brilliant people had on. And we're now approaching almost 200 episodes.
Speaker: I'm not sure when we started out we thought we would do this many, but here we are at nearly 200 episodes. And some are wondering what you think. What has been most encouraging for you? What's inspired you most? Or are there whole areas of evangelism that we haven't covered that you would love us to talk about?
Speaker: We'd love to hear from you. Go to our website, press the contact button, and let us know what you think. And thank you for being part of Pep Talk over these last few years.
Speaker: When we talk about evangelism, it's very easy to think in terms of before and after. At one point, you're not a Christian, and then you commit yourself to the Lord, and suddenly you're a convert and you're in the club.
Speaker: But the reality is often a lot more complicated than that. Some people take a very long time to consider faith, and some people seem to be closed off most or all of their life.
Speaker: These are some of the topics that we're going to be discussing today.
Speaker: Welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast from Solas. I'm Simon Wenham and I'm joined by my wise colleague, Gavin Matthews. Gavin, how are you? I'm delighted to be called wise. I'll take that compliment. Yeah, I'm doing well, Simon. Bit of a frantic week, but but we're here. And more importantly, the technology is working.
Speaker: which hasn't always been the case in recent times when we sat down to record. Absolutely. we've We've had a few problems with technology with our our guest today, so it's wonderful to have him today. I'm actually really excited about today's conversation because we're exploring the journey why by which people come to faith and to help us navigate that I'm delighted to introduce Mark Greenwood, Director of Evangelism for Elam Churches in the UK and author of Big Yes, Little Yes, Healthy Maybe. And that is a wonderful book with a fantastic name, which I do think sounds a little bit like a song title. But ah Mark, welcome to the show. How are you?
Speaker: I'm very well. Thank you. i'm I'm going to write that song. That's what I'm going to do. There's got to be some kind of musical accompaniment, I think. to and Am I right that that Andy Bannister interviewed you in a tent? Is that right? At the Cedarwood Festival? then Yeah, absolutely. We were both um involved in that fabulous little festival. And yeah, we were just um stuck in a tent ah together. It was lovely.
Speaker: Very, very nice. Fantastic. Well, hopefully this is a slightly more comfortable setting, even though we're we're online together. um i wondered if you could just start by setting the scene and briefly say how you come came to faith. It's a wonderful story. And I think it's a really nice way to set up our conversation today.
Speaker: Yeah, definitely. So I wasn't brought up in a Christian home. My mum and dad divorced when I was a bit younger and my mum remarried and the person that she remarried called himself a lazy atheist, which I love. He basically, what he meant by that is he decided there was no God but couldn't really be bothered to find out whether that was true or not. And all that changed when i i had been grounded physically for six weeks. Now, for listeners who don't use the word grounding, I'd basically, I'd done something naughty, me and my brother, and we weren't really allowed to come out of our rooms for six weeks, apart from going to school. And mid-grounding, there was this knock on the door, and my dad, my new dad, opened the door, and there was this guy called Brian Hardacre with a big smile from ear to ear, and he asked him this question, what do you think about life after death?
Speaker: which is a bit of a strange question to be asked on a Saturday night, quite frankly, but it immediately took my new dad back a previous few years when his best friend had had a heart attack underwater. He was a subacqua diver for a hobby and his best friend had had a heart attack and ah they took him to a military hospital and the the doctors there said, I'm sorry, there's nothing we can do for him. And that set my dad on a bit of a journey, really, asking the question, there has to be more to life than this. Now, what's remarkable about that evening is not just that the question that was asked related back to something that was happening in dad's life, but that this guy called Brian who'd just become a Christian six days previous himself was now doing door-to-door evangelism. The minister had taken him out, which is a tough gig for your first thing, wasn't it? But they'd had a really bad night and nobody really wanted to talk about it. And so the minister, Godfrey, wanting to protect this enthusiasm for this new Christian, said, come on, Brian, let's go. It looks like nobody wants to talk tonight. And Brian said to him, no, Godfrey, let's knock one more door.
