Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Being the Best Bad Guys You Can Be || Interview with Stephen McAlpine and Sam Chan || SLP 351

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Being the Best Bad Guys You Can Be || Interview with Stephen McAlpine and Sam Chan || SLP 351 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome to the Speak Life Podcast.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Glenn Scrivener.
• 0:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for joining us.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: Today we've got a real treat.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: Two authors for the price of one.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: We've got Sam Chan and Stephen McAlpine, who are both uh great preachers as well as writers, and they're engaged in the task of engaging the culture and sharing Christ.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: They do so from two slightly different perspectives.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_00: And if you could see their book covers now, you'd see what I was talking about.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: You see, Sam Chan has written a book and the cover is in a sunny yellow, and uh the the title is How to Talk About Jesus Without Being That Guy.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: But then Stephen McAlpine has written a book and the cover is blood red.
• 0:48
  SPEAKER_00: It is a warning, and the title is Being the Bad Guys: How to Live for Jesus in a World That Says You Shouldn't.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: So which is it?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: Should we try to be the bad guys?
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Should we try not to be that guy?
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who is that guy?
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_00: And what are the best bad guys that we can be?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Steven and Sam are actually great mates.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Uh they work together for City Bible Forum, uh, Sam in Sydney and Stephen in Perth.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: And they're often talking together about this issue of reaching the culture.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_00: To what degree do we try to subvert the culture?
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And to what degree do we try to fulfil their hopes?
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_00: Well, uh, we actually find quite a lot of agreement in our chat together, and I'd love to share it with you.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, have you done that thing that podcasts are always asking you to do?
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Have have you subscribed?
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we would love it if you could subscribe to us and perhaps even give us a rating and a review that would really help us to get seen by more people.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to grow the Speak Life podcast and bless more and more people with this content.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: So if you could do that, uh that would be a great favour for us.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_00: But without further ado, I give you Stephen McAlpine and Sam Chan.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Now, Sam, can you reveal to us now that the uh identity of that guy is in fact Stephen McAlpine?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: And you're uh you're urging us not to be that guy.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: What do you mean, Sam?
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: When you write a book on personal evangelism called How to Talk About Jesus Without Being That Guy, what do you mean?
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I you're right.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_02: We hold up those two books next to each other, they do look like the yin and yang, this Hegelian dialectic going on, thesis, anti-thesis, and the truth will emerge, yellow cover, red cover, be that guy, no, don't be that guy.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I am the synthesis of it.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so the title of the book comes up because I once had to give a seminar at a gospel coalition breakout thing, and I thought, well, cheekily, instead of just calling it evangelism, let's make it how to talk about Jesus without being that guy, and it packed out the room, it was standing room only.
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_02: And that's when I realized, wow, this title has touched a cultural moment, it's actually touched a nerve, uh, uh a felt need amongst Christians.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_02: And I thought, well, what is that felt need?
• 3:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's that dilemma that every Christian has the DNA where they do want to tell their friends and family about Jesus.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_02: But right now we live in a world which I call an unofficial, de facto closed country where it's socially, at least socially inappropriate to mention Jesus in a conversation because the instant you do, you become that guy, or as the Americans say, you become that uncle at the Thanksgiving dinner.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 3:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so is is the person who you're trying to avoid being uh how how do they relate to the so so Stephen, tell tell us a little bit about your book, being being the bad guys, how to live for Jesus in a world that says you shouldn't.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: Are you embracing being that bad uh are you embracing being that uncle at Thanksgiving dinner?
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: What's what's the that guy that you want us to actually kind of accept?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, that's a really yeah, I I I try to pick my way through the minefield of uh being the the uncle at the at Thanksgiving who won't get invited back next year, but though he does because he's an uncle.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_01: But the whole idea for me was the how do you come into a setting where you think I can be as nice as I want and I can be as open as I want about all of these different things, but I know that there's a there's a weakness in my argument, and what it is is exactly what Sam said the social issues in our culture today that are viewed as problematic and that are not just defeater beliefs, but they're seeing if you hold on to those views from the past, you know, Christian view of sexual ethics, for example, you've you not only have you got no hearing, but you're not only you're not, you know, you're problematic, but you're unsafe, or you've uh you've really got to put those issues aside because you're the equivalent of the um the smiling racist, I suppose.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: No matter what the way you talk about the sexual identity issues in the culture as a Christian and smile, uh that's not going to cut it.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: So it feels like it's a much more abracing society that we're living in.
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: And Christians don't want to be bad guys, uh some probably do, but this I'm trying to push people away from the culture war side of it and saying, is there a way forward without giving in and without getting angry that shows how we can be God's people in the world in this everything's changing so quickly that you could be the good guy yesterday, but something changes culturally, and you're JK Railing today.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: That that kind of experience that everyone's looking on and going, but she was one of the good guys a few months ago and now she's a bad guy.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: And is that one of the cultural shifts that that perhaps it's worth being aware of as as Christians?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because even not being a Christian, you you don't save yourself from not being the bad guy by simply um not being a Christian.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um you you could be J.K.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Rowling who who gets turned on.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And and therefore um it's a very brutal world out there.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: What do what what do we have to say to that?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_01: Look, I think that's exactly the issue, and it's not even just about sexual ethics, for example, but it it's looking on and going, if you fall through the cracks uh and you get something wrong in a social media world or a world in which nothing can be forgotten and everything can be dragged up, there's no forgiveness.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: There's no framework of forgiveness.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: And uh if you read Douglas Murray's book, The Madness of Crowds, and he's not a Christian, he's an atheist, I think.
• 6:12
  SPEAKER_01: And he's a very good thing.
