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Speaking Life #2 - “The Gospel” Isn’t A Thing… || SLP683 · The Speak Life Podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people's theology is based on the songs that they sang as a kid.
0:03
SPEAKER_06: That's true.
0:04
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
0:04
SPEAKER_02: And the gospel presentation that saved them.
0:06
SPEAKER_06: So I don't know if I've ever really been in a scenario where I'm chatting with someone and I think, do you know what?
0:11
SPEAKER_06: Let me get out some pen and paper and draw a little diagram.
0:13
SPEAKER_06: This whole conversation about what what is the gospel?
0:16
SPEAKER_06: What is the seed we're sowing?
0:17
SPEAKER_06: What is the point?
0:18
SPEAKER_06: Doesn't just matter for am I communicating my beliefs correctly?
0:22
SPEAKER_06: It's actually really important for like what the heck do I believe?
0:25
SPEAKER_02: Yes, which is a good argument for not making your simple gospel explanations too simplistic.
0:30
SPEAKER_06: Oh, I just felt this little like ah in my gut because I was like, Jesus did so much more than die on the cross.
0:36
SPEAKER_02: People listening right here on Tender Hooks are like, what's he gonna say about the bridge diagram?
0:40
SPEAKER_06: I came to Christ in 1976.
0:43
SPEAKER_06: Welcome to the Speak Life Podcast, Naaming Glenn here.
0:46
SPEAKER_02: Hello.
0:47
SPEAKER_06: Um at Speak Life, we are all about Love Jesus, Share Jesus, one of our strap lines.
0:51
SPEAKER_04: That's right.
0:52
SPEAKER_06: And so we are in a little mini-series at the moment on the share Jesus part of that.
0:57
SPEAKER_04: Speaking life.
0:58
SPEAKER_04: Speaking life.
0:59
SPEAKER_06: And thinking about how, what does it look like to share Jesus and speak of him?
1:02
SPEAKER_06: And last week we were thinking about how to fail at evangelism.
1:06
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
1:07
SPEAKER_02: Masters at failing.
1:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:08
SPEAKER_06: The parable of the sower.
1:10
SPEAKER_06: And we asked, um, what does success look like?
1:12
SPEAKER_06: And um, what is the strategy?
1:15
SPEAKER_06: And then today we're thinking more about what is the seed that is being planted?
1:19
SPEAKER_06: What on earth do we mean when we say share the gospel?
1:22
SPEAKER_06: It's actually one of my pet peeves, is the phrase the gospel, which is ironic.
1:25
unknown: Okay.
1:26
SPEAKER_06: Because it's just it's annoying.
1:27
SPEAKER_06: Because someone says, Oh, I shared the gospel in this conversation.
1:30
SPEAKER_06: Oh, yeah, they faithfully, they really faithfully preach the gospel.
1:34
SPEAKER_06: You're like, what on earth do you mean by that?
1:36
SPEAKER_06: And I don't we do ourselves a disservice when we don't articulate what on earth it is we mean.
1:41
SPEAKER_06: You just slap this label on it.
1:42
SPEAKER_02: Anyway, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John took thousands of words to say their gospel.
1:45
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, yeah, anyway.
1:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
1:47
SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
1:48
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:48
SPEAKER_06: Um, so what are we looking at today, Glenn?
1:50
SPEAKER_02: Well, we are going to look at, gosh, let's let's have a go at at least mentioning nine different ways of that people have devised uh, you know, for sharing the gospel, including one of mine.
2:00
SPEAKER_02: And uh we will, you know, critique those, but we will we will look at the nine.
2:05
SPEAKER_02: What's good about having those kind of nine presentations, but also I'm really excited about talking about the tenth thing, which is not actually a gospel presentation, but it's a truth that's totally transformed and clarified and simplified and liberated my evangelism.
2:21
SPEAKER_02: But you've got to stick around for the end to hear what that tenth thing is.
2:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and we really hope that as we go through these different kind of frameworks for sharing our faith and understanding who Jesus is and what he's done.
2:32
SPEAKER_06: Uh our heart is not to just like tear down and critique and say, this is wrong, this is wrong.
2:38
SPEAKER_06: And and we really hope that as as people listen and engage, this is good food for thought.
2:42
SPEAKER_06: Um, we want to this is the mo one of the most important things we can do is try to articulate our beliefs and communicate them well.
2:50
SPEAKER_06: Um and so hear our heart there.
2:52
SPEAKER_06: We're not trying to just be like completely about everything.
2:56
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
2:56
SPEAKER_06: And and in some ways, this this kind of series sounds a bit like um in-house chat, like Christians talking to Christians about Christian things.
3:04
SPEAKER_06: Um, but if you're listening and you are dipping your foot in church and kind of looking in through the window and um getting to know this Jesus, again, my hope is that you hear our heart that we love this Jesus.
3:17
SPEAKER_06: We think he is the best thing that's ever happened to us.
3:19
SPEAKER_06: The best thing that's ever happened to the world, the cosmos.
3:22
SPEAKER_06: And that is why we care so deeply about inviting other people to love him too.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: Completely.
3:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:27
SPEAKER_02: Completely.
3:28
SPEAKER_02: Should we give it a go?
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
3:29
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
3:30
SPEAKER_06: So number one, the bridge diagram.
3:32
SPEAKER_06: Glenn, what is the bridge diagram?
3:34
SPEAKER_02: Bridge diagram is a classic.
3:35
SPEAKER_02: Uh, you've got God on one side of a chasm, and you've got humanity, us, or I guess you could say like you, and you could even draw like a little stick figure of you on one side of the chasm, God on the other side of the chasm.
3:48
SPEAKER_02: And what you're really trying to communicate is the gulf between you and God.
3:52
SPEAKER_02: And what you say is you can't bridge the gulf by your good deeds, and so you might even draw like a a couple of little stepping stones out into the chasm, but no, doesn't doesn't quite get you to God, and so you you you would end up tumbling down into the abyss, or even your religiosity, that's not going to get you across the gulf to God.
4:15
SPEAKER_02: And so the only thing that will bridge the chasm between humanity and God is, and then you draw a big cross, and the cross is the bridge, and that's why it's the bridge diagram.
4:23
SPEAKER_02: And so the thing that you need in order to get you to God is Jesus Christ.
4:28
SPEAKER_02: There is one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus.
4:32
SPEAKER_02: The God man.
4:33
SPEAKER_02: The God man, right?
4:34
SPEAKER_02: And so and so it puts it puts Jesus very visually central in the whole thing.
4:39
SPEAKER_02: It sets things up as, you know, here is the problem.
4:42
SPEAKER_02: The problem is we need to be with God, we are not with God.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
4:45
SPEAKER_02: It it communicates that there is a problem.
4:48
SPEAKER_02: It it can communicates that um there are false ways of getting there.
4:52
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, and Jesus is is very much central in getting you to God.
4:56
SPEAKER_02: And I don't know how many millions of people have trusted in Jesus just by being shown the bridge diagram.
5:04
SPEAKER_02: But uh I think there there is a non-zero number of people who, upon seeing the bridge diagram, uh saw their need for Jesus and trusted in him.
5:12
SPEAKER_02: So praise God for that.
5:14
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
5:14
SPEAKER_06: I mean it makes me think of the um the song that says How great the chasm that lay between us, how high the mountain I cannot climb.
5:21
SPEAKER_06: In desperation, I turned to heaven, spoke your name into the night.
5:24
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
5:24
SPEAKER_06: I I think I picture that that image of yeah, the Grand Canyon or something.
5:28
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
5:28
SPEAKER_06: Me on that s me on one side.
5:30
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
5:30
SPEAKER_06: God on the other, and I can't get to him, so he comes to me.
5:33
SPEAKER_06: Kind of thing.
5:34
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
5:35
SPEAKER_02: I like that.
5:37
SPEAKER_02: Except that it's it doesn't exactly I mean, not every and what we're gonna say is not every communic not every gospel communication can communicate everything.
5:44
SPEAKER_06: Oh, so this instead has your little stick fing figure, like human being.
5:48
SPEAKER_06: If I was the one that then walks across the the banner of the Yeah.
5:53
SPEAKER_06: The arm bit of the cross over to God.
5:55
SPEAKER_02: You're the one.
5:56
SPEAKER_02: Oh so Jesus provides the bridge and then you you cross over.
6:00
SPEAKER_02: But you know, the the direction is left to right and it's humanity's journey towards God.
6:05
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
6:06
SPEAKER_02: And if I was to be critical and we'll be critical about the ways that I preach the gospel too.
6:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
6:11
SPEAKER_02: But if I and and every simplification at times can get too simplistic and distorts things, right.
6:17
SPEAKER_02: But with that said, I don't like the fact that everything is oriented um around humanity's search for God.
6:25
SPEAKER_02: And even even the the problems of sin are kind of you kind of get to go, but not quite, right?
6:30
SPEAKER_02: Or your religious deeds, they s they're sort of they they're well-intentioned and they they get some of the but not but not really.
6:37
SPEAKER_04: Ah, okay.
6:37
SPEAKER_02: And then even though Jesus is central, you sort of use him instrumentally as a means to what you really want.
6:47
SPEAKER_02: And so sometimes I sort of imagine sort of walking over the bridge and say, Thanks, Jesus, see you later.
6:52
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
6:53
SPEAKER_02: Having used the cross to get what you really want, which is and sometimes it's just like eternal life is what I really want, rather than God.
7:01
SPEAKER_02: And so there there are drawbacks to every simplification of the gospel.
7:05
SPEAKER_02: I think that's where a lot of the drawbacks lie for the bridge diagram.
7:09
SPEAKER_06: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
7:09
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
7:09
SPEAKER_06: So it's in the focus it puts on humanity and or on my individual.
7:14
SPEAKER_02: It's humanity's search for God.
