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With Glen Scrivener
70 Plays4 years ago
When sharing the gospel, where do you start? Today on PEP Talk, Andy and Kristi speak with Glen Scrivener about his book 3-2-1: The Story of God, the World and You and how he works from the love of the Trinity down to our ultimate goal of union with Christ.
Glen Scrivener is an evangelist and directs Speak Life, a ministry reaching out with the gospel through preaching and media. They're recruiting creative evangelists now for an internship called the Speak Life Foundry. Glen has written several books including Long Story Short and Reading Between the Lines. He lives in Eastbourne with his wife Emma, his daughter Ruby and his son JJ.
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Transcript
Introduction and Support Call
00:00:00
Speaker
Hi, thanks for downloading PepTalk. If you enjoy today's episode, why not get a free copy of Andy's book or my book by becoming a regular supporter? Visit us at solas-cpc.org and donate just ยฃ3 per month. Thanks so much. On with the show.
Hosts and Guests Introduction
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Peck Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Andy Vanister from the Sola Centre for Public Christianity. And I'm joined today as ever by my co-host, Christy Mayer from Oak Hill College in London. Christy, how are you doing today? Doing very well, thank you. Lockdown Central, but very happy and sunny. Thanks.
00:00:47
Speaker
Well, given a choice of being locked down where you are in London, Christie, or being locked down where I am in Scotland, I think I know which I'd prefer. Chose the better way, didn't you? But all that aside, you know, we have a really exciting guest on the show today. I'm thrilled that Glenn Scrivener is joining us on pep talk today. Glenn wears a number of hats. He's an evangelist. He's a writer, a broadcaster, an author. He's the director of Speak Life. And Glenn, welcome to pep talk.
00:01:17
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. Well Glenn, it's great to have you on the show and there are so many things we could talk to you about. You are a man of many words, certainly a man of many videos. Also an Australian, of course no one's perfect and I'm sure you'll get your own back for that one later.
The Concept of 'Three, Two, One'
00:01:33
Speaker
But you know, of all the books that you've written, I think the one that I found most helpful and possibly recommended to the most other people is your book on evangelism. Three, two, one. The story of God, the world and you. Talk to us a bit about that book, why you wrote it and what the idea behind it is and why it's helpful.
00:01:53
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Well, it started by me reading a blog post where somebody said, you can explain the gospel in 1, 2, 3, 4. And they said, you know, God is one, and then there's the creator creature distinction is the tunus that's out there. And then three, he brought in Trinity, and then four, I forget what four was, but he kind of laid out this gospel presentation. And I thought to myself,
00:02:18
Speaker
What would it be like to start with three? What would it be like to put Trinity front and center in your gospel presentation? And so I thought, well, you'd have to count backwards, wouldn't you? And then what would two be? And I thought, oh, Adam and Christ, that would be two, wouldn't it? And then one, union with Christ. And I was like, hello, this works as a mnemonic, but I think also it works
00:02:39
Speaker
in that these are foundational doctrines to how we think about the faith. The three-ness of God, God is a loving union of three. The two-ness of the world, the world is shaped by two representatives, Adam and Christ, and then the oneness of you. You are one with Adam, be one with Jesus.
00:02:56
Speaker
And I think these issues are not the most straightforward things that they're not simplistic. It's not like you would ordinarily think, oh, I know where I'm going to begin my evangelism. Why don't I unpack the doctrine of the Trinity? But I think on the far side of some rich and profound ideas, you get a heck of a lot of simplicity. So when you start talking about God is a loving union of three,
00:03:20
Speaker
then you start talking about ultimate reality is love, because God is love. And when you start talking about Adam and Christ, I think it gives you a really rich way of thinking about how all of humanity is in the same boat together, where all these children of Adam, we've all got the same mortality, we've got all the same frailness and fallenness.
