Welcome to Oak Hill's Deep Roots podcast, conversations about theology and ministry.
My name's Tim Ward. I'm one of the lecturers here at Oak Hill. Now, my normal co-host sidekick here,
Eric Ortland, is indisposed. He's got a bit of a cold and very kindly he agreed to stay away
so he didn't breathe germs all over us here in Oak Hill's secret film studio bunker. But very kindly,
he's got a replacement. I'm not going to say he's better, it's just different and that's good.
Well, they're big shoes to fill but I'll see what I can do. My name is Matt Bingham. I am also one
of the lecturers here at Oak Hill. I teach systematic theology and church history.
And our special guest on Deep Roots this month is our friend and colleague, Christy Mayer. Christy,
thanks so much for coming down. You didn't even know where this room was in the building, did you?
I got locked out. There's a corridor just outside and it was completely locked. In fact,
Matt Bingham found me wandering the corridors upstairs just, you know, aimlessly. We don't want
everyone finding this place but we're glad you did. Well, thanks for having me. It's a joy to be with
you. Now, Christy, obviously, Matt and I know what you teach but for those listening in, tell us what
you do here. I get to teach philosophy, ethics and apologetics here. I'm in my fourth year and I'm a
research fellow which means that I also get to do my doctorate part-time alongside teaching. Okay.
This is always a dangerous question to ask someone who's doing a PhD. What they're doing.
Give us the 30-second comprehensible to everybody version. What kinds of things are you interested
in that you're studying? Oh, 30 seconds. Pressure. Knowledge, knowing how do we know what we know
and particularly looking at a guy called Michael Polanyi who, Hungarian, close to my heart, former
scientist, turned philosopher and his particular understanding of knowledge, how knowing works.
Yeah, he's quite fun so I'm looking at him. Okay, good. The Hungarian close to my heart thing. Yeah.
Again, we kind of know but Hungary close to your heart. Oh, very much so, Tim. Yeah, very much so.
I'm Hungarian. I was born in Hungary. My family, Romain, kind of between Hungary and Romania.
I moved over to the UK when I was about eight or nine. And that PhD knowing, how do we know?
So is that philosophy? Is that theology? Is that a mix of the two? Yeah, it's philosophical theology.
Yeah, so it kind of straddles both of them. I'm kind of looking at his particular philosophy of
knowing but I'm trying to kind of think about what does it look like to think theologically
about his philosophy. Tremendous. Now you write and speak at a really high level and at also
really everyday comprehensible levels because, hey, guess what, Matt? You see what we have here?
It's more truth, Tim. It's called More Truth. It's got a symbol on it. We don't quite know how to
pronounce that symbol, do we? It's a silent symbol. So the book is called More Truth. By, oh, by Christy May.
By moi. Tremendous. Thank you. This came out a couple of years ago. It did, yeah. It's been
really well received. We're joking. Up to this point, we have been joking. We really like this book.
Tell us, what were you trying to do in this book? Well, I got to write it because my editor at IVP,
Elizabeth Neve, hello if you're watching, she wanted to put together a series of books that
really served young Christians who'd recently come to know Jesus but were really thinking,
does my faith stand up to scrutiny or not? And for those who are thinking, well, I think I might
leave the church actually because of these big issues that I just don't know how to address.
And so at the time, and even now, you know, thinking about post-truth, what is truth?
How can I trust that this something is true? A big question. So she asked, well, could you write just
a very short book on that which helps young Christians in those particular kind of churches
just think through why it is that their faith is good and why Jesus stands up to scrutiny.
So that's really what I was trying to do in that very short, in a very short book with lots of
stories and just looking at Jesus's words in John when he says, I'm the way, the truth and the life.
What does that mean? Tremendous. Now, we're going to get into some details and stop
discussing around some topics. But for those who don't know, you just, as well as your teaching here
on philosophy, apologetics, evangelism, you get invited to go into various places. Quite rightly,
people are saying that someone here is worth bringing in to teach us on things. So just tell
us some of the topics that you find yourself invited to speak about to various groups of
church leaders and people in ministry. Oh, it's really kind, Tim. Thanks. I, this is one of the
things I really love about my work, actually, is that I get to kind of teach it and also I get to
kind of live it in a way and give it room to breathe. And so, yeah, I get to be invited to
what kind of things I've done recently. I spoke at, well, I speak at local churches, training them
in how to think about conversational evangelism. How do you kind of address the big questions,
the big objections to Christian faith? I've done that quite a bit. I help with female evangelists.
