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With Matthew Mittelberg
315 Plays8 months ago
If you know the life-changing experience of tasting traditional Japanese ramen, you know it is something you want everyone to experience. Is it the same with our Christian experience? Today on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi speak with our ramen-loving guest about the roles of enthusiasm and duty in our evangelistic life.
Matthew Mittelberg is an experienced Christian teacher and apologist, serving as Director of Content at Apologetics Inc. He has spoken to thousands at universities, churches, conferences and youth events in both the US and the UK and his talks have been seen online hundreds of thousands of times. Matthew completed his MA in Philosophy of Religion at Palm Beach Atlantic University, received his BA from Grand Canyon University, and a certificate in theology from Wycliffe Hall at Oxford University. Find Matthew on YouTube here.
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Transcript
Introduction of Matthew Mittleberg
00:00:10
Speaker
Well hello and welcome everybody to another packed edition of pep talk the persuasive evangelism podcast I am as ever and always Andy Bannister from Solas and I'm joined as ever always through the other side of the country by my sparkling co-host Christy Mayer who is full of the joys of spring or something today
00:00:32
Speaker
How are you doing? Unbelievable. I'm doing well. Thanks, Andy. It's good to be with you and with our guests today. Yes, we do have a guest. It'd be a very boring show without a guest. We were just sort of interviewed thin air, but we are joined all the way from the other side of the pond from Florida. We're not envious at all about the weather over there. We are joined by Matthew
Role and Mission of Apologetics Inc.
00:00:50
Speaker
Mittleberg. Matthew, welcome to pep talk. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
00:00:54
Speaker
It's great to have you on and people who recognize the name may recognize the name because we had another member of your clan on not so long ago. I had your dad on the show and I think you were telling me before we press record that you taught him everything he knows, right? Yes, yes. He's an up and coming apologist, but I'll get him on the right track, you know, soon.
00:01:14
Speaker
So Matthew, you work for an organization over there called Apologetics Inc. I confess when I heard that, it's such a wonderful American way of naming these. I immediately thought of Monsters Inc. Apologetics Inc. What is Apologetics Inc. and what do you get up to as you work with them?
00:01:31
Speaker
Yeah, I love I love our ministry. I also thought of Apologetics Inc. for Monsters Inc. the first time I heard of it. And I immediately thought of the Monsters Inc. logo, which is we scare because we care. And I thought we share because we care. Exactly.
00:01:47
Speaker
But yeah, I love our ministry. So it's a speaking ministry. We've got several speakers on our team, including Mike Sherard, Alicia Wood, Megan Allman. And it's an incredible ministry. We've got articles, podcasts. We've got our website, apologetics.org. And we do speaking and all sorts of different things. So it's
00:02:07
Speaker
It's a great ministry. It's dedicated to helping people to see the goodness, truth, and beauty of the gospel and demonstrating that. So yeah, love apologetics, Hank.
00:02:18
Speaker
That's really cool, Matthew. Well, we're really pleased that you're joining us today. And we'd love to hear just a little bit more about your own story, like what got you into apologetics for yourself, apart from your father, obviously, maybe.
Matthew's Journey into Apologetics
00:02:29
Speaker
But yeah, yeah. Well, so growing up, I kind of viewed that as my dad's thing. It was sort of like apologetics, like that's his thing. You know, I went to conferences, I heard him and Uncle Lee, at least drove will speak at different different conferences. And
00:02:45
Speaker
But for me, it wasn't something that I really took much interest in until I was in high school and I went to Summit Ministries and Summit Ministries is a worldview apologetics training camp. And I went for two weeks and suddenly I was surrounded by my peers and we were all asking these questions together. And I realized that not only did I care about these things, but I actually had some answers because of being around my dad, being around Lee Strobel and others.
00:03:12
Speaker
And I realized that I was actually really interested in this. So when I went off to college, I started an apologetics club and I led that for a couple of years and really felt to calling into apologetics. And then I went over to the aka and studied at the aka and loved that. That's where I first was introduced to Andy and heard him speak and heard him teach and was captivated by his wit and humor and as well as skill.
00:03:42
Speaker
Yes. And then I worked for the DACA and NRZIM for a couple years as a speaker and recently just completed my master's at Palm Beach Atlantic University in philosophy of religion. So that's sort of a 30,000 foot view of my journey into apologetics.
Enthusiasm in Faith Sharing
00:04:03
Speaker
One of the things that strikes me about that and strikes about you in general, Matt, which is going to be also a very sort of hopefully nice segue into what we're going to talk to you about today, is I love the sort of enthusiasm and the energy that comes out. I wish people could also see the video as well as hear you, because there's everything about you that just says, I love Jesus, I'm passionate about communicating him. And I just thought it'd be great to talk to you a little bit about that whole subject of enthusiasm, because it's often been noted, I think, hasn't it,
00:04:31
Speaker
as human beings and as Christians, we find it very easy being enthusiastic about all kinds of things. We can be enthusiastic about where we've been on holiday, about our sports teams, about our hobbies. I mean, you get Kristy talking about her collection of 17th century lavatory covers. I mean, she finds it so exciting. But then... Not true.
