Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / What We Get Wrong About the Everyday || Mark Greene and Glen Scrivener || SLP444

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What We Get Wrong About the Everyday || Mark Greene and Glen Scrivener || SLP444 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and thank you so much for downloading episode 444 of the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: We're so glad you are here.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: My name's Thomas Thorogood.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: I am the media producer at Speak Life, which means I produce media.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: And today we bring you a conversation that Glenn Scrivener had in person in the Speak Life Studios in Eastbourne with Mark Green.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Mark Green is an author at LICC, the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: Try saying that quickly.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: Mark helps us think through the typical working day for the typical church member, perhaps in the office, perhaps in the garage, the shop, the school, and understand that typical working day is something that Jesus isn't simply relevant to, but something that Jesus is actively involved in and working through God's people in the context where he has placed them.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: So I hope you find this discussion helpful in thinking through where God has placed you and how you can be salt and light in the context where you find yourself.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_05: Hello, I'm Glenn Scrivener from Speak Life.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_05: It's my great privilege to have Mark Green, author, speaker, and the mission champion at the London Institute of Contemporary Christianity.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_05: Thanks for joining me.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: Delighted to be here.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Shalom to you.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:32
  SPEAKER_01: Shalom.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you saying shalom?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: You you love your Hebraisms?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_01: I love my Hebraisms.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, shalom is one of the great, the great blessings in the Bible, isn't it?
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: Holistic, well-being, mind, spirit, heart, everything.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_05: And if you were to boil it down to one word, peace, is that but it's it's such a great word, it can't just have one meaning, can't it?
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: No, that's right.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: In uh Jeremiah 29, 7, where it's you know, where we're called to pray for the shalom of the city which God has exiled the people into.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um often the translations translate it peace and prosperity.
• 2:06
  SPEAKER_01: And actually, it really is holistic well-being.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it's not just individual, it's community, it's ecological, it's political, relational, economic, it's the whole ball of wax, really.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's the ultimate goal.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_05: It's a very marked green word.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: It's also a very biblical word just to say, you know, that you just say that Jesus, although it's Greek, he does say in Colossians that he brought peace by the shedding of his blood, and that wasn't just a psychological ease, was it?
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yes, yeah.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: And and peace between God and uh and us, but peace between peoples and peace reweaving society and cultural sort of uh strands and that that sort of thing.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's part of part of what kind of gets you out of bed in the morning, isn't it?
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_01: Cosmic peace gets me out of bed in the morning.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: Man, you make me sound like a 1960 TV.
• 2:52
  SPEAKER_01: Are you a 1960 TV?
• 2:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm much younger than that.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_05: But in in terms of that holistic view of how Jesus puts things back together again, um I think I think one of your heartbeats really is seeing all of society woven together with Christ at the center, and not just a kind of a boiled-down message of of simple spiritual well-being.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_05: I I think Shalom's probably a good description of of how you see all things.
• 3:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, and and I thought what you said about me was a pretty good description.
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: I I wish I could say it so succinctly.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_01: I think that is right.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I think I think that is the glorious, in a sense, the glorious message of Christ to us, that he comes into us seeking our well-being in every aspect and calling us to, if you like, steward our own lives, creation, the places that he's put us, the relationships he's given us, with that yearning that they would become as shalomi, if you like, as peace-filled as holistically well as they can do before he comes back and makes all things perfect and well again.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_05: And does Shalom have resonance as well?
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_05: Did did you grow up in a Jewish home or is it?
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_05: I did, yes, I did.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: So it has resonances there, and I spent a year in Israel as a youngster working on a kibbutz.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_05: Okay, okay.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_05: So how does how does Mark Green growing up in a in a Jewish home, going to a kibbutz, how how does Mark Green discover faith in Jesus?
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_01: Very slowly.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um went to university as you do, and uh curiously, though uh not for faith reasons, I ended up doing Hebrew studies.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was a modern linguist, basically, but I've been to Israel, came back, thought, why don't you do Arabic?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then Arabic proved very, very, very difficult.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: So I decided to do Hebrew, which I was gripped by modern, medieval, and um ancient Hebrew.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: And during my time at Union, I met lots of Christians, lots of them.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um the Christian Union there was very active, um, and uh I was colour-coded by the Christian Union as in the end, as somebody that you could go talk to, but you probably wouldn't get anywhere.
• 5:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I was and and eventually, my fourth year, because it was a fourth-year course, four-year course, um, this relatively new Christian, a guy called Steve Wexler, who'd been converted himself at university through the Ministry of the Navigators, came to talk to me.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I mean, you know, the right person at the right time, which doesn't mean that all the other people who came to talk to me hadn't done a good job, because looking back on it, they certainly had done a good job.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: But somehow with Steve it or perhaps with me in my it wasn't a debate.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Somehow he wasn't somebody, I mean a smart guy, but it wasn't we weren't having a debate, really.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_01: And uh it felt more like a a real conversation where I wasn't trying to win the argument.
• 5:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um because often you can win the argument, but you can still be wrong.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and he he just one day asked me if I wanted to ri you know, ask Christ into my life, and I remember where I was in my room in Thompson's Lane, literally eighty yards from the synagogue.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_03: Wow.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um and um and I said yes, but it it wasn't it wasn't for an intellectual reason at that point, though I had certainly heard those.
• 6:19
  SPEAKER_01: It was much more there was something in the room.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_01: Now I would say there was someone in the room.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: I it was a moment of surrender, really.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: So would I have known that I was a sinner and agreed with that?
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Would probably not.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_01: It was a sense that Jesus was real and the answer.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: What was the question?
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: Not entirely clear what the question was.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: But I just felt wooed into him.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: And something happened that was deep in me at that moment.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_01: The presence of God.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_05: Isn't that interesting the way the way we look back on those moments?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_05: And it's very tempting to put them into a neat frame in which subsequently you came to learn that the gospel is about sin and then the cross, and then through it's the atonement of Jesus, you know forgiveness and new life, and then the gift of the Spirit, and and it's very tempting to then look back at the moment of conversion as I came to realize that I was a sinner, and I came to recognize the penal substitutionary death of Christ on my behalf, and I which but that's not how people actually tick, is it?