Speaker: but let me knock it this time. And that was my door. They knocked one more door. And so I often say to people, however discouraging it might be in evangelism, however hard it might sometimes feel, always knock one more door, invite one more person to Alpha, share your story with one more person because you never, never know what's happening behind the door of that person, whether it's a physical or metaphorical door. And as a result of that, on my family, the whole five of us became Christians. And within six to eight years, I'd become a traveling evangelist.
Speaker: So I often used to say to Brian, however many people I lead to Christ, if I was the only one you'd led to Christ, you've all already led one more person than me. do you get You get to be a part of of all the others that come to Christ as well. So yeah, it's a little bit of my story, which is remarkable, isn't it? It is remarkable.
Speaker: It reminds me, my pastor is Brazilian and and the strapline he always uses is one more for Jesus. In fact, he puts it on t-shirts for people who are getting baptized. One more for Jesus. And yeah, it's fantastic. How many years ago was that, by the way?
Speaker: So it was in 1982 that I became a Christian. And then in 1988, three days before my 18th birthday, that's when I went into full-time evangelism. So yeah, amazing. Amazing.
Speaker: And then recently you've written a book about evangelism, which I'm guessing draws right on your own story that we just heard about, but brings it kind of right up to date ah as well. And in that book, which which is called Big Yes, Little Yes, Healthy Maybe, we we'll have a bit of a look at that in a minute or two. There's just one phrase in it that think is worth picking up. You said we need, a drawing on 1 Chronicles 12, men of Issachar, you know, men who who men who know the times. Why do we need people who know the times? I mean, I knew this old fella, he said, God hasn't changed, the Bible hasn't changed, so I'm not going to change what I do. yeah I understood his faithfulness, right? I had a good heart.
Speaker: Why do we need this kind of the menace men of Issacar thing? What do you mean by that? Yeah, and I think there's ah there's a really critical part in that verse that's just directly after that, I think, is that we have to use together. So it's Menavisica who understood the times and knew what Israel should do. And for me, that's really critical for us to understand what what is happening out in the world. What what is what is God doing? what What's happening in the lives of people and What do we do in response to that? How do we activate? So it's this kind of knowing and action type thing.
Speaker: And that's that's interesting you say that because your point about knowing what to do, one of one of the things you say in the book is actually that Christians often don't know what to do or perhaps do the wrong type of evangelism or maybe even lack motivation. and do you Do you have any thoughts for why Christians sometimes avoid evangelism in the first place?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I'm really passionate about equipping. Probably 50, 60% of my time has always been equipping Christians to share their faith. and And consistently, the key reasons that I seem to get back are people are frightened.
Speaker: and just just fearful about sharing it. i think I think we force everybody into an extrovert model of sharing their faith when they're more introverted and we we we think that they're going to find it easy. i think they're not only scared of of of saying something, they're scared of of what they say, if it might be wrong. Some people have ah experiences that they just feel they've messed up and that holds them back. I think some people are slightly concerned about appearing to be one of these weird, fundamental evangelical Christians.
Speaker: um I think one of the biggest fear factors is um the the tricky questions that people ask. They they suddenly feel that, you know, they've they've got to be able to answer every single person with a watertight case.
Speaker: um and and that can hold them back. And then I think, I do think a lot of people have lost a bit of passion. um Sometimes I think if you, you know, like this if you find out, listen, I'm probably one of the the world's best salespeople in as much as I get very giddy about something and want to tell everybody about it. But when you lose your giddiness about something, you tend not to tell as many people about it. And I think i think sometimes,
Speaker: It's felt a bit hard living as a Christian and um i think people have ah become a little bit tired and a little bit worn out. But I also think, and I know we'll we'll unpack this a little bit, I also think we've got a bit of a wrong understanding of what success, and I use that word loosely, what success means in evangelism.
Speaker: Mm-hmm. Can I pick up on one thing you said there about night cost extroverts and introverts? um You know, we often think of, I went to this brilliant evangelism conference, Jay John was speaking, right? He's just a legend and his stories are just incredible. But yeah sometimes you think, I don't have conversations like that. Nobody wants to talk to me. I'm not this kind of brilliantly charismatic even um sort of personality that he has conversations with people. What does evangelism look like for introverts?
