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With Inonge Siluka
81 Plays2 years ago
From a cross-cultural guest, today's episode picks up two different strands to sharing faith. First, how do we respond to those who reject their experience of church, even those who have suffered spiritual abuse? As well, what can the contrast between "Christian" and "secular" cultures teach us about conversations centred on Jesus? In both areas, it can be tricky to unpack the individual's experience from the true gospel.
Inonge Siluka grew up in Zambia and moved to Scotland with her family when she was 14. She studied law at university after which she did some student ministry with UCCF and training with Cornhill Scotland. She works full time for a Cancer charity, and is also the founder of Restored Hope Zambia, a Charity that supports Church abuse survivors in Zambia. She is passionate about evangelism and theology and runs Overflow Chat, a blog and YouTube channel aimed at encouraging women and girls in their evangelism and faith. Inonge is a member of Greenview Church in Glasgow where is part of a community group and serves in the youth ministry.
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Transcript
Introduction to Pep Talk Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Yoo-hoo, and welcome to Pep Talk, the persuasive evangelism podcast. I'm Kristy and I'm joined by my fantastically iridescent co-host, Andy Bannister, who is joining us from what looks like a really kind of ambient Swedish spa kind of setting with this kind of purple lighting. It's quite exciting. Hi, Andy.
00:00:31
Speaker
It is exciting, isn't it? And the fun thing is in my little arctic cabin thing in the garden, which is in my home office, I can change the colour. You can't see this watching a video. I can go blue. I can go green. I can go red. And I've got disco mode. There we go. There's disco mode. Let me stop that. My kids love playing with that whenever they come to visit me. So yes, I've been relegated to a little wooden hut in the garden, but it's quite fun. It looks like a card I'm doing. It looks fantastic.
00:00:56
Speaker
Who have we got on the show today? This is not the Wooden Garden Office podcast. This is, of course, pep talk. So, Christy, what amazing guests have we got today?
Guest Introduction: Inongay Suluka
00:01:06
Speaker
Well, we are thrilled to be joined by Inongay Suluka. It's really, really great to have you with us, Inongay. How are you doing?
00:01:14
Speaker
I'm great, thank you. I'm so excited to be here, so thanks for having me on. Oh, it's such a joy. I mean, so many questions to ask you, but before we do, probably helpful just to say a few words of introduction. Now, you've been very clear with us that you wanted to be introduced. There's somebody who works full-time for a cancer charity.
00:01:34
Speaker
And you're also somebody who's just really, really passionate about evangelism. But in addition to all of that, there are many things that you're involved with. And one of them is that you are the founder of Restored Hope Zambia.
Mission of Restored Hope Zambia
00:01:48
Speaker
Can you tell us a little bit about Restored Hope Zambia in ongoing? What is it about? What does it exist for? What's your involvement with it?
00:01:56
Speaker
Sure. It might help to introduce my background there a little bit. So I am Zambian and I've lived in Scotland for the last 17 years. So that's the Zambian connection. And the organisation of Zambia exists to tackle the problem of abuse in church. But in the Zambian context, quite a big issue there for various reasons. Some of them are cultural. Zambia is quite a Christian-ish culture. So religion plays a big part in the day-to-day of the average Zambian.
00:02:25
Speaker
And yeah, there are other systemic issues as well. So this was something that I had experience of seeing firsthand the devastation of and just wanting to do something about it as somebody who loves Jesus, loves the church and what it's supposed to be there for, but also somebody who's passionate about justice. So the vision of sort of Zambia was actually restoring hope to survivors of church peace in Zambia.
00:02:50
Speaker
But not only to provide that support, but to deal with some of the problems holistically. So there's some legal issues, there's some cultural issues, there's spiritual issues. It's a whole big sort of complex ball game. So that's the idea behind it. That's the vision of the organization and passionate about it. It's not easy, but I think it's this needed.
00:03:14
Speaker
I'm immediately struck, actually, that you talk about those two passions, the evangelism, but also the restoring hope, the justice, the people who've been hurt by church abuse.
Addressing Church Hurt
00:03:24
Speaker
One way those questions, those issues come together, and I would love to get your wisdom on, is sometimes when we share our faith as Christians, we come across people who've been hurt.