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: No, well well, but although, you know, in a sense, to my shame, uh, that is the way that I first um used to to share my testimony.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was, in a sense, taught to do it that way, and I'm not complaining about that, but that's the way the way I did it.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: I think it was partly intellectual pride.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'd gone to this very good university, and so I'm positioning myself.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is unconscious, by the way.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: As I I, you know, this guy came to talk to me, and I mean literally, these are some of the words I to consider the claims of Christ, and I went away and I thought about it, and I decided that they were probably true, and therefore it wasn't.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_01: You weighed them in the balance very carefully, and it would be more honest to say yes, and that's not what happened at all.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: Though I had heard because they were they were well-trained evangelists, I had heard about the substitutionary atonement of Christ, yeah.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: I had heard about sin, and people had read the Bible with me, and of course I'd been in British schools, so I'd I'd done a bit of study over the years.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_05: And how are you processing faith in Jesus with your Jewish past and with your family?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_05: Uh what what what kind of uh stresses and strains did that introduce?
• 8:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um with my family, very little, um, as it happens.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um I was brought up Jewish, my father came from an Orthodox context, my mum um agreed to bring us up Jewish, and I didn't discover that I really wasn't, in a sense, from an Orthodox point of view, properly Jewish until I was about 18.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we'd gone to a reformed synagogue and I didn't mind that my mother was a a Gentile, we were being so it was it was all fine.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um but uh it was really my brother who was more concerned, and um I remember I'd been on kibbutz, and then subsequently he was younger than me, he went on kibbutz and came back, and he was thinking of converting to Orthodox Judaism at the time and discovers that his brother had become a Christian.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_01: This was he was he was quite upset by that.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was also partly, I think, that my parents um weren't that impressed by probably by my earlier testimony.
• 9:23
  SPEAKER_01: I remember when I was um invited to go and work in America, I was working in advertising and I went to America and then asked me if I'd want to work in New York.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: Well, who wouldn't?
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: And then my Christian friends were a little bit worried about me because I hadn't exactly completely cleaned up my life, and there I was going to Babylon on the Hudson, you know, and you know, you know, this was New York in the 80s.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: This is you know so vibrant and not um not terribly pure town in that sense.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: So they were concerned about me, and I began to have a few second thoughts, and I shared this with my father, and he said, Oh, I didn't know your faith was that important to you.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: So I've definitely done a good job with my family.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_05: Okay.
• 10:05
  SPEAKER_05: And and so you end up in New York in advertising in the eighties.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_05: How fun is that?
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_01: It was enormous fun, as it happened.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I mean the eighties was not necessarily um or always economically um uh a strong time, but um whatever one's impression of advertising, the the the agency I was working for was called Ogilvy and Mather, and it had the reputation of of um being a great place to work if your parents could afford to send you there.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 10:31
  SPEAKER_01: And also having the reputation of the highest highest standard of ethics, okay.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: Honesty and integrity um in the advertising world at the time.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's all relative, isn't it?
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: Honour amongst thieves and so on.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So, you know, this was not Madman in that sense, it uh and it was not you know, it was not um a dog eat dog context.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, people are people and bad things happen, but essentially a very positive context.
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: But I absolutely uh loved working there, I loved the people.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: New York was very exciting, and I was in a magnificent church.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I was triple blessed.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_01: I was given a an opportunity to work in a context which really suited me temperamentally.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: Americans tend to be glass half full.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, we used to say that you know, go into a meeting in England and somebody's trying to think of five reasons why the thing you just said was the stupidest thing that any person has ever said since the creation of the world.
• 11:33
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Go into a meeting in America and they're trying to think of five reasons why that just could be the smartest thing that anybody's ever said since the creation of the world.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, you may end up in the same place.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_01: Which is yes, no, maybe.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_01: But getting there temperamentally for me was an easier place to work.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then this church was just magnificent.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And well, it was a small church, it wasn't, you know, um 120 members on a Sunday, 180 120 members, about 180 coming on a Sunday.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: So not not a big church by American standards or much bigger churches in New York, obviously.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: It was ethnically diverse, it was diverse in age range, but the key about it was it was um it was a disciple-making church.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Of course, I I was a young Christian, I hadn't grown up, I didn't know what it was.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: Now I've got the language, and I would say now I'd say it was a whole life disciple-making church.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_03: Okay.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: And in 2006, when we started looking for them in the UK, we couldn't find them.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: So these are rare beasts.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_04: Yes.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, so they decided that there was lots of things you could do in New York.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: You have loads of different ministries.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: But they felt their core was people coming to New York, and within five years, lots of them have left.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: They've either left the city to go to the suburbs or they've left the town altogether, because it's a very mobile place.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: So what are we going to do?
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: What's the core group of fifty or sixty gonna do?
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna try to ensure that when people leave they have grown in Christ.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_01: That they're sending them on to sending them on deeper and richer in Christ.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_01: And it was it was disciple making.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um it was, in a sense, quite intentional as a as a culture.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: So we had adult Sunday school, which lots of American churches do, and was such a gift because if you come to Christ later in life, you've got a lot of catching up to do.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_01: And even if you've got, you know, a combination of uh John Stott and you know whoever preaching Jim Packer and C.S.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Lewis preaching at you every week.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's only half an hour or whatever, but you can't ask a question.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think that ability to ask questions to go into to do some doctrine as well as to do a Bible book in in greater depth or cover a topic was significant.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: But the main thing really was the the personal being in a small group with a guy who decided that he wanted he and his wife wanted to grow, help six young adults grow, and then meeting with him from time to time on my own.
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_01: What's really going on in your life?
• 14:15
  SPEAKER_01: Tell me about it.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um actually being taught how to read the Bible.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, but let's not assume that people know how to read the Bible.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_01: I mean I've done literature until the age of twenty-three, advanced study, but reading the Bible's not not the same thing, etcetera.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_01: Not assuming that people know how to pray because they know how to talk.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're not assuming that somebody knows how to have a half day in prayer.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_01: All of those practices were taught as well as you know, the truths and the personal interaction.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_01: So that was an utter, utter blessing.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_01: And only now you know, or not now, I mean I realise when I, you know, within four or five years of coming back to the UK, but now I see it even more.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I'm not yearning and praying for an impossible dream.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 15:04
  SPEAKER_01: I have seen it in action.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not about money, and it's not about having lots of people and lots of paid stuff.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: It's about a commitment over time to seeking to grow people.