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, it's ah it's a really great question. So it's my wife's introverted. You wouldn't necessarily know it if she was in the room because she lights up a room and that's one of the the misunderstandings, isn't it? People would look at me and say, oh, you're an extrovert. I mean, I am but there can be introverts that are like me and but we we ah But we think they're extroverts, but because they're loud or gregarious, the the point is that, you know, if my wife's in the room, she'll want to leave the room a lot quicker than me. so Whereas it's like, please don't leave me, please don't leave me. So that's the first thing I just want to say about that extroversion, introversion. I think we have a misunderstanding of it.
Speaker: But my my experience with introverts is that they're much better when and conversations happen and they are asked questions and they can go a little bit deeper. So my wife's superb in an alpha small group.
Speaker: really kind of digging deep and she's absolutely stunning in those. Whereas if she accompanied me to speak at an evangelistic meal, which I do quite quite a few of those, she would struggle in in those contexts. So I think your extroverts are probably more likely to be, and talk about more of your everyday maybe be more able to kind of proactively communicate.
Speaker: I think the danger with extroverts is by and large, they engage their mouth first and their brain after. And I speak as an extrovert, whereas introverts are more thoughtful. So I think they're probably less likely to be offensive or um say unthoughtful things. Sweeping statements, but I think there's there's some truth in it. There's a great book called The Introverted Evangelist, which I've only had a quick scan across, but and that's written by an introverted evangelist. I think that's probably worth a read. And I took actually put on it briefly in Big Yes, Little Yes, Healthy, maybe just because whilst the intention isn't to talk about introversion, extroversion, I just felt it was worthy of of a mention and ah um a reference, really.
Speaker: Yeah, and that's it's a really important point, isn't it? Because I think sometimes we do see evangelism or as as being the preserve of the evangelist, which is a certain type of person, which is often in our mind what that means. i yeah you Your point about weirdness made me think I had a friend who, one of his first lines to me is, I'm one of those weird Christians. And he said it in a really funny way. Yeah. He was one of the best natural evangelists, but that was his often this opening line because he'd been quite a strong atheist and it yeah surprised him how he'd become a Christian. And he used that in a sort of humorous way.
Speaker: um i love that. I know you you you mentioned obviously being concerned about getting things wrong ah with our with our faith, ah you know, the sort of fears. and you You have a lovely line about big doors swing on little hinges. I wondered if you could say a little bit more about that.
Speaker: Yeah, i I think for me, it's just this recognition that God god works behind the scenes. the The Holy Spirit's really good at it, isn't he? And we we get the joy of being a link in a chain, not the whole chain. And so I think for me, it's even playing a small part. I love that scripture in Colossians that says, make the most of every opportunity. It doesn't say, say the most in every opportunity. Yeah. So I just think making the most can often seem small, insignificant things. I mean, my neighbour has come to Christ after sort of 19 and a half years of walking with him, and there's been lots of little things happening.
Speaker: that are basically that that the doors swinging on these small things. if you look at a door, they're massive things, aren't they? But the hinges are ah really, really tiny. But the important thing is what what what they do, where they're placed, where they're positioned.
Speaker: And so, yeah, it's that it's that desire really to say, hey, look, just focus on on little things. Don't... be so preoccupied with with the big because I think the longer I've been a Christian, i'm I'm more convinced that God moves more in the small and often than the big and infrequent. I think that's my observation. So that would be some of what informed that that that phrase. that I think I stole it off somebody, you know, just for a moment of transparency here. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that would definitely be what I believe. and And hence the title of the book, Big Yes, that's presumably conversion. Someone actually yeah distinctly saying yes to Christ, putting their faith in him, yeah receiving the Spirit. um Little Yes...
Speaker: Healthy maybe. Tell us what little yes and healthy maybe is. I maybe refer to your your neighbor, if if that's okay with your neighbor. Yeah, yeah. What were some of the little yeses on the way to the big yes? What did that yeah look like in practice? Yeah, definitely. so So little yes is about helping people to make an intentional decision to explore things.
