As Christians, we know that evangelism is important, but I imagine that most of us as Christians feel that we're not very good at evangelism.
We feel that we don't do enough evangelism.
In this podcast episode, I'm speaking with Dave Jensen, who works as an evangelist, and he's going to help us to think about how we can increase
in our fervour for evangelism and our ability for evangelism, I find it a really helpful, encouraging conversation and I hope that you do too.
Welcome to Moore College's Centre for Christian Living podcast.
I'm Peter Orr.
Today I'm very pleased to be joined by my friend Dave Jensen.
Dave, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you very much, Peter.
I'm a bit upset.
Am I the last Jensen in my family to be interviewed here?
Well, to be fair, I've interviewed your brother, Michael.
I haven't worked through the, Oh, you haven't done the others.
I haven't done the others.
Oh, you're building up.
You're going up.
Start at the bottom, run up.
I understand.
Well, I'm delighted to be here.
Thanks for having me.
Dave, you at the moment work for evangelism and new churches.
We're going to talk a little bit about evangelism, but you obviously grew up in a Christian home, a high profile Christian home.
But you spent some time really walking away from the Lord.
What was it that triggered that drift away from Christ in your own life?
Yeah, there was two things.
The first one was that I would not, uh, Christian.
And that was the hard reality of it.
Now, fascinatingly, I'm a twin and my twin sister has never known a day, not being a Christian, which just
reaffirms continually the go to passage for us in evangelism 2 Corinthians 4, that it's God who opens blind eyes.
And if you're not a believer that the God of this age, the devil has actually blinded your eyes, and that means that the gospel.
Is really in that language Paul uses just about being an odour that it will not get through now in many
senses I say all that not to abdicate responsibility But rather to say my journey away from Christianity
was entirely narcissistic Built around a desire for praise and adulation and self contentment and happiness.
I never would have considered it in those ways Thankfully, my family are wonderful people wonderful
Christians And that meant, I think, one of the key parts that contributed to me never hating Christianity.
I never hated God.
In fact, I always identified as a Christian a little bit on census forms.
And if someone had asked you, you know, are you a Christian?
You would have said yes.
Or would you have known enough to know that you weren't actually a Christian?
It depends who I was talking to.
If I was talking to a Christian, I would have been like, Oh, if I was talking to a non Christian,
I would have said, yeah, Chris, my religion's Christian and your religion's Christian and whatever.
But I knew that I wasn't like, I knew that I wasn't because I knew what a Christian was and that wasn't me.
And so as time went on.
That meant my life went a particular trajectory.
My late teens became a father, joined the Australian army, uh, a bunch of years and served as an infantry officer around Australia.
And it was really there.
I went through a divorce, a bunch of things happened.
But if you fast forwarded my life to the age of 28.
I probably hadn't thought about God for five years, six years.
My life wasn't terrible at all.
It wasn't collapsing.
I've been divorced for years.
It wasn't this horrible thing.
I was a captain in the army.
I was playing a lot of footy, uh, doing the things I wanted to do, but that was the problem.
I think I just had never paused to think about it.
And when I did, I realized, hold on, how come no matter what I do.
I'm insatiably desiring more, I wasn't more, more, more.
Is it possible that there's more to life than what I'm first considering?
And that led me to investigate Christianity and become a Christian.
So the trigger was the sense of as much as you had a good life and you had everything that you could want, there was something lacking.
And then you say investigating Christianity, growing up in a Christian home, you'd be taught the Bible probably every day.
So what did investigating Christianity mean for someone who probably could
have articulated the gospel and many doctrines better than a lot of Christians?
That is a wonderful question.
Because it strikes right at the core of what happened.
What happened was, I woke up one morning, I began to think about it.
My sister, my twin, had given me an old laptop, which had sermons logged on it that I couldn't delete.
It was just the most irritating form of evangelism.
She'd do this thing all the time.
She's like a mosquito.
Mosquito evangelism.
And I watched a couple of sermons.
I was living in Darwin.
And these sermons very clearly articulated the gospel.
God made it, we broke it, Jesus fixed it, in a very clear way, and yet no clearer than I had heard every single day, and yet!
For the first time, I got it.
And what it was that I initially got was my sin.
Sin had never been an issue for me at all.
I'd never considered it, really.
I felt guilty, but that wasn't sin.
I just felt guilty about being caught.
As I began to think on that day, it was, Oh my goodness, the conviction of sin and the desperation of my plight before God.
And then I called someone I knew who was a Christian who took me to Romans five, six to eight, that Jesus died while I was a sinner.