Simplifying Complex Doctrines for Evangelism
00:03:37
Speaker
And actually on the far side of some difficult, perhaps, or complex issues, I think there's a simplicity that comes out on the other side of it. And so I've just been loving
00:03:49
Speaker
unpacking the Gospel with people, talking about the three-ness of God, the two-ness of the world, the ones of you. And it exists as a book and loads of different videos and there's a course and we're refilming the course at the moment and hoping next year actually to get out there with 321 as an evangelistic course that has a unique selling point in that it's only three sessions. And yeah, introducing people straight off to who is God. And yeah, I've just loved getting into conversations with people around that.
00:04:17
Speaker
I think that's one of the things that I really love about the 3-2-1 work, Glenn, is that you don't shy away from a really complex doctrine when it comes to the Trinity. And you kind of just say, you know, this is who our God is. He's Father, Son and Spirit. How have you kind of got into conversations with those that you know from Him?
00:04:38
Speaker
I think it's, some people say, ah Glenn, you start with Trinity. Actually, what I start with is Jesus, because it's life according to Jesus. But as soon as you start taking seriously the Jesus God, you start taking seriously the one who is the Son of the Father, who's full of the Spirit. So, that simplifies things. What we're not introducing people to is a creed. What we're not introducing people to is, you know,
00:05:06
Speaker
Augustine's day trinitata or something. We're not introducing people to an abstract doctrine. We're introducing them to Jesus, but as soon as you take Jesus seriously, he is from the Father, and yet he is divine, and he's full of the Spirit.
Contrasting Views: Love and Indifference
00:05:21
Speaker
And if he gives you his Spirit, then apparently he is with you. And there's this three-ness and this oneness, and all of a sudden you have the doctrine of the Trinity, not because you've started with a creed, but because you've started with Jesus.
00:05:34
Speaker
Where this, I think, becomes fruitful in evangelism is, you know, here's a comparison. Jesus says in John 17 verse 24, Father, you loved me before the foundation of the world. So before the universe existed, there was love. There was a Niagara Falls of love and blessing crashing down from the Father to the Son in the joy of the Spirit. This is who God is.
00:05:59
Speaker
And this is why in the Bible it can say, underneath all things are the everlasting arms. Now, that is a hugely attractive vision of God and of all reality. Everything has come from love, it's shaped by love, underneath are the everlasting arms. And then often I will, you know, compare that with Richard Dawkins who said, you know, the universe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
00:06:26
Speaker
And at that stage, you've got a very interesting compare and contrast. You're like, who's right? Moses or Dawkins? Moses says, underneath are the everlasting arms. Dawkins says, underneath there is blind, pitiless indifference. Take your pick.
Simplicity in Evangelism Framework
00:06:40
Speaker
And so at that point, you see, again, a doctrine that could be just, you could think of it as very obtuse, as very distant, as very
00:06:50
Speaker
abstracts, actually, when you get down to it, it means that God is love and you're invited. I think that becomes very rich and very attractive in evangelism. What I find so fascinating, Glenn, about how you unpack that is that when you begin with a trinity like you do, it can work both at a very complex level
00:07:07
Speaker
and a very simple level, can't it? If you're sort of theologically wired and drawn to these kind of big ideas, you can think about it in that way. But also, if you're not theologically wired, you can just grasp the Jesus bit. As you say, begin with who Jesus is. It works powerfully at that level too. And I think it's obviously the same for the two, isn't it? On the one hand, you've got the two templates, Jesus and Adam. That's a very big theological idea. But also, when it comes down to the world out there, when it comes down to atheism and the contrast with Christianity, that's very simple.
00:07:37
Speaker
And we can look around us and see that played out in the world, that clearly there's sort of two forces at work. I find it fascinating that even our secular friends are drawn naturally to things like beauty and love and justice, and they see the attraction there, but also I think they're very aware of the power of darkness and evil and the alternatives. I think this whole framework is fascinating that it works at those levels. So why
Humanity's Representation: Adam and Jesus
00:07:59
Speaker
don't you...