Speaker: the christian faith So it's it's that intentional decision. So, you know, it's things like, for example, people coming on Alpha, for example, would be would be little yes type ah people. And then healthy maybe is almost challenging people gently to become open minded. specifically about the Christian faith. And, you know, for an atheist to go from a big no to a healthy maybe could represent certainly philosophically, if not theologically, but certainly philosophically, the biggest decision that they'll ever make, you know. And sometimes we we don't fully appreciate that. So it's not, it's that wouldn't be a big yes answer.
Speaker: theologically, i.e. as you rightly said, accepting Christ, and but healthy maybe we're definitely becoming open-minded and what's the difference between yes't a healthy maybe is that I'm just inviting people just to not let it go. I'm not saying explore because some people just that would be too much.
Speaker: but just to kind of keep it on the back burner, just to not let it dissipate. So rather than just saying, or maybe almost passively, it's just this kind of this kind of active. But here's an interesting thing. One of the things I talk about in the book is I think when people say a big yes to God, for them it can often be, particularly the people who've been on a journey, it can actually be the the final little yes to So they've already said, ah a say, a big yes, for example, to the resurrection of Christ, but they haven't said a big yes to the church, for example, or, you know, becoming part of the church, for example, or in terms of fully committing to the Christian faith. But they've said little yeses to to lots of things. And i there was a person in my in my home church who'd become a Christian without telling his wife, and like he just... he just
Speaker: kind of incidentally said it once in a Sunday service that he'd given his life to Christ. And she looked at him and went, have you? And he went, yeah, I did it about six months ago. And she went, what is this? But she'd been waiting for this kind of big yes yeah moment. But for him, it was lots of little yeses. And also just the thing to say as well, that it's not like,
Speaker: when somebody makes what we seem to realise is a big yes, it's not it's not that that's the end of the exploration. Sometimes people can go all in, but there's still lots to explore. And that's a real passion of mine that, you know, part of the... Do remember when we used to have nurture groups back in the day? And part of what we did in those nurture groups is, right, so you've made this commitment, let's let's make sure you understand what what commitment you made whereas I think so often we go right read your Bible pray which is all good stuff get to church but we've not analysed what and indeed if they understood everything about the decision that they made so for me that's a really critical part as well
Speaker: I want to ask you a follow-up question about it. Do you think that the little yeses are more important now? Because in evangelism, we are painting in the UK on a canvas of almost complete ignorance. Whereas, you know, go back to the nineteen fifty s people might have a knowledge of who God was, might have an idea of what sin is, they might even know about the cross. And so they they might be much more quickly at a quick yes. Whereas today, the blank canvas, but biblical knowledge is, you know, people aren thinking even in Christian concepts, are they? Do you think the little yes is now more important?
Speaker: i I totally get what you're saying there, actually. i i I do think it's, yeah, I think my observations, even in the, so I started in full-time evangelism in 1988, although it was Professor Engels in 1972 that created this thing called the Engels Scale, which informed the the philosophy behind Big Yes, Little Yourself, Maybe. So even in 1972, he was saying to be effective in evangelism, we need to understand the process by which a person, the journey by which a person comes to faith. So I certainly feel like it's always been important to understand what I call the little yeses, but I think it is more critical now. And and one of the key reasons, I think, is that my observation in that time is we we we may have seen more people make and the big yes decisions back in the 50s, 60s, 70s, but maybe we saw um a drop-off.
Speaker: And it ah it'd be interesting. Anecdotally, I've got no evidence to back this up, but my observations are we might it might it's now a slower... process and timeline to people coming to faith but I kind of feel like some of those things that might have caused them to drop off back in the day are kind of being answered and and explored I'll give you little example when I became a Christian in an Elam church Any kind of doubts you had were attributed to the enemy. It's the work of the devil. So stand strong. But actually, it's not just a work of the devil. It's a work of the mind as well.
Speaker: ah Because the truth is, whenever we make big decisions and a change of direction anyway in life, there's lots of things like, oh, am I doing the right thing? so And that's not to that's not to underestimate the spiritual warfare warfare, but rather to lift up the very normal and human element of somebody embracing a life change.