00:03:34
Speaker
by the church and it's the church that's the stumbling block. How in your experience can we help people who've been through that? Yes, they're angry and hurt by the church, don't understandably, but we don't want them to throw Jesus out in the process. How does one navigate that sensitively and wisely? Yeah, great question, Andy. I'm still working through how to do that well.
Openness in Gospel Conversations
00:03:59
Speaker
I think before starting this charity, I used to do a lot of talks on evangelism and apologetics. And not that I've stopped doing those things, but obviously most of my conversations are under sort of Zambia. And interestingly, some people have brought that up, like, do you not think this is a stumbling block to your evangelism? Like, why would you point out all the bad stuff happening in the church? And actually what I've found is that I've actually had more open conversations about the gospel.
00:04:27
Speaker
since talking about this issue than I did before, which might surprise you. But I think people open up more when you are honest about the issues that the church is dealing with. So I used to be somebody that liked black and white answers, you know, like, what's the answer to this philosophical question? And life just doesn't work that way. And so actually, just taking a step back and saying, yes, this happens.
00:04:54
Speaker
Yes, this is bad. Yes, we don't have to defend it and we don't have to try and make something good out of it. Just acknowledging that sometimes, yes, Christians do bad things. And that's not a good thing. It goes a long way because I think sometimes as Christians, we can be tempted to be on the defensive. I need to defend the gospel. I need to defend the church. And that can come across as being not very compassionate to what people have been through. So that would be the first thing that I think just acknowledging that pain.
00:05:24
Speaker
that people may have experienced, not trying to pretend like you know all the dynamics of what happened and on what should have happened. And I think the second thing is always centering around Christ. So another follow-up question I get is, well, if you deal with all the bad stuff the church is doing, why used to be a Christian? And why do you used to go to church, you know? And I always come back to, actually, it's Christ's church and
00:05:51
Speaker
Jesus himself has a lot to say about what the church shouldn't be like. You know, you've got places like Revelation in the letters, the churches where Christ shows his love for the church, but also rebukes his church because he loves her. And when the church doesn't reflect her, Christ does something to say about that. Hey, don't, you know, don't be loveless. Don't practice sexual morality. This is, this is what it looks like, but also encourages the church. And I think that's helpful because at the end of a day,
00:06:20
Speaker
We are not pointing people to some kind of building or denomination, we're pointing them to Christ. And although people have caused harm in His name, Christ is too good. And that needs to be something that I think we bring out, maybe not in a one-off conversation, but I think through what we love, it needs to be clear to people that we love Jesus, and I think they can see that clearly.
00:06:47
Speaker
And even as we talk through some of those complex issues of the hurt they might have been through, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. That will be so far, still working through it, but those will be the two main things that I've found helpful.
Cultural Evangelical Approaches in Zambia vs Scotland
00:07:00
Speaker
Thank you.
00:07:02
Speaker
Yeah, that's really thoughtful and ongoing thinking about the role of honesty in facing some of the devastating kind of situations either that people experience personally or otherwise, and as well as kind of thinking, what does it look like to present Christ in this?