• 15:17
  SPEAKER_05: That's a beautiful vision.
• 15:18
  SPEAKER_05: So church is not this holding room.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_05: So we've got we've got our converts and not long till glory now, just hunker down and you know, either Jesus will return or we'll go to him.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_05: But this is a real vision for growing people day by day as disciples of Jesus.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um I I think I spot there's a number of kind of churches and church movements in the UK that they s they certainly don't think that your job finishes once you've been converted.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_05: But quite often what they then do is they say, okay, now you're in church, your job is now to go and make converts yourself.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_05: And so if if you're a bright lad from Cambridge, then we'll take you and we'll train you up to be a preacher or an evangelist so that you can make more converts, and we'll we'll sort of keep you busy that way.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_05: It's not so much keep you busy, um, it's it's not so much grow you in this holistic sense in all of life, in that in that sort of pastoral way.
• 16:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um there there are some churches that have a vision for what life looks like beyond conversion, but what it looks like is kind of like a pyramid scheme to get more people converted.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_05: Whereas your church were very happy for you to go into Manhattan and to be a minister of Christ in the workplace.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_05: And so your growth uh was not just growing church, as it were, but your your growth was being sent out into the nations in order to be who God made you to be, and and to grow in Christ in advertising, not just go to Bible college.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_05: That's that's a very holistic vision.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_01: It is, and curiously, it was quite deep.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: Um of course I didn't know that I was doing workplace ministry.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_01: When I discovered it was because they asked me to teach an adult Sunday school on it.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_01: And that's when I discovered it.
• 17:10
  SPEAKER_01: But they also did something very, very interesting, which again was quite countercultural.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: Um in that church, every year they would pray about um who they felt God was calling to serve, if you like, the gathered community in particular ways, you know, on a mission commission or on education or on fabric or whatever it might be.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: Churches need people to run things, the book, the bookstall, whatever it might be.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: And one year they came to me and said, We we don't want to give you a job in the gathered church at all, basically.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: We want your service to the gathered church to be a to free you to spend more time uh doing workplace ministry.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_01: And they also did that with uh with uh a woman who was ministering to Muslims.
• 17:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um we we she would have she was worked for Campus Crusade, now called Crew, um, and would have been brilliant on mission commission or education or almost anything actually.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: A hugely talented person.
• 18:03
  SPEAKER_01: But um no, you know, no, no, we want you to focus.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: As it happens, I I decided that I'm not sure they they were right, and so I did do something, but uh you know it was just interesting as a we're prepared to forego some labour because we think God wants this person to focus elsewhere.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think I think uh d don't don't um perhaps um missing me.
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that now there aren't some disciple-making churches in the UK because now there are.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: Um I mean things are praise the Lord shifting, but it's not common.
• 18:37
  SPEAKER_01: But just to give you one kind of uh indicator, one of the questions we ask folk is um has your local community or local church community uh prayed for you for the the things that you do Monday to Friday beyond the church or Monday to Saturday, whether that be going to the school gate or that be a ministry and a tennis club or that be a workplace.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_01: And um the other week I was in a room with people from probably ten, twelve churches, hundred people, and asked them that question.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: Not a single hand went up.
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that would be quite common.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_01: And that tells you something.
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_01: In other words, but it would also be very common that all of those people actually were also serving in in jobs in the church, in in as, if you like, leaders of certain functions in the church, and they would all have been prayed for those.
• 19:32
  SPEAKER_01: So i the culture is quite deep, even at if you like, it if it's quite basic level, you've got a new job, let's pray for you.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't you do that?
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Or why wouldn't you commission people once a year into wherever God has called them and those ministries beyond the church?
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and when you say that to people, they go, Well, why wouldn't we?
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Why haven't we done that?
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, yes.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_01: It's obvious.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: Why of course we do that?
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 19:55
  SPEAKER_01: No one is but it's it's a culture that militates against acknowledging it.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_05: So what's the what's the centre of gravity that the the the other culture orbits around?
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_05: So if if it doesn't occur to us to pray for people whose you know out all our existences lie outside the church from Monday to Saturday, but if it never occurs to us to truly say go in peace to love and serve the Lord, if if if if it's not that sort of um sending out outgoing kind of mission, what instead lies at the heart of our vision and what are we orbiting around such that we miss this?
• 20:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think we're orbiting around um an understanding of the the gathered church.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um and again as as really the key thing.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um these are the things we do together, so it's much more obvious.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: We know each other in these contexts, it's easier to pray for.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Um we we all know um Jane or John up there who's running the children's work, of course.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: We all and we know what that looks like, so we can easily pray for that.
• 21:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we all know the pastor and the pastoral team, so it's easy to pray for them and their holidays and their challenges.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: We have a commonality of purpose.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yep.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: We are in the mission together to this community around us, or we're in this mission together to support an overseas missionary.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: We all share that.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas um having a commonality of purpose around people's diverse scattered ministries, one person's in the NHS, somebody else is a school teacher, somebody else is eleven in a football team, somebody else goes to the schoolgate, that's their ministry.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we don't all know that as well.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: So you have to work a little bit harder.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so the the centre of gravity is really is is is around the gather church, but but that normally comes from what you might call a flawed Operational theology as opposed to a flawed uh theology.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: Ask almost anybody, do you think all of life is significant to Christ?
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_01: They go, Yes.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_01: Why wouldn't it be?
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_01: But what we've found, if you like, is that when you ask um so-called ordinary Christians, and otherwise non-ordained people, you know, so what are the marks of fruitfulness?
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: What what what do you think, you know, when do you think you've really done something for Jesus?
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um you you get three things really.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh one is having an evangelistic conversation.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Amen, yes.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh second one is um engaging uh in direct social action.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: Am I helping in um somebody who's homeless?
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_01: Am I helping with a food bank?
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_01: Am I teaching younger people?
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean what latchkey kids, whatever, am I engaging in that?
• 22:55
  SPEAKER_01: And am I in volunteering in the local church?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Am I serving in the church in some way?