Speaker: And so I think that's really critical and really important as well.
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Speaker: And now, back to the program.
Speaker: ah I loved your point about the sort of different concepts of what a big and big yes and little yes are as well. Like with that couple that actually he was presumably thinking this was a little yes, but of course she was he was huge. Yes, hope you might absolutely. I love the line in your book where you say, we can't create souls, but we can create journey. and And you've just mentioned the Engels scale, um which again, I think is really helpful. Could you just say a little bit about why that's useful, at what it is and why that's useful to sort of know a little bit about that? Obviously, you don't necessarily need to know it, but as in have that kind of concept in your mind. Yeah, it's a very good question that because that was one of my conclusions. When I looked at the angle scale, which I'll explain in a few moments, but it it it postured that this sort of represents... how people come to Christ. And I always felt like there was a kind of an acknowledgement, but not an embracing. So we kind of went, yeah, we think that's how people come to Christ. Whereas I'm going, well, if that's how people come to Christ, is there any way that we can activate that that journey? But we can't create souls. We can't convert. that's He's the Lord of the harvest. Now, I learned that lesson many, many years ago. But I do think we can create journey and we can um actively
Speaker: um encourage journey in all of our conversations that we're not just reducing it to this this moment that we get unexpectedly. and So in all my evangelism training, even with answering tricky questions, I'm always saying, how can we create a journey with the questions? So I said that that was informed by the Engels scale. So Professor Engels, 1972, Wheaton College in Illinois, presented the Engels scale, which basically presents that there are three people involved in a person involved.
Speaker: coming along the journey, there's our role and it and it seeks to present what our role is. And I covered that at a fair bit of length in the book because it is an inspiration.
Speaker: ah People can Google it online as well and find out. So it presents what our role is. It presents what God's role is, i.e. his role is to convict people of their need of him, to convict them of their sin, to regenerate them, to sanctify them using...
Speaker: very Christian words for now because we're talking to Christians, so I think we can get away with it. And and then it's then it's the person's response. And when you look, it goes from minus eight to plus eight with the kind of zeros to when they might you know um make that commitment. And I've overlaid Big Yes, Little Yes, Healthy, maybe onto that Engel scale. And really what it's trying to establish is if I share the gospel with somebody who's never heard the gospel, so I move them from, say, minus seven to minus six, that's actually really effective because now they've heard the gospel. As long as I've communicated it in a clear way.
Speaker: And so it's an attempt to, A, encouraging us in those small steps rather than expecting, take we take somebody from from sort of minus eight to plus eight overnight, including getting them to sign a gift aid form, otherwise it fail, you know. So it's an attempt to kind of like measure...
Speaker: expectation, but not in a kind of minimising way, in a faith-building way. um And so it's got our bit, God's bit, and the person's bit, and it shows you the person's response and to God. So that's, ah in ah in a headlined nutshell, what the Engels scale is about. But it's a very, very helpful, and do we call them matrix? Is that we is that what we call them? Diagram?
Speaker: Thing. Let's go thing. Yeah. Now, we will put a link for people into the show notes so they can find your book and they can dig into that the properly so they can click through and have ah ah have a good thing. But we had last few minutes, I wonder if you could sort draw back a little bit. Now, you're leading the work in evangelism for the Elim Church across the yeah UK. So yeah I wonder if you just tell us, in this in this year, what what has encouraged you most as you look at the big picture? and we've We've looked at the detail of getting into the little yeses. Big picture. Yeah. What has encouraged you as you look across the piece? And what do you think the biggest challenge we face in the UK church in evangelism going forward is? And what's going to be the answer to that great challenge?
Speaker: Perfect. No problem. So so my my encouragements from Ealing actually would be across the broader church as well. Let me explain. So we are definitely seeing people just rocking up to our churches who've never been to church before. I see that so much. um I'm out in different churches every Sunday. So that's a picture that is true of lots of Ealing churches.