00:04:52
Speaker
Then what happens for many of us, it comes to Jesus, who is the most central thing in our lives, and we suddenly clam up. We go weird, and we go nervous, and we don't know how to do it. So talk to us about enthusiasm for a bit, because when we were chatting before, you used this lovely phrase, enthusiastic evangelism. And I think there's something here. There's a challenge here, but also it's an opportunity here.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah. What is enthusiastic evangelism? Yeah. Well, I think we are enthusiastically evangelistic about all sorts of things. We all love to share the things that we love. Whether it's a sports team or a movie or a favorite series or a favorite food or a favorite restaurant, we love to bring people along and get them to enjoy the things that we enjoy and love the things that we love.
00:05:41
Speaker
And some of us can't stop doing that. Some of us are just promoters naturally, and we can't quietly enjoy something by ourselves. We need everybody else to enjoy it just as much as we do. And so I would definitely say I'm a promoter, but both me and my dad were just natural promoters. As soon as we find a shower head that we like, we're calling up our friends and going, oh, you got to get this thing. It's amazing. It'll change your life.
00:06:04
Speaker
For me, one of those main things is I love to share authentic Japanese ramen. I think if you've never experienced excellent ramen before, it's amazing because most people, when they think of ramen, they think of a gray styrofoam cup and freeze dried noodles. That just breaks my heart because ramen is so much more than that. It's an incredible, life-changing food.
00:06:28
Speaker
And so I've brought lots of people along with me to enjoy and to taste and see that ramen is delicious. And they do and they're excited about it and I love to share that.
Approaching Evangelism with Compassion
00:06:40
Speaker
And yet, so many of us when we think about our faith,
00:06:44
Speaker
We and when we try to share our faith, it comes, I think, more from a place of guilt than from a place of enthusiasm, because we know we know we're supposed to do this thing. And yet we don't feel like we've done it enough. We don't feel like we are good at it. We don't feel necessarily prepared for it.
00:07:02
Speaker
And so we kind of squeeze out the words, you know, do you know Jesus? And, you know, people go, I don't really want to talk about that. And it's like, oh, thank you. Thank goodness. I don't have to talk about this. And and we should be sad at that moment. You know, I
00:07:19
Speaker
I think we should instead go, oh no, I want to talk about this. Don't you want to talk about Jesus? He's the most amazing person I know. So how do we change that mindset? And I think partially it's just acknowledging the fact that God's not mad at us. He's not mad at us. That's not his primary emotion towards us. He's compassionate towards us. He loves us.
00:07:40
Speaker
I like the way Dan Ortland says, you know, his compassion is a pinprick away. That's his attitude towards us. And so when we think about him that way and we work about understanding the love of God for us, hopefully that begins to transform the way that we think about sharing him with others. We begin to understand that we love Jesus and we love talking about Jesus and we love thinking about Jesus. And how can that bleed over in the way that we share our faith with others?
00:08:11
Speaker
That sounds, it sounds so, so, so good, Matthew. I think one of the things that I'm thinking, looking outside, and even though there's a little bit of sunshine, just feels a little bit gray and dark, is like, how do you go about cultivating this kind of enthusiasm when you just feel a little bit like meh? What's it like to get to that place where, as you're saying, it's a pouring over and an outworking of loving the most important person in our lives. How do we get there?
00:08:41
Speaker
Yeah, I think somewhat it's a mentality shift, right? I think sometimes we feel like it's all up to us to do this. It's all up to us to perform well and to realize, no, Jesus promised that he is with us to the ends of the earth and to the end of the age. And he's working in and through us to reach people and to recognize that God can use our small and feeble efforts
00:09:09
Speaker
We don't have to be the ultimate end all, be all expert. We don't have to be Billy Graham. We don't have to be Michael Green. You know, we can just be who we are in sharing our faith. And, you know, like my dad talks about, you can share your faith in the way that God's made you with the personality that he's given you. You don't have to try to look like somebody else or share in a style that doesn't fit your personality. You know, if you are if you're a quiet and shy person, make a friend and talk to them and invite them over and have a cup of tea.
00:09:38
Speaker
you know, share the gospel that way. If you're a very loud and friendly person, you know, talk to strangers, go do that. You know, you're going to naturally be equipped to do that. But to actually just change your mindset to realize God can use me
00:09:56
Speaker
me to do this. He doesn't have to use me. There's no requirement, and yet he chooses to. He chooses to use all of us because that's the Great Commission. It's the Great Commission, not the Great Suggestion. He is calling all of us to share our faith, but he's with us in the midst of that.