00:07:59
Speaker
talk us through. You've talked through the three parts, but why don't you now talk us a bit through the two parts of that three-to-one framework that you're describing. So two, the world is shaped by two representatives, Adam and Jesus, and one way of getting into the subject, I mean I could talk about my own experience, so I was born in Australia and that was, you know, that was my birthright. But you go back nine generations and my great-great-great-great-great-great-grandmother
00:08:25
Speaker
stole 10 yards of printed cotton from a London market. And so she was a thief and she was to be hanged by the neck until dead, until the judge commuted her sentence from life transportation, from death to life transportation to Australia, which many people thought was a fate worse than death at the time. But I always say to people, she left the set of Oliver Twist, she wound up on the set of Home and Away. So I think she did quite well out of the whole caper.
00:08:50
Speaker
who says crime doesn't pay. One woman committed one crime, there was one exile. Actually, the rest of the family tree after her took a different route. I was born in Australia, not because I'd won the lottery, not because I'd earned it, not because I'd paid for it, but it was part of my family history.
00:09:13
Speaker
If we go back through all our family histories, they'll be full of Anforbs-type figures. There'll be people who survived the war. There'll be people who left the nunnery and ran away with the Lord of the Manor or whatever. There'll be all sorts of skeletons in your closets. There'll be all sorts of
00:09:32
Speaker
times in your family tree where people made decisions and your life is now radically different because of the decisions of others. I think as soon as you start talking in these sorts of terms, it really radically undercuts our Western individualism.
00:09:48
Speaker
We tend to think of ourselves as, I am a self-made man. I'm a self-made woman. It's my choices. It's what I choose to like that determines who I am. And it's just a nonsense. That's just utter fairy tale insanity to believe that I am the choices that I've made.
00:10:07
Speaker
If we get to know one another, I'll tell you the kind of things that I like and the sort of things that I choose. But 99% of who I am was determined by people who are far above me in the family tree, decisions that were made that no one had even thought of me.
00:10:26
Speaker
I didn't choose to be born when I was, where I was, with the genetics that I have, with it, you know, anything. We are not the choices that we make. We find ourselves in a family called the human family and it is dysfunctional.
00:10:39
Speaker
And so in evangelism, I can then sort of talk about, you know, Adam is a representative. His name means humanity. So what we see him doing in the garden is what we are always doing. And what does he do? He's suspicious of God. So he's selfish. It leads to slavery and then self-justifications. There's this massive screw up and then the separation from God. And as you go through, you know, that life of Adam, you can just say, well, can you relate to that? Of course you can relate. Maybe we're related.
00:11:08
Speaker
Maybe we're part of this whole human family that's dysfunctional. And then the good news is that Jesus is the second Adam, the one who comes from God's family into our family so that we who are in this dysfunctional human family can join Christ's divine family. That's the two.
00:11:24
Speaker
And then you move on to the one, don't you? Is that where you say, you are one in Adam, be one in Christ. How would you go about just thinking right now at the time of recording, we're in COVID-19, well, we're in lockdown. COVID-19 is a reality. How would you go about kind of presenting the three to one to those who currently are just very fearful
00:11:47
Speaker
probably quite alone, isolated, anxious, concerns over many things. How would you really kind of bring the full force of everything that you've just shared with us to bear to those kind of weary hearts?
00:12:01
Speaker
So union with Christ means that though I've been born one with Adam, though I am part of this frail, failed, dying humanity, there is hope. There is one who has come who is apparently, he claims to be the answer to all these problems. Whereas Adam is a representative of all the ways we get things wrong. Christ is the representative of life as it should be.
00:12:28
Speaker
And he came into this frail, fallen, mortal life, took it all on himself because that's what love does. And I'm often telling this very simple story, a man falls into a pit and tries, he can't get out. Someone comes to the top of the pit and
00:12:48
Speaker
and says, you know, if you'd listened to me, you'd never have fallen into the pit and then walks along or the next guy comes to the top of the pit and sees the man falling down and says, you know, you need to climb harder, you know, try more. A true friend comes to the top of the pit and dives down into it and becomes one with the person in all their frailty and all their struggle.
00:13:11
Speaker
and lift them out. That's who Jesus is. He becomes one with us in our struggle, in our suffering. He wants to be one with us through this valley of deep shadow and out the other side. I think what we're going to
00:13:27
Speaker
I think looking back at COVID-19, looking back at 2020, at a distance of let's say a couple of years, what will we want to learn about this time? I think as Christians, we want to be able to say, I don't know how I got through 2020, but somehow Jesus got me through.