7:15
SPEAKER_06: Journey.
7:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and the initial God going right to left and coming towards me to hoist me onto his shoulders like the good shepherd putting the sheep on.
7:24
SPEAKER_02: Bring me home and bringing us home.
7:26
SPEAKER_02: Not every presentation can do everything, but that's that's where there might be a lack in the bridge diagram, I would say.
7:32
SPEAKER_02: Okay, okay.
7:33
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
7:33
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
7:34
SPEAKER_02: Tell me about the four points.
7:35
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, okay.
7:36
SPEAKER_06: So the four points, um I um I I remember maybe the first time coming across the four points was an LZ7 concert.
7:45
SPEAKER_06: Did you have a LZ7?
7:46
SPEAKER_04: LZ7, yeah.
7:48
SPEAKER_06: Anyway, they're uh um like a Christian band.
7:50
SPEAKER_06: Um and they had I think they might have had a song called The Four Points.
7:53
SPEAKER_06: Anyway, I was a teenager at a Christian festival.
7:55
SPEAKER_06: Um, and so my exposure to the four points has been seeing these four logos on all kinds of caps and hoodies and um and little printed out tracks you can give out as well.
8:08
SPEAKER_06: So it's four four images, and I think I mean my understanding is it probably comes from the four spiritual laws, which is I think from Campus Crusade for Christ approaching um from the 1950s, and now is kind of I'd say branded in a bit of a like a cool diagram merch type way.
8:27
SPEAKER_06: Anyway, so the four of them still do icons.
8:30
SPEAKER_02: Oh but we do we really need to do icons actually.
8:33
SPEAKER_06: Um so the first one is it's a heart and an X, a cross, and then a question mark.
8:39
SPEAKER_06: Yes, and so the first one being um God loves you or God loves me, and second one, I've sinned, um, third one, Jesus died for me, and fourth, I need to choose, I need to decide.
8:51
SPEAKER_06: A question mark.
8:52
SPEAKER_06: Yes, question mark.
8:53
SPEAKER_06: What am I gonna do with this?
8:54
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
8:54
SPEAKER_06: Um and it's kind of like a a framework that you then would be able to go into much more detail on each one of those that is maybe uh yeah, helpful for starting with I perhaps compared to the bridge, it doesn't start with the problem, it starts with there is a God who loves you and he made you and he's for you, um and and then brings in but there is a problem.
9:24
SPEAKER_06: Um and perhaps depending on the person, might depend how you articulate the nature of sin, as we talked about before.
9:30
SPEAKER_06: Um and but similar maybe to the bridge thing, the the solution to that is specifically this image of the cross.
9:38
SPEAKER_06: So Jesus' death on the cross as the kind of atonement for your sin, um, which then gives you this conundrum.
9:47
SPEAKER_06: What do you do with it?
9:48
SPEAKER_06: It gives you a conundrum.
9:48
SPEAKER_06: What are you gonna do with it?
9:51
SPEAKER_02: Which gives you life.
9:52
SPEAKER_02: No, it gives you an ultimatum.
9:56
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, sort of, yeah.
9:57
SPEAKER_06: And um yeah, so I love that it starts with God's character, his love for us, um, starts with a focus on him.
10:06
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
10:07
SPEAKER_06: Um, and then and then it doesn't avoid talking about sin.
10:10
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
10:11
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, great.
10:12
SPEAKER_06: That's I think really good, really important.
10:15
SPEAKER_06: Um I like that it yeah, you in order to get from number two, in order to get from the the our sins to Jesus died for me, you kind of need to need to explain that the wages of sin is death in order for that to make any sense as to why someone had to die.
10:27
SPEAKER_06: So it does you do get into a bit of a kind of atonement justification stuff.
10:32
SPEAKER_06: Um and I do like that there's a call to action because I think it's always it's yeah, that is uh not easy to do, whether in a a conversation to you know ask some a question about what they think of it, or even in kind of a an evangelistic or preaching to do some kind of a like how are you going to respond to what you've heard and an invitation to do something about it.
10:59
SPEAKER_06: Um and also, like we said before, distilling and condensing can be helpful, and this is this is visual imagery, which in some ways is helpful for cross-cultural or language barriers, like maybe there's something that's that's um yeah, kind of helpful and it gives people a framework to maybe explain what is the core a core thing that they believe.
11:22
SPEAKER_06: Um but I do yeah, oh one one re uh this summer at at the conference I was at the festival, was walking past the the four points stall and all their like hoodies and and caps and things, and I oh I just felt this little like ah in my gut.
11:39
SPEAKER_06: Um because I was like, oh, but Jesus did so much more than just die on the cross.
11:45
SPEAKER_06: And he and the gospel of the kingdom of God is so much broader than this, and and I yeah, perhaps like you were saying, some of the focus is on us.
11:56
SPEAKER_06: What am I going to do about this?
11:58
SPEAKER_06: Um rather than on declare perhaps declaring like maybe it's not an either or but there is something about that it probably in my mind I would go something like creation, fall, redemption, and then future restoration, like a kind of the king's coming back, and one day all things will be made new.
12:16
SPEAKER_06: Yep.
12:17
SPEAKER_06: And he's reconciling all things in himself, yeah.
12:19
SPEAKER_06: And there is implication of the cross and resurrection, by the way, also that needs to be in there that spreads way beyond just I now have a choice of how I'm gonna live the rest of my life.
12:32
SPEAKER_02: Um John Stutt's kind of s talks about the four planks of sort of biblical revelation and it's creation for redemption, consummation.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
12:41
SPEAKER_02: And it's just interesting that the sort of consummation is the fourth plank that you referred to, that John Stutt refers to a question mark, is where the four points sort of leads to.
12:51
SPEAKER_02: And and I think for better and for worse, I I'll talk about a gospel presentation in a second that sort of finishes with perhaps the most helpful thing about the gospel presentation is that it it finishes with what are you gonna do about this?
13:02
SPEAKER_02: But then there's a massive question just in a theology of of evangelism, like does repentance belong within the gospel, or is repentance a response to the gospel, right?
13:14
SPEAKER_06: Oh, wait, say a bit more on that.
13:16
SPEAKER_02: So is is the gospel the announcement of good news to which the response of the human is I repent and believe, show me some water I need to get baptized, or is contained within the gospel the the kind of the the if clause, and if you repent and believe and are baptized, then certain benefits come to you.
13:39
SPEAKER_02: And and actually, you know, it can it can sound a quite abstract thing, but as soon as you're in the trenches and you're actually sharing the gospel with somebody, um yeah, it it it can shape your offering of Christ.
13:52
SPEAKER_02: Is your is your offering of Christ a kind of a I'm I'm offering you a choice, or am I or am I offering you Christ Himself and in the offer of of Christ, I guess a decision is thrust upon you?
14:06
SPEAKER_02: Like by the nature of the case.
14:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
14:09
SPEAKER_02: Or is the is the choice, is the question mark baked into the offering?
14:13
SPEAKER_06: Okay.
14:13
SPEAKER_06: I think that is helpful, and like we've said before, that um repentance is a gift if we know that grace is on the other side of it.
14:22
SPEAKER_06: Like and so in some ways, repentance is part of the good news, like that you can like you can revise the whole way you've been living your life.
14:30
SPEAKER_06: Did you know you can have a new life totally restart?
14:34
SPEAKER_04: Yep.
14:35
SPEAKER_06: And and you can completely genuinely own up in the cold light of day to everything that has happened to you and that you have done to others.
14:43
SPEAKER_06: And the do you know what I mean?
14:44
SPEAKER_06: Like, man, that's a gift.
14:46
SPEAKER_02: I totally know what you mean.
14:47
SPEAKER_06: And so that is part of the goodness of the news.
14:49
SPEAKER_02: So, okay, Mark chapter one, the whole thing begins.
14:52
SPEAKER_02: I mean, the gospels are the gospel.
14:55
SPEAKER_02: Um as gospel summaries go, I think Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John kind of do very well.
15:02
SPEAKER_02: Um, and they're not overly short, but you can get through Mark in an hour.
15:06
SPEAKER_02: But Mark begins, you know, the beginning of the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.
15:12
SPEAKER_02: So the good news is all wrapped up in a person who is Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God.
15:20
SPEAKER_02: And he's kind of thrust upon this world as this announcement, and just like in Luke 2, the the angels are like, Good news of great joy for for all the people.
15:28
SPEAKER_02: Um, so yeah, the gospel is the offer of Christ to the world.
15:33
SPEAKER_02: And then you get to verses 14 and 15 of Mark chapter 1.
15:37
SPEAKER_02: After John was put in prison, Jesus went into Galilee, and here are the first words out of his mouth in John's Gospel, you know, proclaiming the good news of God.
15:45
SPEAKER_02: So Jesus is proclaiming the good news of God, and he says, The time has come, the kingdom of God has come near.
15:51
SPEAKER_02: Repent and believe the good news.
15:54
SPEAKER_02: And to me, that's kind of um here is like the world is used to hearing bad news the whole time.
16:03
SPEAKER_02: And then the angels are declaring, and scripture is declaring, and Isaiah is promising, and it's all coming together in the gift of the Son of God to earth to be received.
16:15
SPEAKER_02: And it's it's a case of like repent.
16:19
SPEAKER_02: Believe the good news.
16:21
SPEAKER_02: Which is like, stop believing bad news, like stop, stop living out of a tragic vision of life and a tragic vision of yourself, and just just like stop it, stop it, repent and believe the good news.
16:34
SPEAKER_02: And for me, so that that therefore tilts me towards thinking the gospel is the offer of Christ.
16:41
SPEAKER_02: Repentance is absolutely the true and proper response to it.
16:45
SPEAKER_02: But what is offered to you is Christ Himself, and you know And therefore there is a question mark over me as you're offering me the gospel, what am I gonna do with this?