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: All of those are good things, and you know, praise the Lord for all of them.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um but those are the marks of fruitfulness.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that is that on an average day for most people, they're not necessarily going to get a conversation that's evangelistic.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_01: In most jobs, they're not doing direct social action, and self-evidently, if they're doing doing a work or they're looking after somebody at home or they're looking after children or whatever, uh, they're not doing direct social action.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_01: So they're a bit of a problem.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_01: So my week is pretty much a waste of time.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_01: Treading water until until I get to do something.
• 23:35
  SPEAKER_01: Uh that of course those things are hugely valuable.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_01: That is, by the way, you know, why you know we did quite a lot of research on helping people to have a broader understanding of what fruitfulness looks like.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_01: And how you can be fruitful every day, whatever you do, independent of whether you have an evangelistic conversation.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 23:55
  SPEAKER_05: So uh you've got you've got a whole course and and some resources built around fruitfulness on the front line.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um so you so people can kind of check that out.
• 24:03
  SPEAKER_05: But if you were going to boil down, what's what's what's something that really helps people kind of shift from that that mentality of um the gathered church that simply exists for itself to the ability to see your Monday to Saturday as how you bear fruit by the Spirit?
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_05: What's what's something that can really help people shift in their mentality?
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um Well, w we gave them a framework, and I suppose the framework was a very simple one.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we know, because the Bible tells us so, that when you modelling godly character is a good thing.
• 24:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it the or if you like, the fruit of the spirit is a good thing.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: So if you in Christ's power manifest the fruit of the spirit in a context, if you are loving, if you are kind, if you show peace, if you operate self-control, if you show goodness, if you're faithful, and so on, that is something that Jesus wants.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_01: And in some places that's actually quite difficult to do.
• 25:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's yours you're a barista and there's a thousand people coming at you, or whatever it might be, or you're caring for someone at home, being patient and kind can be a challenge.
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_01: You neither you need help.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_01: So when you manifest that, well done.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: Fantastic.
• 25:12
  SPEAKER_01: When you do good work in the power of the spirit, well done.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_01: When you minister grace and love to somebody, well done.
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_01: Jesus is interesting ministering grace and love to somebody.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: When you mould the culture, and moulding culture sounds very grand, but you can mould a culture just by deciding, I'm gonna say bless you.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: One guy in a bank used to say bless you when people sneezed, and nobody had done it before.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: And eventually people started to do it.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it sounds odd, but that was the culture.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_01: It was very we're not interested in, you know, we're just hunkering down here.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: Or you can do it by putting a tea light on the table or somebody's birthday.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_01: You just bring in a one doughnut and stick a candle in it and celebrate somebody.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_01: It just shifts culture.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't have to be grand.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: And then there's ministering uh sort of being a mouthpiece for truth and justice.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: Well, just telling the truth is not a bad start.
• 26:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, and every day we get to tell the truth, or we get to skew it, or we or perhaps we tell lies for whatever reason, then there's then there is being a messenger of gospel.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_01: So when people see that they have been fruitful, and you know, that's one of the things here, is not just to set a whole new set of hurdles, but most people most Christians have got fantastic stories to tell, they just don't know it.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, most of the stories that I've written in my books are about people who don't know they got a story.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_04: Right.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, yeah.
• 26:31
  SPEAKER_05: But they do.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_05: And as more and more people tell those sorts of stories, more and more people go, Oh yeah, oh, that's happened to me in the workplace.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_05: And they've they've been beating themselves up because they haven't led someone to the to the Lord at the water cooler.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_05: But they've got all sorts of stories about yeah, blessing people in the workplace and changing the culture in those ways.
• 26:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I had a lovely story just um just uh somebody I met the other week who are called Rose, that's not her entire name.
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_01: And she'd been quite senior in an organization and um yeah, um, with two hats on, big organization and enormous pressure.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: And she she was juggling all these various pressures and groups, and she always felt that she'd been failing her colleagues.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_01: And it became clear at a certain point, I mean she wasn't fired that it was it was time for her to move on.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so she she felt like she'd failed, but they threw her a big lunch.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: People came from across the organization to this lunch, and they were all asked um to submit one word that summed her up.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_01: Huh.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: Wow.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_01: Scary.
• 27:33
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not saying that rose is scary.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, no.
• 27:36
  SPEAKER_01: They gave her this this this picture which was in the shape of a rose, because that was her name with all these words on it, and there were things like friend, lioness, inspiring, and it's like and and she realized that people saw that well, maybe she did fail in some ways, in the sense that you don't always succeed with the best intentions, because not everything's under your control, as it wasn't in complex situations.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: But she suddenly realized I actually have had an impact here.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: I really have, but she didn't know till that moment.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, exactly.
• 28:09
  SPEAKER_05: And that and that story is multiplied for for every Christian there is, really.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_05: Um, we'll we'll bring you back from New York in a second.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_05: Um but that's reassuring.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_05: We've got about 20 years to catch up, I'm sure.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_05: But um while you're in advertising, what did you learn about how people tick that remains true and good in your understanding today?
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_05: I'm sure I'm sure there's lots of things where you might sort of look through a Christian grid and and think, maybe the advertising world isn't as Christian as it could be.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_05: But w what is it about your time in advertising that made you that that made you more aware of truths about humanity and life, do you think?
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there'd be a number of ways to respond to that question.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: One would be through the relationships I had, of course, and that would be quite common.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_01: But if one thinking specifically about, if you like, advertising and advertising method, um one of the frames in which advertising works is is recognizing that purchase decisions when people buy something, they're actually quite complex psychologically, and they involve, in some of the psychological frames, various forms of anxiety.
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um so um at the very basic level, uh I'm going to spend money on this.
• 29:30
  SPEAKER_01: Is it well spent?
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_01: Will this car break down?
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: Will this thing which says it's going to wash white actually turn everything pink?
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_01: Will I like that brand of baked beans?
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_01: Um and a can of baked beans is a very small risk, so maybe it's fine.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_01: But actually, reassurance is a very important part of purchase decisions.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, in recessions, people tend to buy brands, well-known brands more, because they don't want to take the risk.
• 29:58
  SPEAKER_01: If I try those beans, I can't afford a second can of beans.
• 30:02
  SPEAKER_01: In this economy, yeah, I can't afford it.
• 30:04
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm gonna I'd rather spend 10p more on that one and know that I'm gonna give my kids a decent meal than buy them something that they're gonna go yuck.
• 30:12
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a level trivial example.