And so for the first time ever, I understood the cross and the resurrection.
And it's interesting, as you say, I could, the catechisms, the so on and so forth.
I could have said the gospel.
I taught Sunday school as a teenager.
I did all these sort of things.
And yet it wasn't until I was converted that I realized I wasn't a Christian's monkey ever.
Like I'd never understood the gospel.
And now that is a wonderful affirming truth, which we can discuss later about me as an evangelist to know
there's no second part of the gospel or the secret truth that you've got to show someone it's the same old story.
And when God illuminates minds and his spirit opened eyes, that's how people are saved.
So that's how it happened.
And then you become a Christian.
I'm curious, all of that Christian truth, did it suddenly become activated?
Did it suddenly become like, Oh no, all this stuff that I've known all my life, it now makes sense.
Or did you feel like you were just a baby and you were having to learn everything from scratch?
Yes and no.
There was certainly a sense of, Oh, now that meant, for example, immediately with evangelism, use that.
I knew immediately the moment I became a Christian, I have to tell everyone I know of it.
Number one, I know that because I've been taught that my whole life.
But number two, Oh, I really now know that this is the most important thing.
So think about that.
And I knew other things, you know, just a bit, obviously the Bible, the differences, many of the things that I would not be publicly ignorant.
However, very quickly I realized I was like a baby.
I was like everyone else.
It was almost like.
I'll use cricket as an analogy in cricket, you learn the game by playing the game, not by reading it.
Now you can read as much as you want, but that doesn't mean you're going to become a great cricketer.
The only way to do that is to play it.
And it was like that, that, Oh, I had head knowledge, but it wasn't until I became a Christian that I realized.
That's meaningless unless it's applied to what it tells me about the real true God who I now know and my own life.
And so I realized, Oh, those things really feel by the wayside.
I had to start like everyone else who becomes a Christian on my knees before God and up, down, up, down, falling short, failing, falling short.
And that's continued now, of course, on and on.
But yeah, so it was, that was very helpful.
It connected a lot of dots quickly.
The process of living as a Christian was the same process as it is, I think, for everyone who becomes a Christian.
It must have been a very sweet phone call, calling your parents and your sister to tell them that you've become a Christian.
Yeah, I actually saved the news for when I was on leave, two weeks later I was in Sydney and it was sweet, although
Peter, you know, we are highly reserved middle class Australians and having any emotion is very, very difficult.
Even thinking about it makes me uncomfortable.
But yes, I had to, for the first time, and only time, be emotional with my parents.
It was very, no, it was a beautiful time, and that's just continued.
How long did you spend in the army after you became a Christian, and how was that?
I imagine the army would be a challenging place for a Christian.
Yeah, I stayed in the army for, I think, roughly another three years.
It was a very challenging place for a Christian, which is funny because there's chaplains in the army.
It's really also a very, well, at the time, certainly, a very masculine, macho, and often degenerate type culture.
Alcohol, promiscuity, violence, those things are par for the course often for soldiers, and they were for me.
And also that religion in general is viewed with suspicion.
So there's a bunch of nicknames for Christians and others in the army that were used.
So.
It was interesting.
I think it was a great exposure to the complexities and difficulties that evangelism produces because I was full of zeal and I wasn't a coward.
I was very quick to tell people, and yet I faced rejection, severe rejection quickly.
And That was incredibly discouraging.
And yet I also, in God's grace, saw one or two of my friends become Christians.
And that meant I was able to persevere.
I think this is one of the huge issues that we face in evangelism is that the vast majority of us,
most of us hardly ever see anyone become a Christian in front of our eyes or anything like that.
We might see people at church.
So I was able to see it and it was this very addictive, encouraging thing that spurred me on, but it was very hard.
And in hindsight, I think I remember giving a Bible to someone, one of the first things I gave someone a Bible, he said, what should I read?
And I said, Oh, the book of Romans is my favorite book.
Anyway, he came in the next day, true, he came in the next day and he threw the Bible at my head.
He said, this is about circumcision.
And I was just like, is it?
And it was a great point, actually.
Can I say, to reflect, one of the things I picked up very quickly, because that had been my upbringing was the essential nature of church.
And that's not always implicit to every brand new convert.
Many brand new converts don't see the place and importance of church.
But I knew it because I just, well, I knew myself, but I also had been brought up that church is what Christians.
Get to do.
It's a wonderful thing.
But then I evangelized people.
I realized they didn't have that background.
It was just trickier for people as they come to know Christ, knowing what next steps to take.
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And now let's get back to our program.