16:54
SPEAKER_02: And if I receive him, I am receiving Christ and receiving a new life in him.
16:58
SPEAKER_02: But I but I kind of want to frame the gospel as the offer of Christ in all his fullness and sort of keep the if statements for afterwards.
17:10
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
17:11
SPEAKER_06: Yes, okay.
17:12
SPEAKER_06: Maybe does that maybe bring us on to the next one if you're saying that if this, yeah, then this, if that, then that, yeah.
17:19
SPEAKER_06: There are two ways to live.
17:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
17:22
SPEAKER_02: And this is the great strength of Two Ways to Live coming out of uh Sydney.
17:26
SPEAKER_02: Um it actually grew out of a biblical theology class, I think, that um I think one of the lecturers at Moore College in Sydney was basically just teaching through the Bible and just saying, well, we begin with, and there are six diagrams, and the top left sort of box, if you imagine a cartoon strip, the top left of the six boxes is creation, and you sort of uh draw God is the loving ruler of the world, and you can draw a crown and then the world, and he puts humanity on top of the world, and that's box one.
17:58
SPEAKER_02: Box two is there is sin, and so man rebels against God and sort of crosses out the the crown, but you can't cross out the crown uh with impunity.
18:08
SPEAKER_02: Box three is judgment, okay?
18:11
SPEAKER_02: So because of sin, there's judgment, and you sort of draw the little stick figure lying down under the big crown, under judgment.
18:19
SPEAKER_02: And this is where humanity is.
18:21
SPEAKER_02: We are under the wrath of God, we are sinners, uh, made for God, but rebels against him.
18:27
SPEAKER_02: Good news, box four, and you draw that sort of underneath box one.
18:32
SPEAKER_02: Box four is Jesus comes, uh, he's the true, um, he's the true ruler of the world.
18:39
SPEAKER_02: And uh what does it say?
18:41
SPEAKER_02: The the man Christ Jesus came and he lived our life and he died our death on the cross, taking the judgment that box three talks about.
18:49
SPEAKER_02: Uh box five then is the resurrection, and you sort of draw Jesus uh up on his feet again with a with the with the crown restored onto him.
18:59
SPEAKER_02: And then box six, and I think this is the sort of the strength of the whole presentation, um, and it's the framing of the whole presentation.
19:06
SPEAKER_02: It's it's it's often introduced as this is the choice we all face, and so box six is are you going to continue to be like a box three kind of a person rebelling against God, being under his wrath, or are you going to submit to Jesus and let him be the king?
19:25
SPEAKER_02: So either you wear the crown or Jesus wears the crown, and there are those two, and and one way leads to destruction and one way leads to life.
19:34
SPEAKER_02: And that's that's sort of box six.
19:36
SPEAKER_02: And and I think in personal evangelism, what I've noticed is in taking people through two ways to live, um, it does help at times to be able to say to somebody, which of these two figures represents who you are?
19:49
SPEAKER_02: Which of these two figures represents who you want to be?
19:52
SPEAKER_02: You know.
19:52
SPEAKER_02: And I've certainly had the experience of of taking people through this, and that they're like, gosh, I think I am a person who's heading to destruction and I think I don't want that.
20:02
SPEAKER_02: You know.
20:03
SPEAKER_02: And so the choice we all face actually it helps with a certain with a certain stage in your encounter with somebody else.
20:16
SPEAKER_02: Um when you when you really want to figure out, okay, we've been talking about Jesus for a while.
20:21
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, okay, yeah.
20:22
SPEAKER_02: What are we gonna do about this, Gnomes?
20:25
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
20:27
SPEAKER_06: And and actually that is that's the kind of language I use when I do do a bit of a call to action or an appeal or response invitation, however you want to call it at the end, at the end of a talk, is I'll say, for some of you, this is the first time you've ever heard this stuff, like, and you might be thinking, Wow, sounds great, count me in.
20:43
SPEAKER_06: I'd say, hold your horses, like yeah, this is a big deal.
20:47
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
20:47
SPEAKER_06: Like, read read some more about um meet some more of the account of the Jesus' life story, dip your foot in church for a bit, explore your questions, um, and but but then I'll say, but for some of you, you've been thinking about this for a long time.
21:01
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
21:01
SPEAKER_06: And but maybe maybe something I have said or something you've read or you discussed together has just been like a penny drop moment.
21:09
SPEAKER_06: And um and you would like to respond to that.
21:12
SPEAKER_06: Oh, something like that.
21:12
SPEAKER_06: And so I'll use that phrase of like, maybe you've been thinking about this stuff for a while.
21:16
SPEAKER_06: It's it's kind of when you get into that stage of um yeah, I I'm I'm kind of needing to assume that someone has a fair bit of a foundation of think of kind of thinking or or self-awareness or something, or a knowledge of who this god is that they might be about to live with, yeah, live life with.
21:36
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
21:37
SPEAKER_06: Um yeah.
21:39
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
21:40
SPEAKER_02: So I think that's I think that's a real strength of of two ways to live.
21:44
SPEAKER_02: Um I mean, yeah.
21:45
SPEAKER_06: Would you and so I don't know if I've ever really been in a scenario where I'm chatting with someone and I think, do you know what?
21:52
SPEAKER_06: Let me get out some pen and paper and draw a little diagram.
21:54
SPEAKER_06: Except from recently with um a friend Sophie, who is a Christian.
22:00
SPEAKER_06: Um and I used Nate's wonderful um Apostles' Creed, Hero's Creed, Hero's Journey because I think it's absolutely genius.
22:08
SPEAKER_06: And if listeners haven't come across that yet, search Hero's Creed and you'll find a really helpful little kind of diagram telling the story of the hero the hero's journey, but using the Apostles' Creed is absolutely genius.
22:21
SPEAKER_06: Um but I I I mean already I feel like it if you think I've got this little system, this kind of like message mechanism thing I need to like fit into a conversation in order for that to count as having shared quote the gospel.
22:36
SPEAKER_06: Um it's already a bit of a gear shift.
22:39
SPEAKER_06: But then to also be like, We're having a pint and I'm getting out of a piece of paper.
22:44
SPEAKER_06: How I mean, maybe that is quite natural for some people.
22:47
SPEAKER_06: Um how helpful is that?
22:50
SPEAKER_02: Interesting that you did it with the hero's creed.
22:52
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, I did, yeah, on a post-it note.
22:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
22:54
SPEAKER_02: Because there I I think there are times when you sort of think, feel like, oh yeah, because you know that thing, the you know you know the hero's journey that Joseph Campbell talks about.
23:02
SPEAKER_02: Well, have you ever thought that actually the Jesus thing maps onto that?
23:06
SPEAKER_02: And maybe the hero's maybe the hero's journey looks like it does because of the the Apostles' Creed.
23:11
SPEAKER_02: And yeah, I the it it is interesting that you who don't do that, or you're not wired for doing that, did it with something that's a story that sort of rather than like it's a bit weird.
23:26
SPEAKER_02: It it feels like you're you're doing a pitch, like you're a you're a marketer, and can I show you my slide deck?
23:30
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
23:32
SPEAKER_02: I'm gonna be I'm gonna be pitching to some investors later.
23:34
SPEAKER_02: You just tell me what you think about that.
23:35
SPEAKER_02: Like like that feels that feels weird.
23:38
SPEAKER_02: But if it is a story that you're sharing, maybe it's not a good thing.
23:41
SPEAKER_06: And maybe because maybe because uh it was a fresh way to see as something we're familiar with, actually.
23:49
SPEAKER_06: So I I wasn't introducing the Apostles' Creed to to my friend.
23:54
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
23:54
SPEAKER_06: Um I was m I was more saying, hey, look at this really helpful way to think about it and to memorize it and to um and to engage with it as a story.
24:03
SPEAKER_06: Have you ever thought about it like a story before?
24:05
SPEAKER_06: Wow, let's look at this.
24:06
SPEAKER_06: Um so I maybe it was to consolidate something that she already knew or that we were already talking about.
24:15
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:16
SPEAKER_02: And but the there's something about the visual aspect of the hero's creed.
24:20
SPEAKER_02: We're gonna have to show people.
24:21
SPEAKER_02: We'll we'll do some overlays and people probably see what it is.
24:24
SPEAKER_02: The story clock, you you go down from the known area into the unknown area, and and the hero goes through the ordeal but is raised up again and brings a great boon back to the back to the top of the story clock.
24:34
SPEAKER_02: And the Apostles' Creed says Jesus did exactly that, and he just, you know, crucified under Pontius Pilate and suffered, died, and was buried, and and and then rose again from the dead.
24:43
SPEAKER_02: And so there's something about that belonging in the visual realm in the way that the four points is it's boiling down four doctrines.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
24:54
SPEAKER_02: And and and you can turn those doctrines into nice-looking icons, but there's there's nothing that relates together.
25:02
SPEAKER_02: Like the heart and the cross don't really relate together.
25:06
SPEAKER_02: Not even visually.
25:07
SPEAKER_06: I mean, you could think of interesting ways in which Yeah, and I think they they do say it sort of looks like an equation.
25:12
SPEAKER_06: It's like heart times cross question mark.
25:15
SPEAKER_06: A bit left-brained.
25:16
SPEAKER_06: Sort of.
25:17
SPEAKER_02: Um, if the bridge diagram, you're sort of building up a diagram and you're sort of showing something that moves from left to right, and and there's a sort of a development and there's a bit of an ordeal, and there's a kind of a there's a roadblock in the way.
25:30
SPEAKER_02: Ah, but then it's the overcoming.
25:32
SPEAKER_02: And so it it wouldn't I I wonder whether even the bridge diagram would make more sense to do in a pub than the four points.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
25:40
SPEAKER_02: You know, the four points is just for you to have in your brain, really, to think about oh, I guess we're in a we're in a God's love kind of energy now.
