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Christianity: Weird and Wonderful || Rory Shiner on 'The World Next Door' || SLP420 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_05: Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast, episode 420.
• 0:12
  SPEAKER_05: My name is Thomas Thorgood, media producer at Speak Life, and I'm very excited to bring this brand new episode to your personal device.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_05: Today we have an interview that Glenn Scrivener recorded with Rory Shiner.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_05: So it's a really interesting conversation, I think.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_05: I'm excited for you listeners to hear it.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_05: And I will hand straight over to Glenn and Rory.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_03: Welcome to Speak Life.
• 0:42
  SPEAKER_03: My name is Glenn Scrivener, and I'm joined all the way from Perth, Western Australia, by Rory Shiner.
• 0:47
  SPEAKER_03: G'day, Rory.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Glenn.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_01: How are you doing?
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_03: I'm doing very well, thank you.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_03: And we are connecting uh across the uh the hemispheres to talk about your new book, which you've co-authored with Peter Orr.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_03: It's called The World Next Door, and uh I've read it, I've loved it.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_03: It is a meditation on the Apostles' Creed.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_03: Why on earth would you do such an arcane thing?
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh thanks.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Gwen, really good to uh to be here and thanks for um uh thanks for opening up this conversation.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a book uh that was written, uh co-authored with a friend of mine, Peter Orr, and um we're both um uh you know in different group of different places.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: He was in Northern Ireland, I was in uh Australia, but both have a bunch of people that we know and love that we dearly love them to come to faith in Jesus and um and share in this good thing.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: And um we thought we'd have a shot at writing a book.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_01: We thought there was there was some space there.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_01: There's lots of great books out there, we thought there was some space.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And we um we went, we tried a few different angles.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: We thought, how would you you know we just want to have these people in our mind, our people we went to school with, um parents and friends and so on.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And um what is our best shot at commending to them the Christian faith?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_01: And we we looked at you know exposition, an exposition of a book like uh the Gospel of Mark, or we looked at a framework like a two ways to live or a bridge to life type situation.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_01: And uh we landed on, I think what was at first the most obscure idea.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think we put it up on the whiteboard um just for the fun of it, the the Apostles' Creed.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it really sat with us as um uh for a few reasons.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Firstly, I think it's ancient, which I think is a is a feature, not a bug, um, uh that we're drawing on this.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I don't know what it is about it being ancient, but I think the the thinness of modern life, the thinness of our cultural references and so on, I think it's uh enormously attractive to get back beyond that.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um and to get away from the kind of the kind of the hustle of um, you know, trying to present Christianity as if it was invented last Tuesday in our language and our thought films, and to say actually, no, this is this is strange.
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_01: And so the Apostles' Creed kind of wrestled our evangelical hearts to the ground and forced us to speak about, you know, Mary and Jesus ascending into hell and the one holy Catholic Church and so on.
• 3:13
  SPEAKER_01: So we we had a ball.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_01: That was the uh that was the thinking to let people into the weirdness uh and glories of the Christian faith.
• 3:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, you go very hard on the weirdness, Rory.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_03: Very hard on the weirdness.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_03: And uh and that that thrills my heart because you know, um uh my book, uh, which has just come out, finishes with saying, uh, church, be weird.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_03: That's that's my my final word is uh be weird.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_03: And I'm noticing that uh a few other people are catching the weirdness bug.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_03: Um why why are you not doing the smooth kind of stepping stones from the non-Christian world into the Christian world, trying to make things as as smooth as possible, no disjunctions.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_03: Uh instead, um spoiler alert, well, it's it's it's the first page, so it's not much of a spoiler.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_03: Um you start with demons.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_03: This is this is weird beyond measure.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_03: Why do you do this?
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that was the so we that was uh we set ourselves this task to think as we were kind of having fun with thinking about doing the Apostles' Creed, and uh there's there's a quote, I think it's in in the book, where um Francis Schaefer, Schaefer once some uh client, at least reportedly, used to speak on angels um as one of his first evangelistic talks.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And the theory there was that uh if you speak about um if you start speaking about God and sin, people hear you talking about morality.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if you touch, if you talk about angels, suddenly they're like, oh, this is he's talking about spiritual truths.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_01: And so we thought, what's the highest degree of difficulty dive to begin a book with for a non-Christian?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_01: But what what's the thing that even even Christians, well, some not all Christians, but even like uh Western, slightly shy, weird Christians in the um in the Jonathan Hyde sense of the word, um, what's the thing that they find hardest?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And probably that Jesus did exorcisms and he didn't do one or one and a half, he did like tons of them.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so we thought, look, if uh if if anyone's still with us after um after chapter one, they're in, um, a kind of training at altitude thing.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but yeah, yeah, that is really uh a really a real uh growing conviction that I certainly have.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, I wrote a gushing review of your book.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um uh partly because I you call it swashbuckling.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_03: Swashbuckling.
