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With John MacKinnon
89 Plays2 years ago
Have you put a "no" in the mouth of a non-Christian friend before you've even invited them to investigate the Bible? Isn't it surprising how people we know well react once they're given an opportunity to speak about Christ? Today on PEP Talk we chat about some great resources helping Christians walk through the Bible with their enquiring friends - why not invite yours?
John MacKinnon is based in East Kilbride, Scotland, where he served as the Lead Pastor of Calderwood Baptist Church for more than 17 years. He previously served as an Evangelist and Bible Teacher in an itinerant capacity, with an emphasis on enabling churches to develop their members to make Jesus known amongst their friends. Currently he is Director of Evangelism at The Word One to One, where he rejoices in the privilege of drawing alongside local churches to encourage, equip and enable them to raise up an ever-increasing number of joyful bible sharers. He is married to Linda and they have three children, all adults, and he is Papa to five grandchildren who fill his life with so much fun.
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Transcript
Introduction and Co-host Welcome
00:00:11
Speaker
Well, hello and welcome to another edition of Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I am Andy Bannister from the Solar Center for Public Christianity, and I am joined by Claire Williams. Claire, how are you doing today? I'm good, thank you, Andy. Thanks for having me again.
00:00:26
Speaker
Oh, it's great to have you back doing the co-hosting while Christy, our usual co-host, is off doing something suitably PhD related, I think. Now, you're normally in London now, but you're in Hampshire right now, I believe. Yes, I am. I moved out of London a little while ago. Yeah.
00:00:42
Speaker
but I'm with family now, which has really got quite nice. Oh, very good. And yesterday was the hottest day of the year down in this country, full of steam, but also it's amazing that all of us on this podcast are actually still alive.
Guest Introduction: John McKinnon
00:00:53
Speaker
But we are joined by the always cool, always calm, always collected John McKinnon. John, how are you doing today? You're doing Andy and Claire great to be with you. It was even warm in Scotland yesterday.
00:01:07
Speaker
That is, that is something, when I used to live in Dundee and it got to like 22, Dundonian's like killed Ava. I used to, it was like 29 and he's killed perhaps. We made 29 yesterday. It was glorious. We hit 38 here in Wilkeshire and it was like, I am good. It's a little bit different down here. It's an ill-divided country. It is, it is.
00:01:29
Speaker
Now, John, you've done various things over the years, but that's the big two hats you had. Director of Evangelism for the Word One to One and Passion for Life. Ministries that we're big fans of, but not everybody may know those ministries, or they may have heard of one of them and not the other one. So before we dive into sort of more of the interview today, why don't you give people a bit, the sort of view from 30,000
What is Word One to One?
00:01:51
Speaker
people. What is the Word One to One? Why is Passion?
00:01:55
Speaker
Yeah, certainly. I mean, the word one-to-one has a very, very simple aim. What we want to do is see the local church raise up and send out joyful Bible-sharers. We just want to equip God's people to be confident in turning the pages of God's Word with those who don't yet know Jesus. And so we seek just to put a great resource in their hand, which is the Word of God with some very helpful accompanying notes that just let them walk through God's Word.
00:02:24
Speaker
with somebody who's exploring or somebody who doesn't know Jesus and who wants to find out more about what Christians believe and so that's really in essence what the word one-to-one is all about. In terms of a passion for life, a passion for life is a movement to really just build confidence in the life of local churches, in the life of local believers, to be confident in the gospel, confident in the word,
00:02:49
Speaker
confident in communicating and sharing the good news of Jesus with others.
Mission of Passion for Life
00:02:54
Speaker
And so in that aspect, I did a lot of work with church leaders. I've been a pastor myself for many years. And so I did a lot of work with church leaders and armour on the shoulder in just working on the culture.
00:03:06
Speaker
of evangelism, of mission locally and also in producing personal evangelism training resources for everyday believers just to grow in confidence and so that's been a big part of that and really encouraged a passion for life 2014 so about 350 churches, 2022 so over 850 churches engaging in different ways so it's been an encouraging time.