25:48
SPEAKER_06: No, we're in a yeah, yeah, yeah.
25:52
SPEAKER_06: And maybe, well, yeah, maybe it's I'm thinking about the format of like writing something in the middle of a conversation is maybe also different to um being a storyteller who can engage with the stuff around, saying, Hey, well, imagine you're over here and I'm over here, and this thing happens, you do a little skit.
26:09
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
26:09
SPEAKER_06: That also would feel like a funny kind of gear shift for maybe some conversations do well.
26:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
26:13
SPEAKER_02: Um and in that point of view, I mean, this is probably better, isn't it?
26:16
SPEAKER_02: Like the met here's you.
26:18
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's my glass.
26:18
SPEAKER_02: Here's sin.
26:19
SPEAKER_02: That's your libel, yeah.
26:20
SPEAKER_02: Here's God.
26:21
SPEAKER_02: Right, but yeah, yeah.
26:22
SPEAKER_02: Like that would make a lot more sense, I think.
26:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
26:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
26:25
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
26:25
SPEAKER_02: Getting out of pen and paper.
26:26
SPEAKER_02: Who has pen and paper?
26:27
SPEAKER_06: I know.
26:27
SPEAKER_06: Well it's not a good thing.
26:28
SPEAKER_06: Well, you me, yeah.
26:30
SPEAKER_06: Although I think I lost my pencil case on the train recently.
26:33
SPEAKER_06: It's it's been a sad week.
26:35
SPEAKER_04: Sorry for your loss.
26:35
SPEAKER_06: I know.
26:37
SPEAKER_06: W.
26:38
SPEAKER_06: Smith doesn't even exist anymore.
26:39
SPEAKER_06: TG Jones.
26:40
SPEAKER_06: T G Jones Pencils, anyway.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Anyway.
26:42
SPEAKER_02: Um So two ways to do it.
26:44
SPEAKER_02: That's that's one way of doing cards.
26:46
SPEAKER_02: And interestingly, it came out of basically lectures in biblical theology.
26:50
SPEAKER_02: And this is these are the six epochs kind of of biblical history.
26:54
SPEAKER_02: And it's been turned into an evangelistic presentation, but um yeah, it didn't be didn't begin that way.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
27:00
SPEAKER_02: Um tell me about the wordless book or the yeah, or kind of gospel bracelets.
27:05
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
27:05
SPEAKER_06: So this I guess is another way of making it visual, and maybe having so uh I've seen this in two forms.
27:13
SPEAKER_06: I've seen this as a a bracelet with some beads on it of um six or so different colours, five or six colours.
27:21
SPEAKER_06: And I've also seen it recently done for a kid's talk with a book, so it's just a book that has different coloured pages.
27:27
SPEAKER_06: Um and so my my basic understanding of it is um it probably starts with gold, which is heaven, um and God, I suppose.
27:38
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
27:38
SPEAKER_06: Then black, which is sin and um our separation from God, red, the blood, blood of Jesus.
27:47
SPEAKER_06: Um I've seen a mixture sometimes blue is used then as like baptism of repentance and belief, kind of thing, or white as a forgiven forgiveness.
27:58
SPEAKER_06: Um, and then green, which is around growing and growing now in in Christ, I suppose.
28:04
SPEAKER_06: Um, and then gold again, you finished background where you started.
28:08
SPEAKER_02: Oh, that's nice.
28:09
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
28:09
SPEAKER_06: Which and so that might I I I've not done a great job of explaining it there, but I think um I imagine people will do it in in different ways.
28:17
SPEAKER_06: And when I've seen a friend talk me through the bracelet, it was really quite compelling, and I thought, oh, that's cool.
28:23
SPEAKER_06: Similar to the four-points thing, if you've got a little hoodie or a cap with it on, and someone asks, Oh, what is that?
28:28
SPEAKER_06: It gives you a chance that you're trying to already create an opportunity, maybe to share.
28:32
SPEAKER_06: And I think I've seen that done well if you were doing some kind of a um street evangelism type thing where you're you're just jumping right in, asking a couple of questions, hey, can I ask you a question?
28:44
SPEAKER_06: Like, no, yeah, and then maybe explaining about the bracelet.
28:46
SPEAKER_06: So you gift them a little bracelet.
28:48
SPEAKER_02: Um I did a bit of search on the wordless book today.
28:51
SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, go for it.
28:52
SPEAKER_02: And it they said that it came from Spurgeon.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: So I don't know.
28:54
SPEAKER_02: I mean interesting.
28:55
SPEAKER_02: Spurgeon's one of the people, he's like an electromagnet for quotes, isn't he?
28:58
SPEAKER_02: Like things that he never said get attributed to him anyway.
29:02
SPEAKER_02: But this this said that he he did it for his Sunday schools, and and so he wanted to get it rolled out.
29:08
SPEAKER_02: And you can you could you can imagine in Victorian England, all the little urchin children around you, and you you've got your little wordless book and kind of call army governor, I've never seen that before.
29:20
SPEAKER_02: And then they repent and believe.
29:21
SPEAKER_02: But you you can imagine in a Sunday school setting.
29:23
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah, well, no, that I mean that was where I saw it was in uh I saw the book used in like a kid's talk at the front of church.
29:29
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
29:29
SPEAKER_06: Um, and I I hadn't really seen that before.
29:32
SPEAKER_06: And yeah, so I guess similar to what we were saying before, it's nice that it's kind of visual.
29:36
SPEAKER_06: It's nice that by nature of it being like a bracelet or wristband, you're you're already trying to provide some kind of potential opportunity in your days, you go around and someone might happen to ask you about this.
29:48
SPEAKER_06: That's great.
29:49
SPEAKER_06: I quite like that it it it does include that kind of eternal, eternal hope.
29:54
SPEAKER_06: It does if it comes back to the the glory of God, the gold, the heaven.
29:59
SPEAKER_06: Um it's not just it's not just landing on the blue of you need to be baptized and and are you gonna do that or not?
30:07
SPEAKER_06: Yep.
30:07
SPEAKER_06: Um and it also but it also includes the the green, the growth.
30:11
SPEAKER_06: Like from now on, you are like growing in your relationship with God.
30:15
SPEAKER_06: You're growing and flourishing and being nourished by Him.
30:17
SPEAKER_06: And and um I think that maybe has been lacking in the previous ones we talked about.
30:22
SPEAKER_02: That's true, actually.
30:23
SPEAKER_02: That's true, yeah.
30:24
SPEAKER_02: We haven't talked that about that at all.
30:26
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
30:27
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you're only left with the ultimatum or you're left with eternity.
30:31
SPEAKER_02: What about in between?
30:32
SPEAKER_02: You know?
30:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, exactly.
30:33
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, growing, growing in Christ is important.
30:36
SPEAKER_02: And it tells a story, isn't it?
30:37
SPEAKER_02: Like all of these kind of tell a story.
30:40
SPEAKER_02: And as simplistic as they might come across, they're actually so much more variegated and nuanced than modern secular wisdom.
30:50
SPEAKER_02: Like modern secular wisdom is just slogans, you know?
30:54
SPEAKER_02: And so the pub discussion about what do you think?
30:56
SPEAKER_02: Are people mainly good or mainly bad?
30:57
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I think they're like to come at that, even with the simplest story that was designed for children, is to come armed with something far more sophisticated than even like an evolutionary biologist saying, Well, I think actually we've been optimized for X-Y's.
31:13
SPEAKER_02: Like, like to come and say that we're made by a golden god, but we've fallen like into blackness, but then the man Christ Jesus actually took our humanity and paid the debt, and but but sort of like rose up again to bring us growth, like towards and we're heading somewhere.
31:33
SPEAKER_02: Like this is made for children, and yet I think it's more sophisticated than probably the story that like secular people live with.
31:41
SPEAKER_02: The story that secular people live with is just slogans and not a story at all.
31:45
SPEAKER_06: Oh, that's interesting.
31:46
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and so I guess it's helpful to say that each of these um this is still a better story than you'll find anywhere else.
31:54
SPEAKER_04: Right.
31:55
SPEAKER_06: But also to say that probably depending on how someone fleshes out each of the points in whichever framework you use, yeah, and we'll probably determine whether what we've commented on it is accurate or not.
32:07
SPEAKER_06: Because someone made a brilliant job of expanding on some of these things or bring some more kind of nuance and colour where that's needed.
32:12
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
32:16
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32:24
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32:25
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32:28
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32:29
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32:38
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32:41
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32:51
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32:52
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32:54
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32:56
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33:00
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33:00
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33:01
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33:04
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33:21
SPEAKER_06: Back to the conversation.
33:27
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so we've had a look at Bridge, The Four Points, Two Ways to Live, and the Wordless Book or Gospel Bracelets.
33:36
SPEAKER_06: Um, there are many other ways.
33:38
SPEAKER_06: I'd love to hear if people have other tools in there toolkit.
33:41
SPEAKER_03: We won't.
33:41
SPEAKER_06: I only actually came across this whole kind of concept of having a like summary explanation of my core beliefs when I was probably like 19 or 20, and I felt I mean I'd been in church my whole life.
33:52
SPEAKER_02: But university is that yeah, around that time.
33:55
SPEAKER_06: Around that time of leaving school, gap here university kind of time.
33:59
SPEAKER_06: Um, where and at first I thought, wow, gosh, like I this is really helpful.
34:06
SPEAKER_06: And um I I actually previously didn't think coherence.
34:11
SPEAKER_06: I think because it gave me a thing to say, like in those moments where it does feel like, oh, there's some kind of an opportunity here.
34:17
SPEAKER_06: Um and and maybe maybe as I thought maybe it's helpful because it was like this is a way I could communicate what I'm what I what I believe, but actually, really what is more helpful was more helpful for was trying to wrestle through what is it that I actually believe.
