Latest / The Speak Life Podcast / Incredible Results from The Talking Jesus Survey || With Rachel Jordan-Wolf || SLP443

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Incredible Results from The Talking Jesus Survey || With Rachel Jordan-Wolf || SLP443 · The Speak Life Podcast

• 0:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and thank you for downloading episode 443 of the Speak Life podcast.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: My name is Thomas Thorogood, media producer at Speak Life.
• 0:15
  SPEAKER_00: And today we're very excited to bring you this interview that Glenn Scrivener did with Rachel Jordan Wolfe from Hope Together.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she is talking about the Talking Jesus survey, which was a survey conducted in 2022.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I think you're going to be very encouraged by some of the statistics and facts that she has about evangelism in the UK.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: So I will hand straight over to Glenn and Rachel.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_01: Today is traditionally Blue Monday, but we are calling it Blue Sky Monday because we want to have a big vision of hope, of gospel optimism.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: And we thought, who better to ask than Rachel Jordan Wolf?
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_01: Dr.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Rachel Jordan Wolf is the director of uh Hope Together, and she's put together some wonderful uh resources about uh evangelism and equipping the church to reach the world.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's uh a set of resources called Talking Jesus, and uh she is on the line now.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: Rachel, can you hear me?
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_05: I can.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_05: It's lovely to be with you, Glenn.
• 1:18
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_01: You look very bright and I'm doing green, not blue, I have to say.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_05: Sorry, I'm I just must have missed the blue memo, but hey, we're doing bright green.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: And we love your your orange headphones as well.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's very optimistic.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: So, Rachel, how would you like to introduce yourself?
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Can you introduce yourself and the way that you were introduced to Jesus?
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_01: I'd love to hear that story.
• 1:39
  SPEAKER_05: Uh I'll introduce myself.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_05: So I'm living here in London.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_05: I'm currently in the basement of the old of an old rectory.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_05: Uh my husband, I he, my husband is ordained, vicar, church planter.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_05: So we've been um here for some time, but loving that, uh, I was brought up in the Brethren, but with Pentecostal wings, is what I always say.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_05: Um, an interesting combination.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_05: And how did I come to faith?
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_05: My my parents knew and followed Jesus and were amazing.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_05: And so I don't know, you know, like you learn how to eat food or drink or just grow up and be.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_05: Jesus was just part of that.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_05: So they've got hilarious um tape recordings.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_05: We're going back some now, aren't we?
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_05: Tape recordings of me singing to Jesus when I was like three.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_05: So um that's just how it was.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Jesus was a friend from very, very early days and just part of life and everything, and it's always been so, just makes sense.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_05: So, yeah, that's how I got introduced to Jesus.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_01: Love it.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_01: I hope you still have those tapes.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_05: Well, we were discussing it the other day, and and I was like, I don't who knows.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_05: We have a loft, Glenn.
• 2:53
  SPEAKER_05: And uh yes, uh my family are quite good at hoarding things, so they're definitely there, okay, but I'm not sure anyone could find them.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_01: Every family needs an archivist, don't they?
• 3:05
  SPEAKER_01: Just to go.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_05: Definitely, definitely all of those bits and bobs.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now I first came across the Talking Jesus stuff in 2015, and that that was the the first kind of Talking Jesus survey that you did.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: Is that right?
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: What why why did you want to uh go to very, very extensive lengths in order to survey Christians and non-Christians?
• 3:25
  SPEAKER_01: What what was going on in your thinking?
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_05: Well, in 2015, I was um uh the National Mission of Evangelism Advisor for the Church of England and I was working with the Evangelical Alliance and with Hope.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_05: And we were going to have this big conference of all the denominational leaders and talk about evangelism.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_05: And I said there was just one problem.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_05: I know what they're like, we'll all get together and everybody will share anecdotes of the person they met last week on the bus or whatever or wherever that person happened to be.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_05: And then we'll try to build a strategy on everybody's anecdotes.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_05: And I said, that's just really not very strategic.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_05: If I'd been the national marketing lead for uh, say, Boots the chemist, every week I'd get stats into my inbox that would tell me how big the sales team were, what people thought of our products, whether they liked our branding, what did they think about boots, or were they going to save us or super drug, and if so, why?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_05: And I'd have all this information at my fingertips to make decisions.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_05: But I used to sit there, National Lead, Evangelism, Church of England, none of that information.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_05: And I thought all we're gonna do is multiply this on a massive scale because we're gonna have the Baptists with us, we're gonna have the, you know, uh the vineyard churches, where we're all gonna get together on a massive scale, we're still not gonna have any information.