There's a great network that wants to equip and train female evangelists. I've done some stuff on
how can we communicate the incarnation at Christmas time. I've also done some stuff
wonderfully. Well, there are different festivals like Creation Fest in the south. Again,
how communicating truth, how do we do that? ELF, the European Leadership Forum, I get to go
shortly in May and the past couple of years it's been online. But I was speaking there on
apathy and how do we engage the apathetic. And so there's a great kind of mixture of stuff really
of either local churches, regional and national events, or particular kind of groups of people
thinking about reaching people in the workplace, like in the London Stock Exchange or other outreach
events that local churches or Christians in the workplace are wanting to put on so that others
can come and just see the goodness of Jesus in community and hear more about him. Fantastic.
It's great to hear what colleagues do outside of the building. Absolutely. You mentioned
speaking on apathy there and engaging people who are apathetic. That's really interesting to me
actually because for a while there, back when, I don't know when was it Richard Dawkins,
sort of the big name, and we think of this really aggressive anti-Christian polemic.
And in some ways, I think, thinking apologetics-wise, that actually feels easier and more comfortable
in a sense, isn't it? It gives you something to latch on to. Here's a critique, here's a criticism,
and I'm going to show how it's erroneous, it's misguided, whatever. But the apathetic person,
that's a different sort of problem altogether. How did you get onto that topic and what did that
kind of look like? I think I was asked to speak on it mainly because, as you mentioned, with
Richard Dawkins and others who've been very big voices in particular places in the UK.
But for the most part, that's not really where your everyday person is really at.
They haven't read Dawkins, you were talking about this the other day, weren't we? Yeah.
And they haven't read his books, they don't know what he's about. And for anyone watching,
thinking, like Richard Dawkins, that's ringing a bell, hang on, just give us, again, give us a
30 seconds reminder on Richard Dawkins. So he was one of the, well, he was dubbed one of the
henchmen of the apocalypse, along with a couple of few other names. I know it's quite, I mean,
along with Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and others, who are these key kind of intellectuals in the
universities who really just very much hate God and want to intellectually show, allegedly,
why it is that everyone else should agree with them. So this is really kind of militant atheism.
Exactly. They are utterly certain. Exactly. God is a pile of nonsense. Yes. And you too are stupid
if you believe that the good God can possibly exist. I want to persuade people out of what
he thinks is the utter stupid, evident stupidity. Yes. Of believing God. Oh, this is all the heyday
we're like 15 years ago. Okay. However. However. Yeah. Well, I think they just left a bit of a
vacuum. So as you say, it was about 10 to 15 years ago. And at the time, in particular circuits,
these were the big questions that people were addressing, was trying to think, how do we
respond to people like this? And then people responded to people like that very persuasively
and very well. You know, you think about John Lennox, who is a wonderful man of mine to teach
his I forget now, is it physics and mathematics? And he said he did a lot of work responding to
them. But then after that, there was just this kind of emptiness, this kind of vacuum of meaning,
where people started to think, well, I'm now starting to see that if what Dawkins and others
are saying is true, then that means there are certain things that I have to get rid of. So I
think one of the one of the the kind of hinge points was when Peter Singer, who is he does a
lot of work in ethics and thinking about morality, right and wrong. And he was saying that it's
morally permissible to abort a baby postpartite post birth. And so lots of people after that
were thought, Whoa, how that's not, that's not right. So the logical outworkings of my atheism,
just, it's not at all emotionally or intellectually satisfactory to me. But so I still want to uphold
in some way that there is this kind of, there's meaning, there's almost like the sanctity of life,
that life is precious. But how do I do that without God? And so there's this big kind of
big vacuum and opportunity that that created to then start the conversation about God after that.