00:03:32
Speaker
Thank you so much for that, John. It's really interesting to hear your story about how you used to be a pastor for some years. How did you kind of make that transition to, I guess, evangelist and sometimes the role of a pastor can be quite local and really deeply committed to a certain group of people and actually evangelist has this itinerant
John McKinnon's Evangelism Journey
00:03:51
Speaker
focus. How did you manage that?
00:03:53
Speaker
Yeah, actually, to be honest clear, it's been a real sort of reverse engineering because I started life as an evangelist, but probably in the old fashioned mode of proclamation evangelist out there, when very often you felt all the responsibility was on you. You preached the gospel and everyone had invited you to come and speak. And so you almost felt as if the fruit of this depended upon you. Then you grew up a little bit in your faith and you understand the sovereignty of God more.
00:04:22
Speaker
And you know, you do a lot in your faith. But yeah, I was itinerant. So for many years I worked on the streets and the courts, I worked on the prison systems, I worked on the gang culture, and I was itinerant as an evangelist amongst schools and colleges. And so in a sense what happened to myself was that latterly in that itinerant role,
00:04:43
Speaker
I was working a lot with church leaders on how they can shape their strategy for reaching out into the community. And one of the things I felt there was that I had to go and be the lead pastor on a local church setting. And so we actually did that for 18 years. I felt as if I was doing an 18 year apprenticeship for what I'm doing now, in terms of trying to equip churches throughout the UK and Ireland. So it's been a fascinating journey.
00:05:11
Speaker
I have to say, one of the, I love, I mean, I love both those ministries, but word one-to-one, one of the things I love, because we've also seen it work, like, so personally, my wife's got a good friend of hers back in Scotland who would not profess any faith. And sort of asked her to plucked up the courage to sort of see if she could invite her to do the word one-to-one, expecting a bit of a pushback. It was like stunned when her friend said, Ashley, I'd love to take a look at the Bible. I've always wanted to, never had the chance. When can we start?
00:05:42
Speaker
And it's a very accessible thing to do with her friend. And I guess probably that's quite a common story, right? I think it is designed to be a surprisingly easy to use kind of resource, right? That almost anyone can get their teeth into, right?
00:05:58
Speaker
Very much so, Andy. I fell in love with the word 121 while I was still a pastor in a local church, so I started to encourage a number of our members to use it, and they started to use it myself. One of the things I found is it's so applicable
00:06:13
Speaker
It doesn't matter where a person's coming from, you know, the background, they can have no knowledge whatsoever, or they can have quite a bit of knowledge. It's fascinating. I was reading with a person there for a little while, similar age to myself. It would be early sixties, a little, you know, a couple of years older myself. And when we were reading, you know, the first episode together, he said to me, you know, he said, John, why have I never looked at this in my life?
00:06:39
Speaker
And he said, I must be the only person that gets to this age of life and hasn't looked. And I was able to say to him, look, you're not on your own. There are countless numbers of people. And yet at one level, it was such an easy ask. And so when we started, and he said yes, and so when we started to do that, just wonderful to do that. And then I've also worked with folks coming from very
00:06:57
Speaker
different backgrounds, quite broken backgrounds, quite abusive backgrounds. And again, just to encounter Jesus in the pages of God's Word. So yeah, very much so. And my journey with that began way before I ever started serving in the ministry.
Why Choose John's Gospel?
00:07:12
Speaker
I wanted to ask about the actual resource itself, so it's focused around John's Gospel, right? I love John's Gospel. Why did you choose John? Why is it John's Gospel? I know some university students will use Mark's Gospel, Mark Uncover, you know, that kind of resource to do one-to-one reading, but what is it about John's Gospel?
00:07:33
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I think we always say to folks there are many different ways in which you can read the Bible one to one with people. For the word one to one, when it was birthed it was John's Gospel that was used, an actual thought. When it was first modelled it was John's Gospel that was used.