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_03: Over I haven't gone over that yet.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_03: I I keep telling everybody.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um yeah, I do I just think that um, you know, one of my one of my prayers for the book, certainly with with friends and so on, is that they would have that kind of Narnia wardrobe opening experience of just uh walking into a seemingly normal situation, uh, and suddenly it's a wardrobe that leads to another world.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I I think uh the Christian faith is is uh is at its best there.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_01: We wanted people to say, look, don't just uh uh you know, here's the door, and until you've ascended to the idea that this is a door and you really ought to walk through it, um, we wanted to say, look, come and have a poke around, have um get a sense of what's going on here in all its weirdness and all its kind of um uh glory and strangeness and so on.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think that is the to me, I think one of the I mean there's many reasons I stay Christian, uh not least um that I desperately want to put my uh sins, um, have my sins forgiven and uh uh love Jesus and uh love the Father.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: All sorts of reasons I stay Christian.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: One of them is that the longer I'm a Christian, the more spacious I experience the Christian faith as.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_01: I just think, man, this is unbelievable.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: I just and I my experience of reading scripture is like that, that it's just like this, it's just door after door after door.
• 6:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're doing Leviticus at the moment, and I feel like I'm becoming a Christian all over again.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm like, what's going on here?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um, that's a it's a great delight that I have in in being Christian, and I guess wanted to share some of that um with friends and family.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_03: What's been your experience of that?
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_03: So, I mean, people are starting to to read the book and give give you feedback on okay, you start with the exorcism, which brilliantly allows you then to talk cosmologically and to talk uh about the triple decker universe, the heavens and the earth and under the earth, um, which actually um gives you it's it's not as weird as it sounds to you know to start with an exorcism because it enables it enables you to go to 30,000 feet and do this sort of nosebleed, you know, vision of the cosmos.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_03: Um but w what kind of feedback are you getting on that?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's probably there's probably um two different types there.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: So there's um, you know, people like yourself, um Steve McAlpine's written a review and um Sam uh Sam Chan's done something in the in the works and so on.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: I think there are people who are kind of practitioners who their day job, the thing on their passport is evangelist or or something.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and um I think that's been uh there's been this kind of shared sense of, yeah, something in this ballpark is what ought to be happening, that we should be leaning into all uh all that Christianity is, and this is the time to um you know arc up the weirdness rather than walk away from it.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_01: Then in terms of it going out to its its intended audience, which is um uh I'd say the intended audience is really a secular, um, Western or westernized, uh educated, not crazy educated, it's not like a it's not a difficult book, I don't think, but um, you know, uh I don't want it to be patronizing either.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: I want to just have a conversation with a uh the kind of friends that we uh we live with.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, certainly uh I've put it into the hands of a number of uh uh of people and they've read it.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's short, it's like 66 pages.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I did one of the things we did in the writing process was just want it to be um, and this is uh possibly um uh putting my head on the block for any other reviewer, but we wanted it to be relentlessly interesting.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, like on every page, I thought I want something here that you're in bed and you think, oh, one more, one more.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I wanted people to have the pleasant surprise of thinking, oh, I think I'm nearly at the end of this chapter, I might as well keep going.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think I it really is a book we want read.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh yeah, we've had some warm, warm receptions.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_03: It does remind me that this whole I want to grab the reader by the throat thing.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_03: Uh, I was talking to Rebecca McLaughlin last year um on this channel and and asking her, you know, how do you keep someone's attention for a 200-page book?
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_03: And she said, you never keep someone's attention for a 200-page book.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_03: You've got one more page, right?
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_03: And you've got you've got to you've just got to get them to turn one more page, one more page, one more page, and you've got to do the trick 200 times.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_03: That's how you get them.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_03: And I we need more books like that.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_03: Because I I just gave up on a book the other day that was just so vanilla and just so uh so bland and so it's just like, do you not realize that people's attention spans are sort of seven seconds long?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so I certainly think when you know, when I was when I was younger and starting out in writing and preaching, I think I was always um I was always preaching, at least partly, to the invisible Bible college lecturer at the back of the church.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_01: And you just and um I think that's a very important habit to get out of if you're a uh if you're at all keen on evangelism, it's the thing.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: I just want I'm relentlessly about you, and I want you to keep reading, keep listening, and um, you know, like uh going to a Bruce Springsteen concert.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's an interesting about Bruce Springsteen, he plays for three hours, and he he he's still got that working class sense that he's come to do a job and his job is to work for you.