So then there's actually much more kind of spiritual intrigue, thinking about, you know,
questions of faith now than there ever have been, because in the militant atheists, they've kind of
shown that their own position doesn't stand up to scrutiny. But then what do we do with these desires
with these longings that we have and the, the lurch that we have towards meaning and truth and purpose.
So that's just all just a very long way to say that there's this kind of desire to want more.
But then after that, probably, I think in the past, maybe three to four years, there's, there
has been cultivated a kind of an apathy towards, towards God, and to those questions. So you'll
find now that if you were to ask somebody, do you think that a good God can exist, probably say,
I don't really know, I don't, I don't really care. You know, it's what you believe is what you believe.
What do you think? You know, that's fine. And so that's, that's the point that that now we're
starting to pick up the conversation and think, okay, how do we talk to people where they're at
right now, which is more of the, what somebody else has called it's a trained, benign indifference.
It's not something that's happened over the years.
A trained, benign indifference.
Yeah.
Talk us through each of those words.
Yeah. So this isn't something that people just have woken up one day and said, you know what,
I now want to be apathetic. I've now decided that I don't want to care. And I've decided
about God and his existence. It's something that has, that has been, that has been,
well, I guess it's something that they've been trained to do. I'm trying to think of another
word. It's been cultivated. It's been developed intentionally.
So what kinds of things cultivate us in this?
As a guy called Jonathan Roach, who is an economist and an activist, and he writes for the
Atlantic Monthly, back in 2003, he wrote an article on apotheism. And in that article,
he addresses, he addresses this in its entirety, saying that what has, what has led to this rise
of apathy is religious extremism. So as you look at, you know, 9-11 and all of the other
awful attacks that have taken place in Europe and in the UK and elsewhere, this kind of religious
extremism has led people to think, well, if that's where religion takes you, then I don't really want
anything to do with that. So you can do that over there. And so it's led to this kind of trained,
well, I'm just going to train myself to not think about it. Because if I think about it, then
obviously that leads to this kind of hideous manifestation of religion, which I don't want
anything to do with. So again, it's all part and parcel of, you know, this is, this is my truth.
Tell me yours, take it, you know, leave it. There are lots of different ideas. That's fine. And so
they've just trained themselves not to care and almost shut off. Because, you know, I was in
Birmingham for quite a while before I came to London. And I remember walking, I was outside New
Street Station. You go out down by the ball ring, all these shops, and you can't really walk,
maybe a few hundred yards without having either a Christian standing in the street kind of saying,
repent, you know, the time is nigh, repent. And then you walk a few, a few kind of yards down,
and then you can hear the Quran being, you can hear it audibly, it's being played. And so there
are Muslim friends over there who are, you know, wanting to tell you about Islam, and then you go
a little bit further, and then there's a spiritualist group, and you go a bit further,
and then you see the Jehovah's Witnesses. And so there's just this competing marketplace
of different religious ideas. And so people have kind of trained themselves just to not hear. It's
better to just, you know, it's fine. It's just the cacophony of these different noises,
leads people to like retreat. And so you put up this wall of apathyism, well apathy, sorry,
apathyism is something else, and say, well, you know, I'm trying to protect myself from it.
But also I just don't care, because it's so loud that I'm just trying to make myself immune to it.
So it's benign in that way. It's not malevolent. It's not nasty.
I got about three questions that came into my mind all at the same time,
because you're a historian, you've been a pastor. Pick whichever one of these you want.
Here's the historian question. The first century in which the scriptures were written,
the New Testament scriptures, that was very like this competing marketplace of religious ideas.
So do we see some of this back in the first century, which you've also been a pastor,
did you encounter this in your ministry in the United States? Answer either of those.
We'll talk about something else, Matt, whatever you want.
Yeah, I know. I mean, it's really interesting, isn't it? And talking about these different sort
of clash of ideas and sort of almost shut down response rather than engage with any of them.
And I wonder here in that as well, thinking about this concept of apathy,
apathy, and thinking about people I've known, you know, the sort of this idea, the secularization
thesis, this idea that as modernity advances, as civilization, you know, progress, technological
progress, industrial progress, rising levels of affluence, that sort of the need for some sort of
religious explanation just gets sort of squeezed out, people sort of have fullness in their
material sort of present frame, and there's just no need, there's no desire for anything more.