• 30:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then there are other things about how people perceive themselves.
• 30:19
  SPEAKER_01: So uh we used to call it self-image benefits.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_01: So when somebody buys something or they wear it, how do I feel about this when I'm wearing it?
• 30:28
  SPEAKER_01: How how do I feel about being a Christian?
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_01: If I became a Christian, what would that I'm not that kind of person, I'm not I'm not like the vicar of Dibli.
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: Or I'm not a cake-eating sherry tippling, slightly a feat vicar sort of person.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_01: No, no, that's not me.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't want to be that.
• 30:46
  SPEAKER_01: Or a social image benefit, for example, which is how do people how would others see me if I drove a Ferrari or if I drove a Skoda or if I wore jeans with holes in, or if I wore a jacket, or whatever.
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: There's a social image, and those aren't bad things.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_01: It's right for us to think about the impact of what we do and what we buy and how we speak on other people.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_01: But when it's too powerful, then we're in trouble, either the self-image or the social image.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for me, one of the things was understanding, that was one thing, was understanding that those dimensions are always at work.
• 31:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um, will it work?
• 31:25
  SPEAKER_01: Does it does this thing work?
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: How do I feel about it?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: How will others feel about it?
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a l an area of legitimacy, but of course, in cultures, um, if somebody's part of a friendship group and they're suddenly, and that friendship group is the kind of group that has been disdainful of religion for a long time, you're actually asking that person to do quite a lot.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_01: Now we're aware of that when somebody's coming out of another faith community.
• 31:49
  SPEAKER_01: We know that for a Muslim to come out of their community it could be really, really difficult, um, perhaps dangerous in some cases.
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_01: Um, or indeed for some Orthodox Jews to become Christians can be, they can be cut off from their families.
• 32:03
  SPEAKER_01: So we know about those risks, but with people if you like who are not from faith communities, they've still got a group of people around them who would have a view of this.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_01: So there's relational risk involved.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the other thing I learnt in advertising is around this, in terms of as it relates to evangelism, is that um it takes time.
• 32:27
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it's very rare.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_01: You know, um there was a time when um if you like uh drinks like Guinness and Maccasin and you know those dark stouts were for basically for for older people who are suffering from constipation.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:44
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I remember working in hospital once we used to give Macassin to the patients.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_01: Not not to put them to sleep, but actually to help with their inner workings, as it were.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_01: And um and suddenly it becomes a drink for for cool people.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_01: Guinness is a drink for cool people.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: The benefits are the same, it tastes if you like it, I do.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but you know, uh it's repositioning a benefit.
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_01: And I think understanding that that can take time, that once upon a time no one would touch decaffeinated coffee or no one would touch a diet drink because it tastes good and I'm not a wimp and all that kind of stuff.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas over time that happens.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that notion particularly um I think was reinforced to me when I did some work with Billy Graham for his his what was called global mission, which was I think he he he spoke to a billion people for the UK stuff.
• 33:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I asked his the the guy who was head of setting it up, because I was doing some of the PR and advertising for it.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, uh the sort of average person who comes to know Jesus through a Billy Graham address, so you know, what do we know about them?
• 33:54
  SPEAKER_01: And he said one of the things we know about them is that they've on average had 32 significant exposures to the gospel.
• 34:00
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's usually liberating, isn't it?
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 34:03
  SPEAKER_01: I can be one of those.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: But the impression that if I just speak for the first time and suddenly suddenly you're going to become a Christian, well, maybe not.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_01: So moving somebody from rejection of a product or a service to, oh, maybe I'd give it a go to acceptance and seeing it takes time.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now I'm not saying that the gospel is a product or that Jesus is a product, but I am saying saying that.
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and you see it in you see it in in how the Lord moves Peter in to the point where he's kind of open to the notion that the Gentiles, the Spirit is on them.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, he he moves him around Israel, doesn't he?
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_01: He goes to the house of Simon the Tanner, which he probably wouldn't have done beforehand as an Orthodox Jew, because Tanner's handled dead things, and then he raises somebody from the dead, and then he has some dreams.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: Why have I got these dreams?
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, Lord.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_01: And God tells him somebody's coming, and Cornice is coming, and then he goes and he's got some days to think about.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to the house of a load of Gentiles, and they seem to have had this thing, and then he goes there, and then oh, and he realizes, Oh my goodness, yeah.
• 35:09
  SPEAKER_01: God is operating with the Gentiles too.
• 35:11
  SPEAKER_01: So even in that, I mean it's not weeks, but there's a a process.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:16
  SPEAKER_01: So I think um I mean, at one level it's basic, it's basic to people.
• 35:20
  SPEAKER_01: Why would we expect somebody to instantly change their worldview?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_03: Mm-hmm.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah, yeah.
• 35:26
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 35:27
  SPEAKER_05: It it happens, but it it it usually happens through means, and it yeah, and and God does not uh sort of extract us from our humanity in order to come to Christ, but but works through the humanity of the preacher, the you know, the uh the one who believes and and the humanity of all those they come in into contact with.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_05: So, okay, so you're in New York.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_05: What brings you back to the UK and what do you find when you when you get here?
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um what brings me back to UK, um two things really.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um one was I'd been thinking about going to Bible college for about four years, and the reason for that was that the guy who was discipling me had really turned me on to the Bible.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, I I've always loved literature, but he had absolutely turned me on, and I just wanted to learn some more.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: I had no uh sense in my mind that I was called by God to pastoral ministry, uh, or church-paid pastoral ministry, or church-paid overseas mission, or any office or function in a parishurch organization, I thought I would go for a year, maybe two, and then goes go back into advertising or consulting or something like that.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, that was one part.
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the other part was you know, I'd reach a certain stage in my life.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I'd been there seven years, I was 33, I was single, and I thought, where do I want to live my life?
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: And um since I had successfully um, as a white Christian straight male, failed to find a wife in New York with all the advantages that I would have had.
• 36:56
  SPEAKER_01: An Englishman in New York is normally an advantage.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: And the odds were in my favour.
• 37:01
  SPEAKER_01: You've you've got ten extra IQ points, just with the accent.
• 37:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's absolutely true.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um they they did they used to say that.
• 37:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it was actually one of my clients said that to the guy that worked directly opposite me, you know, in the client organization.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_01: He said, You you you gotta get those English guys to write to you, because when they say it, it sounds fantastic.