• 10:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think as evangelists, um, that's not a bad way to think about it.
• 10:58
  SPEAKER_03: All killer, no filler.
• 10:59
  SPEAKER_01: That's and that's you know, I'll put I'll put that on the back of the book.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_03: Bangers, just floor fillers.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um so and and I think your book absolutely achieves that, but it achieves that not again, not by being um predictable and not by um being a smooth introduction to, you know, if you believed this about the natural world, then you might as well believe this, and then there's a hop, skip, and a jump to that, and it's not that at all.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_03: And what I also appreciate about the book is um you honored the art form, as it were, because okay, someone someone is gonna give you an afternoon of their time.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_03: Someone is going to give you a hearing and they are going to sit down, so you can take your time to a degree, you can take your time to take them to Legion and then do a triple decade universe thing and then walk them through the creed.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_03: And I think sometimes um with books, I think evangelists misunderstand the medium because people are invested in a much different way if they're listening to a book uh or you know, reading a book as opposed to you know watching a YouTube video.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_03: With a YouTube video, absolutely you've got twelve seconds to grab them.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um with a book, someone's paid good money and they go they're gonna sit down and they're gonna give you time.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_03: And so I I I thought that was another good thing about the book, and a good thing about introing your book with that.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_03: And I think people who misunderstand why you begin with Legion might not be might not be honoring what the art form of the book is as as opposed to another another kind because it's not a tract and it's not a video.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_03: Um you've got time with people.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's right.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: They absolutely they they've decided that's right to spend their afternoon with you in one of I don't know how many books does a person read in a lifetime, they've chosen that one of them is going to be yours.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and there is a yeah, that that's a beautiful thing.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: I think I think that's there's a whole kind of theology of art in there as well, where I think that as um Christians and evangelists, we ought to uh honour and um uh be good um good guests in the art forms we inhabit and um advance their cause or whatever.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's uh I think Flannery O'Connor used to say that a um uh you can't write with the church looking over your shoulder.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um by which by which she did not, he's a very Orthodox Catholic.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but what she did mean by that was that um the she says the the novelist's job is not to tell you what ought to happen, but what did happen.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: That the novelist's job is to is to see the world.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it say in a novel, which this book is not a novel, but in a novel, the novel that we all enjoy is the novel where you say, Oh, Spotto, I've seen that.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: I've met that person, I've noticed that Grass feels like that.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And um, yeah, I think I think honoring honoring the uh the forms that we're in is is really important thing.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_03: So you decided to do a kind of a dogmatics and outline.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_03: Um so you you sort of you sort of give a hat tip to Karl Bart early on and uh and say, you know, that's a that's another good way of following up on the creed.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_03: What did what did you what did you find most helpful in in kind of preparing a book on the creed?
• 14:03
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it was that thing, I think the the creed um it does in it, I mean, it it does keep you on the straight and narrow, like it means that I it doesn't it constrains you from being idiosyncratic and eccentric, that it's just like he's he's the thing that almost every Christian of almost any tribe ought to be able to say.
• 14:24
  SPEAKER_01: So there's a there's kind of a mere kind of orthodoxy to it.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_01: But funnily enough, I think this that these two things aren't mutually incompatible, it forces a certain amount of uh like whimsy on you that it's just oh okay.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we're there's just all these curiosities in the Cape Creed, like you know, jumping from Jesus' birth to his death and um mentioning the uh you know the resurrection twice, you know, his resurrection and the resurrection of the dead.
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this is all these things there where if you're really paying attention, it it forces you to do, um, you know, given our audience, it forces you to do theology in public.
• 15:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think public is a really great place to do theology.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um I uh yeah, it is interesting that the the New Testament is largely driven by intra-Christian theological controversies.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um and yet it's a book that it's the book that uh kind of commends the gospel to the world.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um I know this this may this reference may absolutely sink uh its credibility, but um when Boris Johnson was at the spectator many uh years ago, he uh one of his one of his journalists was off to interview the new archbishop, uh uh uh maybe it was Justin or uh anyway, whoever it was, sent sent off to interview them.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and the journalist said, Who should what should I ask them about?