• 4:39
  SPEAKER_05: And that is where this came from.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: And you did this very seriously.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: You used Comrace, is that is that right?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so we used Comrace to fans.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_05: So we used a polling company that would um work for the government or work for work for the NHS so that we could get a proper, what you call weighted samples.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_05: It wasn't just me going to my friends.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and so in 2015 we worked with them, and then we've done that again in 2022.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_05: We've got even more partners, so then it was the Church of England, the EA, and us, um, Hope Together.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_05: And we've also now got um Kingsgate Church have come on board, CV Global, Lewis Palau.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_05: So it's a really big, it helps us with funding.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_05: If everybody chips in money, then you can actually go out there and do a really big project.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_05: So I loved it in 2015.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_05: It was a real delight to do it again, because then we begin to see if there are trends.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_05: Are things that are going up or things going down?
• 5:29
  SPEAKER_05: Has the opportunity for the gospel got better or has it got worse?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_05: Do people and the plan is again, we'll do it again in five years' time, so that we can begin to see almost like what's happening in the nation and what are the trends in the nation?
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_05: Which way are we going?
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's clearly um very a very good survey because uh in 2022 um the results came out to say that I think was it 48% in your survey uh identified as Christians?
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_01: And within a few months, the census data from the 2021 census came out and it said something like 46% of the of the UK uh again ticks that box that that says that they are Christian.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I that that must give you a certain level of confidence that the the sample that you're using is actually representative.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, really helpful and meant that the census wasn't a surprise to us that we dropped under the 50 level, uh, because it was above that in 2015, and then in in 2022, we had dropped beneath that 50% marker.
• 6:23
  SPEAKER_05: So that it was quite, and in that sense, also just we were that you're like, oh yeah, you're right, that's good.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_05: It gives us that, it gives us a sense check.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: Well, what what should it make us think as Christians?
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: Obviously, there were a lot of headlines a few months ago saying for the first time since records began, less than 50% of the UK population identifies as Christians.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And many people, some people were celebrating that fact, other people were really decrying it.
• 6:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, what should what should a Christian make of that?
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_05: Well, um, I'm really pleased we did Talking Jesus because it actually helps us to have a perspective on this.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so the the thing is, a lot of people tick Christians.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um they tick Christian because they're someone in their family tick Christian a long time ago.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_05: They were they're brought up, if you like, culturally Christian.
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_05: And that is where the decline is.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_05: The decline is uh particularly uh if you look at people who are 65 plus, many, many more of them will tick that they are um that they are they're they're Christian.
• 7:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um but if you go down into like the 18 to 24 year old group, you you actually find that a lot less people would tick that they are Christian.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_05: And so what you're seeing there is we're we're basically seeing the change.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_05: So it's um 63% of people age 65 plus would be saying that they're Christian, but only 29% of 18 to 24 year olds would be saying they're Christian.
• 7:44
  SPEAKER_05: Now, does that mean that we've got massive decline in the church?
• 7:51
  SPEAKER_05: That would be what we what the newspapers would be concluding, but actually we haven't.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_05: And that's because it's not a true measure, it's not a measure of active Christians, it's not a measure of the people who are really part of the worshiping community, it's not a part of we go back to the boots analogy, it's not a measure of the team.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_05: These are people who are culturally Christian.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, some of them never pray, some of them never go to church ever.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and most of them would, you know, they're definitely not reading their Bibles.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_05: And this is what we did is we asked all the people who were Christian in 2015 whether they were regularly part of a worshiping community, whether they were reading their Bibles at least once a week, and whether they were praying once a week.
• 8:31
  SPEAKER_05: And regular was once a month.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_05: I know things have changed since when I was growing up and I went five times on a Sunday.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_05: Um, so that's what regular looks like.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_05: And then we looked at that group and we took that group out, which is actually just six percent of the population who are part of that real community of disciples of people following Jesus.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_05: And the really good news is that that six percent hasn't changed.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_05: So basically, um we're keeping the church has stayed the same.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_05: So the census figure is a really interesting marker on cultural change, but it's not actually um a depiction of what's happening in the church.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_05: And the other exciting thing about what's happening in the church, I'm definitely on the on the positive, is that that that group is is equal across all the generations.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_05: So we don't have a missing generation in the church.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_05: We have a missing generation of cultural Christians, but we don't have a missing generation when it comes to active practicing Christians that is stable and has remained stable since 2015.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_05: And that's fantastic news for the church.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_01: That's fascinating.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: That's fascinating.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_01: I I often I live in Eastbourne, which is known for being sort of the retirement capital of the UK, and yet there's a kind of a nominal Christianity here.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: And then when I go to do student missions and that that kind of thing, very quickly people will tell me that they're atheists, but but I notice a kind of a nominal atheism among the young.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_01: And what people instantly like claim as their label is not really uh the way they process the world or the way that they live their lives, it's it's a very different kind of a thing.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm really glad that you were doing that that kind of practicing Christian question that you that you asked about.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: There are some surprising stats uh in the Talking Jesus stuff, both in 2015 and in 2022.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: For instance, you ask people about the resurrection.