00:13:48
Speaker
And here we are in this valley of the shadow of death, and everyone is being confronted with their mortality. I mean, a plague is a time of intensification, and it's an intensified feeling that time is running out, that I'm not in control of my life, that there are forces out there that are far bigger than me, that life is a very, very scary place, and I am headed towards the grave.
00:14:16
Speaker
We are
Finding Hope in Challenging Times
00:14:17
Speaker
all walking through the valley of the shadow of death. The truth of one is there is a good shepherd who has entered into the valley to be with us and to be for us. And the great tragedy is that people would ever walk through that valley alone when Christ is right there opening his arms wide to the world and saying, I want to be with you. I want to walk you through this. That's the wonder of oneness.
00:14:40
Speaker
This has been a really helpful framework to walk people through. Glenn, thank you for sharing all this. But, you know, a question that follows, I think, especially given our context, you know, as we record this, we're still in the middle of COVID-19. That makes evangelism very hard. We're kind of locked down, not seeing people in the same way. We're elating in the same way. But, you know,
00:15:00
Speaker
One of the things that I've long enjoyed about your work is that you are one of a small number of people, I think, who've mastered using online media really, really well. You've kind of rebuilt a number of sort of things around that platform. Now, we don't all have access to the recording studios and the kit that you have, but I wonder.
00:15:19
Speaker
Are there things, Glenn, that you've learnt about online evangelism that the rest of us listening to this podcast could perhaps learn from? Are there ways that we can maybe use digital technology or the internet, social media, all those things? Are there ways we can use those online platforms more effectively in our own everyday evangelism, especially in these times where that may be the only option or one of the main options open to us?
Authentic Christian Presence Online
00:15:45
Speaker
I think so much of being online these days is just being an authentic presence. You put somewhere in your bio that you're a Christian, and then just don't be a jerk. That is 95% of evangelism online, actually. Be clearly a Christian. Talk about it as though it makes a difference. And if Sunday morning made a difference to you, you can say it on Facebook.
00:16:14
Speaker
Put it clearly out there that you are a Christian. It will be shaping the decisions that you make. It will be shaping the way that you see the world in some of your posts, some of the time. It doesn't mean that you always have to share those memes that Aunty Elaine is always sharing in soft focus and Comic Sans font.
00:16:32
Speaker
You don't have to do that, but just be a Christian and don't be a jerk is 95% of it. Are there other resources that people can use? We try at Speak Life to produce
00:16:49
Speaker
videos that aren't the cringiest that people can be proud to share because I think social media works the way that mission works. I mean, social media works on the basis that what you like you share. And I think actually the gospel spreads around the world on that very same basis that actually
00:17:08
Speaker
We produce media that we hope Christians really like, and we try to make the gospel plain to people in a way that draws out the richness of the good news of Jesus in a way that Christians go, ๏ฟฝOh, this is great, actually.๏ฟฝ And to the degree that you like something, you end up sharing it, and then the thing goes viral.
00:17:28
Speaker
That is literally how the Great Commission works and it's how social media works. My advice would be not a million miles from what you would say to anyone in any discipleship context is proudly own the fact that you're a Christian. Walk with integrity and when you mess up, confess and say, I've really got that wrong.
00:17:50
Speaker
take those opportunities to demonstrate something of the forgiveness of Christ, but try to walk with integrity, try not to be a jerk. And there are resources out there, and at these times of lockdown, how much easier could it be to invite somebody to church this Sunday?
00:18:06
Speaker
It's incredibly easy. You know, there is the web link. Come along, drop in, see what we're like. And there's some evidence that, you know, on March the 22nd, the first sort of Sunday of sort of lockdown conditions, that there might have been more people watching church than they had been physically visiting church the Sunday before that. So here's an opportunity for us to get out there online because it's never been easier to share a link to something Christian.