34:33
SPEAKER_06: What is it this this Christianity thing I've been brought up with?
34:35
SPEAKER_06: And I was having a conversation with one of the teenagers in my church just this week who was saying that that's basically her question at the moment is what does it actually mean to be a Christian?
34:45
SPEAKER_06: Because I've grown up in this whole thing and I am a bit confused.
34:49
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
34:49
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
34:50
SPEAKER_06: Um so sometimes just the simplicity of here is like the ki a key story of God's love for you and our separation from him and how he's brought to himself in Christ and is you know gonna redeem all things and it's a coherent, meaningful story that makes sense of life.
35:08
SPEAKER_02: And so yeah.
35:09
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
35:09
SPEAKER_02: Whereas I think I think a lot of people navigate the even the Christian life just with slogans as well.
35:14
SPEAKER_02: Oh, oh, there's a little thing about forgiveness here, sin here, and yeah.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
35:19
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
35:20
SPEAKER_06: And some that aren't even in the Bible.
35:22
SPEAKER_06: Oh, we should do a whole poker's episode on that.
35:23
SPEAKER_02: Mm-hmm.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
35:25
SPEAKER_02: So it's helpful for Christians, isn't it?
35:26
SPEAKER_02: Just to like actually there there is a story of the world that we fit into.
35:31
SPEAKER_02: And I I think just for discipleship for Christians.
35:35
SPEAKER_02: I think these things help.
35:36
SPEAKER_06: But on that as well, it if you if you came to know Jesus through if what if something like this was particularly helpful for you, you're on the receiving end of that pub conversation with the weird post-it note guy, and you at the end of it you thought, my goodness, um there's actually something in this, then then you that informs your understanding of what your faith even is.
35:55
SPEAKER_06: Completely.
35:56
SPEAKER_06: And therefore, informs how you're going to share it.
35:58
SPEAKER_06: And so this whole conversation about what is the gospel?
36:02
SPEAKER_06: What is the seed we're selling?
36:03
SPEAKER_06: What is the point?
36:05
SPEAKER_06: Doesn't just matter for am I communicating my beliefs correctly um such that someone else might come and enjoy Jesus like I do.
36:12
SPEAKER_06: Instead, it's actually really important for like what the heck do I believe?
36:15
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
36:16
SPEAKER_06: How do I understand my own salvation?
36:19
SPEAKER_02: Completely.
36:20
SPEAKER_02: Which is a good argument for not making your simple gospel explanations too simplistic.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
36:24
SPEAKER_02: That's a really good because if they do in fact function as discipleship tools for me, so that the I so that I can coherently kind of um put together my my Christian faith in in a story that makes sense for me, um, then it's quite important that it's not too simple.
36:46
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
36:46
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
36:47
SPEAKER_06: And this is where I I mean, again, it was maybe only four or five years ago I came across.
36:52
SPEAKER_06: I feel like I just like exploring my whole journey on this podcast.
36:56
SPEAKER_06: Um three or four years ago came across the concept of catechisms and was like, wow, this is complex and rich and deep.
37:03
SPEAKER_06: And people used to teach us to their kids, my goodness.
37:05
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
37:05
SPEAKER_06: And I'm like, yeah, bring that back.
37:08
SPEAKER_02: There are people yelling at their devices right now.
37:10
SPEAKER_02: We still do know.
37:11
SPEAKER_02: We still do petty.
37:12
SPEAKER_02: I know, I know.
37:13
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:14
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
37:15
SPEAKER_06: That kind of thing.
37:16
SPEAKER_02: And and the creeds, I guess, um uh there's some quite technical language in, say, the Nicene Creed, right?
37:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
37:23
SPEAKER_02: Like they they hammered out some very technical language in the in the Nicene Creed in order to make things as simple as possible and no simpler, which is like uh Albert Einstein's great line.
37:32
SPEAKER_02: Things must be made as simple as possible and no simpler.
37:35
SPEAKER_02: And largely because, yeah, it's meant to hold my Christian doctrine together in a coherent story.
37:44
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
37:44
SPEAKER_02: So that then in my conversation with my unbelieving friends, it's sort of it comes out wherever the conversation's going rather than I now sit them down and and take them line by line through the Nicene Creed, you know.
37:57
SPEAKER_02: And so I do think and I do think, interestingly, that all these presentations that we've discussed are very precious to lots of people probably listening.
38:09
SPEAKER_02: They're probably listening, people listening right here on Tentahooks, like, what's he gonna say about the bridge diagram?
38:14
SPEAKER_02: I came to Christ in 1976 and it was the bridge diagram that did.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
38:18
SPEAKER_02: Um and so we we sort of we treasure these, and they're they're they're very precious to us.
38:23
SPEAKER_02: But I think I think that's why I wanted to get into the business of the gospel presentation game.
38:29
SPEAKER_02: Because I was just sort of aware that a lot of people's theology is based on the songs that they sang as a kid.
38:35
SPEAKER_02: That's true, yeah.
38:36
SPEAKER_02: And the gospel presentation that saved them.
38:39
SPEAKER_02: And actually, for a lot of Christians, our theology doesn't grow much beyond what the songs we sang as a kid and the gospel presentation that we sort of you know, learnt to bring us to faith.
38:51
SPEAKER_02: And so, yeah, so I often I often like when I think of 321, which is sort of the gospel presentation that that I've put out there into the world, I've kind of been determined not to make it too simplistic.
39:02
SPEAKER_02: Um but therefore it's it's sort of it's sort of it's different from the others that we've talked about, because it doesn't really narrate the story.
39:11
SPEAKER_06: Ah, okay.
39:12
SPEAKER_02: So it's it's worse than everything that we've talked about.
39:16
SPEAKER_02: Because like you could talk about three and two and one, which is like three is Father, Son, and Spirit, two is the world is shaped by two representatives, Adam and Jesus, and one is you are united to Adam, be one with Jesus.
39:28
SPEAKER_02: And and so in saying that, I haven't actually told you that God created the world, right?
39:32
SPEAKER_02: And I and I I could, I mean, it would be weird, but I could I could leave out the cross somehow in that teleport.
39:40
SPEAKER_02: Because it's actually three doctrines that I think sit above the four points.
39:44
SPEAKER_02: Ah, okay, okay.
39:45
SPEAKER_06: So can you give us a little so like three to one yeah is a is in some ways a course uh uh an experience?
39:55
SPEAKER_06: A thing you can use fragrance.
39:59
SPEAKER_06: The adverse would be very different if it was a vibe.
40:02
SPEAKER_06: 321 is a vibe, no, I hate that.
40:04
SPEAKER_02: Um that people can do over the course of several weeks or or just um binge it in a couple of hours or there's a couple of short videos that people can do, but yeah.
40:11
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
40:12
SPEAKER_06: Um so but I feel like for this to be a level playing field, yeah.
40:17
SPEAKER_02: Let's creep let's stick the boot in.
40:19
SPEAKER_06: Um if you were to have an opportunity in a conversation where you've got a minute or two to to kind of outline what it is that you believe, how would you do that in a way that is having a three-two-one kind of framework?
40:33
SPEAKER_02: Well, interestingly, when I when I do that, three, two, and one are very much in the background.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
40:39
SPEAKER_02: And what's in the foreground is is story.
40:41
SPEAKER_02: And I might be thinking about, oh, what's a Jesus-shaped vision of God?
40:45
SPEAKER_02: Ah, he's threeness.
40:46
SPEAKER_02: What's a Jesus-shaped vision of the world?
40:48
SPEAKER_02: The world's two-ness.
40:49
SPEAKER_02: What's a Jesus-shaped vision of me, uh, my oneness?
40:51
SPEAKER_02: But you've probably heard me do the, you know, in the beginning there was light and life and love, a father loving his son and the joy of the spirit, and everything's come from light, life and love, but we live in darkness, death, and disconnection.
41:01
SPEAKER_02: Where's that come from?
41:02
SPEAKER_02: We when you turn from light, you end up in darkness.
41:04
SPEAKER_02: But what does love do when love sees the beloved in trouble?
41:07
SPEAKER_02: Love says, Your trouble will be my trouble, and your darkness will be my darkness, and your death will be my death.
41:11
SPEAKER_02: So who is Jesus?
41:12
SPEAKER_02: He's the Son of the Father, filled with the Spirit.
41:15
SPEAKER_02: He lives our life, and then on the cross he dies our death, rises up again, and he says, You in the darkness, do you want my light?
41:21
SPEAKER_02: You in death, do you want my life?
41:23
SPEAKER_02: You in disconnection, do you want my love?
41:25
SPEAKER_02: And anyone who turns to him and says yes to Jesus, we get his father as our father, his spirit as our spirit, his future as our future.
41:32
SPEAKER_02: So that's kind of the gospel in however many however many seconds it is.
41:38
SPEAKER_06: Where's the water for me to get baptized?
41:40
SPEAKER_02: Um Repent! Repent, sister.
41:43
SPEAKER_02: But yeah.
41:44
SPEAKER_06: Okay, so I see how you um You did you you did start you started with who God is for life, light and love, I think.
41:54
SPEAKER_06: Yep.
41:54
SPEAKER_02: Father, son, spirit.
41:55
SPEAKER_02: Yep.
41:55
SPEAKER_06: Father, son, spirit.
41:56
SPEAKER_06: Um you and you use those specific words.
42:00
SPEAKER_06: That is, I mean, that's helpful because it's memorable, isn't it?
42:01
SPEAKER_06: The whole alliteration thing, but it's um you then you do kind of do a bit of a gold to black kind of thing.
42:09
SPEAKER_02: We do a gold to black.
42:10
SPEAKER_06: But we live in darkness, death, and disconnection.
42:12
SPEAKER_06: Um so you do do that same thing.
42:15
SPEAKER_02: I didn't talk about Adam, for instance.