• 10:17
  SPEAKER_01: And do you believe that Jesus sort of rose from the dead?
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: Do you believe that he rose from the dead according to the Bible, or do you believe that he just sort of rose from the dead, maybe according to a um maybe not according to an inerrantist view of the Bible?
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: And was it like 45% of people sort of said yes?
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, it was 44% in 2015, and it's 45% now, and that is huge.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_05: No one believed it.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_05: So when we did this research in 2015 and we went to all these denominational leaders, they just said I remember the then Archbishop of York uh sent to me, he was like, That just can't, you just can't go out on Radio 4 and say that, Rachel.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_05: I can't do this.
• 10:56
  SPEAKER_05: So they all agreed in the room, they would give us another chunk of money, and we did the whole thing again, but with a lot more people, and still came up with the same result.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_05: We've done it now in 2022, and it's still staying strong.
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_05: And um, the BBC also um did uh this question in 2017.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_05: Uh now they were looking for a slightly different answer.
• 11:18
  SPEAKER_05: What they wanted was a headline for Easter Sunday, and their headline they wanted was uh more people believe in reincarnation than resurrection, no longer Christian Britain.
• 11:27
  SPEAKER_05: So they then thought they'd go and find the research to match their headline.
• 11:31
  SPEAKER_05: They went to Savantha Comrace, they said, Yeah, we've got a question on the resurrection.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_05: They ran this and discovered to their amazement that 44% of the population believed in the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_05: I mean, it's amazing.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_03: Right.
• 11:46
  SPEAKER_05: What they then did is they looked at that Christian group, all the people who ticked Christian, Christian, and they worked out, I think it was 13% of the people who tick Christian don't believe in resurrection.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_05: And that is what they used for their headline on Easter Sunday.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_05: So my absolute that I was like, how could you miss the main headline?
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_05: The main headline is this huge number of people in the UK.
• 12:08
  SPEAKER_05: Now you're like, well, we don't see them all in church.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_05: No, they're not all in that practicing Christian group.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_05: If you like, they are there's obviously a spectrum of faith, but they are hoping for something.
• 12:20
  SPEAKER_03: Yes.
• 12:21
  SPEAKER_05: Um, they're hoping for something, they they've got some hope um that there is some resurrection or there's something after life.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_05: I think it's to that particularly might be what they're looking for.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_05: Um that it's it's like they they want something, but they don't know.
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_05: And wouldn't we love to have a conversation with somebody who said, um, I believed in the resurrection, but I'm not quite sure, sort of thing.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_05: It was 41% of the population who were clearly not believing in the resurrection.
• 12:46
  SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_05: Um 16% solidly, word for word, is in the Bible.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_05: And remember, that's quite a lot bigger than our practicing Christians.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_05: So that's the 6% plus an extra 10 10% of people who are probably a bit more bit bit bit looser, maybe in their spiritual practices, shall we say.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_05: And it's 41 who don't.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_05: But I would love to have a chat.
• 13:09
  SPEAKER_05: So we really want to make noise around Easter, Glenn.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_05: We want to think about what we can do, particularly around Easter, to reclaim that as an evangelistic moment.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_05: And we want to engage with that group of people who are like, I hope it's true.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_05: I think it might be, but I'm not quite sure.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_05: What an amazing mission field.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:29
  SPEAKER_01: That's so challenging for a lot of evangelistic and apologetic kind of outfits that spend a lot of time trying to like prove the historicity of the resurrection, and they've got sort of five minimal facts by which they kind of try and piece together an argument.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of a lot of the background to that is we kind of think that everyone in the culture is a thoroughgoing naturalist, a thoroughgoing materialist.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_01: They're all Richard Dawkins, and they and they all need to be blasted with sort of logic and evidence.
• 13:56
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, what what you're saying is that the the the natural beliefs of the man or woman in the streets, um, they are much more open to believing in the supernatural than than we perhaps were led to believe, which I I find really interesting.