00:07:49
Speaker
Why I love using it is that it blows away any preconception people often have about Jesus. And so when you turn to the first episode, the first 18 verses, one of the things that I always say in introduction is this is the eyewitness John's account. And I always say to folks that you might find it a little bit unusual. There's no baby Jesus, there's no manger, there's no angel, there's no stables, but there's some pretty big concepts. And so don't be surprised if we take a little bit of unpacking. But the good news is we've got the word, we've got some notes.
00:08:18
Speaker
And we can talk through that together. And so I kind of, I think John's Gospel itself, I mean, I love John's Gospel and sharing them with my faith. It's been one of my go-to's. I actually get converted through somebody sharing John 10 with me. So John's Gospel has always been, you know, happened for me. But it's working very, very well.
00:08:36
Speaker
Incidentally, we often get asked, could you do the same for Mark? Or could you do the same for Luke? We've actually just released the Acts of the Apostles, because many people who read right through John often say, what happens next? And so we get to the story of the early church and the Acts of the Apostles. But yeah, I mean, John's Gospel was just where it was birthed. And we wouldn't say it's the only one you can do this from. You can do that from anywhere. But it works so well.
00:09:02
Speaker
And sometimes folks who struggle to get confident in sharing their faith, and sometimes it's the only ever read the first 18 verses, but a time you get to the end of the first 18 verses, you've been introduced to Jesus as the creator, you've been introduced as the one who is the source of everything,
00:09:19
Speaker
you've been introduced to the one who can give life and himself, you've been introduced to the one who declares that we can personally know God through him. So it's phenomenal in terms of the first 18 verses. And even if that was all an unbelieving friend read with you, and they didn't continue to read John's Gospel with you, you can walk away from that and know that you've shared a lot about your faith in Christ.
00:09:44
Speaker
I love the fact you've got acts coming now. And I guess if that's a success and it keeps being a success, in 10 years time will be what would one to one, Philemon edition or something. Do you want something I found interesting and I'd love you to perhaps chat about
Challenges in Evangelism
00:10:01
Speaker
this for a...
00:10:01
Speaker
for a moment or two. I think one stumbling block that Christians can sometimes have when it comes to evangelism is just not thinking our friends are going to be interested in the Bible and that there's going to be all this kind of baggage we have to deal with before we can even sit down with them and open the Bible. And I think as we saw personally with my wife's friend, actually sometimes
00:10:21
Speaker
those objections are more on the minds of the Christians than the non-Christians. I mean, yeah, some non-Christians do have questions. Can I trust the Bible? And there's great apologetics on that. Claire, I've done a lot of stuff on that. I've done stuff on that. Every apologist, bread and butter, why trust the Bible? But for some people, that's not an issue, right? They're ready. And I wonder whether we sometimes, we're so afraid that we miss the fact they're ready to go. So any sort of thoughts on that? Because I love the fact word one-to-one doesn't start with an apology. It just starts with,
00:10:51
Speaker
I love a lot of apologetics and I love many things that are produced in so many different areas. I think the word one to one comes slightly differently because it doesn't start with that whole business of persuasion. It goes straight to proclamation, but it's actually just proclamation straight out of the word of God. One of the things I keep saying to people about inviting their friends to look at God's word with them is never say
00:11:21
Speaker
there's no for them. And too many of God's people in actual fact think, oh, no, no, they'll say no. And I just keep saying to people, don't say a person's no for them. Just ask. And sometimes we hesitate to ask because we think the rejection is going to be rejection of us. Ultimately, it's not rejection of us. And at the end of the day, I just keep saying to folks, if I were to simplify it, don't say there's no for them.
00:11:49
Speaker
Let them say no if they're going to say no. But the counter to that is also true. It's remarkable how many times when you do say to a non-Christian that they actually turn round and say something like, there's some thinking of a couple of examples, I invited somebody to come and look at the first 18 verses with me and they said to me, non-Christian, would you do that for me?