42:16
SPEAKER_02: So the two kind of more officially is there's a representative of life as it as it is.
42:21
SPEAKER_02: It's Adam.
42:23
SPEAKER_02: Um but really what I'm trying to get across is we we live in a world of disconnection and grubbiness and finitude and sin and that sort of thing.
42:31
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
42:31
SPEAKER_06: And then you quite I think one thing I think is really helpful about the way you just framed it there, and this is something I think you're particularly good at, is is just um it it flows in a way that you're like, oh, that makes sense.
42:44
SPEAKER_06: Often I when I've heard you speak, it's like, oh yeah, of course.
42:48
SPEAKER_06: Um and it's because you connect the dots in a way that is like this is the necessary outcome of this thing.
42:53
SPEAKER_04: Right.
42:53
SPEAKER_06: So instead of it being like a bit jarring of like, wait, so what wait, so I I don't quite understand the sin bit, and now like God had to die.
43:03
SPEAKER_06: I uh what is going on?
43:05
SPEAKER_06: Um there's something about the way that you've used your language to say um this is you know life, light, and and love, this is what God is and what he dwells in.
43:15
SPEAKER_06: We live in darkness, death, and disconnection, and um and it's the way you explain because if you have turned from the God of light, you end up in darkness.
43:25
SPEAKER_06: You turn from the God of love, you end up in in um disconnection, you turn from the God of what is the one word?
43:30
SPEAKER_04: Life of life, life and death.
43:31
SPEAKER_04: Yeah, yeah.
43:32
SPEAKER_06: And so and so that's why, and then you're saying, Well, what's God gonna do about it?
43:37
SPEAKER_06: Well, when love sees the beloved in darkness, they're gonna go.
43:41
SPEAKER_06: And so it takes on our our death and darkness and disconnection.
43:44
SPEAKER_06: And that is I think it's almost the little in-betweeny bits that make that a really strong thing because I I'm left thinking, oh yeah, it makes sense.
43:55
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
43:56
SPEAKER_06: Um as a little coherent story, even if I'm not in it, I know.
44:00
SPEAKER_06: I you know, I understand it from a distance.
44:02
SPEAKER_06: And then you've and then you did what you said, which was say if.
44:07
SPEAKER_02: That was a good little if clause.
44:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:10
SPEAKER_02: Um and he says do what was it?
44:13
SPEAKER_06: Oh yeah, yeah, and and if you Um Yeah, what are the people can go back on the table?
44:18
SPEAKER_06: Those who those who are in darkness, do you want my light?
44:22
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, do you want me light?
44:23
SPEAKER_02: And if yeah, if you turn to Jesus from that darkness, death, and disconnection, say yes, I want Jesus, then you get his father.
44:30
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so that's just a good thing.
44:31
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, if then that's what they used to call an algorithm before we thought about Instagram feeds.
44:38
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
44:39
SPEAKER_06: Um and if then, so if you come to him then you have his father's your father, his spirit is your spirit, his future is your future.
44:48
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
44:49
SPEAKER_06: And that is weaving in the union with Christ thing, isn't it?
44:51
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's interesting.
44:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
44:54
SPEAKER_02: Like, yeah, like I said earlier, I think it's it's always a it's it's right at the heart of actually how your theology of evangelism and the and the practice kind of comes together is yeah, where do you put the if?
45:06
SPEAKER_02: You know?
45:08
SPEAKER_02: Um Yeah.
45:09
SPEAKER_02: Did Jesus die for the world if the world believes him?
45:12
SPEAKER_02: Or you know, like okay, that's probably not the place to put the if.
45:16
SPEAKER_02: But yeah, there is like unless you're gonna be a universalist and say, you know, every everybody's saved just because Jesus dies, then yeah, the if the if comes somewhere.
45:25
SPEAKER_02: But um yeah.
45:26
SPEAKER_06: Yes, yeah, but it's not just like a cool, so do you believe that thing I just said?
45:31
SPEAKER_06: It's a it's uh well if yeah, if you if you do, then this is also like it's a kind of a it is it's another a nature of the case sort of thing.
45:41
SPEAKER_02: Like if you come to it's like he he got baptised baptized into our kind of life.
45:45
SPEAKER_02: So if you stand in those same waters, well you get baptized into his kind of life, obviously.
45:49
SPEAKER_02: And you get his father as your father and his spirit is your spirit, and now and now you're one with Christ.
45:54
SPEAKER_02: And what I've what I've enjoyed about through two and one is finishing with one because then it makes sense to say to people, um, okay, so you've come to Jesus, you are now one with him.
46:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:07
SPEAKER_02: And it's not the case of thanks, Jesus, thanks for giving me the thing, and now I'll go and enjoy the eternal life thing.
46:13
SPEAKER_02: It's well, whatever is being offered is Jesus himself.
46:16
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
46:17
SPEAKER_02: And however I enjoy that, it's going to be in him.
46:20
SPEAKER_02: And therefore, the life of discipleship kind of makes sense.
46:23
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
46:23
SPEAKER_02: And the life of church makes sense because if I'm one with Jesus, I'm also one with you because you're one with Jesus, and now I've got to figure out how to do this thing together.
46:30
SPEAKER_02: And so it's not the terms and conditions that you know, I failed to check the fine prints.
46:35
SPEAKER_02: What?
46:35
SPEAKER_02: I gotta show up in church on us someday.
46:37
SPEAKER_02: How does that make sense?
46:38
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
46:39
SPEAKER_02: I think it makes sense if if oneness with Jesus is is where you're where you're calling people to.
46:45
SPEAKER_06: That was I I think that was one of the strengths when I watched through the 321 course and I thought, oh wow, yeah, okay.
46:53
SPEAKER_06: Um you've woven in the sacraments, so you've woven in like baptism and the Lord's Supper and church in as as the the necessary and natural outworking of union with Christ who you've been invited into.
47:07
SPEAKER_06: And I was like, oh, yeah, okay.
47:09
SPEAKER_06: That's that's quite helpful.
47:11
SPEAKER_06: Um what do you think are well?
47:14
SPEAKER_06: I mean, it seems silly to ask someone for their own blind spots, but what do you think are the um weaknesses of three, two, one?
47:22
SPEAKER_02: I think you've already we've already seen a couple of the weaknesses.
47:24
SPEAKER_02: And and one is it doesn't naturally lend itself to like me just telling you the three propositions of three and two and one doesn't really help you.
47:34
SPEAKER_02: Especially if you don't know anything about like Jesus.
47:36
SPEAKER_02: Like you've got to put a lot of flesh on the bones.
47:38
SPEAKER_06: Okay, yeah.
47:39
SPEAKER_02: Um, and so in the in the situation of we're in the pub, um three and two and one might be something that I can remember in the back of my head and it can inform the conversation I'm about to have.
47:50
SPEAKER_02: It's probably not gonna help me that much.
47:53
SPEAKER_02: Not to the same degree that drawing Two Ways to Live would I uh or the bridge diagram, I don't think.
47:59
SPEAKER_02: And I mean, it doesn't actually narrate the gospel events, so it's it's what I what I'm convinced of is that we must have these three doctrines informing our gospel presentations.
48:12
SPEAKER_02: Like the the God you're talking about in your gospel presentation must be the Father, Son, and Spirit.
48:17
SPEAKER_02: And the the world you're talking about must be a world that's kind of condemned in Adam but saved in Jesus, and you you've got to have that doctrine of humanity, and you've got to have a doctrine of union with Christ, or else none of this thing works.
48:29
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:30
SPEAKER_02: So I'll I'll kind of go to the stake on that.
48:32
SPEAKER_02: But as of as a presentation, it's interesting.
48:34
SPEAKER_02: You asked me to do 3, 2, 1, and I kind of didn't.
48:38
SPEAKER_02: You know, so it's a failure.
48:40
SPEAKER_02: It's a failure from that point of view.
48:43
SPEAKER_02: On the other hand, you can't just get out your phone and show somebody a video.
48:46
SPEAKER_02: So I mean, there is there is that cheat, isn't there?
48:49
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
48:49
SPEAKER_02: But I think it's doing it's doing something slightly different.
48:59
SPEAKER_06: And maybe that is somewhere where we we are going from talking about on the spot kind of gospel summaries to being able to actually go a bit slower and deeper and doing a kind of a longer journey with someone through a 321 course, through a Christianity sports, through an alpha, something that maybe is a whole other conversation about courses.
49:21
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
49:22
SPEAKER_06: Um but yeah, helpful just to just to throw in the mix and to think, oh, with each of these, there are gonna be like there are gonna be things that they're missing because by nature of doing a distilling, you're gonna be missing something.
49:36
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
49:37
SPEAKER_06: And if you if you took one of the examples of Paul speaking about declaring who Christ is in Acts, you'd be like, oh well actually, Paul, you missed out this and you missed out that.
49:47
SPEAKER_02: Right.
49:48
SPEAKER_02: And isn't it interesting that what people do with the sermons in Acts?
49:52
SPEAKER_02: So there are multiple sermons by you know Peter and Paul in very different scenarios.
49:57
SPEAKER_02: Now, what do we do with those as we want to study what gospel preaching looks like?
50:01
SPEAKER_02: One thing we could do is just go, hey, looks like there's a lot of flexibility.
50:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:07
SPEAKER_02: We could conclude that.
50:09
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people don't conclude that.
50:10
SPEAKER_02: A lot of people what they want to do is ah, we need to boil it down to the essence, right?
50:14
SPEAKER_02: We need to like what what is common to all the sermons in Acts, and then we've got to come up with our um absolutely rock solid, you know, gospel presentation that that never changes.
50:26
SPEAKER_02: You're like, this is a strange thing to have done, because I think what Luke is doing in Acts is saying, hey, you know, Peter in front of a whole bunch of Jews and Paul in front of a whole bunch of Gentiles, gospel looks quite different.