• 37:21
  SPEAKER_01: So we had to write everything up.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_01: So I come back and um and I found um I w I went to London Bible College.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Again, it was just a phenomenal place.
• 37:31
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it was a golden era, incredible richness of faculty and students, and loved that.
• 37:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but one of the things I discovered was that virtually no one was talking about everyday workplace ministry.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_01: There was the great Richard, Reverend Dr.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Richard Hinginson, who was at Ridley, who written a book called Call to Account.
• 37:55
  SPEAKER_01: And um Sir Fred Catherwood, I think, was still alive at that point, and he he was an advocate for it.
• 38:00
  SPEAKER_01: But nowhere was anybody, it wasn't on the curriculum of any theological college.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there were very few books about it, no one it wasn't a category.
• 38:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, it wasn't a category.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 38:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um how do you help people do minister in the workplace?
• 38:15
  SPEAKER_01: No one was thinking about that.
• 38:17
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and of course, having had such a a positive experience of seeking to walk with Jesus in the workplace, and the joy that that is to be walking with him and seeing what he does, and having seen that in so many other people through through a an adult Sunday school class that that I taught, and seeing the joy that they felt, oh my goodness, Jesus is working through me, things are happening, and it's just I don't have to go anywhere, I'm just going to work and look what's going on.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: Praise the Lord, you know, it's exhilarating.
• 38:50
  SPEAKER_01: I realize that that it that it it's almost it's tragedy is a strong word, but it's not far off.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_01: Because what's being withheld from people in a sense is this sense that I get to walk with Jesus in everything.
• 39:04
  SPEAKER_01: That is exciting.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: And the opposite is I only get to walk to Jesus when I do with Jesus when I do these sorts of things.
• 39:13
  SPEAKER_01: And the moment you say it you go, well, no, that can't be the case.
• 39:16
  SPEAKER_01: But that has been the case for most Christians, and it uh and it pervades church culture.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: So the average young person in a church, eleven to eighteen, has no biblical framework either for education in general or any subject, with the possible exception of science and RE.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: So why is mathematics important to God?
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_01: Why is learning a foreign language important to God?
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Does God care about literature?
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_01: Why are you doing it?
• 39:52
  SPEAKER_01: And the problem with that is if they are making decisions about which GCSCs they will c they will they will choose and which A levels they will choose, which will based on their sense of what work they might one day do.
• 40:04
  SPEAKER_01: But they have no biblical framework for work.
• 40:06
  SPEAKER_01: Except that it's pretty cool to be a preacher, even cooler to be a worship leader, and mega cool to be a social activist.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_01: So so what I was looking at was a culture that basically inadvertently, this is not deliberate, which of course makes it a greater challenge, but inadvertently sets aside most of everyday life for most people as not really significant to God, except yeah, do show integrity and do look for opportunities to share the gospel, both of which I think are great.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 40:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this this this became a sort of you can probably tell something of a burden and it's still there.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: You know, this is not right.
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_01: This is not just to the people of God.
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_01: We are we are we are literally withholding something from them.
• 41:01
  SPEAKER_05: And it's not something from most of the people.
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, you know, w withholding something from most of the people because if if the the zenith of your discipleship is to become a full-time pastoral leader in the church, that that that's not most people.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_05: And I've I've heard this said, I'm sure you've heard this said.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um somebody said in my hearing, it's better to be uh a sub-par Bible teacher than a state-of-the-art um heart surgeon.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_05: And if someone is a state-of-the-art heart surgeon, but they could be, even a sub-par Bible teacher, they should leave heart surgery and become a Bible teacher.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_05: What would you say to that?
• 41:45
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I mean the thing I would always say is it depends what God is calling you to.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: I think the genius of the guy who founded the London Institute was John Stott was that when you look at the people he discipled, then a lot of them did not turn into church leaders.
• 42:01
  SPEAKER_01: John John Wyatt, who is a professor John Wyatt, who is an ex global expert on uh neonatal pediatrics, professor emeritus, I think at King's and so on, and has also written lots of books on on medical ethics from a Christian point of view, and dying from a Christian point of view, was on the board of the London Institute for Contemporary Christianity as a disciple of John Stott.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_01: John Stott wrote to him once a week for five years and he did not want him to come out of medicine.
• 42:27
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:28
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas you're quite right, another stream would have said, you know, you are a really good Bible teacher, which he is, by the way.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: He used to teach on courses at the London Institute when I was there.
• 42:38
  SPEAKER_01: Used to irritate me like mad because he always used to get better ratings than anybody else.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: We're meant to be the professional teachers, and John White gets them off the scale.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_05: Well, he's a lovely man, so he gets away with so much.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_01: Well, there's of course I'm not a lovely man, so I don't have that on.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_01: But it wasn't just John, it wasn't just John White.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: It's David Turner, who's a brilliant he's a he's a word to so there was this sense, wasn't there, of of of that that isn't the zenith.
• 43:02
  SPEAKER_01: The zenith is to to be who God has made and called you to be, and to do whatever you do for his glory and his power and his strength.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_05: Yes.
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_05: Go go where God calls you, but he might well be calling you to be a neonatal pediatric doctor or a lawyer, or who who knows?
• 43:20
  SPEAKER_05: Um okay.
• 43:21
  SPEAKER_05: And so where where does LICC sort of fit into the story then?
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_05: You you're at Bible College, um, you're not seeing a lot of people raised up for this kind of work.
• 43:29
  SPEAKER_01: So LICC fits in in the sense that I I was I uh I stayed um on the staff at London Bible College, they invited me to join the staff.
• 43:39
  SPEAKER_01: And uh because the pay was so good, I thought you can never match this with compared to Manhattan.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: This was just that was uh just uh over the top lavish.
• 43:50
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I just felt I think I I think I was called to do it, actually.
• 43:54
  SPEAKER_01: And and I was very really happy to earn uh so I spent nine years on the staff, eventually becoming uh uh vice principal community, not academic.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I did do a fair amount of teaching on contemporary culture and again, you know, positive.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: But then I was encouraged by several people to apply to for the post of uh executive director at LICC, which initially I turned down and but I couldn't get it out of my system.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_01: And on the last day of application I got a phone call and and I was literally had the application on the top of a pile of papers in my office and I'm thinking why have I not thrown this in the bin?