• 14:11
  SPEAKER_05: I think that is so true.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I think that's what like all of this data in this report is showing us that there's a lot more, there's a lot more openness than we would imagine.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_05: Like people are positive about Jesus.
• 14:22
  SPEAKER_05: Um a lot of uh quite a lot of people, I think it's 21% think he's God in human form.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_05: That's massive.
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_05: But then there's a whole lot of people who think he's prophet, which is a lot bigger than the number of people who are are Muslim in the population.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_05: Four percent of the population are Muslim, but like over 30% of people think that Jesus is a prophet.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_05: So there's again, what an interesting conversation.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_05: What did the prophet say himself about who he was?
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_05: Because if they've got that far, yeah, it's 33% who would say he was a prophet or spiritual leader.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_05: Great conversation I can have with them.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 14:54
  SPEAKER_01: No, absolutely.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's very heightening.
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_01: And what does the evidence show about how people view Christians?
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_01: Because I know when I when I first came across the 2015 study, um, I I was sort of surprised to begin with at the positivity at which the majority of the population sort of had towards Christians.
• 15:12
  SPEAKER_01: And whenever I've talked to people about the findings of the Talking Jesus survey, they all sort of say, Oh, well, they mustn't have asked my neighborhood, they mustn't have asked the friends that I have.
• 15:21
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody hates us.
• 15:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but that's not really what Talking Jesus shows, is it?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_05: No, it's really fantastic.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_05: And if you like this staff, that's one statistic.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_05: It was fantastic in 2015, it's still brilliant in 2022.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_05: And it's um, I've spoken about it in lots of rooms, and and it's almost like everybody goes, ooh, that that confidence.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_05: They almost changed their position.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_05: People like us.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and so what we did is we asked the population, we asked non-Christians if they knew somebody like us who was a Christian, and then we asked them what they thought about us.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and um that that was just amazing.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_05: So um 53% of the non-Christians in this country know one of us who's a practicing Christian.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_05: That's the only warning light in this research that's dropped since 2015.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_05: So we need to, I think partly pandemic, but we need to stretch our boundaries, we need to increase our reach, we need to get to know more non-Christians.
• 16:12
  SPEAKER_05: But then they know us really well.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_05: They we're we're family and we're friend.
• 16:16
  SPEAKER_05: And so, of course, if we're family and friend, when we they ask, we ask what our traits are, we get them a whole list, positive to negative, we come out as friendly, caring, and good humoured.
• 16:26
  SPEAKER_05: I love the fact that we come out as good humoured, and so they genuinely like us, so they know us and they like us, and that is just so helpful.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, um, yeah, I think it's it stops us disqualifying ourselves from evangelism before even trying.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: Because I I know so many people, if if we feel embattled and if we feel like we're, you know, the world already thinks we're we're a bigot, so I better not open my mouth.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: Actually, you know, talking Jesus can really help us.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: See, that that's not the perception.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, instead, it just shows that we are the best person.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, people don't have uh the church, church as an institution doesn't come out so well as as us as individuals, because that is that's like with a lot of things, there's a slightly more distrust of the thing that's over there that I don't know, but the person that I know I really like, and that that brings the onus for mission evangelism, really, if you like, to our door, to us as individuals, where we are we are the best person in the right place to do mission and evangelism.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and we need to get out there.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: If only 53% of the population knows a Christian, there's 47% of the population that that, yeah, yeah, we need to get out of here.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, that's a big that's a big call to us to really increase our reach, to get to know more people.
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_05: Uh, you know, whatever it is, maybe we all need to start a new hobby or something in 2023, just to increase our reach um and get to know some more people.
• 17:47
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's that's vital.
• 17:50
  SPEAKER_01: Um how are people finding how are people finding out about Christianity these days?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_01: What does what does the survey say about?
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_05: This is a new question for uh 2022.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_05: We didn't ask it in 2015.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_05: And um, we were looking at like we just asked people where would they go if they were going to try and find out about the Christian faith?
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_05: Now, everybody, where would you go to find out about a good holiday destination?
• 18:14
  SPEAKER_05: Where would you go to find out about the weather for tomorrow?
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_05: Where would you go to find basically where would you go to find out about anything, quite frankly?