• 6:14
  SPEAKER_01: A Christian atheist, that's exactly right.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: So they've got frameworks of thinking that go, surely you can come back from you know, from being the bad guy.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_01: And the post-Christian culture is saying, actually, no, it's a bottomless pit down there, and you just keep falling.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_01: And people like Douglas Murray and Tom Holland are saying, despite our rejection of Christian frameworks, we're firmly rooted in the Christian framework, we're moored to Christian moorings.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: And our culture doesn't quite realize that at some level.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um let me let me bring up a verse that sort of um struck me while I was reading both those books.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's funny, uh th I I read both these books kind of together.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: They both sort of landed on my desk at exactly the same time.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and both of them seem to in in different ways bring out 1 Peter 2, verse 12 live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they may see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what right there you've got the the reality of conflict, the reality of of living differently and facing accusations, and the reality of uh there's gospel good that God brings out of it.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: And um Sam, I was really um helped by your book.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, once once I got past the cover, because I I did read that that first, you know, the the in parentheses without being that guy, and I thought, uh, he's gonna he's gonna soft pedal something.
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_00: Sam's gonna soft pedal something.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_00: And actually you come into the book, and like the first the first thing you tell us, evangelism tip number one, evangelism is a lifestyle change.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: And this this is not this is not a little tip that you take up at the weekend, is it?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: What what what it what is this this life that you're calling us to in your book?
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I compare it to how every New Year's Eve we all make the same resolution.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_02: This year I'm gonna get fit, I'm gonna eat less, drink less, and exercise more.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_02: And of course, it doesn't work.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_02: We try to go for the early morning run, we sign up for a gym, but it's unsustainable because we saw fitness as an event, a one-off event that we shoehorn into our busy lifestyle.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I think as Christians, we think evangelism is like that.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_02: You know, let's just add an event to the church calendar, a gingerbread house making night where we get people to come to church and we hit them with a 20-minute Bible talk, or maybe I'm gonna be brave and tell my friends about Jesus, or I'm gonna sign up for a cooking club and I'm gonna tell everyone in that room about Jesus.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm saying they're good things, but they're just one off events when really evangelism is a lifestyle change where I've become evangelistic.
• 8:42
  SPEAKER_02: And one of those main things is I have to deliberately actually not just have non-Christian friends, but I need to somehow merge the universes of Christian and non-Christian friends together so that all my non-Christian friends don't just have me as a crazy bozo who believes the Jesus story, but but suddenly they realize hey, five, six, seven of my friends also are bozos who believe the Jesus story.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe this is way more believable than I thought it was.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a lifestyle change where we I say in my book, we go to their things, so they come to our things, we open up our private spaces through creative ways of doing hospitality.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_02: But the big one really is deliberately not just having non-Christian friends, but introducing our non-Christian friends to our Christian friends.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, and and that's a real strength of the book.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: And again, you could you could read this and you think, well, Sam Chan is just a natural, he's an evangelist, he's one of those strange breed that just can, we you know, they've got fire in their bellies, and you just just let them run.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And thanks, Sam, thanks for doing our evangelism for us.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Um whereas the the whole book is kind of a clarion call to to have a community that that sort of witnesses well together.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: You you talk about the plausibility structures of of how we form our beliefs.
• 9:53
  SPEAKER_00: It's because we come into a community that believes this stuff, and you talk about I loved your chapter on being a de facto chaplain and uh and being being a non-anxious presence uh wherever you are.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us more about how we can go about being a de facto chaplain wherever we find ourselves.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and this idea came up because I had a friend of mine who was a chaplain with the Australian army in Afghanistan, and things weren't going well, so he had to do a lot of counseling, grief management for the soldiers.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_02: But the commanding officer, he had nothing to do with Christianity.
• 10:27
  SPEAKER_02: He was an atheist, did not need my friend the chaplain.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_02: But one day he calls my friend in and says, Hey, close the door, sit down, please.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_02: Can you pray for me?
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_02: And all my chaplain friends say this is exactly what happens.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_02: The wars come down during a crisis, they need you to speak meaning into their life, uh, somehow be their connection with the sacred and the transcendent and speak on behalf of God for them.
• 10:52
  SPEAKER_02: Then I thought, wow, well, that's actually our role.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_02: And again, using the premise that we're in an unofficial, de facto closed country where we can't talk about Jesus until we don't want to talk about Jesus.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_02: Maybe our role is to be the unofficial, de facto chaplain in their lives.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_02: And in my book, I share many ways we can do that, but my friends who are chaplains say one way is just to show a genuine curiosity in their lives.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_02: Um, not just how was the weekend questions, but how was the weekend questions, not just how are the kids going at school, but how are the kids really going at school questions.
• 11:32
  SPEAKER_02: And they say home is where you're understood.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_02: So apparently, as human beings, we go around looking for people who understand us.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: Like finally, we can say, Oh, you understand me.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_02: And surprisingly, that doesn't happen a lot at home.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_02: You know, our children don't understand us, my wife doesn't understand me.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_02: But if I can find a trusted person who understands me, I will open up to that person so we can be the unofficial de facto chaplain who takes a genuine curiosity in someone's life, who understands what someone's going through, and who's that calm, non-anxious presence in their life?
• 12:10
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen you uh nodding along to a lot of that, Stephen.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that the the phrase non-anxious presence kind of shows up in both your work, really.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um how how important is that, that sort of that sense of being, uh a warm light kind of glowing in the in the corner kind of kind of idea?
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_00: What how important is that in in uh witnessing?
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's huge, I think.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, it was Eric Friedman, who uh you know, the father of family systems therapy, who came up with that term that the non-anxious presence, and I a lot of my book is about the workplace.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: Um, the non-anxious presence is the person that uh may not have supervisor or CEO on the door, but they're the person that other people go, there's an issue here.
• 12:49
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the moral framework and leadership in this place that can give us a bit of direction?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it can be that person who's not necessarily high up the food chain in the workplace, but over a period of time, they're the person that doesn't gossip, they're the person that doesn't get frantic, they're the person that doesn't take kudos for someone else's work.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's part of the issue as a Christian for long term in the workplace, especially.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I think Sam's right about the the chaplain to your friends.