00:12:14
Speaker
And that's powerful. Would you do that for me? Would you actually just take time to look at that? And I always say that a lot of God's people, as they start to do this, is just slow down as you read the Word of God. And what you start to do is you rediscover the wonder for yourself, because sometimes we start to speed read the Word. But when you start reading with an unchristian, you slow down and you rediscover something of the wonder of the Word of God, and it's just beautiful.
00:12:40
Speaker
Yeah, I can imagine there's some element of personal discipleship that happens when you're going through that with a non-Christian. And yeah, as you say, like rediscovering the word.
Life Mission 2022 Overview
00:12:51
Speaker
I think it's amazing. I really do. Tell us a bit about...
00:12:56
Speaker
a passion for life and specifically the life mission of 2022. Yeah, the passion for life was interesting because we decided it was run in 2010, 2014, and initially we were going to go sort of 2018. That didn't happen. Then of course we all went into lockdown, the pandemic, everything else, which actually was wonderful at one level for evangelism because people were asking some serious questions about their own mortality and everything else.
00:13:24
Speaker
But the big challenge was, would the church be ready, having navigated all the strange places we found ourselves, to rally around mission? I knew that was going to be quite a bit of a tough call. And probably to be honest, there were some who managed, there were some who didn't. But there were two things we did with it, which I think were helpful. One was that we still wanted to focus on a nationwide month of mission.
00:13:49
Speaker
and so we aim for that sort of March-April 2022. But we also had the little strap line, a month of mission but a lifetime of evangelism.
00:13:58
Speaker
And so, therefore, one of the joys of doing Life22 was that that's something you can use right through the whole of the year. And so, for instance, even around church, we took Life22, we did all the personal ventures and training resources for using a number of them because they were designed to be bespoke to whatever was helpful to the local context. And we just took four words. We just said, you know, pray, host, invite, follow.
00:14:24
Speaker
and we unpack those words for our people. And that then equipped them, yes, to do some events that we were putting on, but it also equipped them personally, just to be sharing Jesus in their own homes or using the word one-to-one or articulating the gospel from one of the training videos they'd done or whatever else. So the whole design
00:14:43
Speaker
was really just to grow and to build confidence in the Gospel and the Word of God and the desire to make Jesus known. And some of that began understandably right back with pre-evangelism, opening your eyes to the contacts God has given you and beginning just to develop those relationships. And also I think allowing people to understand that the whole of evangelism is constantly showing and reaping. We never quite know whether we're showing or reaping at any point in time in the way
00:15:11
Speaker
Do we start this you what God is doing? That's brilliant. And as I say, I mean, our passion for life was such an exciting kind of series of events, either privilege being involved in events around the country. And but I want to pick up something, John, that you said moments ago in the previous question I asked you where you said about, you know, don't don't don't do that. Don't answer the no for your unbelief. Yeah. Well, I got this hunch that
00:15:39
Speaker
One of the struggles, I think, another of the struggles that we, that folks have is around that whole area. And so I'll just press into that a little bit further. And that's the whole question of how we invite. Because the, built into all of these events, whether it's passion for life, Word One to One, you know, Alpha, Christianity Explored, all of those require Christian to actually do a little bit of inviting. And some of the invites, some of them are slightly bigger invites, some it's a lesser invite. But I think a lot of us are just afraid of inviting.
00:16:07
Speaker
Right, we're just afraid of
Tips for Easier Invitations
00:16:09
Speaker
that. I just love to say a few things. How can we get more confident at the inviting part? Because as you say, we might get thrown back on our Facebook, we might not.