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: And he stopped.
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: He said, Why don't you ask him about transubstantiation?
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: What's the what's going on there?
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_01: And and I thought that would have been a great interview, like to talk to a bishop about transubstantiation rather than you know the minimum wage or the housing crisis.
• 16:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, right.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_01: Wouldn't that be great?
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: And to hear and uh I I noticed also when um uh when the Pope was visiting one of the Eastern European countries, there was a there was a priest there, a um Eastern Orthodox priest with a little sign up, you know, um protesting the Filioquite, their failure to uh or the addition of that.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_01: I thought, fantastic, that'd be a really but because I do it, I mean it could get acrimonious, but I think it is kind of it's I I think one of the one of the things that my unbelieving friends don't get to see or see enough of is how interesting Christianity is.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: Like just that that I don't think they and and when when they see it, that there's these, you know, we we just at a standard issue church here in Perth, but at you know, at staff meetings we'll talk about, you know, agonize over theology or or or kind of have a crack at our keeping our Greek alive, or these things I used to think, no one people don't know that there's this world where we're having this conversation and wondering wondering who what demons are and so on.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um I I just I I don't think that's all just really interesting.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, the strange new world of the Bible and and therefore kind of evangelism is I'm always saying it's it's it's like inviting people into a cathedral that makes no sense to the outsider, as opposed to standing on the outside of the cathedral in the tourist information booth with a little leaflet and a thumbnail sketch of how the cathedral works.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_03: That is that is typical bog standard evang evangelism, you know, in our tribe, as opposed to yank people into the cathedral and just say and just try to wow them with with the wow them with the weirdness.
• 17:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah, we we that um I'm gonna steal that and use that.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_01: My my standard um go-to for that same thing, I think, has been to say that if you if you got invited to a uh you know a Seder with a Jewish family, imagine if you got there and that family said, Oh, oh, you're Gentile.
• 17:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we won't do that tonight.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_01: We'll just um we'll order fish and chips and um we'll watch the uh watch the football and so on.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: You think, oh, I'm kind of keen.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: Now you'd you wouldn't want them to be you wouldn't want them to um be, you know, you wouldn't want to be embarrassed that you didn't know what to touch when and how the meal worked and how long it was supposed to go for.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_01: So you'd want you want them to be hospitable, but not to change what's going on, because that's what I came for.
• 18:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I think with um uh I think we want our our church services and our community events to be um seeker hospital seeker hospitable but not seeker directed.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_03: It's like Christmas as well.
• 18:42
  SPEAKER_03: Like, you know, I mean I've spent a lot of Christmases in somebody else's culture.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_03: And you know, maybe they won't maybe they'll serve me a s a side dish that I quite like, and they'll they'll explain their peculiar traditions, but I don't want them to do my traditions.
• 18:58
  SPEAKER_03: I've come to their Christmas to, you know, to do it to do it their kind of way.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um so that's uh yeah, that that is absolutely central, I think, to what evangelism ought to be, and especially in an age in which um Gen Z do not understand why like people Gen X's like us, we we're used to doing evangelism in terms of um let me tell you what Christianity has to say to the debt crisis, or let me tell you what you know Christianity has to say to the phenomenon of Pokemon Go or whatever it is like um and we're constantly trying to sort of um build bridges from hey, you know the thing that you know, we're kind of like that.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_03: And the one the one thing I think younger people tend to think Christians might have an idea about is Christianity.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_03: So why don't we just like cut the other spate and switch nonsense and talk about the one thing we know about, which is you know, yeah, yeah.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, absolutely.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_03: Um in your book, you um you don't do classical apologetic moves.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um so you y you don't come with an armful of arguments for uh belief in God.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_03: In fact, at one point you say, there are uh the these are some some of the reasons that we think belief in God is reasonable.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_03: But in the end, arguments about God only get you so far.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_03: They are, as biblical scholar NC Wright has put it, like pointing a flashlight towards the sky to see if the sun is shining.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_03: Um So if you're not gonna go the argument route, what what route are you gonna go?
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think that you know, and I should say as well, I think there's probably a gifting thing there.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: I just think um there are people who God uh by his spirit have gifted and um you know, and to hear them in in doing apologetic work and even classic apologetic work, like you know, arguing for the existence of God can be very compelling and uh and all all power to them.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: And partly I think it is a gifting thing that I um that doesn't seem to be uh the thing that I do like um fantastically.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um there's also I think there are kind of a truth and advertising thing where you know I think it's only a minority of us that came to Christ through classical apologetic, not no one, like you know, yeah, most people, but a minority, I think.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: And um and almost none of them is it the reason that we're still here.