00:10:17
Speaker
You know, very much, of course, the other side of the coin to the enthusiasm piece is the guilt mode, right? Which obviously is where so many Christians start operating from. And one of the challenges there, let's get your thoughts on Matthew, is that, okay, on the one hand,
00:10:34
Speaker
We don't want evangelism just to become a duty. We feel guilty. We know we need to do it. It's a bit like taking the garbage out or cleaning the 17th century toilet covers. Whatever it is we know we need to be doing it. It's never going to speak to me again often.
00:10:49
Speaker
I can't believe it. But on the other hand, there is also a duty component because part of Christian discipleship is evangelism. Scripture is quite clear on that. How do we balance that? How do we ensure that the duty part is we do it as part of our service to the Lord, but it doesn't just become a drudge? Is there some middle ground that we should be thinking around there?
Evangelism as an Adventure
00:11:14
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I think one one important part of that is just to recognize that God never calls us to do something that is not good for us. You know, when he's calling us to do this, it's not because he wants us to, you know, do some chore that he's unwilling to do. No, no, this is this is something that is good for us as well as the other person. And not only good for us, it's actually addicting. It's actually an adventure. My dad wrote a book on this called The Unexpected Adventure. And
00:11:43
Speaker
actually, when you realize that you can make a difference in someone's eternity, it is unbelievable. The feeling of adrenaline, the feeling of joy and realizing that you've helped somebody to take a step closer to the Lord is amazing. There's nothing like it in the Christian life to realize that you are equipped to do this and that you can make a difference in somebody's eternity. I remember one of the first times that I had the opportunity to do this, I was in the UK doing a
00:12:12
Speaker
series of events at University of Bath. We were doing these lunch talks and evening talks. I met with this guy named Kyle. We met afterwards, and he had a feedback form that he had filled out. I realized that he was in the Christian club, so I assumed he was just asking on questions on behalf of another.
00:12:33
Speaker
But I just took some time to share with him, to talk with him, and I realized Kyle doesn't actually know God. So I talked with him more and I said, Kyle, have you ever made a decision to follow Jesus yourself? Or have you just always kind of assumed that you were a Christian because you grew up in the church and you go to this Christian club?
00:12:51
Speaker
And he said, well, more than a second, I've never really done that before. And I said, man, that's, that's really the beginning of an intimate relationship with the Lord is really taking that step to say, yes, Lord, I want you to be my Lord and savior. I want to repent of my sin. I want to turn and follow you.
00:13:07
Speaker
So we talked throughout the week and at the very last night he came up to me and he said, I've done that now. I've said yes to Jesus. Thank you so much for helping me to realize that I needed to do that. And just the joy that I felt in that moment of like, wow, I can do this. God can use me to reach somebody and to bring them closer to the Lord.
00:13:30
Speaker
Matthew, we love your heart. I mean, it's contagious just hearing this. And I think Andy and I would both attest to the fact that it is one of the most life giving things that you can do, isn't it, is to have these kind of conversations with people that the Lord has brought into our paths. I think just thinking briefly about the UK context in particular, I don't know if it's like this for you in the US. But at the moment, there's a I guess there's a just a risk. There's an emphasis on activism. So in
00:14:00
Speaker
In recent conversations, I think it's come to the fore, quite rightly, that there's a sense of activism where it's not so much duty, it's not duty-bound evangelism, but there's a freneticism around evangelism that you have to be doing it, you have to be doing it quickly, and you have to be doing it really loudly.
00:14:18
Speaker
really almost enthusiastically like you're saying. And that can almost lead to an empty, just an emptiness and a numbness and a sense that I have to be doing this in order to be seen to be doing the right thing. And it's just one of those things that's come up quite recently. And I'm just wondering what are your, what might you say to someone who could be listening to this podcast and thinking, I love the heart behind this.
00:14:43
Speaker
but I'm just hearing activism. I'm hearing the call to do more. What would you say to that? Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I've not heard about that. That's certainly not the mindset I think in the American culture where I think most Christians just don't even know that they're personally called to do evangelism. They think that's the pastor's job. They think that's the missionary's job. I'll donate some money to some missions trip to do that.
00:15:10
Speaker
So it's interesting to hear in the UK context that there's kind of this emphasis on that. So what I would say is all of the Christian life is lived out of obedience to the reality that we've already been loved and accepted by Christ.
00:15:27
Speaker
This is nothing that we're called to do is something that we're supposed to do in order to be accepted by God, in order to earn our salvation, in order to be made right with God. Actually, we are already made right with Him. We've already been redeemed by what Jesus did on the cross. And what we do to obey God, what we do to follow God ought to flow out of
00:15:52
Speaker
the love that we have for him, the realization of the joy that we have because he saved us. And that ought to, you know, I love the way that C.S. Lewis puts it that, you know, if you are following him, it means that you ought to be trying to obey him, but in a less hurried way, in a less hurried way, in a way that is not trying to earn his acceptance, but in realizing that you've already been accepted.