• 13:15
  SPEAKER_01: It used to be that the the you know the establishment churches were the chaplain to the community, and I think it's been broken down to exactly what Sam's saying.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's the individual chaplain to individuals rather than the priest of the parish being the chaplain to all the things that happen in the school or all those things, and it's now individuated to who is the person that I would go to.
• 13:36
  SPEAKER_01: And you know that's true that people are looking around for someone to go to, and it's it's usually a doctor at the moment if they you know well Sam doubles down on those things, he's but with both, but it's who is there in authority that would be someone who could hear what I have to say and it would be a safe place to park it?
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the key, and that's you know, uh contrary to what Sam just said, some people do run from the 1st of January and keep it going, and I'm one of those.
• 14:04
  SPEAKER_01: But one of my non-Christian running friends, because you talk a lot when you run, uh, got cancer, and we walked a lot and talked a lot about the gospel and uh you know what's going on in the world.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_01: And he was reading John Lennox books, and uh suddenly it was like, wow, uh we've run a lot and talked a lot in packs, and he's thought about things, but when it came to I've got this diagnosis, he wanted to talk to me, walking and thinking about where life was going.
• 14:33
  SPEAKER_01: So you can't predict those moments, and I think Sam's probably said that too.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: You're you're kind of waiting for things, it's it just comes out of the blue, it's it just happens, and you've got to wait for those waves to come at some at sometimes, I think.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_00: I often say to people, yeah, be the be the person who your friend will confide in when they get the diagnosis.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_00: You know, aim aim to be that person the rest of the time, rather than being because I think the caricature of an evangelistic type person is that they've got a thousand cracking mother-in-law gags and they're the life and soul of the party, and they're a Christian.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And like, do you really want to talk to that person when life goes badly?
• 15:06
  SPEAKER_00: You know?
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, be be the person who, when the diagnosis comes, yeah, they they want to say, Can we have a drink?
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_00: Can we have a quiet word?
• 15:13
  SPEAKER_00: Um that's that's very good.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um both of you, I mean, so a as you uh tell us to be non-anxious presences, and as we want to be, you know, unofficial chaplains to our friends, um I I guess, Stephen, you're also wanting to prepare us that on one level it will be a surprise to our uh work colleagues that we can be trusted because we might come across as the smiling racist.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Like like how do how do we how do we feed that into this this idea of being an unofficial chaplain?
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think one of the things I've put in the book is that it there's a you've got to be what I call repellently attractive.
• 15:50
  SPEAKER_01: And people say, well, they couldn't be a good person because they hold these views on these things.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: But gee, uh they back me on, you know, I I would trust them with this other stuff.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_01: So it can't be that they're you know, we we live joined up lives.
• 16:04
  SPEAKER_01: If we're really that rotten, it's gonna leak into every aspect of life.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: So if they see something in us, they go, Well, that's so good, but I can't marry it with this, it's not gonna say, well, it can't be true that they're good.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna go, maybe there's something more about this question about what they believe about identity or sexual ethics that you know our company policy says is wrong.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm talking about people in workplaces especially, because workplaces are the new place where you know, where meaning is it's a place of identity manufacturer, just not product manufacture.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the key to me is can that person be so discombobulated by you that you're a curiosity to them at one level?
• 16:43
  SPEAKER_01: And once their curiosity gets the better of them, they might and situations arise, that's when I think you're gonna get opportunity to explain what you believe and why you believe it, and why it's a good picture of human flourishing.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_01: And uh I think that's important that you've got to be play the long game with this.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_01: I do think that's part of the issue.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, that comes across very much in your book too, Sam.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: The the the long game.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: What what how should we s how should we set our expectations about what it looks like um to be a witness?
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I I I use the word witness because it's less loaded than the word an evangelist.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_00: We might get into um should every Christian consider themselves an evangelist um a little bit later, but but yeah, what what what is what is the goal?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: How should how should we how should we think about ourselves as witnesses scattered out into the world Monday to Saturday?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and this is where my eyes were open because I heard a talk by Andrew Cate, who's a minister in Australia, and he explained there are actually three scenarios, and I mentioned this in the book, and I referenced Andrew Cate.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_02: Scenario number one is where you talk to the stranger, you know, on a plane, train, or Uber ride, and really it's it's only gonna be 10, 20 minutes, back, forth, back, forth, back, forth, boom.
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_02: Then there's um evangelism where you speak at an event, as a speaker, where you do a 20-minute monologue.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_02: And funny enough, for all of us who went through seminary in Bible college, if we were taught evangelism, it would have been by a preacher, and they were teaching us either how to do a 20-minute monologue at an event or how to talk to a stranger on a plane, but there's this middle section, which is how do you talk to your friends and family, and that's something we realize the preacher monologue model doesn't work, the talking to the stranger on a plane model doesn't work either, and that's that's what my book is trying to fill this space in the middle, and this is where it goes to the street.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_02: You say it's in the middle, Sam.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: You say it's in the middle, but it's it's it's actually 98% of life, though, isn't it?
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_02: I know that's why most yeah, that's why we do walk away from those evangelism courses often quite underwhelmed.
• 18:47
  SPEAKER_02: I thought, oh okay, I know how to speak at a Christmas Carol's event or a gingerbread housemaking event, or know how to pull out a track and talk to a stranger on a university campus.
• 18:57
  SPEAKER_02: But we're talking about my brother, my mother, my uncle, my work colleague here, and that's where suddenly realize in God's province, maybe it could be a two-minute conversation.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_02: But the reality for all of us, we know it's probably gonna be a long game, it's gonna be a series of moments, it's a journey.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_02: This is where what I don't say could be 90 times more important than what I do say.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_00: Hmm.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: You don't get that a lot in in Christian paperbacks about evangelism, um, because it doesn't sound good.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: Because they're trying to tell you what to say.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to do the the 2% stuff.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: And both both your books really equip us with the with the other 98%.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: And and I found them a real a real blessing.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: And the idea of um well, first of all, uh telling Christians a story of the world that makes sense of why we're now the bad guys.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_00: Stephen, you you take some time to equip Christians with some biblical lenses in order to see see the world and and and tell the story of how how it went from um Christians were um nice but irrelevant to suddenly being the bad guys.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: Why wh why is it important to tell that story to Christians?