• 21:30
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• 21:33
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• 21:40
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• 21:44
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• 21:46
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  SPEAKER_00: Let's get back to the podcast.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: Sometimes um I'll talk to people and they'll say, oh, the reason I became a Christian is because um the uh the argument for the resurrection of Jesus was persuaded me.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: But then when you're talking to them, they can't actually rehearse the argument for the resurrection of Jesus.
• 22:39
  unknown: Okay.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or haven't recalled it.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what's going on there?
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: And I think partly they've kind of, or you know, the or the uh you know, a theodicy for evil or whatever, partly they've kind of maybe left that speech that's got them in, and then they've come into that nartier experience of this this whole world.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um partly I wonder whether what they were sometimes responding to was um a credible person seems to believe this, and that's good enough for me.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and so I do think even, and now I'm all for I'm absolutely um uh, you know, um Jesus rose from the dead, bodily, uh essential, uh essential to the gospel and um the inspired word of God, or can I just saying that in the in the actual experience of being Christian, it's weird, uh it's a bit like marriage, you know, marriage is so different when you're in it.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um that the things that you think will dominate marriage, like the uh sexual expression and so on, kind of take these more modest proportions, and then you just discover all these surprises that, like, oh, we get to get a bit older together, and then you have to bury your mum, and I didn't know that would impact you like that.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: And this is just you know what I mean.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_01: It just it is different, different from the inside.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: And I think um uh I think my my sense is I just want to get if someone's done me the honour of having read this book, I I want them to um have seen as far inside as they can, and to experience um how the Christian life is actually lived by the and thought of by the person that they're um uh people that they know.
• 24:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_03: And it's um I I I stole this uh analogy from a friend who uh works with Al Masera, which is a series of 13 TV episodes that introduce Christ to Muslims um as the Messiah, Al Masira.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_03: And um in their training, they often say, look, we're not building stepping stones from the Muslim house to the Christian house.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_03: We're just opening up the doors of the Christian house, and it's an act of hospitality.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_03: And our evangelism is hospitality.
• 24:44
  SPEAKER_03: Come on over, I know it looks a bit weird.
• 24:46
  SPEAKER_03: Um there are some squabbling kids in the backyard, sorry about that, and um you won't understand it to begin with.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_03: But at that at that stage, it is hospitality that is doing the work rather than um the the chain of argumentation that you're able to make.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_03: Um and and that then enfranchises the whole church body in the work of evangelism.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_03: Because if the work of evangelism is fundamentally hospitality, if it's love, well then the body knows how to work together in love.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_03: If the fundamental aspect of evangelism is a chain of arguments, well there's only a very few I can I can't do it.
• 25:22
  SPEAKER_03: You know, sudden suddenly, you know, you you and me are kind of out of the game.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_03: Well, who's in the game?
• 25:26
  SPEAKER_03: Very few people, and it it suddenly becomes uh yeah, very much a spectator sport for the rest of um for the rest of Christendom.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, quite right, quite right.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's um I think we we do see that in in our church.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think see in lots of churches that there's a that's a lovely word, an enfranchisement where you say, look, the um, yeah, you you know, Sam Chan's things about mixing those communities that your people need to meet my people, that it's kind of dinner, coffee, and and so on.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it it's it's hugely significant to move to move into those kind of plausibility communities where there's these massive.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then I you you do see people really um come alive in a church when they work out that the thing that they've got is a thing that can promote and advance the gospel.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um, because what they've got is a bunch of mates that get together on Tuesday night to read the Bible or whatever it is.
• 26:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, absolutely fantastic.
• 26:22
  SPEAKER_03: You say at one point the Christian faith is less like an object in the world whose existence is accepted by some and denied by others, it's more like a pair of glasses through which you look at the rest of life, the universe and everything.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_03: Um so, what are the implications of that for how you go about evangelism?
• 26:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's and it's really good.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because I think it is um uh you know, obviously, I think that's that's true that that in terms of the the actual experience of being Christian is a is a way of looking at the world in a way of being in the world, um, as much as a a set of propositions.
• 26:57
  SPEAKER_01: And one of the the reference in the title, The World Next Door, is to an old book called The Universe Next Door, which I'm sure uh no one's read recently, but it was a um quite an important book back in the day.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it's its contention was that the Muslim next door to you doesn't just have some propositions that are different from your propositions, but they have a universe in their head that's different from the universe uh in in your head.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so if you know, uh if you have a proposition like God exists or abortion is permissible, um they almost always come out of a whole way of seeing the world.