00:07:18
Speaker
Do you, in your work, you mentioned that you were out in Zambia, was it for six months or so? Was it a sabbatical? Did you have any kind of stories of what this looks like on the ground for Christians and for those who might just be drawn to this particular witness? Yes, so it was interesting. I had a lot of learning to do. So Zambia, I think I sort of mentioned that I was in a sabbatical for six months, and it's just a completely different
00:07:45
Speaker
climate from Scotland because in Scotland, very secular, you sort of need to sometimes feel like you're tiptoeing around things just to get conversations about Jesus. But in Zambia it's a complete opposite. Like people will, you'll get onto a bus and there'll be somebody preaching. Like it's just very, you know, Christian, I guess, quote unquote, which is a good thing sometimes, sometimes not a good thing because culture Christianity has its own problems. So what I actually found is I sort of wanted to
00:08:14
Speaker
bring the conversation about Jesus and wanted to be super sensitive and like, let's find out, people were just quite blunt about it. They're like, yeah, this is what I really think. So that took, that took me by surprise, like, oh, how do you share the gospel with somebody who sort of has quite a lot of experience with church? They've maybe been to loads of churches and they think they have a good idea of what Christianity is and they're rejecting it. And so you're, you're not starting from, Hey, you know nothing or,
00:08:43
Speaker
Does God exist? You're starting from, well, yes, I believe in God, of course, but I don't like the church and therefore I'm going to do my own thing. And I think what I found helpful was just asking good questions to find out what they really thought because Zambia is quite, even within the Christian denomination, there's so many random denominations. So somebody is saying, yes, I've been to church. They might have been in a cult for, you know, loads of cults, loads of
00:09:11
Speaker
false teaching, loads of prosperity gospel, all of that mixed in with obviously, you know, good churches and things like that. So I actually found asking questions about what do you believe? What was the church that you went to like? What did they preach? What did you not like and why did you not like it? And what I found is that usually the things that they didn't like, I would be like, well, yeah, I don't like that either. It would be things like, well,
00:09:37
Speaker
you know, people really worship the man of God. You have this phenomenon in Zambia where people self-declare themselves to the man of God and will say, God told me to do this and we'll use that to abuse their power either financially or spiritually. So actually when you find out the reasons I reject in the church, I'm like, actually those are good reasons to reject that particular church because that's not what the expression of what the body of Christ should look like. And so that was a helpful starting point is actually what is it that you're rejecting?
00:10:06
Speaker
because the chances are we're rejecting the same thing. And then off the back of that, bringing in, well, why are you rejecting that? I don't think church should be like that. What should church be like? And then you're coming back to the gospel and the teaching of the Bible on what is a church? What should a church be like? Why should it be like that? And you're still going to come back to, actually it should reflect the person of Jesus, it should reflect her head. And that was, I found that helpful.
00:10:36
Speaker
difficult to sort of be like, oh, okay, you're not actually rejecting this outrightly. It's just that your experience of this has nothing to do with Jesus at all. Great opportunity, I think, in that particular context.
Navigating Cultural Sensitivity and Wisdom
00:10:52
Speaker
The other one question as well that spins off this in ongoing, I'd love to chat around for a minute or two as well. It just occurred to me listening to you that how different a setting Zambia is from Glasgow, we were saying before the show. It's always hard to think of two more different cultures, but you've lived in both and you've got a foot still in both.
00:11:16
Speaker
kind of worlds. Are there lessons that you've learned from that that you found also helpful in dealing with other sort of cross-cultural evangelism? Because Glasgow, like London, where I'm on the edge of and Christie is, you know, very multicultural cities. There was those stats published yesterday showing that London and Birmingham are now cities where, you know, white British are a minority.
00:11:37
Speaker
because they're so diverse. And I think that diversity could scare Christians. How can I talk to someone who's very different to me without causing a fence because there's this big cultural divide. But this thing to you is fantastic because you've got a foot in both cultures, doesn't faze you. And are there any things that you've learned as you've operated those foots in two very different cultures, but perhaps you can share with others in terms of ways that we can be sensitive and wise in terms of communicating with others who are different.
00:12:07
Speaker
Yeah, I think two things come to mind. One is getting to really know people. I think sometimes we are, and I've had this conversation because I sort of, my background is a lot of conservative evangelical churches. And sometimes people are too scared, you know, this, so I don't want to offend. And in that fear of not wanting to offend, we sort of, you know, don't want to go towards people that are different from us. What if I ask the wrong question?
00:12:34
Speaker
Actually, if you do, you mess up and you say, I'm sorry, and you start again. But we can't, I don't think you can learn until you actually genuinely hang out with people. And not just on a Sunday. Hi, how are you? My name is Inongay. Nice to meet you. Like, how do we get people in our homes and really get to know them? Because only then can you start to pick up on certain cultural dynamics that might help when you are having conversations about the gospel. So just for example, Zambia is quite a
00:13:03
Speaker
and lots of African cultures, hierarchical societies. And so when I was there, you know, I was a founder of this charity and people were like, hello, madam, you know, good afternoon, madam. And it was just so weird. I was like, gosh, I don't think I'm old enough to put a madam for starters. But also, you know, they were just being respectful. And we can look at that from a Western perspective and be like, gosh, like this is this is a terrible potential abuse dynamic structure. But actually, it's just
00:13:32
Speaker
you know, there's a culture of respect there. So what does it look like? What's good about that? And how can that be maybe be abused in some ways and just learning that? But I wouldn't, I wouldn't know that even as somebody grew up in Zambia, it's not something I'd picked up on until I was actually actively living there and seeing, oh, this, this is what it looks like. And so things like speaking to elders, you very rarely would sort of challenge authority, not because
00:14:00
Speaker
people are dull or they're not able to think critically, but because that's seen as disrespectful. And so if you are speaking or preaching the gospel in that context, how do you honor authority and power? What does Jesus say about those things? Does he say they're bad in and of themselves? No, but this is what it looks like. It looks like service. And so the gospel and the Christian worldview bring brought into that isn't saying to this particular culture, oh, no, everything should just be informal because that's our Western world thinking.