• 44:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'm thinking that thought when the phone rings and it's the chairman of of the Board of Trustees of LICC and he said, What are you thinking right now?
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I said I'm thinking why have I not thrown this in the bin so we talked and um and of course the reason why it was so attractive to me was not because I was unhappy at London Bible college or I thought you know uh there wasn't a good place to be but the the the focus of LICC was on the question how do we empower everyday people to be fruitful for Jesus in the places God has called them and how do we help church communities become church communities that disciple them for those contexts.
• 45:22
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the question.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: That's how LICC fits in and that's that's our focus.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 45:29
  SPEAKER_05: Um and has been yeah yeah um I wanna I want to ask you about something that's sort of been bothering me for for some time now and it's something that Stephen McAlpine said who's been on this channel he's a uh church pastor in uh Australia and uh he he said in an interview with me um so many preachers prepare their people for the kind of Monday morning that the preacher's gonna have rather than the kind of Monday morning that the congregation is going to have and fascinatingly for me just at the end of last year we had Stephen McAlpine on the channel again to discuss uh an Australian case um were you aware of the Andrew Thorburn case in Australia?
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_05: He went to a Melbourne Anglican church called City on a Hill and he was the CEO of National Australia Bank one of the big uh banks in Australia and then went to become the CEO of Essendon Football Club um one of the big uh football clubs in in the Australian Football League he lasted less than twenty four hours um because the media went through the sermons at City on a Hill Church and discovered a couple of sermons one was on abortion one was on uh same-sex marriage and I don't think either of the sermons were actually preached while Andrew Thorburn was even a member of the congregation but because of his association with the church it was deemed um that he could not lead a an inclusive football club in modern Australia even though um his diversity and inclusion strategies for National Australia Bank were um setting the the standard um in in the workplace.
• 47:07
  SPEAKER_05: Nevertheless his association simply with this Christian church made him unemployable in in that field.
• 47:14
  SPEAKER_05: And it sort of it it made me think that in one sense whoever preached those sermons ten years ago um sort of they didn't feel the heat from the culture.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_05: They preached those sermons and they went back you know to their pastoral ministry Monday to Saturday and kept on preaching those sorts of sermons.
• 47:34
  SPEAKER_05: But somebody like an Andrew Thorburnt simply for his association with a church is really on the front line in a way that the full-time pastoral ministers weren't on the front line.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_05: And I I wonder if we're seeing a shift in society where it's it's not as though lots of people want to be vicars nowadays.
• 47:53
  SPEAKER_05: But there is one sense in which it could be a a safer option to be a church minister than it is to go out into the workplace and own the name of Christ when there are all sorts of new pressures that are on Christians.
• 48:09
  SPEAKER_05: Are you seeing that yourself that the that there is in in one sense it's far more dangerous to be a Christian and you're you're in one sense more on the front line in secular employment than you are on the staff of a church and whether whether we're alive to that and whether Christian preachers and and pastors are adjusting us for this moment well that's a that's a that's a chilling story and um a really good question.
• 48:37
  SPEAKER_01: I can't comment really on on if you like whether some people go into if if you like ordained ministry because it's a safer option.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: I can say that some people go into ordained ministry because they think it's a more significant option.
• 48:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember when I was working on something called setting God's people free for the Church of England which is a task force that the the bishop who was part of that fantastic man, Philip North said that he'd had three conversations in recent months with people where he'd asked them the question who'd come forward for ordination where he'd asked them the question why do you want to do this?
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they said because I want to do something significant with my life and two of them were teachers to which his first response is you already are doing something significant with your life.
• 49:24
  SPEAKER_01: So um that bit I think is clear there is the same issue really with what's significant and what is not significant.
• 49:33
  SPEAKER_01: But your your point about what world is is our preachers preparing us for is I think um a really significant one and I think that is is probably the case.
• 49:48
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think if it wasn't the case then then an awful lot of people would know that their work is significant to God or that they can have a ministry on the school gate or that they could have a ministry in the local shop they go to they would know that because people would their ministers would would want to know their world.
• 50:08
  SPEAKER_01: They'd want to know their world.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the one thing that is requires what you might call a significant discipline for church leaders because they have in lots of cases lots to do in most cases too much to do.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: And so their time is siphoned off often between um leaders in the church that they have to brief and people in pain in the church that they must minister to because there is there is a pressure to do that.
• 50:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so their exposure to what you might call the other folk who are just getting on with their lives well they they're not in a sense a priority.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: So the pastor's view of what the world is like can be um slightly distorted by those who are in pain or are suffering because those are the people they spend most time with.
• 51:02
  SPEAKER_01: So the antidote to this is in a sense to have some form of some way to find out what's actually going on with ordinary folk in where they're at.
• 51:14
  SPEAKER_01: And what we found with the pastors who do that well I'm answering this question positively if you like is is that they go visit.
• 51:24
  SPEAKER_01: They go visit people in the place where those people's activities are.
• 51:29
  SPEAKER_01: So it could be a tennis club or it could be a balls club or it could be a workplace.
• 51:33
  SPEAKER_01: But the thing is if you like um boots on the ground and when when a a pastor goes in there they sniff it they see it they feel it oh my goodness this is a very this feels like a very pressure environment everyone's moving around so quickly oh this is very quiet or the or you know or they're just sitting there in reception in a plastic extrusion factory and they're not allowed in on the main bit and they're reading widget weekly or plastic extrusion monthly or whatever it might be.
• 52:03
  SPEAKER_01: You know and they're they're getting a sense of what it feels like what it smells like what what what's the vibe between them and the the the receptionist and so on.
• 52:11
  SPEAKER_01: And that like the old thing of going visiting people in homes which is less common you know opens people up to their worlds.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: And of course stories come out when you're there.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_01: Oh that so and so she does this or that so and so I actually did have an opportunity the other week to talk to them about something they're going through a hard time or whatever.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I think I think you're right one of the exercises that we do with people from time to time is um we we ask we look at the fruit of the spirit and then we look at the works of the flesh.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_01: Because Paul talks about the fruit of the spirit in the context of the works of the flesh he's writing to Galatians who are not necessarily in a pretty town where everything is absolutely marvelous and what's the context?