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_01: Well I think because of the presumption that they make that if I just fill in little aspects of what life's about and I say, um, you know, this is why we think this or the you know, in little bite-sized bits, it it you can't join it up.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_01: So what I'm saying to people is everyone has a story and a narrative of what makes meaning and what makes truth and where we're headed, a narrative of progress, perhaps.
• 20:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's when you step back and you say, I've got to understand first that I have a story as well.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: That secularism, the hard secularism would say that all of these uh religious stories are just built up onto the foundational truth, which secularism, surprise, surprise, is.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_01: But I wanted to say first let's examine that we have a story, and we can't don't need to be ashamed of that, and we don't need to be worried that we're gonna get found out for having it, because secularism also has a story.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: It's it presents itself as a subtraction narrative, as Charles Taylor says, that you what you get, secularism is what you get when you strip away all the crazy stuff, like religion.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: And there's cold, hard secularism, but it's actually got a narrative of once we were like this, and then science came along, and then suddenly I was once blind and now I see.
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they're gospel stories, and so is the personal identity story of someone who said, Once I grew up in this sort of very straight-laced family, and I felt that my identity was very different to what my family are doing.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_01: And then um I went to university and I discovered these people that believe the same as I did and practiced sex the same as I did.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_01: And once I was blind and now I see.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_01: And there you go.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: Know your own story well enough and be humble enough to realize it's not the given for everyone, and then you can look at other people's story and say, what corresponds?
• 21:59
  SPEAKER_01: Where's the identity?
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Identity meaning part, where's the purpose, where's the direction, and where is the location of the the bottom locus of our identity?
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: And work with those things.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the way we I wanted to sort of say to Christians first, get a good narrative of your own story, and then see how you might be the bad guy in the eyes of someone whose gospel is very different to yours.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: And and this comes across in your book as well, Sam.
• 22:26
  SPEAKER_00: You you you talk about different sort of stories that we tell um uh uh about people coming to faith, and and you you you tell the the story of look a an Asian student at an Australian university um might tell their Christian story as a story of liberation, whereas a a sort of a deconverted, secular, jaded Westerner um would tell the story of leaving Christianity as the story of liberation.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Take us through those those two stories.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the the Copernican moment came for me when and I joke around with this, and again to those without the video, I am Asian, alright?
• 23:01
  SPEAKER_02: So I am very Asian, and I say if you go to any university campus in Australia, and I suspect the UK is the same, the first thing you notice is there are Asians everywhere.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_02: What is going on?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_02: There are more Asians here than Asia.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_02: And then you go to a Christian group on campus and you realize, hey, I'm the only it's all Asians, I'm the only Anglo here, what is going on?
• 23:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I'm saying the Asian conversion story, the gospel has this traction with Asians.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right now, we presented it, whether we knew it or not, as this surprisingly well contextualized gospel story to Asians.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_02: And the Asian conversion story is I used to believe in evil spirits, but I found Jesus.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_02: Jesus has set me free from all of that.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_02: I'm so glad I found Jesus.
• 23:44
  SPEAKER_02: I feel sorry for my friends who haven't found Jesus yet.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_02: I wish they too could find Jesus.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas the Anglo-D-conversion story is completely flipped.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_02: I used to believe in Jesus.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_02: I used to be trapped in fear and superstition.
• 23:57
  SPEAKER_02: I used to have to obey outdated views on sex and morality.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_02: I used to be under the authority of priests and and religion and the church, but I stopped believing in Jesus and I've been set free from all of that.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_02: I see my friends who still believe in Jesus.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_02: I feel sorry for them.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_02: I wish they too would stop believing in Jesus and be free like me.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_02: See, they're both actually stories of freedom.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but Jesus represents something completely different in that freedom narrative.
• 24:25
  SPEAKER_02: And so when we go preach Jesus to Asians, they welcome it because it's a story of liberation out of fear, darkness, and superstition.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_02: When we tell Jesus to Anglos, they're hearing oppression that we're gonna drag them kicking and screaming back into the dark ages under the authority of priests, they're gonna believe in witches and unicorns again, and they're gonna be trapped in fear and superstition.
• 24:48
  SPEAKER_02: So they're hearing oppression when we preach Jesus.
• 24:51
  SPEAKER_02: They're hearing the the loss of freedom and liberty.
• 24:55
  SPEAKER_00: So is is it possible to preach to Anglos and convince them that the Jesus story is a liberating story?
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: If if so, what do what do you do in order to present the Jesus story as as the liberation that it is?
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_02: Well, we tell a better story, and I think we've been coached in telling a story that's worked as the better story for Asians, but now we can think, okay, what's a better story for Anglos?
• 25:18
  SPEAKER_02: And the Bible gives us so many dimensions and gospel metaphors.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_02: And I was talking to Julianne Laird, who does AFES ministries in Melbourne, Australia, and now it's with city to city.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_02: Three years ago, she said, We're getting conversions everywhere.
• 25:32
  SPEAKER_02: And I said, Were they Asians?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_02: Because it doesn't count if they're Asians.
• 25:36
  SPEAKER_02: She goes, No, these were Anglos.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Okay, real conversions.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_02: I said, Well, what is it?
• 25:39
  SPEAKER_02: She says, They're looking for purpose.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_02: They turn up to campus, they don't know what they're free for.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_02: They know what they're free from, but they don't know why they're here.
• 25:48
  SPEAKER_02: What are they free for?
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_02: Then she rings me up this year.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_02: She says, the story has changed.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_02: My adult daughter, her liberal progressive friend, just became a Christian.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_02: For her, she was looking for freedom from anxiety.
• 26:01
  SPEAKER_02: She needed peace and rest.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_02: She was restless.