00:14:30
Speaker
You actually say, oh, that's good that you want to respect people and you want to respect the elders. And that you revere authority. That's not a bad thing. But what does it look like to do that in a Christ-like way? And why is that a good thing? And you would only find that out if you're hanging out from people. How do you do things in your country? Don't assume. Even things in Zambia would be different from something in Ghana. I constantly learn. I've got a Ugandan friend and a Ghanaian friend. You're just constantly learning. You do that in your culture? What?
00:15:00
Speaker
And so genuine, I think, hospitality and just conversation with each other beyond the, you know, Sunday morning is a helpful starting point. And secondly, I think we need to be challenged by our own cultures. And that goes both ways. I think when I'm when I first moved to Scotland, I really struggled with the secular context is like, this is really difficult. Take me back to Zambia, Christian country. But this time around, when I went back, I was actually like, actually, the churches were discussing things like
00:15:30
Speaker
you know, should women wear trousers in church? And it was driving me nuts because I was like, I live in Scotland where I don't know what the percentage of Christianity is like 5% or whatever. And here you are, you can walk into any bus stop, you can do it, you can do anything you want. You can just stand anywhere and preach a gospel and people actually listen to you. You've got such an opportunity and you're not using it because you're so comfortable. So actually that was convicting to me because we tend to think in Scotland,
00:15:56
Speaker
If only we had this situation or this circumstance, we would share the gospel more. I was like, well, actually, here's a culture which has all the advantages and actually they're not using it. So I think it's convicted in that. Do we sometimes use the secularism as an excuse not to share the gospel? And yeah, just just a lot to think about there. I feel like we should do a church swap. Like each culture just swaps like
00:16:23
Speaker
just for six months, like just, you know, for a bit of perspective. I think you've just, I think you've just invented the next reality TV show, at least the gold TV or something. I love it.
00:16:36
Speaker
This is fantastic. We'd love also just to hear, I mean, your heart for evangelism is coming out loud and clear through everything that you've been sharing with us through your work in Zambia and also in Scotland. We'd love to also just highlight your blog, which is www.overflowchat.com, which is aimed at encouraging kind of women and girls and their evangelism and their faith.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah. So slight, slight shift now into a different kind of area, but tell us, tell us about this, this wonderful resource that you've put together and why you think it's necessary. Yeah.
Encouraging Women in Evangelism through Blogging
00:17:12
Speaker
Um, I, I used to be involved in student evangelism, um, through like UCF, the Christian unions, and I did a lot of sort of Bible handling training. And then I finished all of that and was going into the secular workplace and was like, great, what do I do with all of that?
00:17:27
Speaker
I met all these wonderful women, just women evangelists. We need to do something somehow. So Overflow Chat became something that was not just about me wanting to equip women evangelism, but having a platform that all these women that I was meeting, whether at conferences or other places, could actually share as well. They might not have time to do their own blog, but at least, okay, you can do a guest blog here and there. So that was one of the reasons behind it.
00:17:56
Speaker
And then I think I just wanted to marry the... I love theology, but it can be sometimes that some women might feel, oh, no, I don't do theology. And some churches sometimes can be for blame with that because the women's events are like, oh, let's do this flowery thing. And then the men would do the evangelism. So I wanted to bring in the theology with the evangelism and say, well, actually, evangelism is just about sharing our lives and sharing the gospel.