• 27:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yes uh values around um uh freedom and empiricism and what whatever else.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: And and so um so I I think I think part of that is that we um having people making our communities accessible to the people that we're evangelizing um means that I I think that that that as you think, oh this this group of people sing songs to Jesus on Sunday and they they seem to meet in homes during the week and read a very difficult text, and meals seem to move around as people are pregnant and so on, um, is all part of the infrastructure that leads you to um make those kind of ethical um stances on the the permissibility or not of abortion or the um how much you would care about a refugee trying to come to your uh nation or whatever.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_01: And uh so I do think, I mean, as we've been saying, I think you uh you know, and again, I want a rigorous thing.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: I don't want someone to feel uh manipulated or obliged to think, oh, these people have been so lovely to me, I can possibly um not follow through and become the thing that they seem to want me to become.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think I think you can build a robust um evangelistic church life where those two things hold together really admirably, um, where you can keep either have people in that what the ancient church would have called a kind of a catechumen situation, um, where they're they're working it out and you can create that space for them to do that without thinking that you know eventually one of those meals is gonna be the one that we then come and say, now here probably should become a Christian.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_03: Yes, yeah, yeah.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_03: So yeah, it is it is an act of hospitality.
• 29:23
  SPEAKER_03: And yeah, they can like like if you were in the Seda meal, you might be a fringe member, but you know, I I guess you get drawn uh ever more towards the the the center of things.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_03: Um what place go on.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_01: That well, that must be how the kind of which is you know a 1990s phenomenon, but has kicked on of the kind of alpha and its you know uh airs and successes.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think the the heart of that was that methodology of uh food, humans, and time.
• 29:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um and if you you if you've got gospel truth happening in that context, um there's a guy over here called Dominic Steele, who I don't know if you've come across.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yeah, yeah.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: He's he's got this kind of cheeky bit of math.
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it's just that um uh something about how the you know the stats go up.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's all about just keeping someone as long as you possibly can.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: So once you've done that course, you say, you know, the next course, and then what the next course and the next course, and and uh and he's got some uh mathematical formula being cheeky, but um, but I think it is it is true that that playing that long game in a in a warm um uh Christian context is is very hard to resist.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_03: Does that make you think of a possible incarnation of the world next door?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_03: I mean, I mean the Apostles' Creed was that, in that you know, in the year 200, I guess you you know, this is kind of the the creed is kind of coming out of the catechumens and they're getting ready for being baptized on Easter Sunday, and they would they would have about 120 to 150 hours of instruction um in in all sorts of in all sorts of areas, but the the creed was obviously at the at the heart of things.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_03: Does it make you think, well, maybe maybe there's a maybe there's a 13-week course uh that we could do with people?
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I that that's a really interesting thing.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think the uh having you know having written the book for for unbelievers, one of the places that it seems to start to get some traction is in um uh confirmation um classes because it's a a book that you could use.
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we didn't think of that at the time, but it does it does suit that um kind of confirmation process.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, that's really interesting.
• 31:31
  SPEAKER_01: We we do have a course that we a homespun course here in Perth um called Taste and See, or the Gospel in Four Meals, where we do these um these four meals that are based around the Christian faith and and and share something uh of the uh creation to new creation story in that context.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_01: That that's always a very um worthwhile endeavor.
• 31:51
  SPEAKER_01: So maybe we should um build onto that as sort of having heard this, why don't you sit down and do the go the catechumen's path and uh and learn these things?
• 31:59
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, do it in Lent, do it in over six weeks, maybe, or yeah, who knows?
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_03: Um so yeah, I I give that for free.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_03: Consultancy as well, Rory.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_03: Um spoiling you.
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_03: So um I think one of the one of the features of the book, I I don't think um you're just trying to get people to turn the page um in the way that you write.
• 32:20
  SPEAKER_03: I think you are trying to write beautifully.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_03: Um so for instance, you you say uh at one point, music, books and lovemaking, whiskey, potatoes and butter, the sound of a cricket ball when it finds the centre of the bat and is smashed for a six, the laughter of children, the smell of sauteing onions, the architecture of goudy, the womp of a door closing on a European car, the sky at dusk, old medding old men getting the giggles, children playing chasey, one of Bach's cello suites, the scent of wood fires, the feel of water, all of these are invitations to praise, incitements to worship.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_03: They are an opportunity to give thanks to the God who made them.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_03: So you are using beauty, you are using craft in order to open people's eyes to beauty.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_03: Why?