• 26:04
  SPEAKER_02: She needed freedom from anxiety.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_02: And then she said, Oh, my blue-collar trade son.
• 26:10
  SPEAKER_02: His friends all checking out Christianity because they know there's a God.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: That's a given.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_02: They don't want to get right with this God.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_02: That's a baby boomer question.
• 26:20
  SPEAKER_02: But they just want to know what they need to do if there's a God.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like what would a Christian life look like?
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_02: Do they have to hate gay people?
• 26:27
  SPEAKER_02: Do they have to go to church?
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_02: What does that look like?
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: So just this month for my own church, we design a series called Feb Talks.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_02: Every year we do talks where we try to track non-believers to check out Christianity.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_02: So this year for Feb Talks, I I I used my exegesis with Julianne Laird, and talk one was dignity.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: We called it a road map to life series, a map for life.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_02: Talk one was dignity, why do I matter?
• 26:55
  SPEAKER_02: Talk two was purpose, where am I going?
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_02: Talk three was freedom, how can I escape anxiety?
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_02: And talk four next week will be what do I do about God?
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_02: And it's gone gangbusters, full houses, people checking out Christianity, people signing up for a follow-up course for more information.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_02: So it's really touch and earth because we're now telling a better story than the one they have out there.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, here's something you might not know: Speak Life is really active on YouTube.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, most of our podcasts have video versions on our YouTube channel, as well as many more resources like our groundbreaking reset series.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: Reset engages the meaning crisis and speaks with fascinating guests.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: Or you might go to YouTube to find our response videos interacting with prominent YouTubers like Russell Grant, Jordan Peterson, and Alex O'Connor.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Go to youtube.com slash speaklifemedia and subscribe to our channel there.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_00: That's youtube.com slash speaklifemedia.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Back to the show.
• 28:00
  SPEAKER_00: As I come across to you, Stephen, and ask you about like encouraging stories you're seeing in your um situation, I've I've heard you speak um many times on these sorts of issues around being the bad guys.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: And what strikes me is you you tell stories of um slow burns and thick community.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_00: Um can you can you tell us what is uh what is new birth and and new life look like in in your context?
• 28:26
  SPEAKER_01: Well it's interesting that uh last night one of the young guys who comes to our church, Christian family, you know, never been a Christian, uh always very rebellious, um said, and he became a Christian a couple of years ago, and I baptized him last year, and he said to me last night, Oh, life's just sorting out well.
• 28:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I don't quite get it.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: He said, uh since I became a Christian, I feel guilty that I've got a good job lined up for next year.
• 28:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm getting on fantastic with my parents, and uh my friends are going, I'm not going out getting drunk every Friday night.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Well, because you're living with the grain, I said, You're living with the grain of the way life's meant to be lived, and you would expect that that isn't chafing against something.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, It's like in this situation where I can't even remember her name, it's very a radical feminist writer in Brazil, saying acknowledging that the thing that released so many Brazilian women into freedom in life and raised the boat on, you know, the tide for all the boats economically was so many people becoming evangelical Christians in Brazil in the last 20 years.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_01: Men stopped drinking, sleeping around, uh, got a job, looked after their families, and went to church.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_01: And that raised all the boats.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I think part of the issue is you've got to take a long-term approach to that and say the church itself over a period of time is supposed to be a uh what I get an alternate alternate social ethic.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's sort of this little microcosm of what life could look like if it's going with the grain.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_01: Now, obviously, we get things wrong in church all the time.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_01: But as you bring people into it who live a different lives, they're going, that's very that's interesting.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so in one of our congregations of one of the churches I was working at up until last year, uh, there was a young lesbian girl coming along who was into, you know, the arts, you know, working in the arts area, and uh she was more uh worried that her parents found out she was going to church, because but she was intrigued by it because it's the flip side, she didn't want to get outed as someone who's rocking up to church.
• 30:26
  SPEAKER_01: I think there's something about the Christian framework that uh it just doesn't it it shouldn't work, it shouldn't make sense, but it kind of does.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so how do you get around that?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_01: There's something mystical about it at one level, and there is because it's the Holy Spirit.
• 30:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I I said to this young guy last night, if you got 140 people, the size of the church that we was at, who from a different background and put them all in the same room together, uh who aren't Christian and just said the most common thing you have is this, how would it look like in three years' time?
• 31:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I think the Jesus thing at the middle of that just changes everything.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: And you've got to have the confidence to believe that, um, as you go to work on Monday morning, I think, uh as you go back into the rest of the world, that the Christian community together over a period of time, just the average Christian community, not the ones that make Twitter and all those things, but all those just average Christian communities start to look different.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why in the churches I've worked at they've been taking on foster kits and all these things that people are going, why would you give up your time and your space and your energy and the addition on your house for less comfort?
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_01: You know, why would you make yourself uncomfortable for other people?
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_01: And we live in you know the half gods of comfort and ease in the Western setting.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: And if you give those things up for other people at no seeming benefit to you, that says a lot.
• 31:53
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they see your good deeds and glorify God on the day he visits us.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um I want you guys to uh talk to one another as as okay, you've you've read each other's books and um and I presume been blessed by them.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what is it?
• 32:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um perhaps uh Sam, you talk about Steve's book first of all.
• 32:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um what what is it that you will take away most of all um from uh being the bad guys?
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so I think what I take is it's what's fascinating is just on the weekend Steve and I spoke at a same conference.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_02: There were we were two or four speakers, and it was about how to be a Christian in the public workplace, and all the speakers, without consulting each other, we all picked the book of Daniel to preach from because it just seems to fit with what's going on right now.
• 32:48
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're foreigners well in a foreign land, we stand out, but there's this toxic environment and it enforces a hegemony of ideology upon us, conform or be kicked out, cancelled, that sort of thing.
• 33:03
  SPEAKER_02: And so we all pick bits of Daniel to speak on, but I think we all pick different emphases.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_02: So whereas I might have picked Daniel 1, where subversively Daniel and his three friends sneak through eating secret food on the side, but they don't tell anyone and they come out wiser, stronger, and fitter, or maybe where Daniel interprets the king's dream and comes out a winner, that sort of thing.
