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With Nigel Watts
103 Plays5 years ago
Nigel Watts is currently the British Isles Director of Precept Ministries. But he also served over 25 years in the British Army, many as a helicopter pilot in active war zones. What lessons has he learned about sharing your faith in such diverse situations as the Green Zone in Baghdad or a taxicab in Cornwall?
The Persuasive Evangelism Podcast is hosted by Andy Bannister and Kristi Mair. It is a production of Solas Centre for Public Christianity. Support us here.
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Transcript
Introduction: Hosts and Guest
00:00:08
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. My name is Kristy and I'm joined here by Andy Bannister. And we're actually talking to you live from Creation Fest in the middle of Cornwall, where sat in this glorious shed decorated, adorned by these lovely twinkle lights. And what shines more brightly is the person sat to my right, our special guest today, Nigel Watts, who is the UK Director of Precept Ministries. Nigel, welcome.
00:00:36
Speaker
Well, I tell you, it's great to be here at Creation Fest and with
Role Reversal on the Podcast
00:00:42
Speaker
you guys. So thank you for having me on the program. Oh, you're welcome. And I tell you what I'm looking forward to on this podcast, Christy, is Nigel is famous for sneaking up to people at conferences and getting them on his podcast. So I've been on your podcast.
00:00:53
Speaker
Christie is going to be on your podcast and before he ran away from interviewing for you, Christie, we grabbed him and sat him down in front of the microphone. So revenge is sweet. We've turned the tables on you. I feel hijacked, but that's ambushed. Ambushed. Good military term, but I think that's fine. Good stuff. Speaking of being ambushed, you have an incredible backstory, Nigel. Could you share with us some of the highlights of your life so far?
Nigel's Youth and Army Career
00:01:18
Speaker
Sure. I grew up in a lovely family, loving family. Went to what I would call a traditional Anglican church as a boy. I went to boarding school, was confirmed at 14, which was a meaningful experience for me. I actually led Bible studies at school when I was 17, 18. Left school at 18. Was not bright enough, academic enough to go to university because I was a sportsman. I loved sports, particularly tennis.
00:01:45
Speaker
And after a year of travelling around the world as a 19 year old, and by God's grace, just looking back on some of the stories God protected me in that year off is amazing, but I decided to join the army. And so I went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and after commissioning and a short time with an infantry battalion,
00:02:05
Speaker
I went to a place called Middle Wallop and I was taught to become a helicopter pilot. So I found myself aged 21 in the early 80s, having qualified, obviously fooled the system, and flew Gazelle helicopters and was posted out to Germany.
00:02:21
Speaker
and was there for my first tour three and a half years and had an amazing time in Germany and I met who's now my wife over in Germany so that was great and we got married in 1988 actually about three years after meeting in a place called St Aldex in Oxford
Journey to Christianity
00:02:44
Speaker
and we got married there and by that stage we'd left our time in Germany and we're back in the UK. I became an instructor, flying instructor at helicopters back at Middle Wallop and I had to confess I wasn't a Christian, I wasn't a born-again believer when we got married but I was very shortly after I
00:03:06
Speaker
became a Christian. So very early on in our marriage we became a Christian. That was really through the ministry of St Aldates and the ministry of Andover Baptist. A tremendous preacher preaching the word of God week in week out and it was a love of God really that reached out to me and I submitted my life to Christ back when I was 26, 27.
00:03:28
Speaker
And it's been a wonderful journey since but I did spend 25 years in the military flying helicopters and Went to many places around the world doing that Some very hairy times Spent two years supporting the special forces flying my helicopters and went to very far-flung places around the world and In some very dangerous places as well
00:03:57
Speaker
You know, as a saying, I kind of hear sometimes around kind of sort of faith in the military that, you know, there are no atheists in foxholes. Christians are fond of saying this, that, you know, under the pressure of combat and stuff, you know, it's hard to be an atheist. But sometimes I've heard that question turned around. So, you know, you become a Christian, you're there in the military, you're in some dangerous parts of the world.
Faith in Iraq
00:04:14
Speaker
Were you ever tempted to look around in some of those parts of the world and go, the world is such a messy place, you know, where is God in all of this? How do those questions kind of sit together? I think so, certainly. I mean,
00:04:23
Speaker
Looking back at the time that I was serving in Iraq, in Baghdad, living in the city of Baghdad, which was relatively secure, it was called the Green Zone at the time, but I had to travel from the city of Baghdad to the airport, which was about 10 miles away.