And Christianity very much seems like a less live option in the way that some of those more sort of
what have traditionally in this context been, you know, smaller voices. Now Christianity just
seems like one more sort of competing voice. And it's sort of daunting, isn't it? Where does one
where does one begin engaging with a person who says, Look, I'm pretty happy with my life,
I have what I need. And when I hear you talking about Christian things, that very much feels
like something from the past, not something in the present, not something that is going to inform
the future. This is a piece maybe of heritage at best. But it's not, it's not living in vital and
real, how do you, where do you begin a conversation with a person who says, Look, if that's what you
want to do, that's fine. But yeah, I'm good. Thanks. I don't need medieval superstition mumbo jumbo,
which sounds very much like what you're offering. Yeah, it's such a great question. I think that's
exactly what some of the things that we're just thinking about the moment is, is how to go about
starting conversations like that. And often, I mean, I don't know what you think, Tim, I think,
there are questions that we can ask, sometimes that apathy is created as a result of Christians
pretty much just talking at people for quite a long time. And, and so one of the things that
that I found quite helpful to do is there are just three questions. And one of them is asking,
Have you ever wondered? So really, nobody's actually that apathetic, there are things that
we all care about, very deeply that we have these ultimate commitments that every person holds to.
And it's really just trying to first listen, you know, Proverbs 18, you know, to talk, to talk
without listening is a person's folly and shame. And so firstly, like listening to others, and
you can only listen to people if you know them well, and you're in some kind of friendship with
them. And so I think it's, it's listening to them as you start thinking about the bigger issues. So
it might not talk to me, it might not be immediately talking about God, it might actually be talking
about something in the paper to begin with. So for example, I was, I was at a spa, and I was with a
friend, and she was, we were outside, I was just lounging about, it was really lovely, it was
idyllic, and so idyllic, but I was actually, I think I was actually on Twitter at the time.
And I found this article, except there was a Christian doctor who'd been convicted for calling
a baby a human being in the womb. And I just thought, oh, this is, this is obviously,
obviously outrageous. Obviously, my friend is going to agree with me that, you know, why is this person
been convicted for saying what is patently obvious, that this is a human being in utero,
it's not a dog, it's not a cat, it's a human being. And so I think I remember I showed it to her,
I thought, oh gosh, this is quite interesting, this, you know, doctor, and just, she was so peaceful,
and just in that moment, she just erupted. And she's like, why on earth do you have to bring
something like that up right now? We're having such a nice time. I'm so sorry, you know, I didn't,
I didn't at all mean to ignite anything. I just thought, yeah, well, you know, I just don't want
to have a debate right now. You know, I just, you know, it doesn't matter, you know, what I think
about this. So, oh, but, you know, I do, I do care about what you, what you think about this.
She's like, no, no, no, we're just, just, just leave it. Like, we're having such a nice time.
Let's just forget about it. So I did. And then later on, after she'd calmed down, we were talking
about other things. I, you know, I said to her, why, you know, I noticed that you responded quite
strongly there. Why, why do you think that was? And she just said, yeah, I think I just feel like
I have to have an opinion on everything. And I just thought that was quite revealing on a couple
of levels, because the apathy stuff links in with something that the Greeks have this fancy word for
it, which is ataraxia, which is this, this freedom from stress and worry. And so a lot of the apathy
kind of hinges on this desire to just not to be mentally agitated. You know, I don't need to have
an opinion on everything. And that was what she was pursuing was that kind of sense of just
peacefulness. But also it revealed something else, which was that it was a particular view of,
of knowing that I was expecting her to have an answer on an article, rather than opening up a
conversation. And so again, I think that just shows that there's just such a polarised and
almost just like a tribal, tribalism that has kind of grown up, grown up that what you say,
you have to say with certitude. And what you say also reveals your cards of where you stand on
particular things. And so I was like, Oh, that's interesting. So really, what you're talking about
is, is knowing like, do we have to do you think we have to be certain before we can express an
opinion on something? So I started those questions of how of, oh, what do you mean by that? Why did
you say that? And then I could move the conversation on later and by asking her things, or have you
ever wondered dot dot dot, and we could talk about that article. And why did you say that? So I think
those kind of short questions can open up a lot in a in a conversation where you know, and you've
listened to the other person beforehand.