50:37
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:37
SPEAKER_02: Um, I think that's what Luke is doing in the narrative of Acts.
50:40
SPEAKER_02: Isn't it strange that what we do is kind of actually boil down and boil off all the differences and try and get it down to these propositions.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
50:50
SPEAKER_02: And it doesn't help you be the flexible evangelists that you could be when you're having a conversation with your friend.
50:55
SPEAKER_02: And I don't think it helps you be the the gospel proclaimer in in church if you're if you're preaching either, because it it just gives you a list of some sometimes quite arbitrary points that you must crowbar in no matter what, or you haven't preached the gospel.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
51:10
SPEAKER_02: Whereas that I don't think even acts is telling us to do that.
51:13
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
51:13
SPEAKER_06: And even Jesus himself is asked like the dream question, like, teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?
51:21
SPEAKER_06: And I think, wow, I can you know, can I imagine a friend ask me, like, what do I do?
51:27
SPEAKER_06: What do I do to inherit eternal life?
51:28
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
51:29
SPEAKER_06: Um, and you're thinking, okay, golden opportunity to have some kind of a clear vision from Jesus, and like, okay, so what do we say if I supposed to summarize um quote the gospel?
51:42
SPEAKER_06: Um, how how would I do that?
51:44
SPEAKER_06: And I mean, we see him answer it in two different ways.
51:47
SPEAKER_06: That's one thing to say.
51:48
SPEAKER_06: Um, I think it's Luke 10, Luke 18, um, we see um one leads to the story of the good Samaritan, yeah.
51:57
SPEAKER_06: And one leads to the go sell your possessions, give and give to the poor and try and follow me.
52:02
SPEAKER_06: Right.
52:02
SPEAKER_06: Um he responds to both with with questions.
52:05
SPEAKER_06: Right.
52:05
SPEAKER_06: Why you call me good?
52:06
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
52:07
SPEAKER_02: Um and who is my neighbor and what's in the law, how do you read it?
52:12
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
52:13
SPEAKER_06: So even then he's not he's not just going for it with a little presentation, he's asking a question, inviting conversation, and and tailoring his response.
52:21
SPEAKER_06: He talks about the law with the lawyer, he talks about um yeah, the good.
52:25
SPEAKER_06: Oh, I've not done my revision on this, but he talks about Riches with a rich man and riches with a rich man.
52:31
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
52:32
SPEAKER_06: Um, and so even Jesus has flexibility in how he answers a question of like what is the what's the point of it all?
52:40
SPEAKER_06: There is a commonality there, but we'll I find I've I've come across some of the um a couple years ago, some of the teaching from John Mark Homer on this trying to drill down what okay, what is the gospel?
52:51
SPEAKER_06: And for him, his concern is what is the gospel Jesus preaches?
52:55
SPEAKER_06: Um and in in one of the the episodes, he said he goes through what he calls the four American Gospels.
53:02
SPEAKER_06: Um and this this is a little a little snippet from his teaching asking um a similar thing here.
53:08
SPEAKER_01: And Jesus, as we just read, is full of surprises.
53:11
SPEAKER_01: If your Bible is still open to Matthew 19, in verse 16, that opening question from the young man of privilege, teacher or rabbi, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?
53:25
SPEAKER_01: Now, for those of us who care about preaching the gospel, this is the dream question, right?
53:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean, this is what we secretly kind of hope our coworker or our friend or Aunt Sally or whatever will ask us, you know, John Mark, so uh tell me, what good thing must I do to get eternal life?
53:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me tell you, Aunt Sally, or whatever.
53:45
SPEAKER_01: And based on my church experience, and I know a ton of you did not grow up in church, but a lot of you did.
53:49
SPEAKER_01: And if your experience was anything like mine, I know what Jesus is supposed to say here.
53:54
SPEAKER_01: He's supposed to say something like, do.
53:58
SPEAKER_01: You don't need to do anything.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: That's religion, that's man earning his way to God.
54:06
SPEAKER_01: That's works-based righteousness, that's not the gospel.
54:09
SPEAKER_01: I'm about to do it all for you on the cross.
54:13
SPEAKER_01: All you need to do is believe.
54:23
SPEAKER_06: So he he goes through four, his four different things are the evangelical gospel, the reformed gospel, the the prosperity gospel, and the social gospel.
54:31
SPEAKER_06: And I just recommend listeners to have a have a listen to this because even if you don't agree with some of the stuff he says, it's really rich and really good food for thought, quite nuanced, quite encouraging.
54:42
SPEAKER_06: He's very good at drawing out what is good in each of the different kind of articulations of of the gospel.
54:48
SPEAKER_06: Um, and so that's a good, a good next place to go and listen to some more on this kind of thing.
54:54
SPEAKER_02: What's the difference between the evangelical and the Protestant gospel?
54:57
SPEAKER_06: Oh, so so the evangelical gospel, that's his that's kind of the distilling um to uh justification.
55:06
SPEAKER_06: I think it's the it's kind of the four points one.
55:08
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
55:09
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
55:09
SPEAKER_06: God loves you, you're messed up, you need Jesus to die in your place.
55:13
SPEAKER_02: And not the present, the reformed.
55:14
SPEAKER_06: And the reformed one is um, I think the the main the focus is more on the like justification by faith alone.
55:20
SPEAKER_06: By faith.
55:21
SPEAKER_06: This is not this is not your own thing.
55:23
SPEAKER_06: It's the gift of God, yes, that kind of focus.
55:25
SPEAKER_06: And so he would say with each of them, he's like, there are things that are true are true.
55:30
SPEAKER_06: It's not that they're wrong, it's just that there's slight distortions, or they are unbalanced, or um yeah.
55:37
SPEAKER_06: And so so anyway, that that is another helpful place to go.
55:40
SPEAKER_02: Um I think it is, and uh but I I think what is the same between all the times when somebody comes to Jesus and asks, What must I do to be saved?
55:51
SPEAKER_02: Is Jesus himself?
55:52
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, you know?
55:53
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
55:54
SPEAKER_02: And like so, like what is the gospel that Jesus preached?
55:58
SPEAKER_02: Well, yeah, but I want to say what's the gospel that Jesus is?
56:02
SPEAKER_06: Yes, yeah, exactly.
56:04
SPEAKER_06: Exactly.
56:05
SPEAKER_06: Yes, and that that is where so I think in listening to this a few signs from John Mark Homer, I would agree with him that um often things missing is a view of participating in the life of the Trinity, like the enjoyment of the Father, Son, Spirit, and that is the thing that we are invited into, not just a mechanism of what you get from God or what he's done for you, but being invited into him, his very nature, and um yeah, and we would agree and say, yes, there's the unity, like union with Christ is the crux of the thing that we're talking about when we talk about salvation, yeah.
56:44
SPEAKER_06: But where we would probably differ with what he says in as he tries to seek like what is the gospel, and he says, Well, what is the gospel Jesus preaches?
56:51
SPEAKER_06: Like you said, we're saying it's not a really a message as much as it is a person.
56:56
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
56:57
SPEAKER_06: It's the good news of Jesus Christ.
56:59
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
57:00
SPEAKER_06: And the the times when these different presentations do well is when they focus on him.
57:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:06
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
57:07
SPEAKER_02: And what has like I haven't I haven't seen that John Markham?
57:10
SPEAKER_02: I definitely want to.
57:11
SPEAKER_02: I've I've I've enjoyed his teaching.
57:13
SPEAKER_02: Um I fear though that if we if we do boil it down to it's what Jesus says, well, Jesus is the gospel walking around planet Earth, and kind of what he then will do is just say, Well, come follow me, or you know, come to you know, come and see, and he will he will eat with tax collectors and sinners and kind of and as he's saying, you know, I'm coming to your house for dinner or whatever, um, he is kind of doing a gospel message, like he's he is sort of thrusting himself on somebody and uh they could resist if they like, but if they don't, they are eating with the Son of God, and like all of a sudden they are inside the gospel.
57:51
SPEAKER_02: And so if we but if we ignore that Jesus himself is God's good news spoken to the world, then we might think that the gospel is what he says when he says, Come follow me.
58:03
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
58:03
SPEAKER_02: And then it's a I know what the gospel is.
58:05
SPEAKER_02: The gospel is discipleship, the gospel is following after Jesus.
58:09
SPEAKER_02: Whereas I think the great stuff that John Mike Comer is talking about, you're talking about, about being in Christ, is a slightly well, it's not slightly different.
58:17
SPEAKER_02: I think it's quite a different gospel to an a following after Christ gospel.
58:21
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:21
SPEAKER_02: Like to be in as opposed to be following after.
58:24
SPEAKER_02: And you know, sometimes I talk about different gospels like like maybe the evangelical gospel is is more like you invite Jesus into your heart so that he can be with you.
58:32
SPEAKER_02: You know?
58:33
SPEAKER_02: And it's sort of it's a it's a with Christ gospel, which is great.
58:36
SPEAKER_02: There's plenty of with Christ passages in the Bible, there's plenty of following after passages in the Bible.
58:40
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
58:41
SPEAKER_02: But there's 150 times where it says we're in him.
58:44
SPEAKER_02: And I think that's a that's a different kind of a thing.
58:46
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
58:47
SPEAKER_02: And then it opens up that green page of the wordless book, doesn't it?
58:51
SPEAKER_02: Because because then I'm being offered Jesus, and now it's it's not like I'm just like twiddling my thumbs, waiting for the gold page to wait into the turn of the like the I can grow in him and I can be conform to his likeness and I can enjoy life in Christ.
59:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:07
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
59:08
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
59:08
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
59:09
SPEAKER_06: And like I've um like I said on our more recent chat about the the person and work of Christ.
59:16
SPEAKER_06: So I I I've said I've said this kind of stuff to some students before.
59:19
SPEAKER_06: I might go through different gospel outlines like this and say these are tools you can use if they're helpful.