• 18:21
  SPEAKER_05: Be it you want to get a new car, uh yeah, you wait, I don't know, you want to unplug your sink.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_05: Um, you would go to Google and you would probably go to YouTube, depending on your age bracket.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_05: But they obviously come out.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_05: Uh Google comes out 26%, 26 of people would would go to Google.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and um 10% of the population of non-Christians said they'd go to YouTube.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_05: Uh YouTube jumps to 16% if you're looking at 18 to 24 year olds.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_05: So if you're looking at that age bracket, you can just see that the YouTube generation is moving in.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and so we obviously um everything that you do, speak life.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_05: We need you are in the place where people are.
• 19:04
  SPEAKER_05: Um, and that's so important because we've got to be online, because that is where we go to find out about everything.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_05: Um, the pandemic was like the biggest missionary movement um for the church that we ever we can you think how many talks, Glenn, we'd have had to have given saying to uh normal churches, do you know what?
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_05: If you want to be missionary, you could live stream your service.
• 19:26
  SPEAKER_05: We could have we could have said it non-stop and nobody would have listened to us.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_05: But the pandemic meant the whole church went online and it was one of the biggest missionary movements that's ever happened was the church going online because we went to the place where people are searching, and that actually did have a big impact during the pandemic.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: That's such an optimistic take, Rachel, especially because um, in your statistics, you've shown that the 6% of practicing Christians has held up through the pandemic, that the people, those who are practicing Christians before the pandemic still are worshipping at least once a month, reading the Bible and praying.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: Is that true?
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, so what we found is um so we did I did a different, I love research.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_05: I did a different piece of research with the Church of England during the pandemic.
• 20:08
  SPEAKER_05: And uh we looked at some of this.
• 20:10
  SPEAKER_05: We looked at who was leaving, who was joining.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_05: So we had people who left the church during the pandemic, that is definitely certain.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_05: The people who stayed had had strong spiritual practices, they had personal spiritual practices.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_05: So they were reading their Bibles themselves, praying themselves.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_05: They were able to feed themselves.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_05: So that's actually all around discipleship.
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_05: Um, other people did leave, but they had probably they had weaker, I feel like, spiritual practices.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_05: So that shows the importance of us, all if you like, being able to take responsibility and have those classical things that, you know, I read the Bible every day with my mum when we were really small, we prayed every day.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_05: And that's why I still read the Bible and pray.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_05: Those really important things.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_05: But we also saw that um a whole pile of people joined us because we went online during the pandemic.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_05: So there was actually quite a there was quite almost a change.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_05: Some people left the church and some people joined the church, and that was all to do with the fact that we went online and many people found us for the first time and then engaged with us and then came and found us as we came out of the pandemic.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_05: So it had a big, it was like a big missionary movement.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_05: I think it was about four percent of the population uh who came and joined the church online because we because of during the pandemic, which is big.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_05: That's a big percentage leap of people who come into experience and try and and um see what was going on.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: That is uh yeah, a big leap.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: So the 26% who are Googling, you know, answers to what is Christianity all about, that was that was the largest sort of segment of how people are doing.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_05: It was.
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_05: It was it was really big.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_05: Then it was going to a local church, 22%.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_05: So if we've we've got a lot of local churches, uh and reading the Bible.
• 21:47
  SPEAKER_05: One of the things I love about Talking Jesus is the Bible just comes out beautifully strongly um throughout, based on how people come to faith and the way people would know to look.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_05: So I think there's a real combination there of what we do with the Bible.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_05: particularly again online.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_05: Um we at hope we've produced beautiful copies of Mark and Luke's gospel because we did surveys as well about how to people are more like because design matters which you will know everything you do matters.
• 22:13
  SPEAKER_05: We designed beautiful like contemporary versions that people would actually love to read and take away because it matters what people what things look and feel like matters.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_05: And if people are interested in reading the Bible, if they want to find out about the Christian faith, that is they know that's a lot of them know that's where they would go.
• 22:29
  SPEAKER_05: Just really amazing.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_05: God speaking on his own terms is a great missionary strategy.
• 22:35
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely that's yeah his his mission strategy isn't it yeah yeah yeah the Bible is God talking Jesus to us isn't it yeah yeah just giving you a bit of a break now to let you digest some of what you've heard we've got the rest of the conversation coming up so please don't go anywhere.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: This was actually recorded as part of Blue Sky Monday uh the online Zoom call that we had on the 16th of January we're we're calling them house parties now they're gonna happen once a term so three times a year and in them we effectively have Glenn and Nate presenting uh and it's a chance to interact with the Speak Life team other Speaklife supporters and a special guest who comes along and is interviewed usually by Glenn and of course it was a a great joy to have Rachel Jordan Wolf for our most recent one.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: And as you'll hear in the second part of the conversation we we go over to a QA.