00:04:41
Speaker
And the road that went from the city to the airport was called Root Irish. I don't know why it's called Root Irish, but it was called Root Irish. And it was the most dangerous stretch of road in the whole of that country. And suicide bombers would wait on access roads to the motorway, waiting to drive into military convoys, military-looking vehicles, blow themselves out and blow you up as well.
00:05:06
Speaker
and I had to drive on that road every day twice a day and we had a in the ops room at the airport we had a digital map of the city of Baghdad and you would have red dots symbolizing explosions or killings that had happened and not infrequently there were these red dots on route Irish and I would look at the times that the incidents had happened thinking I was driving along that road 10 minutes before this explosion happened and I think
00:05:35
Speaker
What came to my understanding was that actually the days that we live on this earth are numbered by God. There was nothing that I could do to extend my days or shorten them in that situation. Psalm 23 verse 4 says, even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me. And that became a very dear verse to me and recognising that actually
00:06:05
Speaker
my days are numbered, all our days are numbered. And so although I was in the midst of horrific things that were going on,
00:06:14
Speaker
Seeing that, experiencing that, I knew through my faith that actually God was with me at that particular time. So I think it's in the difficult times of life, we know this from biblically, but also personal experience, that it's in those really tough times that we have to dig deep into our understanding of and relationship with God.
00:06:37
Speaker
God's Word is so important to you personally and in your ministry. You were telling me earlier on that you were leading Bible studies in Baghdad.
Bible Studies in Baghdad
00:06:47
Speaker
What did that look like?
00:06:48
Speaker
Well, yes, I was and there was a particular day, one day I was with a US chaplain actually and we were in the cookhouse eating a meal and there was this huge explosion which went off very close by.
00:07:08
Speaker
and the ground shook and it was a rocket attack on the airfield and it landed about 200 metres away, it destroyed a number of helicopters and they worked out that these rockets had come in from about 16 kilometres away. Through that I actually set up a Bible study
00:07:31
Speaker
with some guys using actually some of the precept Bible study material and although the numbers weren't great it was like an oasis to be able to meet together with other Christians to pray and I've never forgotten it actually it was in the midst of our enemies literally but there we were studying the Word of God
00:07:57
Speaker
and remembering that God was with us. So yes, the Bible is very important to me and I've always taken it with me wherever I went in the military and sought to in gentle ways really encourage others in their faith too.
00:08:11
Speaker
Obviously, doing Bible studies in the middle of a war zone with bobbins going off is kind of one thing. I mean, I did sort of youth work on a fairly dodgy part of London years ago, but it was not nearly as dramatic as that, Nigel. But thank you, Christy, for getting that piece of argument.
Faith's Urgency and Everyday Application
00:08:27
Speaker
I suppose my question for you, now you're back in the UK and doing the work you're doing with Precept, Christian Ministry and so forth, are there lessons you learnt in the war zones, are those lessons you learnt there about sharing your faith in that pressure cooker environment that actually have translated back into normal life here in the UK? I think absolutely. There's an urgency actually.
00:08:55
Speaker
Jesus said in Matthew 28, go make disciples. So in a war zone, I didn't know how many days I was going to be living. And so actually there was an urgency to communicate faith to others. And I think back here,
00:09:15
Speaker
that urgency has translated in a slightly different context. I think one of the things that I would say to those listening is we need to be open to the Holy Spirit's leading to share our journey, our testimony,
00:09:32
Speaker
with others. And God, if we really think about it, God gives us, he does give us opportunities to do that. The question is, are we looking out for those opportunities? I have a wonderful American friend of mine who refers to the Holy Spirit as Bob. I don't know why he calls the Holy Spirit Bob, but he does. And he gets up every morning and says, right, Bob, who have you got for me today?
00:09:52
Speaker
to share my faith with, to bless in some way. And I think that attitude of getting up saying, okay Lord, you know, as believers, followers of Christ, this is an exciting journey. And so I've sought to be open to God's leading to share my faith with people. And when I say share faith, I think referring to the person of Jesus is so important. We can refer to God
00:10:19
Speaker
But when you talk about Jesus, then you can ask people, what's your understanding of Jesus? I mean, we're at Creation Fest right now, aren't we? I remember two years ago, I actually left Creation Fest for a short time to go and play tennis.