• 33:29
  SPEAKER_02: Whereas Steve will pick Daniel in the lion's den, or he could have picked Shadrach, Meshach, Avenago being thrown into the furnace.
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_02: Meaning there's some times you can work with, you know, your culture and community, you can be the good guy, you can be socially appropriate, you can find common grace, common ground, something to resonate and agree with.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_02: And I think that's my book's emphasis.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_02: But there will be times where society is the beast, the antichrist, and where it doesn't matter how much resonating winsomeness you do, you're gonna find yourself in a furnace or a lion's den.
• 34:07
  SPEAKER_02: So I think I appreciate Steve uh touching that note because it's there in the book of Daniel, it's there in the Bible.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:15
  SPEAKER_00: Shadrach was a very friendly guy, very winsome.
• 34:19
  SPEAKER_00: Still into the furnace you go.
• 34:21
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And what about you, uh Stephen, reading reading Sam's book?
• 34:26
  SPEAKER_00: What uh what will you take away from this more than anything else?
• 34:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, a couple of things I think.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_01: If you're not going to be that guy, then the book would have to be winsome.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I just love the winsomeness of the book, I have to say.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's fantastically written.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um so I like Sam's writing.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_01: But I also think, too, the big challenge I had from this was as I get older, I like to keep people a little bit further away from me.
• 34:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm too busy, I'm too this, I'm too that.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: And when I was younger, I was involved in more strongly missional kind of engagement with the culture communities, Christian communities.
• 34:58
  SPEAKER_01: I just thought Sam was able to say, How can I just live a normal life and just have it's almost like you're Terminator 2 coming into the bar, you put those glasses on and you can read situations really well.
• 35:10
  SPEAKER_01: I think learning to read situations that you are as gospel opportunities, that was a big thing in the book.
• 35:17
  SPEAKER_01: And part of your issue is I could go and help that person, but you know, that would just be another person in my life that's going to make me busy.
• 35:25
  SPEAKER_01: But leaning into that, because the flip side of that is being the um the Levite or the Pharisee walking along the side of the road and crossing to the other side.
• 35:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think I was really challenged by his book again to go, do I really want to give up my Saturday morning uh hangout to go and do run the line or at the the soccer match or whatever?
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh not really.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_01: Would I do it if there was a better story that those people could be involved in?
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was the dovetailing of that winsomeness of it and that challenge at the same time.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I I really enjoyed that.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: It didn't give me the guilt, but it actually pitched a vision for me, I think.
• 36:04
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes, it cast casts a vision for the the kind of thick mission of living that other books um make you feel a bit guiltier um for not for not doing.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, yeah, really helpful on that.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And and I guess that dovetails with a with an issue that um in an Australian context um has a bit of a pedigree.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: The the big question about is everybody an evangelist or are there gifted evangelists and and the rest?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um and there's there's there's been back and forth and tug of war uh over that and especially strongly in Australia, I think.
• 36:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um how do you guys kind of appro approach that question?
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe start with you, Sam.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so in in the one sense, the New Testament says we're all priests, aren't we?
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_02: And it says we're we all appropriate the suffering preaching servant of Isaiah.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I think at that level we do, but I think it comes out concretely, particularly in different ways for all of us.
• 37:02
  SPEAKER_02: So some of us would be extroverts, some of us would be introverts, some of us would be the guy who can do the 20-minute Bible talk at the Christmas carols, some of us can be that guy who can do the walk-up.
• 37:13
  SPEAKER_02: But for most of us, I think we're just that 98% who just plug away and God works through our relationships.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: And sometimes God gives us a one-talent moment, sometimes it's a three-talent moment, sometimes it's a five-talent moment.
• 37:26
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, but I think we're we're just different.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: That's why Paul talks about God's gospel, but also talks about my gospel and the way I brought it to you.
• 37:34
  SPEAKER_02: So I think we we all have different ways of doing it, and God uses us in our in different ways.
• 37:40
  SPEAKER_00: Mm-hmm.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say, Steven?
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think there's a difference between a face, some people are gifted face-to-face, and some people are gifted shoulder to shoulder.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_01: And so, elders that I've worked with in my previous church, two of them were really good face-to-face people and communicating, but also evangelism.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_01: And one was a one's a lecturer in a university, so he's very good face-to-face.
• 38:01
  SPEAKER_01: But two of the other guys were shoulder-to-shoulder guys, they just walk with someone and talk with them about life or working alongside them, and always it would just be a weaving of conversation.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I think one of the keys is that you've you've got to have a a relationship with Jesus that means something to you first.
• 38:19
  SPEAKER_01: If you're dry, dead, and cold, and it's been a long time since you even really cared, uh, it's gonna be a factor.
• 38:25
  SPEAKER_01: The other thing I'd say too is that um I always use the example there's Shane Warren, the great Australian cricket in a leg spin bowler, um, and there's Stuart McGill, who was also a great leg spin bowler, but had to try hard.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Shane Warren, you say, How do you take six wickets?
• 38:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, you have a few crafty cigarettes down the back of the sheds, eat a can of baked beans, send off a loot text, and you go out and take six wickets, idiot.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_01: You know, as whereas Stuart McGill had to work at that craft in a different way, and I think that's part of it.
• 38:55
  SPEAKER_01: So um I think I probably am the person that can just have a natural conversation.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_01: But part of that's because I know that my my answer box won't run out quickly.
• 39:06
  SPEAKER_01: That if people say, but what about, what about I've got 25 to 30 years of theological training and thinking and reading philosophy books, whereas someone else's answer box may be a bit thinner and they're feeling like if they get to, you know, if I get to answer 15 and they've got three more to go, I'm in trouble.
• 39:23
  SPEAKER_01: Because I couldn't say I don't know.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_01: That would that would be dreadful.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and there's the issue.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_01: We we're afraid to say, I don't know, I I need to find out from someone else.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe that's part of the issue.