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: So if you join us in future you'll be able to put your questions in the chat and uh and we can answer them to the guests.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: So we're really excited about these house parties and we'd love to have you along for the next one.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: It will be on the 4th of May May the 4th Star Wars Day and you can sign up already by going to speaklife.org.uk forward slash house party but that's enough from me back to Rachel and the audience so these are ways that people are reaching out to find out about Christianity you also ask questions of those who are adult converts to Christianity and you ask them um what was most significant for them coming to faith.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_05: What did you find uh they were saying yeah so really interesting to start with we asked everyone who's a practicing Christian um what were the key they could have take more than one key influence we asked them what the key influence is that helped them come to faith.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_05: I unfortunately then finished the report you know how you do this you finish writing the report everything is done it's gone to the printer and then you wake up do you ever have those moments anyone you suddenly wake up in the middle of the night and you go oh no uh and it wasn't a no no it's just that a lot of people we also ask people the age at which they came to faith and an awful lot of people come to faith under the age of 18.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_05: And that is wonderful and we still need to really resource our youth and our children and helping people uh there's a chunk that will come to faith still around under the age of 25 and then it gets it gets tougher to reach people in adult life less and less people become practically Christians in adult life but people do come to faith at every generation and that's also clear in talking Jesus.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_05: So then what I needed to do was break out the people who came to faith under the age of 18 and look at what was influencing the people over the age of 18 to come to faith.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_05: So that's how we then got these results and that was a brilliant little thing to see.
• 25:42
  SPEAKER_05: And the number one thing in that was a life event so it suddenly swapped growing up in a Christian family was the number one thing if you're under the age of 18 but if you're not and you're over the age of 18 a life event.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_05: So this is like what wobbles people's worlds is what I call it.
• 25:59
  SPEAKER_05: And um we've just been through some life events people we have been through a pandemic the war in Ukraine um and now we're going through an economic crisis this is like this is like um people's worlds being shaken that's what life events do.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_05: So they can be that somebody's somebody dying you being bereaved getting married having a child moving house changing jobs all of these things are life events but we've been on national life events and that's why people are more open now than they were in 2015.
• 26:30
  SPEAKER_05: So we've also seen that in the results that more people um once they've had a conversation with a Christian more of them would like to know about Jesus or more of them would like to experience him in 2022 than 2015 which is amazing.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_05: So the so the gospel opportunity's actually gone up yes I jumped because you were asking me weren't you about the ways people come to face number one is a life event Christian family is still big but we were looking about this earlier weren't we Glenn the the online stuff is having an impact when you are an adult.
• 27:02
  SPEAKER_05: So um if you look at Christian content shared on social media by people you know 5% of those over the age of 18 said it's someone that they know sharing social media content.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_05: Then there's also um Christian media which is online content as well as TV, other things 7% of adults said that that was important to them.
• 27:23
  SPEAKER_05: And 5% said Christian content shared by someone they didn't know on social media.
• 27:29
  SPEAKER_05: So social media is really beginning to play a role in how people come to faith particularly over the age of 18 and so is all the other content um on um yeah all different Christian media platforms as well as traditional things like conversation 18% said a conversation with someone like you and me 18% said chatting to someone like you and me was key and influential in bringing them to faith.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah yeah and it's interesting um what the statistics show about between 2015 and 2022 um I think you were saying earlier that one in five conversations lead someone to to very much wanting to to know more and and and taking steps towards faith whereas it's now one in three conversations lead to that sort of thing is that right yeah so in 2015 if you had a chaptercome Christian about one in three were saying oh yeah I'd like to know more about Jesus and it's strong you know this wasn't I want to know more about spirituality I want to know more about peace in the world it really was Jesus.
• 28:30
  SPEAKER_05: So one in three in 2015 wanted to know more about Jesus or experience and encounter him for themselves and that wasn't a complete overlap.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_05: So there's um some people who are some people are more head some people are more experiential there's a bit of an overlap but not an entire overlap.
• 28:46
  SPEAKER_01: And now um yeah no it's now one in three it was one in five it was one in five it's now one in three so it's gone up it's one in three which is amazing yeah yeah yeah I I was just teaching on the the parable of the of the sower in Mark chapter four and you and you sow seed on all the soil types and you don't expect that every single uh soil type is going to produce in the same sorts of ways but yeah to to know that you know you you sow seed on three different soil types and and you'll get that yeah some kind of response that's amazing if you if you try three doors one of them will open to a to a gospel kind of a conversation I think I think that's that's really hope giving as we as we think about reaching out um rachel we we've got to draw things to a close in a second but um if someone says to you um why why bother with all these statistics because the Great Commission is there Jesus has given us our marching orders we're told to go it doesn't really matter you know statistically how open people are how closed people are we just go we do our thing we've been doing our thing for 2000 years we don't need this survey what would you what would you say to that person?