00:10:32
Speaker
for the Inter-Services Championships at Wimbledon. You serve in many ways Nigel. I had to get a taxi from here, from Creation Fest, to the local Bodmin Parkway at Sea Station.
A Taxi Encounter with Bill
00:10:49
Speaker
And so this guy called Bill, he's a taxi driver. Bill picks me up at the gate and he takes me, and Bodmin Parkway is quite away from here actually, it's about half an hour. So I'm in the taxi and of course we set off and the first question that Bill asks me is, hey, what's that event that's going on in that place that I've just picked you up from? And I start to tell him about Creation Fest and it's a Christian conference and whatever. And this is what he says.
00:11:12
Speaker
You're not one of those religious types, are you? And for 10 minutes in the taxi, he is going off on one about religion and faith and how that is the root of all the problems in the world. And while he's talking, I'm praying. I'm saying, Lord, please, you know, I'm being attacked here by Bill, the taxi driver. How do I respond to this? And he was talking about religion and religious people and all this.
00:11:42
Speaker
I believe the Lord just gave me a question to ask him. And I said, Bill, have you heard of a guy called Jesus? And of course, he looks at me a little bit sort of quizzically as he's driving me in the taxi. I said, yes. I said, well, Bill, you know what?
00:12:01
Speaker
what you're talking about, religion or religious people and all that stuff, Jesus would agree with you. And in fact, Jesus reserved his harshest comments for the religious leaders of the day. So he'd be right on your case. And he sort of looked at me a bit shocked. And then I was able to tell him a little bit about Jesus. When he collected me 36 hours later, from Bodmin Parkway to bring me back to Christian first after my tennis event, I had been home and I got a tract.
00:12:29
Speaker
Beautiful, beautiful trap that I use a lot and it's the story of a guy in the First World War who's his best buddy standing next to him in the trenches and he's shot and he's about to die. And he turned to his buddy and said, I'm about to die, how do I get to heaven? And his best buddy, this guy's writing the tract looking back on this story, doesn't know.
00:12:51
Speaker
And he asked down the trenches, hey, Bert's about to die. He's asked, how do you get to heaven? Can we help him? And none of them could help him. And he writes in this tract. There we were, brought up in Christian England, so-called. And the guy's dying. You can't give him, you've got to tell him what the truth is. And eventually he gets to a machine gun at the end of the line. So this is the way. And he points to the verse, John 3.16. And he comes back down the trenches and he's able to read John 3.16 as this guy's dying.
00:13:20
Speaker
And at that moment, he's saved, literally. And so using a tract was very helpful. And so I brought one of these tracts. I didn't talk about Jesus at all in the taxi on the way back, because I thought Bill's thinking, oh, this guy's going to bash me over the head with a Bible. I didn't mention it. We talked about all sorts of other things. And then just as he dropped me off at the gate here at Creation Fest, I handed him the tract. I said, Bill?
00:13:47
Speaker
Here's something that I would love you to read. One day I would love to see you in heaven and this is a story that's going to help you on your way. Thanks for the taxi ride. Have a great day. And actually the rest of it is up to the Lord really.
00:14:05
Speaker
There's a couple of aspects of that story I like tremendously,
Evangelism and Personal Witnessing
00:14:09
Speaker
Nigel. I love the idea of actually, I think, tracks have become a little bit underrated in today's age. You know, I grew up in a world where they were more common. I think they are a bit less now, and the idea of having some, you know, resources that you can draw upon in your back pocket. I also love that story of the journey back of having the wisdom to go, you know, you had a quite intense conversation on the way out. On the way back, just get a bit of breathing space. Yeah. Because I think there are two mistakes, aren't there, that Christians make. Sometimes we don't press in. A lot of times we press in too much.
00:14:35
Speaker
But obviously you've got a military background and so some would say, well, it's alright for you, Nigel, you learn to fly helicopters and run through fire zones and drive down the Irish road and have bombs going up all around you. So, you know, a taxi driver is easy, really, but some people are just terrified of saying boo to a goose. But I admire the fact that you're actually quite a quietly spoken chap, but you just seem to have this quite confidence and willingness to step into these conversations. Did that just come naturally, or is that something any Christian can
00:15:03
Speaker
can learn to do just to look for those opportunities. I honestly think any Christian can learn to do it and you know often we know that the hardest thing is to do it the first time. I can never share my faith with anybody. Well, I think it's raised a really important point here and that's to recognize actually what Jesus has done in your life.