• 33:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, so that that's that's me.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um that's kind of your poor man's GK Chesterton, um uh trying to channel that um that spirit of that kind of um, I think in Chesterton, there there is that real, that kind of robust embrace of uh of the creator or the gods got us in.
• 33:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, you know, he has the um uh the small poem, I can't remember it now, but about the um uh you know that he he he dies another day, um, and you've given me two.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: Like, how is that possible?
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: How did how is any how is it that there's how do we get two of these, not just one?
• 33:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um uh I think that is um I think that's um probably underused in Christian discipleship, as in uh, you know, um that um part of what keeps one going as a Christian is you think, oh my father spun the sun around again.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I like that chill.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: And um that's an issue, you know, to to be more attentive to the the world that we're in.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that I guess that particular passage um is a kind of Chestertonian attempt um to say to someone that this is what the world could look like with these glasses on.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_01: Because your um your intuition, which I think everyone has, uh your intuition that when the when you see a sunset or a or laugh with your friends or uh a small child um draws a picture that that you know that that you owe someone thanks, that someone someone is owed thanks and praise for that.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you never you know we've got we've got a western the beach here is a it's a western shoreline, and so you see the sun set at the beach, and uh it's it it's like almost in invariably stunning to go to the beach in Perth and watch the sun set.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: And if someone if you look at that and say, Oh, um gee, that's beautiful.
• 35:07
  SPEAKER_01: Allow yourself to get stolen by that.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: You if someone said to you, oh, isn't it annoying, those synapses, they just kind of um they do that, don't they?
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's some evolutionary kind of thing, and um, we're we're trying to fix it.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um wouldn't only be annoying, it would be untrue.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_01: Like I I think we just think that's not true.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_01: It is true that something beautiful and transcendent just happened and it's bigger than me, and it's enough that it's that that I don't I don't need to look at that sunset and say, Oh, I would have done it a bit better.
• 35:41
  SPEAKER_01: You just and I I think that that that is a um uh it's certainly a thing that I enjoy about being a Christian, that I get to thank someone for it.
• 35:50
  SPEAKER_01: Uh imagine living life with in a world like this and not being able to thank anyone for it.
• 35:54
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think it is actually one of the in its own funny way, one of the sharper edges of the gospel, uh a la Romans chapter one, is that we did not give him thanks and praise.
• 36:05
  SPEAKER_01: That the um you know, the great crime um for which we're on trial is who does that?
• 36:13
  SPEAKER_01: You know, who who lives in a world like this and then gives credit to idols, or who um who who lives rent-free in God's universe and not giving him the honor to do his name.
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it is, I think it's simultaneously uh attractive because I you know I you never meet anyone who doesn't have a beautiful experience, even if their beautiful experience isn't a kind of uh high-minded middle class Western one, someone can always uh it'll be something like the the roar of an engine or whatever.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think we're we're quite in in the best sense of the word, quite vulnerable at that point to God.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um because you're kind of in a corner.
• 36:50
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 36:51
  SPEAKER_03: And therefore, I think you've got two tasks.
• 36:54
  SPEAKER_03: Um, if if evangelism is what we're saying it is, you've got two tasks, which is to awaken people to the weirdness of Christianity, but actually to awaken them to the weirdness of the world, and then to say, ah, but through the lens of this weird Jesus thing, um suddenly, yeah, things go into in in technicolor and and things come into focus.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lovely passage in um Marilyn Robinson's book, Gilead, where um she, you know, it's from the perspective of this uh this old um uh old pastor who's and he's looking at his very young son because he married old, and that and he says something like he says, it's kind of written in a like letters to his son, he says, Um, I see you there, he's playing with the hose in the front yard, he says, I see you there whooping and jumping, as any sane person should do in the presence of something as miraculous as water.
• 37:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and you think, you know, if say we lived on a planet without water and someone went to another planet and came back and bought back water, you would not believe it.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that'll make no sense.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: How is it that I can see entirely through it and there's no spaces in it?
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: And if I get into it, it holds me up, but I feel like I'm heavier than it.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it's it's you know, just the the miracle of you know, and as um in the in Gilead, the same the same person is the kid who's jumping around and looking at what water does in the sunlight.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_01: That that's sanity.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 38:28
  SPEAKER_03: Tell me what you think what well what first of all, what do you hope for this book to do?