00:18:37
Speaker
And just one final question to you, Glenn, just taking a slightly different angle. One of the things that I really love about your ministry is your willingness to engage with people like Matt Delahunty, for example, in that recent debate that you had. How would you go about
00:18:52
Speaker
Well, I guess, have you noticed any kind of common themes that have come up in your conversations with those who'd call themselves atheists or seekers as agnostics or whatever that for us listening could be like, okay, I'll never be in a debate, you know, with a guy with like Matt, but here's
Humanist Values and Christian Principles
00:19:07
Speaker
something that I can use in my own conversations with those who don't yet know the Lord.
00:19:13
Speaker
massively. I think human rights is just a massive area that we got into with Matt Delahunty. He had an assumed humanism, which is the fruit of the gospel, the fruit of Christian civilization. And at the same time as he wants to hack at the roots of Christianity, he also wants to plunder the fruits of Christianity.
00:19:38
Speaker
and you just can't do it. So someone like a Matt Dillahunty wants to claim that they are an atheist humanist, and I want to say pick one. You cannot have both. And if you want to dive into this more, I think Dominion by Tom Holland is a terrific book going through the history of the West as the history of Christianity taking root.
00:20:02
Speaker
And Tom Holland, the secular historian, is very, very clear that the only reason why we want to prize the poor and the vulnerable in our world, the only reason why we think that a society should be judged according to how we treat the least and the last and the last, the only reason why we have these humanist values that every single human being is of equal value. These are nuts ideas to classical antiquity. These are nuts ideas. Plato and Aristotle, if you said to Plato, you know,
00:20:31
Speaker
Andy and Christie, they are utterly equal. But obviously, Christie is more intelligent than Andy. And obviously, Christie is better looking than Andy. Christie is far more economically valuable than Andy. And Plato would see all these things very clearly. We can all see them. I mean, it's plain as the nose on Andy's face. He's going for you. I'm really going for you.
00:20:56
Speaker
I've been saving it up to the end of the podcast. Someone like a Plato or an Aristotle would say, okay, so in what sense is Christianity equal? When we analyze two different human beings, what we are seeing is their differences. In what magical realm does this thing called equality exist? And yet, it has bedded itself down so fundamentally in the way that we see the world that, of course, all human beings are equal and have an inherent dignity and value.
00:21:24
Speaker
No, only Jesus gives you that. And to the degree that you walk away from the Jesus story, you are also walking away from human rights. You're also walking away from human dignity.
00:21:35
Speaker
have a look at the Matt Dillahunty unbelievable thing that I did, or look at Andy's chat with Peter Singer, also on the big conversations with Unbelievable. It's fascinating that Peter Singer would never sign a humanist manifesto. He would never sign on to those sorts of things because he realizes how thoroughly Christian
00:21:57
Speaker
These ideas, humanism is just speciesism if you walk away from the gospel of Jesus Christ. It's Jesus Christ who gives us these moral values that we just hold dear. And I'm finding that very, very powerful in talking to people. And people just haven't really considered the cost of walking away from Jesus.
00:22:19
Speaker
And I think, societally, we are seeing that it is either Jesus or the pit. It's either Jesus or the abyss. And that could sound like a really rednecked fundamentalist kind of thing to say. It's either Jesus or hell. But actually, historically,
00:22:36
Speaker
It's true. Jesus is the one who saves us from a pit of our own making. He's the one who saves us from a will to power and this sort of Nietzschean dystopian vision for what society should be like. So these are areas that I'm pressing into more and more and I'm finding them very fruitful.
00:22:56
Speaker
Just thinking about things on the level of assumptions like that is so potent, isn't it? I think that's so helpful. Thank you so much, Glenn. I've just looked at the time and we are running out of time. Thank you so much for your time today. As ever, it's a joy to chat with you, Glenn. You have lightened my lockdown.
00:23:13
Speaker
Oh, Glenn, you say you're the best thing today. Andy, thank you for being a wonderful co-host. Thank you so much for listening, and we'll catch you again next time. I didn't mean it, Andy. I didn't mean it. Oh, now he's retracting. Now he's retracting. Oh, don't worry. I totally asked for that comeback. You're right. We're all to crispy. I mean... Thank you for listening to Pepto. We'll catch you again soon. Bye.