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_05: Well it's a really funny thing facts help people so I and again I could say to you oh you know I think it's I think it's a really open time and you go because people will believe they do believe what they hear so what you said about people thinking that they're not liked genuinely a lot of Christians think we're not liked very much by people people have a bad image of us they won't want to hear from me and all these things it's almost like we're being lied to sometimes think it's a bit like an earpiece it's wired into some of it's the mainstream media some of it's social media but we listen to it all the time because actually we are always listening to facts.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_05: We are always scrolling through a social media channel some so it's somebody's always telling us something yeah right but they might not be telling us the truth.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_05: And so talking Jesus is like changing the headset and actually listening to truths that can set us free.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_05: And what it does is it sets us free from a lack of confidence and gives us the confidence.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_05: It sets us free from uh you know sometimes I just note that headline that we will have read on Easter Sunday or the headlines we read after the census just make you go oh we need to give up there's three of us left we live in Portsmouth we're gonna the lights are going out next week and it's all over for the church in this country and that's what we can think and when we do that I feel like the enemy just is squashing us down and removing our confidence and what talking Jesus does is it's facts that come into the ear and you go oh okay and I've just watched those facts help rooms as people go amazing people like me.
• 31:32
  SPEAKER_05: Even if I say I'm a Christian they like me and you know what there's actually people out there who want to know more about Jesus.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_05: There's people who believe in the resurrection of Jesus I just need to go and find them.
• 31:43
  SPEAKER_05: Some people are going to go no I don't believe fine I'll move on and find the next person.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_05: So that's why I'm really passionate about it.
• 31:50
  SPEAKER_05: I think facts that are truthful can change people's minds and views.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_05: And we do actually listen to an awful lot of facts and it's who's in charge of those facts and it's time that we as the church took over the voice piece and actually we use facts for the kingdom of God not against the kingdom of God.
• 32:08
  SPEAKER_05: Wow wow love that answer thank you thank you so much Rachel people on the Zoom call you've all got opportunities to type in your questions to Rachel and uh they are to send them to the speak life uh yeah the speak life message my goodness I imagine every Monday's a cheerful day with Rachel so much yeah uh encouragement there world wobblers that's one of my take homes yeah world wobblers what else have I I put something else facts help people yeah yeah and we're always being told the state of the nation and the state of the gospel um wouldn't it be nice to have some facts behind and the fact that they they were so desperate to run with a negative headline yes on goodness me so we have a question for Rachel did you uh put your data in terms of cities and outside of cities race income etc so I guess just wondering how fine grained you went in the study in terms of the different demographics and things yeah so the demographics that they what they do is they weight the data for us and they make sure for example enough people from the northeast answer questions and enough people from different ethnic backgrounds answer the questions so that you've got if you like the perfect UK soup um made up of representation of the number of people who would be in the northeast who've answered the question.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_05: So that's what they call weighted data.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_05: So that's how they do it.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_05: But we also are able to break out I gave you a few breaks didn't I when I said all the 18 to 24s or the 65 plus so we're able to wait um break the data by generation we can break the data by region.
• 33:49
  SPEAKER_05: London comes out quite unique.
• 33:52
  SPEAKER_05: It's just the way that London is that's partly because a lot more 18 to 24 year olds live in London.
• 33:57
  SPEAKER_05: So that changes it so it's um it's a younger place.
• 34:02
  SPEAKER_05: But also it has a different ethnic makeup to uh to the rest of the country.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_05: So two things come into play in London both ethnicity and age that make London have a have a have a slightly different um yeah different stats.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_05: And so we can do some of that breaking and some regions um the regions are quite big so for example you know we could look at the northeast or the northwest or the eastern regions um so we can do a little bit of that uh an example if we looked at the southwest we'd see probably something which is more of a rural picture uh if you compared that with London you'd you'd get a quite an interesting comparison.
• 34:39
  SPEAKER_00: Thomas any more fantastic thank you we have another question sort of slightly similar to that is um what's the data you would really like to have but haven't got in the 2022 survey oh um I do I do so um I wish I could break it by rural and urban that would be really interesting to me uh and the reason we've got regions but we haven't got rural urban uh I can't remember the definition I think rural is any any um group of people under 10,000 people in a in a in a habitation would be rural that would be quite interesting although it's only I think about 17% of the population who do inhabit rural spaces most of us would be in more of an urban space.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_05: What else would I like to know?