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_03: And more broadly, what what is it possible for books to do more generally?
• 38:40
  SPEAKER_03: But start start off with the world next door.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, good question.
• 38:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I think the uh for the world next door, I just I I would love to get it into as many uh hands of unbelievers as possible.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: I you know, as we as I said, really, I really we've written it to be read.
• 38:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think uh I think as as you're um alluding to, books create a particular kind of space.
• 39:01
  SPEAKER_01: They're not um they're kind of more demanding um than uh than a YouTube thing or or a podcast.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think I mean podcasts are interesting because they're so they're so long form, they're kind of an interesting the internet's always accused of being ABHD, and it sort of is that, but then you've got Jordan Peterson speaking for 90 minutes and yeah, Joey for four hours, and yeah.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly, yeah.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: So that's a there's a there's a there's an interesting thing there.
• 39:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but I think I think books do create that particular space where um you've if they're written well, you've you've um killed your darlings, you've got rid of a whole lot of extraneous stuff, and just really tried to work each sentence um uh to do to do as much heavy lifting as it can.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: And um, so I think there is a there is a space for books.
• 39:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's probably a different space from um the time of the Reformation where books were doing the work of blogs and tractarians and so on, and and being this highly subversive, you can hear what Luther said, even though technically he's not really your priest, but away you go.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think priests, uh I think books have now uh occupy that slightly more patient uh space in people's lives where they've they've they've walked away from the noise.
• 40:21
  SPEAKER_01: And um, and so I think they uh I I suspect they'll have a more a more modest thing going forward.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm even I'm I would be like on a spectrum more of a book person than not a book person.
• 40:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I I notice how much I consume audibly these days, just you know, vast tracts of stuff is comes into my ears.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so books have be have had this kind of this much more kind of charming, um almost um almost a kind of sacred time quality in that um Charles Taylor sense of the word, that they you're suddenly making this this space that's very different to the spaces we occupy.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I think there'll be space for for I mean long books that earn that earn their length.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's lots of space for that.
• 41:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I think as as people people committed to commending the gospel, I think uh I think I think what we need is more books where people um uh under understand what it is to sat down with someone else's book and um and take that opportunity to to lay it out in beautiful and true prose.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: Brilliant.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_03: Well, and I think I think your book has done that.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_03: I uh I do think it is beautifully written.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_03: I do think it's um it yeah, it grabs the reader, it it does not shy away from the weirdness of Christianity, and but it also awakens the weird the reader to the weirdness of the world that they're in and shows them the gospel in this cathedral-like structure, which I I think um is brilliant.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_03: And I I think it's a it's a great book to read and pass on to a friend.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_03: Um so I heartly recommend that people run, don't walk, and get a copy of The World Next Door.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_03: Um, other ways that people can keep up with you, Rory?
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, well, they could um we've um our we've I'm at providencechurch.org.au.
• 42:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on Twitter, and uh that's probably where I mainly hang out on the internet.
• 42:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're about to start a blog.
• 42:23
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna blog like it's you know 2007.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_03: Um happier times.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that's uh that's a place where people could people could find us.
• 42:34
  SPEAKER_03: Awesome, awesome.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: I hope people do that.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_03: But Rory Shana, thanks so much for joining me.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, Glenn.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Great to talk.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I hope you enjoyed that conversation.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_05: I certainly found it fascinating.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_05: It's been very quiet in the Speak Life studios today, just myself and my wonderful colleague Matthia, and we've had a guy coming in to do some electrical work, which has been great, getting the building ready because in September we have our intensive details on speaklife.org.uk, brand new website by the way, speaklife.org.uk, same URL, forward slash foundry, and you will find all the details about our upcoming intensives.
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_05: These are week-long uh opportunities to hear theology, theology of creativity, filmmaking, get all sorts of training in those departments, uh, meet other Christian creatives, and you'll form some great friendships and some great contacts as well.
• 43:36
  SPEAKER_05: And it's an opportunity to meet the Speak Life team, catch the vision, learn the craft.
• 43:41
  SPEAKER_05: So I warmly uh invite you to those and commend those uh events to you.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_05: And yes, our first intensive of the new academic year is rapidly approaching September, and so do go and check that out, and we would love to welcome you to the Sunshine Coast.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_05: Well, I think that's everything.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_05: So thanks so much for listening, and we will be back next week.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_05: God bless.
• 44:07
  SPEAKER_05: Goodbye.