Tell us a bit more about this kind of apathy, because I know that you, it's something you just
you're finding out to you as you're engaging, particularly with evangelism among university
students, and a kind of a rising generation and engaging with church leaders about it. So
tell us what you see going on. And yet some more ways in which you think there are helpful ways in
which we can begin to open up a conversation.
Yeah, well, I think, yeah, thank you, Tim. I think it's something that it's still cut, it's still
evolving in some ways, because of course, there are human beings that are in front of us. And so
not not everybody will be as hardened in their apathy as every other person. One of the ways
I think particular communities do it well is by being a community, and whether that's kind of
churches, or whether that's groups of Christians on campuses, is by inviting people in to just to
taste the quality of redeemed relationships in community with one another, that also just shows
off the credibility of the Christian faith. And that, that is a great way of I think CS Lewis was
talking about, just sneaking behind the dragons, you know, the watchful dragons that are set over
our hearts, you can go around the back, you can sneak around those sleeping dragons, those watchful
dragons, by bringing them into community like that, because that isn't the place where you,
where if you do have that kind of lingering either resentment or questioning or just desire to switch
off, it's as you see people interacting with one another, that just very slowly starts to wear,
wear down one's defenses, and opens people up to then ask questions. So then you're more in one
Peter kind of territory, and thinking about, well, yeah, why do you believe this stuff? Give me a
reason for the hope that you have. Okay. Do you see this kind of thing happening? Just life,
just life in the church you're a member of? Yeah, I, one of the things that raises for me is thinking
about if I'm, if I'm preaching, if I'm doing evangelistic work, if I'm doing one to one,
whatever ministry I'm involved in, if I have somebody who at least outwardly says, this stuff
seems very irrelevant to my life, this seems, again, sort of almost some sort of medieval sort
of superstitious stuff. You know, how do you how do you come at that? I'd be curious, you know,
one thought would be, well, I want to sort of then present myself as, as very much a normal person to
they can relate. And I want to show how the things that I'm thinking sort of slide right into the
life and the culture that you know, and are comfortable with. And actually, it's not all
that weird at all. And let me show you how. And often, I think that's a direction we want to pursue
in churches, and we want everyone to be comfortable. The other direction, though, that sometimes you
hear coming, are you hear stories about younger people, millennials and things who find themselves
in, you know, churches where some of the distinctions and the differences are really
emphasized. So sometimes this is what we're hearing about people who find themselves wandering into
more liturgical worship, where they're sort of really emphasizing the the strangeness and the
the ways in which the Christian faith is a word from somewhere else. It's not like what you are
used to. And I'm wondering if you is that do you think there's any place for emphasizing the sort
of strangeness of Christianity, and almost to wake people up from their apathy and say, actually,
you know, something's happening here, when these people gather for this thing we call worship,
that is really a word from without. This is something unlike what you're going to find
at, you know, IKEA or the shopping center. This is something, yeah, strange, different.
I don't know, just thinking about how does the church itself and worship present an opportunity
to sort of rouse people out of their apathetic indifference and wake them up a bit. Yeah,
that's that reminded me of something that I spoke with a great guy called Philip Gough,
with Justin Breilly on his Unbelievable program. And he was saying something very similar to,
I think, to what you were just suggesting there, Matt, where he will go into cathedrals
and into these spaces because they evoke kind of a sense of awe and a sense of other and a sense of
just wonder that has just been lost elsewhere. And at these sacred spaces, he recognizes them as such.
But he'd call himself a believer who doesn't believe. He wants the almost the fruit of that
kind of experience, but not the object and the contents of the one who provides that.
And so, you know, I mean, we're probably going a bit off piece now, but
spaces in particular, and where's Matthew Sleeman? I'm sure he'd be able to speak much more into this.