00:16:21
Speaker
No, I think it's good for us to acknowledge that all of us find it hard to invite. So I think that's helpful. Sometimes we tune into lots of very helpful ministries who are encouraging us and equipping us and enabling us. But they're not always there when we're making the invite and the invites rejected. And so I think it's good, first of all, to acknowledge that none of us find this easy. And it doesn't matter how long you've been doing it. I think I always encourage folks when they're
00:16:50
Speaker
beginning to think intentionally about inviting someone to something, whether it's something in a local church, whether it's to read the word one-to-one, whether it's some key event. First of all, beginning prayer. Invitation comes much easier when we've been praying first. But I think one of the other things is
00:17:09
Speaker
it becomes much easier to invite people when we've been deepening the relationship we have with them. And so the reason we said, pray, host, invite, was that we really wanted to actively encourage people to be hosting non-Christian friends, you know, for breakfast, for lunch, for dinner, you know, have them in their homes, let them see them for who they are, let them meet, you know, some of their, we are the wacky Christian friends if they'd be, you know, but, you know, just host them. Christians have been very good
00:17:38
Speaker
at hospitality. But hospitality has normally been for entertainment rather than for engagement. And so I think often I found that a lot of God's people are really good at throwing barbecues and doing great meals and having their brothers and sisters in Christ around. And they can sit to the small hours
00:17:58
Speaker
you know, encouraging one another and, you know, just enjoying all that. And I say, try and capture some of that and think about it engaging, you know, the person that lives beside you, you know, the person you work with, you know, just it's almost that thing. Stop trying to be interesting, but be interested.
00:18:16
Speaker
in those that don't know Jesus and just let them see you. You don't have to be interesting in and of yourself, just be interested in them. And I think when we deepen the relationship, I think what happens there is that it becomes that little bit easier to invite. I think the hardest invites are the very almost like the cold call invite, you know, when suddenly we've not mentioned anything to them and, hey, how do you fancy, you know, it's like, whoa, where did that come from?
00:18:43
Speaker
So I think sometimes it's deep in the relationship for me at the invite. But I think sometimes the other thing we need to do is just to think about what we're inviting them to and how we would go about that. And as we do that, be very natural.
00:18:57
Speaker
you know, be very relaxed. So sometimes when I'm inviting someone to look at the word, for instance, I've often maybe had a conversation with them, you know, about, you know, they know I'm a Christian or they know I read the Bible daily and something might just come up and I might just say to them gently, winsomely, you know, how much have you read? And it's interesting, particularly myself talking block to block, how much have they read? Often they'll say, you know, well, you know,
00:19:23
Speaker
Well, I've heard a few people speaking about things and I say, well, you know, just let me push back a little bit on that. How much have you read? And they'll say, well, yeah.
00:19:32
Speaker
When I think about it, I've not read much. And I think that's one of the great things about inviting somebody to read the Word of God is that often people have not read
Being Genuine in Faith Sharing
00:19:40
Speaker
much. And we're not inviting them to hear our view of the Christian faith. We're not inviting them to hear us, can I give a three point sermon? You know, an actual fact, we're just inviting them to turn the pages and to look at God's Word together. And so I think it's just to think about what you're going to say, how you're going to invite somebody.
00:19:55
Speaker
And I think that also applies to some event that we're running, just to think about the invitation. But to be quite intentional about it, so that they do have an opportunity to say yes or no. And not to get all hung up when they say no. I don't hear somebody saying no to me as no, never, never, never. I only hear them saying no, it's not yet for them. And look for the other, the next person to ask.
00:20:23
Speaker
So John, I'm going to push you a little bit more on this one. So I think I feel personally really inspired and possibly even convicted actually, to do more of the inviting and the hosting that you're talking about, to just read the Bible rather than just having some sort of apologetic conversation, which again, I love apologetics, as you know. But okay, so what about the perspective of the person? What if the Christian might be thinking, like you say, doing the thinking for the non-Christian friend thinking
00:20:51
Speaker
Is it kind of disingenuous of me to trap someone in my house for 90 minutes to read the Bible? Like, am I inviting them into something where they're doing something again? Do you know what I mean? Like, am I kind of being shady about this to get them to read the Bible or to have them over for dinner and then...