Since that time, you've done a few different ministry roles and you're now working for Evangelism and New Churches in Sydney.
Can you just tell us a little bit about that organisation and the role that you have?
Yeah, Evangelism and New Churches, which used to be called the Department of Evangelism, and some of your listeners
may know John Chapman, "Chappo", Australia's, uh, greatest evangelist and he headed up the department of evangelism.
It's actually been in the Sydney diocese for well over 100 years and in
essence it's quite, it's not hard to explain, it's just a bit weird to explain.
In essence it is an organization that exists at the heart of the family of churches that are
the Anglican Church in Sydney that exists for the purpose of encouraging parishes in evangelism.
So that we will see more people find life and hope in Jesus Christ across Sydney.
So encouraging, that's a big term that includes a bunch of things.
So that's the evangelism piece.
Around 20 years ago or so, the new churches part was added to it in recognition of the essential nature of evangelism.
To church planting so that a wing of evangelism new churches is to champion and encourage, but also to help establish new church plants across Sydney.
So I work very specifically in the realm of evangelism.
And my job is really to help pastors, but also Christians engage with non Christian people
to think carefully about how we're doing evangelism so that more people become Christians.
Can you help us as listeners to the podcast, how can we be better evangelistically engaging
with our non Christian friends, both at the individual level, but at the church level?
Yes, I can.
Thanks.
Okay.
Yeah.
I think brother, the first thing that we need to understand when it comes to evangelism is we need to understand the deflection.
By that I mean to say, we need to understand what stops us doing it.
Now, I'm going to make a assumption that if you're listening to this, you are
a born again believer, you is probably active member of your local church.
And so that means statistically that 90 percent of you will be convinced that evangelism is something Christians should do.
There's a gift of evangelism, but also the broad encouragement of the new Testament that we
are witnesses to Jesus across the world until he returns, he's with us to the end of the age.
We've got 90 percent of us who believe we should do it, but what percentage of people, according to the data that we
have, NCLS and otherwise, Peter, what percentage of people do you think actually are proactively involved in evangelism?
A little bit lower than 90%.
Slightly lower.
So flip it on its head.
And 10%, so you have this disparity between conviction and action.
So the question really is, how do we get people to go between that to move from conviction to action?
And I think the way that we do that is primarily identifying why we don't do it.
And I would offer that in my experience, but I think this is biblical explained as well.
The thing that prevents most of us doing evangelism is.
Yeah, we're afraid with good reason.
Jesus promises that it will be scary.
So when it is scary, that's a fulfillment of that.
And we see what happened to Jesus.
He promises for his followers.
They will hate us as well.
If we look at what happened to the apostles, the book of Acts, we're doing a sermon series on that at the moment and the continual.
Response they get is persecution and imprisonment and torture and then death.
So when we face rejection, firstly, it's important that we understand that that's not evidence of incompetent evangelism.
It's evidence of evangelism.
That's what happens often, more often than not.
And so when we understand that it's fear that's stopping us, how do we stop fear?
How do we deal with the fear?
Well, I think the most important thing I've seen in churches where you've got higher than usual levels of
people involved in abandonment, and I just know from my own life as well, is that I think there's three things.
Number one, It's not to assume that the conviction that we should do it is a sufficient conviction.
I think the bigger conviction that we need is not just that we should do it, but that
no matter what above all else, it's worth it because eternity matters more than today.
And so if you're captured by the eternal realities.
of life that Jesus offers.
Why does Jesus go to the cross?
He goes because the joy is set before him, is what the book of Hebrews 12 says.
When he says the son of man must suffer, where does he end?
And rise from the dead.
Jesus dies because he knows he will rise from the dead.
He knows the crucifixion works, but he also knows that eternity awaits for those who trust in him.
So it's worth it, the garden of Gethsemane.
He doesn't want to do it, but he does it because it's his father's it's worth it.
Now that means, how do you get that in someone?
Well, the good and bad news is there's no short way to do it.
I think it's a continual drip feed of Bible preaching in small groups, in personal devotion and seeing
the value of eternity and letting that be the compass that drives you eternity, eternity, eternity.
I'll give you an illustration of that.
Not long ago, I was moving house and I had some removalists there and we'd had a bit of a chat.
I knew I was a minister.
We began to speak about these things and I then went inside to get a little gospel tract that I've got to give to them.
And then I walked across the garden and I felt up my spine, this terror, you know, Oh, what am I doing?
What am I doing?
So how did I deal with that?
Usually often, more often than not, I felt I would go, Oh, I stopped and I thought eternity, eternity, eternity, it's worth it.