• 39:32
  SPEAKER_01: We've trained people to say, you've got to, I want to see you um close that deal.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_01: And evangelism isn't about closing that deal, it's about showing and saying who Jesus is in the context.
• 39:43
  SPEAKER_01: And it doesn't mean it'll close a deal.
• 39:46
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder, like in one Peter, let me let me float a theory to you and see what see what you think.
• 39:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I I think we've individualized the priesthood of all believers such that we make it everybody is in and of themselves an isolated uh individual who is a priest.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if we're going to talk about an individual who is a priest, we talk about Christ.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: Um now we are all equally members of the one priesthood, the church, and nobody is more priestly than anyone else in this priestly body called um called the priesthood.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: But I th I think we do ourselves a disservice when we individualize it and say ev everybody is equally as where whereas, you know, in One Peter it says, you know, you are this royal priesthood, you guys together.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: And then it's got the the shortest gift list in the whole New Testament.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_00: He you know, he he says, you know, some people uh if they if they speak, they should do it as one who speaks the very words of God.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_00: If they serve, they should do it with the strength that God's provides.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_00: And th the you know, it it's a it's a two-item gift list in in One Peter.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_00: But it's it's got this the serving hospitality diaconal kind of uh gifts, and it's got the the people who are good with words.
• 40:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I think Peter's saying, what if these guys got together?
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_00: What would you get?
• 40:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you get mission the way that it happened in the first century and in the gospels and um and and what positive mission looks like so that we don't have to beat ourselves up if we're not all a Sam Chan, you know?
• 41:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um and I I I don't know, I mean Sam, as I reflect with you, I'm sure you've done loads of evangelism training, I do loads of evangelism training, and the all almost the worst response is people saying, Oh, that's brilliant, I could never do that.
• 41:18
  SPEAKER_00: But but but so so often people think, Oh, okay, if if Sam's what an evangelist is, I guess I'm not, and they disqualify themselves from the broader work of mission.
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: Is is that a problem?
• 41:28
  SPEAKER_00: How do we fight against it?
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, totally, and I love your example.
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, we're we're part of a corporate body, uh uh, you know, a priesthood.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: And Nathan Campbell, Brisbane pastor, blogger, he's the one who pointed out in Thessalonians, Paul says, you know, how we lived among you.
• 41:46
  SPEAKER_02: You know, it's and our gospel came to you.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_02: It didn't say my gospel or or I lived among you.
• 41:53
  SPEAKER_02: So it's a corporate community of believers that does this work, and it's that philosophical problem of the one and the many, you know, one priesthood but many priests.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: And I think this Zoom call, I don't know if people can see it, but somehow we're all Australians.
• 42:08
  SPEAKER_02: Like somehow we picture what does an Australian look like?
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_00: So out there's this absolute platonic ideal of Australian-ness.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: But somehow concretely, manifestly comes out in three more looking Aussies right now, and yet somehow we're Australians, and that's evangelism.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we're all the suffering witnessing servant of Isaiah, we're all the priesthood, but we all have different ways of doing it.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_02: I think my wife is a way better evangelist than me, but she cannot string two coherent words together if you put her up front.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_02: But that's to say it's it's good she's not a Sam Chan because she'd be less effective.
• 42:48
  SPEAKER_02: So at the last guest service, she brought three of her friends along.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_02: None of my friends turned up, but somehow she was able to get three of her friends.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_02: And I also love it when I work as a doctor and where they're operating, there's a surgeon, nurse nurse, nephew this me, uh, anesthetic nurse, and they always say, Hey, did you give a talk today?
• 43:08
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, uh, very nervously, yeah.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_02: What was it on?
• 43:11
  SPEAKER_02: And I always say, it doesn't work unless it's a 20-minute monologue.
• 43:16
  SPEAKER_02: I can't tell you right now.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_02: And that's the whole point.
• 43:19
  SPEAKER_02: I have a very limited model, a 20-minute monologue that doesn't work in 99% of life.
• 43:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so I'm glad when someone says I'm not a Sam Chan, I go, wow, perfect.
• 43:31
  SPEAKER_02: You'll be effective in the 99 the 99% of the other arena of life.
• 43:36
  unknown: Right.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um if I'm ever having any delicate surgery, just remind me not to have you in the operating city because you're a distraction.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_00: We we have a problem.
• 43:48
  SPEAKER_02: No idea.
• 43:51
  SPEAKER_00: Because they're all the needs of doctors.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_02: I always laugh when Christian pray for a friend having an operation, and we pray that you'd be with a surgeon and give them steady hands.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: I thought you have no idea.
• 44:01
  SPEAKER_02: We're watching YouTube, we're listening to music, we're talking about plans for the weekend, we're talking about the cricket, we are not worried about the operation at all.
• 44:12
  SPEAKER_02: We always have to say, okay, who's next?
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_02: Who's next?
• 44:16
  SPEAKER_02: What operation is it?
• 44:17
  SPEAKER_02: Um I always love asking the surgeon.
• 44:21
  SPEAKER_02: So so what's this guy's story?
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_02: Uh I don't know.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna have to read the notes, you know.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Can you confirm for us that it's it it is true, therefore, that the surgeons are just watching YouTube tutorials on how to do brain surgery?
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: Like Intro to brain surgery.
• 44:35
  SPEAKER_00: Episode three.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_02: There's way more truth to that than you realize.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_02: We are cramming.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: Hey, we crammed the night before just like everyone else does.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: It is sobering to think, isn't it, that you're yeah, it's it's as likely as not that your surgeon is in the bottom 50% of all surgeries.
• 44:52
  SPEAKER_02: My my brother was a hand surgeon and the patient was awake while I was operating on him because it was just a local anesthetic.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_02: And the patient said, So how many of these operations have you done in your life?
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_02: And my brother, this is the first time, right?
• 45:04
  SPEAKER_02: So my brother goes, Uh, you're the first one for this year.