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_05: There was something the other day you know when you're going through and you go oh should have asked um so there's every sort and there's a little thing where you go oh I must make a little note of that because actually I would quite like to know this or I would quite like to know that.
• 35:37
  SPEAKER_05: Most of what I want to know it's there.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_05: We added in a couple of extra questions this time from 2015 but I think mostly what I want to know is is in the data somewhere which is great.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_05: I'd like to do on a if you could do more than 3000 people that then then I could you could break it with more accuracy um because your sample size would be bigger.
• 35:57
  SPEAKER_05: So some of the once you begin to break by age region ethnicity if you did all those breaks the samples would begin to get like probably too they'd be small and so you have to put quite a lot of um maybes around it at that stage.
• 36:12
  SPEAKER_05: And I would absolutely love to do this globally if anybody happens to be sitting on an awful lot of money but we're probably not but you know I'd love to do it globally.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_05: I'd love to be able to look at um what's happening in the UK and look at what's happening in Germany uh for example because I think the comparisons would be really interesting or what's happening in South America or what's happening in because I think it would be fascinating to see what the differences were and it would help the churches in all different nations.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah and if once you've done the next one so five years time to 2027 you might be helping with this survey no I want I want I want us to do um like a whole green screen studio and then we can have a swingometer.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_02: Oh yes like in a snow like yes in the um when you do the election night thing because I think that's the one thing we we just need is a great yeah you can have a go that'd be quite helpful I think a little bit up down yes you do the green screen and Rachel can do the counting yeah that would yeah yeah that's fine.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah I don't want to do those numbers they're difficult.
• 37:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well I don't know about you but I found what Rachel said incredibly encouraging.
• 37:27
  SPEAKER_00: It highlighted to me uh the ways the the misconceptions that I had about the state of the church in the UK uh the openness to the gospel in the UK.
• 37:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's really helpful to actually have an informed view about what's going on and as as Rachel said facts help people.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: The final thing I'd like to draw your attention to this week is our upcoming intensive so we do things on a kind of termly basis at Speak Life three times a year.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_00: So we have three house parties a year the online Zoom calls like the one you just heard we also have a termally intensive and these are week long things where you come to Speak Life to meet the team, learn the craft and catch the vision.
• 38:14
  SPEAKER_00: So if you really want to come in on the work of Speak Life and and join us, just see what we do, have some teaching, have some Bible studies, it's a great opportunity to meet other creative Christians so you can form some some links there.
• 38:30
  SPEAKER_00: The theme of the upcoming intensive which is from the 30th of January to the 3rd of February is evangelistic and pastoral and so this is something that Glenn is very big on the idea that evangelism is pastoring non-Christians and pastoring is evangelising Christians and so we often put evangelism and pastoring pastoral care in in different spheres but actually they go hand in hand.
• 38:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're the best of friends so that's kind of the broad topic for the week and a lot of Glenn's talks and Bible studies will be related to that.
• 39:09
  SPEAKER_00: But there'll also be some more hands-on kind of technical training so Max Patterson who used to work at Speak Life he'll be coming down he he comes down to for most of the intensives and it's great to get his expertise his experience in film production so he'll be talking a lot about actually producing films and even if that's something that you're not specifically interested in some of the principles in terms of just managing a creative project that involves quite a lot of people and a lot of scheduling I think it'll be really cool to get Max's expertise.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'll be chatting a bit about social media and our YouTube channel and maybe some some tips for if you are considering taking more of what you do online, considering starting up a YouTube channel and Nate's gonna be doing a lot about storytelling as well and how that ties in with evangelism and pastoring.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_00: We're also gonna have some special guests so it's it's gonna be a fantastic week and as I said it's the 30th of January to the 3rd of February.
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_00: Some people just come for a day so it's quite flexible.
• 40:17
  SPEAKER_00: You can go to speaklife.org.uk forward slash foundry to find the sign up link and you can specify how long you want to come for.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_00: If you're interested in coming do get on that pronto because the deadline to apply is this coming Sunday Sunday the 22nd so yeah really looking forward to seeing some of you in person.
• 40:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's gonna be great.
• 40:40
  SPEAKER_00: Well thanks so much for listening we will be back next week.
• 40:43
  SPEAKER_00: God bless