It's worth it.
That's like a split second conversation I'm trying to have with myself all the time.
It won't happen intrinsically.
I think we've got to teach ourselves.
So that's the first one.
The second thing I think that can really drive us towards more evangelism in our lives and
the lives of others is practice doing it, but not in the way that potentially we might think.
But if I say evangelism.
Oh, let's go do evangelism as a church.
What do you think many Christians here, what do they think we're going to be doing when we say let's do it?
Knocking on doors, walking up to people on the street, that sort of thing.
Yeah.
How do you think that makes most Christians feel?
Uh, a little bit nervous.
Yeah.
Slightly nervous.
I like to have an assault rifle with me if I knock on someone's door.
I don't like knocking on people's doors.
I don't like standing on street corners and doing it.
That's socially embarrassing.
That doesn't mean I'm ashamed of the gospel.
It means I'm ashamed of standing on the street corner and knocking on the door.
So I think understanding that that's the way most people feel.
They feel like evangelism is falling off a cliff, realizing, you know, it's not, it's bungee jumping.
Jesus is with us.
He's with us forever.
He's with you right now.
But also, therefore, as a church family, thinking through ways we can lower the bar of entry into evangelistic
activity in a way that's actually not utterly paralyzingly terrifying, such as encouraging each other to bring people
to church, to bring people to an evangelistic call, to drive their friend to and from, to chat about it on the way.
And to actually be involved in that process with the church family, so that we have conviction, we have action, that sort of thing there together.
And the final one I will say is that in essence, prayer, that we pray to God that he would give us courage because it does take courage.
It's not easy.
It's hard.
Don't pretend there's this easy version of it.
There isn't.
But that we pray to God for courage, conviction, and for opportunity.
That's so helpful, Dave.
And those are some very basic Christian convictions.
But it's so easy to forget them.
It's so easy to put them to the side and reading the New Testament.
I've been struck by how often particularly Paul defines Christian in connection with the gospel.
We are gospel people.
In other words, we are people who are concerned for the gospel to go out.
And even Philippians one, he wants to hear them standing firm in one spirit, striving side by side for the faith of the gospel.
Even Jesus, when he calls people in Mark 10.
To be willing to renounce their family.
It's striking that he says, renounce your family for my sake and for the sake of the gospel.
So this gospel conviction is really who we are, but we need to be reminded of it, as you say.
And these ways of doing evangelism are ways of making sure that we are.
and remain gospel people.
Yeah.
Big time.
I think that's right.
And Philippians one, I mean, just as you said that I always think like God, every time I pray for you
because of your partnership in the gospel, he is, there's a financial aspect to that, but there's also a
proactive evangelistic aspect of that, that we partnered together and not just with one another, but with.
God, you know, it's his gospel and the Holy Spirit and the Lord Jesus, who is with us always so that we
are in partnership with God in his mission to see his gospel proclaimed across his world for his people.
And so talk about a bungee jump security blanket.
I mean, they're just like, ah, whatever the response, it's going to be okay.
And there's also, as you've mentioned, this is something we do as a church.
This is something that we do together, and sometimes we think of evangelism.
Obviously, I'm the one who's going to have a conversation with my friend or my family member, but
evangelism is something that we do together and we encourage one another and we pray for one another.
And I think that's something that I find helpful to reflect on.
My journey into effective evangelism happened through church because our church encouraged triplets.
Prayer triplets in evangelism, where you just have three of you and you'd all come up, you'd have
a friend and there was a course coming up, a Christian explored or whatever it was in a terms time.
And the idea was to meet together or just message each other and pray for each other's friends.
And that changed everything for me.
It just meant I was able to really intentionally think.
Hey, what am I doing to know that I'm not alone to have friends encourage me and support
me and know, and even better, my friend actually did come to that and was converted.
Sam is his name and my friends who were in the prayer triplet came to the course
and that meant they were there with me and Sam and they knew all about him.
They weren't weird about it, but I was able to partner together.
Cause it is the hardest, can I just say, they say that the last thing to be converted in a man is his wallet.
You've heard that before.
It's not true.
The last thing to be converted in a man is his desire to humiliate himself in evangelism.
He hates that so much.
He'd pay any amount of money to get out of doing it.
You know?
So I think we just need to continually encourage one another to do this.
We're better together.
Wonderful.
Well, Dave, really appreciate your time on the podcast today and also really appreciate the work that you're doing as you seek to encourage.
Churches and Christians in their evangelism.
Thanks very much.
Thank you very much.
Thanks for having me.
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