But, you know, the grandeur of the architecture is so evocative and is able to communicate in ways
that transcends human speech. At some points, I mean, I think John, he's recording this,
he was trying to find a picture for your upcoming blog piece, I think, online. And I was, and he
found this, I noticed that he was looking at one of the big cathedrals in Vienna. And every year,
I usually kind of get to go to this cathedral at St. Stephen's, right in the center of Vienna.
Mozart was there as a choir boy, and it's just this incredible, incredible kind of stunning
architecture. And people come, people come to the services there because of the building.
But then the question is, how do you keep people there? So thinking about how do you evoke the
otherness, you know, particularly in worship settings, I guess that isn't so much my own
experience. So mine is more kind of thinking about how do we create spaces that excavate and dig up
the desirability of the Christian faith, which includes wonder and awe in our communication,
but not so much in terms of the actual room in which it's taking place. So usually far more
trapped in this. So you can, is this right? You kind of think that the ministry of a local church,
if it majors on the rational defense of the gospel, it's not that that's a wrongheaded thing.
We need to give reasons. There will be people want to say, tell me the evidence for the,
you claim in the resurrection, give me some evidence. And we're not going to,
and we're not going to say I have nothing to say. But actually for most, is this what you're saying
for most people increasingly? That's not why they don't believe. Yeah, absolutely. And for a
particular age groups, especially, so very much for kind of baby boomers, the question was,
show me the evidence for the resurrection, show me that this is trustworthy. But the downstream of
that generation, you have, you know, millennials, Gen Xs, Gen Zs, who aren't asking those questions
to begin with. They get to those questions, but the questions to begin with are, is this relevance
my life? Apathy? Is this desirable? Is this livable? Can I wear this? And then if they've
seen that this is desirable, they then ask, well, is it true? And so the ordering has kind of changed
past 10 to 15 years. Do you think it's an, is it an act of faithlessness on behalf of the church,
on behalf of the church to say, okay, if people are asking, is it relevant? I'm going to address
that. If they're asking, is it workable? I'm going to present the gospel like that. There might always
be perhaps something in some kinds of evangelicalism, which have a sense of, if I start on that foot,
am I, am I being a little bit unfaithful to, to the truth? How do you work that one through?
Mm. Oh, that's such a lovely question. And I guess that would be something that, I mean, I,
you know, that comes up in most of our hearts to some extent when you're thinking there are
particular well-trodden ways in which we, which we present the gospel. And if we, in some ways,
kind of deviate from that, then we feel like we're now being unfaithful, as you say. And I guess this
isn't actually a, an undermining of that. It's more of a blossoming of what is already there.
And so, I mean, one of the things that I've noticed in my own Christian life, and, you know,
this might be completely wrong, so please correct me, is that we're very quick to talk about
propositional statements of, of truth. But often in the preaching, at least, that I've heard,
it hasn't quite resounded in my heart in such a way that I think, ah, yeah, God, God loves me.
I know he loves sinners, and I know he loves these people, but how, how is this actually relevant to
me in my life? I can intellectually assent to it. And of course, it's the power of the Spirit and
his work who, who illumines that to our hearts. But how, you know, the word on fire, you know,
how do we, we preach, how do we preach the word in such a way that, that hearts are gripped?
And so I think thinking about desire, like relevance, those kind of questions of desirability,
should probably be part and parcel of our preaching anyway. So this isn't a separation of that.
It's more just foregrounding it and, well, your homiletics guide him. So, you, you, much more to say on this.
You just do my job for me, so just keep going, preach it, sister.
Oh, yeah. So I, I, I, it's more kind of foregrounding these things rather than,
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In some way, diminishing the gospel.
Yeah. So the way we're preaching and teaching, it's, it's always going to be communicating
either this is a beautiful, attractive truth or it's not. It's, you can't just say, I convey the truth
and we'll leave all the aesthetics and how it feels and whether it's a,
whether it's a beautiful thing or not. And you can't just leave that all outside because
the people listening to it, they're not just minds. Yes. They're whole people.
Yes. And even to you, you're communicating this truth is beautiful or you communicating.
It's kind of not, but, but you're never not addressing that issue.
Yeah. And if you want communicating it away, that is beautiful.
And there's a question of, are you actually communicating the truth?