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_01: What's the emotional psychological relational context that people are in and so you put down the works of the flesh and you ask somebody so in your workplace how many of these are actually happening?
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have jealousy?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have envy?
• 53:12
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have rivalries?
• 53:14
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have dissensions, beefs if you like do we have sexual immorality?
• 53:19
  SPEAKER_01: Do we have orgies and so on?
• 53:21
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I remember doing that with um with a group of asking for it to be done with a group of teenagers in Steen Stevenich before I was going to speak to them so I would find out what kind of environment they were in.
• 53:35
  SPEAKER_01: And one of those uh teenage girls ticked every single box on the works of the flesh as applying to an environment except orgies.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_01: So once you begin to once you know the world in which people are actually operating emotionally it helps you.
• 53:55
  SPEAKER_01: And we can't make assumptions if I I'll stop in a moment about this but you can't make assumptions about sectors.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: Right because I remember at one point a corporate company like Price Woodhouse Cooper's was writing articles in the company newsletter about the Christian group and would have you know Carol services every year.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas at IBM you couldn't you couldn't get a room IBM consulting.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: You couldn't get a room right for a Christian group.
• 54:28
  SPEAKER_01: Now that may well have changed but you can't make assumptions just because they're in the same sector they're like this all advertising agencies are cutthroat and evil all banks are like this all factories are like this no no no they are ev every workplace is a foreign country and they're all different.
• 54:42
  SPEAKER_05: Yes yeah and and so immerse yourself in in the world of your people and and recognize that as as you know in an Anglican context you say go in peace to love and serve the Lord um this is where your people will be loving and serving the Lord and they'll be loving and serving the Lord not just because they volunteer to run the life group on a Tuesday night.
• 55:04
  SPEAKER_01: I love that that go in peace so just triggers um a a story for me reminds me of a story because one of the church leaders that we've worked with um a while back a London church leader his conclusion after the time that we worked with him was he said is a much deeper appreciation of those words go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_01: And I think for him it worked in both directions because often when when uh Anglicans say that they often say either so go in peace to love and serve the Lord or go now in peace to love and serve the Lord or so it's almost like there's a connection and there is a connection between what's already happened.
• 55:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 55:45
  SPEAKER_01: On the basis of if you like word and sacrament of prayer and praise of giving the peace to one another of all that we have done together and sought to to do feeding on Christ and encouraging one another on the basis of all of that the strengthening that brings the hope that that brings the insight the clarity that that brings the encouragement on the basis of our community in Christ together and his purposes go now and love and serve the Lord.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: So we the the curious thing about this is that and I can't prove this I can't prove this but anecdotally is that often the people who are most out there trying to do something are most keen on the local church because they need them.
• 56:40
  SPEAKER_01: They know they need they need to be amongst Christians they need to be encouraged they need the sense of freshness and purity you get from being with with godly people for an hour and a half and then with with with a group in the middle of the week or with your prayer partner or prayer triplets or whatever it might be.
• 56:56
  SPEAKER_01: They need that they need the feeding they need the strengthening they need the sacrament.
• 57:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 57:01
  SPEAKER_01: It it doesn't diminish the importance of the look actually increases it.
• 57:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 57:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes I need my team behind me.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_05: Yes yeah and it's that it's that flow isn't it that um the difference between the old covenant and the new covenant was not that there was one day a week of rest in the old covenant and now there's seven days of of of rest in the new covenant.
• 57:22
  SPEAKER_05: It's the shift from you work towards the seventh day to now the first day of the week, ah, you have your shalom you have your peace now it's go in peace to love and serve the Lord.
• 57:32
  SPEAKER_05: Take that peace out with you out to the nations and having been filled by this and and I often wonder whether part of what makes it difficult for us not to feel like we're outgoing Christians is we don't feel like we've been fed on a Sunday.
• 57:47
  SPEAKER_05: Like how have we been filled with the goodness of Jesus such that okay you're on top of the world now just walk downhill.
• 57:55
  SPEAKER_05: Stroll downhill into your week I think that's that's what that's the feeling I'd like to get on a Sunday such that and then Monday morning is the second day of the week, isn't it?
• 58:04
  SPEAKER_05: And on the first day of the week it was a day off and I got a you know I I I encountered and understood and appreciated my riches in Christ.
• 58:14
  SPEAKER_05: So Monday morning is not day one.
• 58:15
  SPEAKER_05: Monday morning is day two and that's different isn't it?
• 58:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is well it's all you're also saying creation in a way Adam gets created on day six what's the first thing he has to do not do anything.
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_01: Exactly have a day off a day off yeah so it's out of shalom out of rest that we go into the world.
• 58:31
  SPEAKER_01: Well though I I I would want to say and I know you're not saying this that um we do fill our tanks um in a sense um but the Lord fills our tanks every day as well.
• 58:44
  SPEAKER_01: Yes yes um it's it's not the only place that we fill our tanks and I think one of the the roles really of pastoral ministry that equips us for works of service day by day is in a way to ensure that in that interim we know how to strengthen ourselves in the Lord day by day moment by moment and that we've been given the practices or the the means that help us to do that so that we're not you know if you like running on fumes by the time we get to Saturday.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_05: So we began with shalom we finish with shalom every day we need to receive the blessings and and and shalom of the Lords.
• 59:29
  SPEAKER_05: Mark it's been fascinating uh learning more from you today if people want to find out more how can they find out more about you and LICC?
• 59:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well um LICC's got a website as you would expect and uh LICC.org.uk filled with good things some free and some not so free courses um links films uh resources um that help people both people and church leaders and theological educators to work out what this might look like for them in their in their context um obviously I say obviously we have Facebook and an Instagram channel I'm also on Instagram at MarkgreenLDN as in London at MarkgreenLDN um but yeah the uh weekly emails are quite encouraging to many people one on the word on Mondays one on culture on Fridays but um brilliant love to connect with you if we can but uh thank you so much for inviting me on your marvellous programme this Hall of Tyrannus that you have here blessing on your ministry inshallah on it thank you so much Mark Green thank you well there we go I hope you enjoyed that episode thank you so much for listening with thank you to Mark Green for coming to the Speak Life Studios and having that conversation with Glenn much appreciated well I'm gonna leave you there we will be back soon with another conversation God bless see you next time