Speaker: But the likes of... um Also, I met with churches together in England who were a group for evangelization, which is people involved in something like I'm involved within their respective denominations. And so what we're seeing in Ealing is also being seen right across the broader body of Christ. It's a massive encouragement. Coming back to Ealing, we're seeing more people get baptized than than ever, significantly, significantly. And we're seeing a lot more people come on Alpha courses than we've seen in a long time. We've seen a lot of engagement come through our kind of Mercy Ministries community engagement pieces. So we're seeing that kind of see some some throughput as well. And we're seeing a lot of stuff happening around sort of young men, 25 35. That's consistently happening. and So that would be kind of some of the stuff that I'm seeing. I think that the challenge, and and i i say this in a kind of, it's a positive challenge and a challenge that I think we can do something about. So there's two things really. I suppose the the the the main thing which I want to focus on
Speaker: is that there's a temptation because people are coming in that we say, oh look what God's doing. He's answering our prayers to bring people in. Well, let's let's celebrate that.
Speaker: But I would argue it's a greater moment to get equipped. to get out there. if if If God is at work, then surely we want to crack on. It's it's as easy as I can remember in the many decades, ah but we need to get out there, don't we, more and more. So for me, that's ah a bit of ah a bit of a challenge and that I think is good challenge, though.
Speaker: yeah And one thing I love ah about your work is actually it's a real encouragement. There's the story of a wife praying for husband for 30 years, and then she's devastated when he finally comes to church and he doesn't commit himself to the Lord. And your point is, actually, this is quite a major step he's made, yeah but that isn't the end of the story. And and I love that. And i I wondered if you could just finish with just saying a tiny little bit. You you talk about Matthew's mathematics, about Matthew 9, 35 to 38. Could you just finish by just saying a little bit about what you mean by that term?
Speaker: Yeah, certainly. And it it's a good question because it kind of links with um what I hinted at just a few moments ago. So we know from that scripture, don't we, that the problem isn't with the harvest. The problem is with the workers. And one of the things that I do is I give this little illustration when i'm if I'm using that in a live context. In fact, ah I'm not even sure. I probably gave it in the book. But um the idea that when when we moved um from up north to...
Speaker: to Warwickshire, darling. And we didn't know that many people. And it became really frustrating because we just we just couldn't find stuff. We had a young daughter who was six months old and fairly demanding. And so like only one of us could look for lost items.
Speaker: at any one point. I remember saying, oh, it'd be great if we could just have somebody who could come and look after our daughter, which means that both of us could look for lost items and the chances are we'd find the the specific item we're looking for ah much more quickly, but we'd find other items.
Speaker: um that we didn't realise were lost, that we didn't realise we needed necessarily along the way. and And then I kind of, as any good preacher does, I stretch out that illustration for all it's worth and say, imagine what it would look like with four or 16. And I'm always a little bit careful with mathematics because I got unclassified. So I just warn you...
Speaker: ah But the notion being that and the more people we get looking, the more likely we are to find lost things and find the things that we know are lost.
Speaker: And so this idea that with with Matthew's mathematics, of course it is spiritual. And whenever I talk about things like this, it's not in any way to under underpin the spiritual element, but it is quite clear that Jesus says, pray that the Lord of the harvest send out workers, because mathematically, the more people we get looking, the more people we're going to find. And linking back to an earlier comment, the harvest really is plentiful. And I think we are we are seeing those shoots, aren't we, and at the moment. So yeah, let's get more people looking. Fantastic.
Speaker: Yeah. And at the beginning of of this podcast, i I loved it when you said that you get giddy for things and want to tell people all about them. And it just struck me, Acts 4, you know, um the place where they were meeting was shaken. They were filled with the spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. They got giddy for the gospel. So let's pray that God will give us that kind of impetus to get out there and do the work and work through the little yeses to the big yeses and on-premise as well. Thank you so much, Mark. That's been really encouraging and helpful. Pray that everybody listening today will be inspired to get out there and get into God's harvest field and do the work. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you, Simon. We will be back at a fortnight with another guest to encourage you in God's work of sharing the gospel in a lost world.
Speaker: See you then.