59:23
SPEAKER_06: Um but we need to keep in mind that at the end of the day, the the the good news is who Jesus is and what he's done, how we fit into kind of that that story.
59:34
SPEAKER_06: So I use a phrase of yeah, his character and his story.
59:38
SPEAKER_06: And in some ways that feels like anything it feels like a narrowing, doesn't it?
59:43
SPEAKER_06: To be like, oh, um, so I've just said the name of Jesus in a conversation and maybe that's actually enough.
59:50
SPEAKER_06: Like wow, it's okay, maybe this is really simple, but in other ways it's not narrow at all.
59:55
SPEAKER_06: Right.
59:56
SPEAKER_06: And like you you mentioned in our um our speak life values, one of the first, I think the first one, Christ-centered and all of life.
1:00:04
SPEAKER_06: Um well, you say the doctrine of Christ alone is not a narrow insistence because Christ is not narrow, he's cosmic.
1:00:11
SPEAKER_06: Jesus is not a bridge we cross, so we get what we really want.
1:00:15
SPEAKER_06: Do I say that?
1:00:16
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, that's on the speed like website.
1:00:18
SPEAKER_06: Um when we come to Christ, we get Him and through Him we look again at the whole of life.
1:00:24
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, and so that that is why our kind of strap line is love Jesus, share Jesus.
1:00:31
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
1:00:32
SPEAKER_04: Um Yeah, yeah.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_02: Which is so simplifying and clarifying and liberating for me.
1:00:40
SPEAKER_02: Like I I think I I kind of came to gospel presentations later in life and then used them in evangelism a lot when I was a Christian and when I was an evangelist.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_02: Um, but I would find that's uh as much as they could help simplify and clarify, at times they were sort of strait jackets because I wouldn't know what to do with my friend in the conversation if they weren't on the script, you know.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:05
SPEAKER_02: At which point I'm kind of like a telemarketer, and you can imagine the telemarketer with the with the microphone, and I'm sure they've got a laminated card that tells them the flow chart of how I could shepherd this conversation down.
1:01:17
SPEAKER_02: And my friend is over here, and so what do I do?
1:01:19
SPEAKER_02: Well, I've I've got to crowbar them, you know.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:01:22
SPEAKER_02: And you get Come and see the chasm.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_06: Come and see the brand, come and see the heart, or come and see the and I wouldn't know what to say to them if they're not staring at the chasm.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:01:32
SPEAKER_02: And then, so if if if I can only be Christian in this conversation if this person is at this point in my gospel presentation, then actually my goal in the conversation won't be to reveal Christ.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_02: My goal will be to get them to the point in the gospel presentation where they see the chasm.
1:01:51
SPEAKER_02: And I see this all the time.
1:01:52
SPEAKER_02: Evangelists are kind of like, either I have nothing to say to my friend because they're not convicted of this of their sin yet.
1:01:57
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_02: And then and then you say, well, what what are your tactics now?
1:02:01
SPEAKER_02: Well, I just must convict them of their sin.
1:02:04
SPEAKER_02: Like, how's that going?
1:02:05
SPEAKER_02: Well, you can just berate them and berate them and berate them.
1:02:08
SPEAKER_02: And you're like, and is that evangelism?
1:02:10
SPEAKER_02: Like, I'm I'm all for the preaching of the law.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_02: And and the law does its work of of humbling the sinner and showing us that we can't do it.
1:02:16
SPEAKER_02: But is that the only thing that we can do?
1:02:19
SPEAKER_02: And I think it it absolutely ties our hands behind our back.
1:02:22
SPEAKER_02: If we have to take someone through this preset journey, they have to be in that valley before we can even offer them Christ.
1:02:31
SPEAKER_02: And I'm like, well, where's that rule in the Bible?
1:02:33
SPEAKER_06: But I think it's even more than that because if even if you had each of these different presentations and more ready to go in your back pocket, um, maybe then you you've actually got multiple different ways you could find a connecting point in a conversation.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_06: Because it could be, okay, they've talked about this thing.
1:02:49
SPEAKER_06: Oh, maybe we're in box four of Two Ways to Live, or maybe we're on page white of this thing, or you have there it's not just they have to start here and I go through the conversation because you could use these in a way where it's like, oh, okay, maybe they are here on the journey, I'll join them in the middle there and then and then explain the rest or something.
1:03:08
SPEAKER_06: Or maybe you're categorizing your conversations in terms of oh, this is kind of a a creation-y kind of conversation, or this is kind of a redemption-y, that's kind of future hope, or whatever it might be.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_06: But but it but Jesus himself, as you've already explored in thinking about metaphors for sin and atonement, and um Jesus himself invented everything.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_06: Right, right, and everything in life relates to him.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_04: Right.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_06: And so, regardless of the the conversation topic, if it feels like it's in a place where it is that little bit deeper, more vulnerable, philosophical, whatever, like there is a way to bring shed real kind of you know, gospel light here, yeah, because there is a way, there is a way in which Jesus and specifically his character specific aspect of his character or what he's done does actually resonate.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:04:04
SPEAKER_06: Um, regardless of whether it would neatly fit into one of these various categories or subsections of a gospel presentation.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_06: Yes.
1:04:10
SPEAKER_06: And that is so freeing.
1:04:12
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:04:13
SPEAKER_02: So really we've simplified the gospel even further.
1:04:16
SPEAKER_02: Because it's just three words, isn't it?
1:04:18
SPEAKER_02: Jesus is Lord, isn't it?
1:04:19
SPEAKER_02: Yes.
1:04:19
SPEAKER_02: It's like Jesus is Lord, but that's not simplistic, is it?
1:04:23
SPEAKER_02: Because because he's Lord, well, he gives us a very different vision for God, because the Lord is is God.
1:04:28
SPEAKER_02: So he gives us the vision of God's threeness, and he gives us a very different vision for the world.
1:04:33
SPEAKER_02: That you know, Caesar is not Lord, Jesus is Lord, and like who's in charge?
1:04:36
SPEAKER_02: Is Death in charge of this world?
1:04:38
SPEAKER_02: No, he rose from the dead, so Jesus is Lord of this world.
1:04:40
SPEAKER_02: It's like he gives us a vision of the of the world and he gives us a vision of me, you know, who's my master.
1:04:44
SPEAKER_06: My lord.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:04:45
SPEAKER_02: He's my lord.
1:04:46
SPEAKER_02: And so into in saying that Jesus is Lord, it's it's kind of it's stripping things back, but you press through to the to the far side of this sort of simple insistence on the supremacy of Christ, and all of a sudden this vista has opened up.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_02: Oh yeah.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_02: It's so rich.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_02: A Jesus-shaped vision of God, the world and you and everything, life, and and and then you can talk about anything.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah in the book.
1:05:08
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, literally.
1:05:09
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, it's liberating.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:05:11
SPEAKER_06: And I think we'll get on to that next time.
1:05:12
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_06: Let's do more of that.
1:05:14
SPEAKER_06: That's right.
1:05:15
SPEAKER_06: Hopefully, that's been a good little behind the scenes there of uh thinking behind 321 and why we talk about loving Jesus and sharing him, but also why we talk about seeing life through the lens of Jesus.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_06: Um that we kind of come through him into this vista of understanding how life works um and finding ways in which he he speaks into it.
1:05:37
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_02: And then as you get excited about it, maybe your friend will be interested in trying on some Jesus gobbles for a bit and you know, looking around and that's the thing.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_06: Good one.
1:05:46
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_06: Um I'd love to know of some other gospel presentations or tools in the toolkit, the things that you found helpful, particular videos you send to someone, or um yeah, ways that are helpful for structuring our understanding of what the heck this whole attainment story thing is, who this Jesus is, how we communicate that.
1:06:07
SPEAKER_06: Um we aren't experts, we just have the privilege of spending all of our time thinking about it.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, yeah.
1:06:17
SPEAKER_06: Um, so yeah, I would love to hear more.
1:06:18
SPEAKER_06: You can get in contact, pod podcast at speaklife.org.uk.
1:06:22
SPEAKER_02: And can I make people know about a new tool that people can use?
1:06:26
SPEAKER_02: I've only just thought about this.
1:06:28
SPEAKER_02: But uh, yeah, this is launch week.
1:06:31
SPEAKER_02: Yeah, we're putting together a course called Through the Bible.
1:06:34
SPEAKER_02: It won't be called that in the fullness of time, but at the moment, the working title is Through the Bible.
1:06:39
SPEAKER_02: Four modules to take you through the whole of the Bible.
1:06:41
SPEAKER_02: Module one is just Genesis, and it's structured just like 321.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_02: You can do it in eight videos, you can binge it in a couple of hours, or you can do it in in eight weeks.
1:06:50
SPEAKER_02: And uh if you go to speaklife.org.uk slash ttb, uh, between now and November, um, it will be open for you to do the the prototype before we snatch it back and then rejig it.
1:07:03
SPEAKER_02: But we want to hear what people think about it, and uh hopefully it will be helpful to people.
1:07:07
SPEAKER_02: So speaklife.org.uk slash ttb.
1:07:09
SPEAKER_06: T TB, which stands for through the Bible.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_06: Through the Bible.
1:07:11
SPEAKER_06: And if you're listening to this between September to November 2026.
1:07:16
SPEAKER_06: I mean give it a go.
1:07:17
SPEAKER_02: Give it a go, and if there's a 404 message, you know what.
1:07:20
SPEAKER_06: Yeah, but we're testing it out.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_06: It's a prototype, it's a pilot.
1:07:23
SPEAKER_06: We would love any feedback.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_02: We really would.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_06: And we really hope it's going to be another helpful tool in the toolkit.
1:07:28
SPEAKER_06: Yeah.
1:07:29
SPEAKER_06: See you next time.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_02: Thank you.