Okay. And don't you think what do you think?
If you're not communicating away, that's beautiful. Are you communicating the truth? Yeah. I mean,
I think the Christian message has, has a beauty to it that is inseparable from its, its truth.
I mean, they are in a sense, two sides of the same coin. God is perfectly true. He's perfectly
beautiful. And when we think about that, and we think about preaching, we think about ministry,
I think about, again, this question of apathy. And now, you know, we're almost now talking about
the lives of believers, aren't we? Professing believers, professing Christians who struggle
with actually the same cultural factors that are weighing on our non-Christian friends are weighing
on all of us as well, aren't they? We also live in a world with incredible options for entertainment
and things to do with our time, things to distract us. You know, we have these phones in our pockets,
obviously, that have this whole world brought right to us. And I think Christians feel that
pole as well and feel, okay, you know, is there something here that is, that I can get excited
about? And communicating that as opposed to just the sort of more, here's five reasons for the
resurrection, but here's why the resurrection actually is the most significant event ever that
speaks to your deepest longings and this kind of thing. How do you communicate that? Well,
seems to be just as relevant for Christians as non-Christians.
So Christie's just bringing this into land. Let's just think about just the lives of local churches.
We're all members of local churches. I think this is an issue for every Christian,
pastors as well, but certainly for every Christian. I was really intrigued by that switch you were
talking about, you know, in general terms, as you were saying, if maybe in the past, a lot of people
were coming with, they wanted to know about evidence, show me the evidence for the resurrection. I'm a
scientific kind of person. Opening question. Now, fewer people, that's their approach.
More often, their approach is almost, there is no approach other than,
hey, I'm cool if you're cool and it's all fine. Now you're saying, well, stick with people.
And if they see something of the quality of the lives of Christians,
the life in Christ that he's brought in the spirit, that we live in our local churches,
if they can see some of that over a period of time, they will begin to ask,
now tell me the reason for the hope. But I think I wrestled with this a bit as a pastor.
And I still wrestle it now. Now I'm no longer a pastor, but a member of a church.
So how do you stay in relationship with people? How can, what can churches do? What can members
of churches do? What do we need maybe to tweak in the way we just do our life as Christians?
To allow people in while they're not asking any questions at all, apparently, at least on the
surface. Yeah, it's, it's, I've been thinking about this recently. And as I look at my own life and I
look at the, the friendships that I have, and this might not be true for everyone. And it's much
harder now actually living here than it has been before, but it's, it's cultivating and maintaining
genuine friendships with people, not because you want to at some point preach the gospel to them.
Though that would be wonderful to be able to share such goodness with them. But because you
want to honor and love and care for them as a fellow human being made in the image of God,
people very quickly can see through any kind of tactics and sincerity. Right. So we can all do
that. And so thinking then, well, what does it look like for me to cultivate and to maintain those
kind of relationships? It can be very difficult and it very much depends, doesn't it, on our age
and stage in life, our particular commitments, family commitments, all sorts of things. But one
thing that most of us will have after university at some point is either a work, a workplace, or a
hobby, or a favorite book, or a favorite meal, or a restaurant that we like going to, or a
music that we like listening to, or a play that we want to go and see. Really it's just thinking,
do what you, I remember somebody, Jason Clark, he's in Sheffield. I remember there was one talk
that he gave when I, when I worked for UCCF and he just said, just do what you love and take Jesus
with you. And that just really stuck with me actually. And so I think one of the, one of the
things I'd encourage, you know, just, just Christians, church leaders, whomever they are,
just Christians, church leaders, whomever they may be, is how to encourage one another, as brothers
and sisters in Christ, to do what we, do what we love and to take Jesus with us. So if that's,
if that's sports, join a local sports team and get to know, get to know the other people on that,
on that team, you know, invest in them, care for them, and cultivate those genuine relationships
there so that when they see you and they're, they're prompted and provoked to ask questions,
they will, you've got that, it's trust and it's trust that is so lacking at the, at the moment,
particularly thinking about, you know, post-truth issues and all sorts of other things which you
haven't had time to talk about. But most of the time, most people are thinking, who can I trust?