00:16:20
Speaker
And I love that in a less hurried way kind of statement. And I often think about that in my own life where, you know, am I just doing all of these things because I think I need to be accepted by God? Or am I just following in obedience and trusting that the Lord will work through my efforts? And actually, I think the
00:16:40
Speaker
the steady as you go kind of mentality of, yes, I'm going to obey, but I'm going to also consider rest. I'm also going to consider balance. I'm also going to consider spending time with the Lord. You know, even Jesus, he took time alone in prayer quite frequently because he needed that time with the Lord to recharge.
00:17:02
Speaker
Yeah, if you're listening to this and you feel like you're just on the hamster wheel of events and serving and doing all of these things and you're not being filled up with the spirit, I think there is balance there. Yeah. I think also as well, I just wonder as well, that also connects back to the evangelism
00:17:21
Speaker
piece, the enthusiasm piece, right? Because if you're just doing a sense of freneticness, I think people are going to spot that on there. It's funny, it's in Hamster Wheel. I mean, any thoughts of that scene? I can't remember if it's Pets at Home 1 or Pets at Home 2, where you've got that hamster, there's that line, I run, I run, I run, I've gone nowhere.
00:17:37
Speaker
And actually, and again, as you, we started talking about, you know, we took the hobbies and things, you know, I think the most passionate evangelists for say a hobby or a product and not those who are trying desperately to sell it to someone who just talks about the thing that they love just because they love it. And then actually people are drawn to that. So, so yeah, I wonder whether there's something here too, that if we relax a little bit, the evangelism is more persuasive.
00:18:03
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think enthusiasm has to be genuine. It has to be genuine. If it's coming from a false sense of trumped up enthusiasm or fake enthusiasm, people can see right through that. Like you say, it's the salesman that actually truly believes in the product.
00:18:25
Speaker
that actually sells the product in a way that makes you want to actually buy the product. And it's the same way with, you know, if I'm introducing you to my friend and you can tell that I really actually love this friend and I actually think the world of them, that is when you go, oh, I want to meet that person. I really want to get to know that person.
00:18:42
Speaker
And so when it flows out of a genuineness, out of a desire for people to actually know Christ, I think that's where that comes. And I think this is links to one other thing I wanted to talk about, which is the fact that I think a lot of people feel guilty because of sort of a post-truth mentality. And I'm sure you guys have talked about this before, but just the idea that it's our opinions and our feelings are more important than truth and objective facts.
Defending Faith Sharing
00:19:11
Speaker
And this is this was a survey in America, American Christian millennials, but Barna did a survey that said that forty seven percent agree with the statement that it is wrong to share one's personal beliefs with someone of a different faith in hopes that they will one day share that same faith. That is mind blowing. Forty seven percent think it's wrong to do that. And it I think it links to this mentality of if I'm trying to change someone's mind, I'm trying to
00:19:40
Speaker
get them to change their mind, then that is wrong. That's a judgment. 40% in that same survey said that if someone disagrees with you, it means that they're judging you. Boy, that's a dangerous mindset because number one, it's self-contradicting because if you disagree with everyone who says that disagreement is judgment, then you're judging them.
00:20:01
Speaker
But number two, we have to agree that if Christianity is true, then this message is good news. People actually need to know Jesus. They need to know the Savior. They ought to want to know the Savior because He's the greatest reason for existence. He's the purpose of our lives. He's the comforter of our souls. And we ought to want to share Him with others.
00:20:26
Speaker
So I think we need to kind of get rid of that mindset and realize that it's actually a good thing for us to share with others. It's a good thing for us to want to talk to others about Christ. Matthew, thank you so much. I think we're nearly at time now, but what a lovely kind of place to land it on, thinking about the goodness of Jesus Christ himself. Thank you so much. Just as we finish, Matthew, where can we go to find out more about you and to find you online if we wanted to?
00:20:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, apologetics.org is the ministry that I work for. That's our website, as well as I've got a YouTube channel. If you look up my name, Matthew Middleberg or youtube.com slash Matthew V. Mitt at Matthew V. Mitt. That's my YouTube handle. So I've got a new YouTube channel where I'm posting content and trying to be helpful to people and especially Christians as they think about apologetics, evangelism, all of these things.
00:21:24
Speaker
Well, Matthew, it's been a joy to have you with us today on PepTalk. Thanks so much for bringing everything that the Lord's bid well. A little slice of what the Lord has been doing in your ministry recently. Thanks so much. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me on. You guys really appreciate you. Always good fun. And we'll be back in two weeks time with another guest. So do tune in and we'll catch you then. Bye for now.