• 45:08
  SPEAKER_02: And the guy goes, No, no, no, like how many, no, no, you're the first one for this year, and he just left it at that.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_02: Really, you're the first one I've ever done.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_02: Oh man.
• 45:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's gotta be the first time for somebody.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but as as Sam talks about, you know, he he he has a more unique role.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_00: He is more, you know, if anyone speaks, let them speak with the words that, you know, the very word of words of God.
• 45:31
  SPEAKER_00: And the majority of those who are who belong to the priesthood are not in that position.
• 45:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but Stephen, a a line from your book that's haunted me ever since I read it was that um too many preachers prepare their congregations for the kinds of Monday morning that the preacher is gonna have, not for the kind of Monday morning that the congregation is going to have.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: How do we how do we change that culture?
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that yeah, and it is an issue because I I when I say that or write that anywhere, I get private messages from people saying, That's exactly what it is, but don't tell my pastor.
• 46:05
  SPEAKER_01: Because I think it's you know, when I first got into ministry, it was seen as the hard gig, you're really sacrificing.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_01: And now it feels like the there's a searing heat in the Babylon experience of a post-Christian framework that you're getting up on Monday morning and it feels like you're going out into Babylon and you return to Jerusalem on the Sunday, and the emotional experience of Monday morning in the uh you know multinational, you know, the the uh big international company that you're working in is very, very different.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_01: And ministry uh doesn't get it, and they're saying your role is to go out there and share Jesus with everyone tomorrow uh during your break at the water cooler, and you're going, well, what if I lose my job?
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: Because that goes against the social policy uh issues in the culture.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: And even people are saying to me that in the workplace they're saying if you bring someone to a church meeting that is uh that someone then comes back and says, That minister said something that was really offensive to me and triggered me, you can get into trouble for bringing your friend to your church in your workplace.
• 47:09
  SPEAKER_01: Suddenly all bets are off.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: You're going, Do I want to bring anyone to anything?
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think ministry teams need to say, we need to sit down and listen to our people over a long period of time as to what the pressures are on the workplace or university for them.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_01: Not just assume that a Monday morning when we get together for our staff meeting, that everyone else is feeling I'm gonna put into practice today what I heard yesterday.
• 47:31
  SPEAKER_01: I we we've got to start meeting saying to our people, I want to give you space to say how you're feeling, and I don't want to busy you up too much with a lot of program stuff, to give you at least the mental and emotional energy to deal with what work is becoming increasingly like.
• 47:45
  SPEAKER_01: And that's not just on social policies, the the way work operates and the cutthroat nature of it and the gig economy and all those things are affecting how people feel about their jobs, and they're feeling if I keep my head down and I keep quiet, I'll get through.
• 48:00
  SPEAKER_01: And the minister's saying, Who did you evangelize this week?
• 48:03
  SPEAKER_01: And you go crumbs.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think we've got to start having a better dialogue with our workers.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: Brilliant, brilliant.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, as we draw things to a close, let me just uh ask the same question of both of you.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: What what do you hope that your books will achieve?
• 48:16
  SPEAKER_00: Released out there into the world, seed cast onto different soils?
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_00: What what what do you hope will be the fruit?
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, well, for me, for Christians to just realize, hey, this is way easier than I thought it was.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_02: I'm probably doing most of it already anyway, but also understanding oh that's why it's so hard to evangelize.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_02: Uh we're not we're we're not the society has changed from 20 years ago where all it took was a 20-minute Bible talk.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_02: This is a different world, and that's why it's hard.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_02: And here's a book that finally gets why it's hard, what has changed.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_02: But here's some new, fresh ways that I can reach out to my friends about Jesus.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that's interesting because that dovetails really with what I would be saying is that I wanted to explain to people how the it's hard because there is a bracing uh almost a hostility towards the Christian framework that it's been tried and found wanting and is not good news but actually bad news and unsafe.
• 49:17
  SPEAKER_01: But at the same time, there is a joy, a deep joy in being the people of God together that is infectious, and that the way the Christian framework is put together and the way the gospel transforms people, and especially in Christian community, is as I say repellently attractive.
• 49:34
  SPEAKER_01: That can't be right because we've tried that and it doesn't work.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_01: But gee, there's a you know, I'm gonna use a Bundaberg rum ad, as only an Australian could know, and there's these old guys standing in a pub looking over at these Bundaberg rum bears, the the white polar bear, which is the classic symbol of Bundaberg rum, and they're all having a you know, drinking and laughing, and the old guys look over and go, gee, those bears are having a good time.
• 49:58
  SPEAKER_01: And I kind of want us to gee, those Christian bears look like they're having a good time.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: I want people to think that about us, that they go, I want some of that.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, yes.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_00: I thought they were the bad guys, but yes.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: But and but there's a there's a radiance to their life, and I and I think both both of your books end up in that in that same place.
• 50:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, from yes, they may accuse us of doing wrong, and there is there is uh there is a a light that shines from us when we live the way of Jesus in this self-giving kind of kind of way that is attractive.
• 50:30
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I highly commend uh both books.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh guys, run, don't walk, and uh get being the bad guys, how to live for Jesus in a world that says you shouldn't by Stephen McAlpine, and uh get how to talk about Jesus Without Being That Guy by Sam Chan.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I reckon maybe even like start a book club and read them both together and uh see how they mutually inform um how you're thinking through the the life of being a witness in God's church, because I I think they really do uh bring to light one another in a very helpful way.
• 51:00
  SPEAKER_00: Uh but uh Stephen and Sam, thank you so much for joining us here at Speak Life.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_02: Great to be with you.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_02: Thanks for having us.
• 51:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that'll do us on the Speak Life Podcast for this week.
• 51:12
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• 51:14
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• 51:20
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• 51:25
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• 51:28
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• 51:30
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• 51:36
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• 51:43
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• 52:01
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• 52:07
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• 52:12
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• 52:17
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that'll do us for this episode.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: See you next time on the Speak Life Podcast.