And they're watching you if they know that you're a Christian, they're looking for reasons to either
distrust you or reasons to think, how can I share my deepest pain with you? And so what does it look
like for us to kind of cultivate those kinds of relationships that are genuine, it's not, you know,
project kind of centered, but person centered. And as you say, keep at it.
And then presumably, when a moment arises, when maybe one of those questions that's suppressed
starts to bubble up, you will then at that point have the credibility, the relational credibility
to speak and to be heard and to potentially communicate something that would have been very
difficult, if not impossible to communicate to that person, had you sort of gone in cold, as it were.
Yeah, and then you've got those questions, have you ever wondered, you know, why I'm a Christian
or whatever it is you're talking about? Why do you say that in response to something that you
might be reading or something that's happened? And what do you mean by that? You know, they're just,
they're very easy questions to ask, but they keep the conversation going. Because often we ask the
first question of, oh, what do you think? But we struggle to ask the second follow up question,
which is on how a conversation develops. And I tell you where this where I know this
bites me personally, and I doubt I'm very unusual in this. This takes time. And this requires patience.
And there will often be little discernible fruit. And if you're the kind of person who's wired that
you want your life to be a series of projects, and you want your life in your ministry to be,
well, I achieved this and I tick this box and I achieved that and tick that box. This just doesn't
fit with that at all, does it? I don't think I know anybody who sets out into ministry thinking,
let's make people into projects. But it's incredibly easy to fall into when you want a sense of my
church is a success, my ministry is a success, I'm a success. Because the kind of thing you're
talking about is just going to be days, months, years relating to people. And who knows what the
Lord will produce out of that. And much of that comes by way of Dallas Willard, the philosopher,
theologian talked about the ruthless elimination of hurry, because a lot of some of the reason why
we are so project centered is so busy. So we think, oh, you know, there are 10 minutes to be able to
talk to this person half an hour to talk to this person. But it doesn't mean that we're not busy,
but eliminating that hurry. Because again, people know when you're in a hurry, you're in a hurry.
Because again, people know when you're visiting, you need to go and you're not going to cultivate
a genuine relationship in that time. But also it just does take time. The friend that I mentioned
earlier on, we've been friends now for 22, 23 years. And in some ways, it's familiarity at the
moment, which is making it even more difficult to speak. Because either I'm the exception to the
rule, like, Christy, I know that you're not homophobic, I know that you're not this, but
all these other people are. So that's why for me, encouraging her into community, it would be such
a great thing for her to see that this isn't just me, this is a whole, these are redeemed people who
are thinking this in very similar but very different ways. And there's diversity, there's
unity and diversity. And so, yeah, and none of this is to say that we shouldn't speak.
I think the more most of us, if there were a spectrum between talking and not talking,
most of us would probably be on the talking end of it. So I'm just wanting to kind of, for those
of us who might be there, to encourage us to be more down here. But for those of us who might be
more down here and a bit timid and will never speak, even if there was the opportunity,
just to encourage them with those questions to start the conversation, you don't need to have
all the answers. You don't need to know X, Y and Z about Dawkins or about the resurrection. In fact,
the most significant thing that was ever said to me when I was looking into the claims of Jesus
for myself was my mum in response to a question that I asked her, when she said, I don't know.
And that just spoke volumes to me, because I'd been speaking to Christians up to that point,
who had given me all these nice ideas, and I could tell that they didn't know what they were
talking about. They just very much wanted to proffer something. And you don't actually know
what you're talking about. I don't trust you because you actually know what you believe for a
start. But my mum said, I don't know. And just pierced right through it. And I thought, ah,
there's something here, because you're willing to tell me you don't know. And then she said she
wanted to find out and we could talk about it together later. And again, that just helped me
that that just helped me so much in my own conversations when it came to receiving Jesus
for myself. So sorry, there's a lot there. Great. Christy, thank you very much. Really
enjoyed chatting with you. Thank you, Christy. Thanks for standing in, Matt. I'll let you know
if you've got the gig or if it'll be... No, no, no. Maybe it'll be you and Eric next time. Who knows?
That's true. Great. Thanks, friends. Thank you.