00:21:08
Speaker
uh you know shove the gospel down their throat as well as you know the roast lamb and Yorkshire pudding i don't i don't i just i'm just thinking because i can i can imagine some people are really quite nervous about but being accused of that sort of thing i i think that the roast lamb and Yorkshire pudding is good to put a thrilled anyway
00:21:26
Speaker
But I think it's not about being disingenuous. I mean, I don't think we ever tried to do anything from the back door. I think it's important for you to the front door. I think one of the great things about hosting is we're actually just inviting people to come and do a life with us, to be involved in that and to see that in us. I don't think we need to force anything. I think we just need to get into each other and they start to see what motivates you, what takes up so much time in your life,
00:21:53
Speaker
And then to be very intentional when it comes to the invitation, so if it is to read the Word of God, is to say, well, you know, I'm a Christian and you know that I'm committed to that. Have you ever looked at the Word of God? And, you know, would you like to? Is that something you'd like to do? And, you know, because I'd love to spend time with you doing that. The other thing is to try and think about where you might meet.
00:22:15
Speaker
and to make sure that they're comfortable with that. We always encourage folks, when you think about an invitation, look to make that an environment they're comfortable in. One of the great joys of the word one-to-one is the way in which we'll produce it in those little bootlets, because again, nobody's breaking out a big ESV study Bible and kind of, you know, whack, you've come to sermon.
00:22:36
Speaker
Well, you know, I mean, psychologically it's, you know, very acceptable, you know, to make parties, you know, and it's a joy to be able to do that. So I think it's not about being disingenuous. I mean, I think we want to invite people, you know, into homes to meet, you know, our loved ones, to meet our friends, you know, to enjoy that kind of, you know, table fellowship.
00:22:59
Speaker
And that table fellowship always leads to conversations around the things that really matter in life. And the thing that really matters in life for you is your living faith in Christ. And it's that that becomes the springboard for the little opportunity to say, would you like to look at this or would you like to, or if there was something coming up?
00:23:18
Speaker
you're able to say, you remember we had that conversation about this, got a friend of mine, and they're going to be speaking about this, and you'll like this person because they're funny, they're witty, whatever else it might be, but they really know their stuff. So sometimes thinking about the person, this is not saying a no for them, but thinking about the right context, the right invitation for them. Sometimes it is just directly grappling with the Word of God, sometimes it is coming to hear,
00:23:45
Speaker
someone who speaks very well on some issue, subject, whatever. Sometimes it is just inviting them to church. I mean, the number of believers that have lost confidence in inviting people to church.
00:23:59
Speaker
we should be confident in the churches that we're in and the people that are going to meet just to say, yeah, do you want to come along and see church? People sometimes say to me, say, you know, the building will fall down. You know, if I walk in and I say, look, it doesn't fall down. And it's not falling down yet. So at the end of the day, sometimes you just have that kind
Hospitality in Evangelism
00:24:17
Speaker
of confidence. And it's amazing how many times when people just ask one simple invite, you know, you want to come for lunch, or do you want to come to church? You want to read the word? It just opens up an incredible door of opportunity.
00:24:29
Speaker
This has been great, John. Lots of really good practical wisdom there. And by the way, if anyone listening to this needs practice on hospitality, I'm sure this, you know, you could invite Claire or John or me to try the roast lamb. Absolutely. We'll test the food for you before you invite. Very interesting things is, and we need to leave it here, but I just leave this to think about this. I'm struck by in recent months, we keep coming back to this theme of hospitality from different voices, different people. There is really something
00:24:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I mentioned it before on the show. There's a really good book on this, Rosaria Butterfield's book, The Gospel Comes with a House Key. It's a really thoughtful book on just the importance, the significance of hospitality, because it's very, very disarming when you have someone in for food. But John, thank you for bearing with us and answering our questions and just sharing so much with us. Blessings on all that you're doing. Thank you guys.
00:25:27
Speaker
And Claire and I will be back in two weeks time with another guest. Whether we'll have roast lamb and Yorkshire puddings, tremendous species in. Whether we'll have melted another heat wave, who knows. But for now, we have been pep talk and I hope you enjoyed it. See you again soon. Bye now.