00:15:27
Speaker
And if you can identify those things that Christ has done in your life, I mean the first thing that happened to me when I became a Christian is I stopped swearing. I mean I'm in a military background, you know, there's swearing, there's pornography, there's all sorts of stuff, and I just stopped swearing overnight. And there are practical things that we can identify that Christ has actually done for us, it may be
00:15:47
Speaker
Well, you know, my relationship with my wife or my son or my parents has been restored. I'm actually less angry than I used to be. I'm more generous. You know, I talk about two conversions, the conversion of the heart, the conversion of the wallet. Well, actually, I'm prepared to give my money away now and actually set up a standing order to the church to do this. There are simple things that we can identify that Christ has made a difference in our life about. And those are the things that I think we can share.
00:16:16
Speaker
And I don't think, you know, I have a lovely Christian friend of mine in a precept called Bob Rean. He said, you know, if it was up to me to convert some people, there are some people out there that I wouldn't want to convert because they're horrible people. But actually, it's not my job to convert them. That's up to Christ. What we're to do is to be, we're not all called to be evangelists. Obviously, there's a gift of evangelism. But we are all called to be a witness. You know, we're called to be a witness.
00:16:43
Speaker
to Christ and I think we can all be witnesses to what Christ has done in our lives. So identifying those things and being open, as I said, to the Spirit of God to share those things and not being afraid. I think fear can stop us sharing our faith
00:16:59
Speaker
But there's a hurting world out there and we have such good news to share and those simple things. I remember plumbers, we've had plumbers, electricians come to our home and I've ended up talking to them about Christ. You think, well how did that happen? Well it's something that he said or maybe he's got a biblical name. I think this plumber, his name was Daniel. And I just said, oh you've got, oh that's a good biblical name.
00:17:23
Speaker
Do you know about Daniel in the Bible? And that would lead on to a conversation about biblical things and those one-on-one conversations. I think we have in our mind, to be an evangelist, you've got to stand on a stage in front of 2,000 people. We once had a dear lady, we were doing a training actually on
00:17:44
Speaker
evangelism and being a witness and at the end of the day the lady was very frustrated and said well I don't know what my spiritual gift is and and so we said well what do you do she said well I'm a taxi driver and so I take people from one place to another and this is what she said and I can't stop people I can't stop telling people in my taxi about Jesus but I don't know what my spiritual gift is
00:18:05
Speaker
And so we said to the other people in the workshop, well, what's her gift? She said, you're an evangelist. Am I? Am I? Yes, you're an evangelist. She didn't even know she was an evangelist. So there may be some folks out there that are already sharing their faith that don't recognize actually that they've got a gift of evangelism. But I would say just don't be fearful and be open to the Spirit of God and to seek to be obedient to that prompting. You know, we all recognize situations where we've been prompted and we stood back.
00:18:30
Speaker
because of fear or what are they going to say. But I just say go for it, you've got nothing to lose. Sometimes it turns out, not brilliantly, but you know what, God can use that as a seed in that person's life. You know, one of the numbers of points in that person's life to bring them to faith. And actually, when you look back on life, what's the most important thing that we're going to be doing? It's actually bringing people to faith because we're talking about eternal destinies here.
00:18:55
Speaker
Right,
Tools for Sharing God's Word
00:18:56
Speaker
right. And one of the things that you mentioned earlier on is how the Spirit applies God's Word to us. So just in this kind of last couple of minutes or so, I'd really love to hear, do you have any practical tools as to how we can not only have these conversations, but also just open up God's Word with those who don't yet know Him?
00:19:13
Speaker
Yeah, well, the ministry that we're involved with teaches people how to study the Word of God. We use a simple method called the inductive study method where we observe the text carefully, we want to interpret it in its context and then seek to live it out. If people want to know more about that, they can contact preset ministries. We would love to help them with that. And through that, I think scripture memorization is a really good one.
00:19:36
Speaker
Because if we are able to memorize scripture, then the Holy Spirit can bring those scriptures to mind at appropriate times. And you know what? Scripture is powerful. It's far more powerful than our own words. And if we can speak scripture, then God can take that and use that in a situation in a person's life that is supernatural and wonderful.
00:20:04
Speaker
That's great advice. Nigel, it's been an absolute privilege having you on the show. Thank you for the work that you and the folks through Precept do. And yeah, that's all from ours. So join us next time for another guest and for another location. And we'll see you on a future episode of PepTalk. Thanks for listening.