00:18:23
Speaker
Theology is about God. So how can we bring these doctrines and all the things that we're learning to bear in our evangelism? And so the idea is helping Christian women to be able to understand what they believe and why, and then to be able to articulate that naturally through the spaces they inhabit, whether it's at work, at home, in clubs, local clubs, and so on and so forth. So that's what I wanted to create, I think,
00:18:53
Speaker
from my experience, women just sort of shrunk back and I sort of wanted to have this avenue where women could like, come on, let's do this, let's go, let's encourage each other. So yeah, I hope it will be something like that, that can help women to be like, actually, I can do this evangelism thing. It's not for the pros. It's not just for the, you know, big theologians. And actually, I'm doing theology. I know a lot of theology, even though I don't have a PhD or
00:19:20
Speaker
a master's because I do know a lot about God and I can just, here's what it looks like to explain it in this life circumstance or in this situation in an everyday kind of context. So yeah, so that was the idea behind Overflow Chat and the blog as well.
00:19:36
Speaker
Fantastic, and we'll put a link to that, to overflow chat into the show notes with the podcast. So if people want to go and check that out, they can follow the link. We're kind of rapidly running out of time. One question I'd love to ask Inoungue if you're willing to chat around this one. I'm just intrigued that at the start, we talked about you wear all these various hats that are involved in various things, but obviously your day job is working there in the nonprofit.
00:20:01
Speaker
kind of world. And that's another space, I think the workplace where I think Christians can sometimes feel a bit nervous on the back foot. Have you found it being a Christian in the workplace? Do you find that that's somewhere that you can sort of be natural and, and find ways to talk about your faith? And so how do how do you do it? How do you how do you bring your Christian faith into the into the workplace in today's very secular world? What are some of the lessons perhaps you've learned? Yeah, I actually find
00:20:28
Speaker
When I first started working for the charity, I was a bit nervous, actually, because it's that first day one. Like, do I tell them I'm a Christian today? How do I do it? But actually, I was quite surprised in God's providence because I shrunk back a little bit. I was like, okay, let me overdo it. Let me just be subtle with it. And then I think day two, somebody found my YouTube channel and was watching a video about prayer and the sovereignty of God. Like, you didn't have picked a more
00:20:58
Speaker
just this, I did not make this for evangelistic purposes, but okay, the car is out of the bag, like let's do this. So I was forced into evangelism a little bit with that. And I just realized my colleagues were just intrigued, not necessarily by the things I thought they were like the typical evangelistic topics or apologetic topics. They wanted to find out about prayer and what I thought about that. So that was surprising. So something that I've learned is just don't assume, especially if you're somebody who's passionate about evangelism.
00:21:27
Speaker
you read loads of books and you're like, okay, these are the questions that people have. Actually, you'll be surprised by this completely different set of questions depending on the individual. I've had to have conversation about new age thought and just other things that I probably haven't thought about before. So just be open to that possibility and talk about normal things and be genuinely interested in your colleagues. I think
00:21:51
Speaker
Um, that made things normal. Um, I, you know, just before COVID hit, we had a big conversation about what people thought about death, because that's the kind of chart we just, we just had about anything. Um, you know, random stuff, deep stuff. Um, so I think creating that, um, normality with your colleagues and just genuinely loving and caring for them and being interested in what they care about means they might be interested in what you care about. And that might be a opportunity to just talk about Jesus more.
00:22:18
Speaker
Naturally, I guess you could say, for lack of a better phrase. So I've actually loved being in the secular workplace. I know it can be difficult for some people, but I've had the privilege of being around like-minded colleagues. It's the charity sector. People genuinely care about other people. I haven't had to deal with maybe some of the tricky questions around sexuality and things like that. So that's maybe something to think about beforehand.
00:22:44
Speaker
if this topic came up, how would I speak into it? I haven't had to have that conversation, so I don't really have much advice on that, but maybe something to think through before the conversation happens. And, Ongye, that's such excellent advice, and it's just been such a joy hearing your heart on all of these topics. There's such wisdom there and such riches for us to reflect on. Thank you so, so much for your time and for joining us today.
00:23:13
Speaker
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. Yeah, really enjoyed this conversation. Oh, thank you so much, Nongay. Well, I think that's it for me. That's it from Andy. It is. That's it for me too. And we look forward to joining you in a couple of weeks time and with another wonderful guest on our virtual sofa. Take care. Until then. Bye. Bye.