The old saying is ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ But could the spark of story telling, and celebrating faith increase evangelism in churches and on university campuses everywhere?
National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students Richard Chin is emphasising the importance of prayer, through what he calls a 'two-for-two' model, and asks churches to join him in consistent branding in a nationwide push to introduce people to Jesus.
We discuss practical steps to integrate evangelism into the church's DNA, champion the role of head, heart, and hand in fostering a consistent culture of outreach.
Rory Shiner is senior pastor of Providence Church, Perth and Chair of the Gospel Coalition Australia.
Baden Stace leads the ministry team at St Stephens Normanhurst in Sydney’s north.
Elliot Temple is missions pastor at Christ Church St Ives also in Sydney’s north.
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The old saying is ‘A rising tide lifts all boats.’ But could the spark of story telling, and celebrating faith increase evangelism in churches and on university campuses everywhere?
National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students Richard Chin is emphasising the importance of prayer, through what he calls a 'two-for-two' model, and asks churches to join him in consistent branding in a nationwide push to introduce people to Jesus.
We discuss practical steps to integrate evangelism into the church's DNA, champion the role of head, heart, and hand in fostering a consistent culture of outreach.
Rory Shiner is senior pastor of Providence Church, Perth and Chair of the Gospel Coalition Australia.
Baden Stace leads the ministry team at St Stephens Normanhurst in Sydney’s north.
Elliot Temple is missions pastor at Christ Church St Ives also in Sydney’s north.
--
Become a regular financial supporter of The Pastor's Heart via Patreon.
It's the Pastors' Heart in Dominic Steele and today church is working together so people might meet Jesus and a full crew today Richard Chin, elliot Temple, baden Stace and Rory Shiner. There's a saying a rising tide lifts all boats and in evangelistic fervour we want to see the boats rise. But how do we increase the mission heat in church? And how can we do that? By working together. There are plans under foot for an Australia-wide Meet Jesus campaign. Richard Chin leads the University Campus Ministry across Australia. He's the National Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. Baden Stace is the senior pastor of St Stephen's Anglican Church in Normanhurst to Sydney's North Elliot. Temple is mission pastor of Christchurch St Ives, also in the North of Sydney and with us remotely from Western Australia. Rory Shiner he is the Chair of the Gospel Coalition Australia and senior pastor of Providence Church in Perth. Elliot, I wonder if we could start with you, for your pastor's heart is to increase the mission heat that in a busy church we would be focused on reaching the lost.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because when you turn up to church and there's all these people in the room, it's really easy to focus on the people in the room. But our heart is shaped by God's heart, His vision for all nations. So raising the heat is about helping our church lift our eyes up and out and constantly having a kingdom vision. And in our church, one of the things that brings me joy it's not just telling people to lift your eyes and lift them up and out. So it's when you hear stories like in late last year a young person who put their faith in Christ then introduced his friend in January this year to put their faith in Christ, and you see the joy on their face. When people get up and share their faith and are celebrated in the congregation, it just keeps reminding us to keep looking outward and sharing the good news of Jesus.
Speaker 1:So, richard Chin, I wonder there's all sorts of things to ask you about in terms of outcomes and goals and all those kind of things for this Meet Jesus campaign. But perhaps you could take us back to its genesis. So I'm imagining there was a group of you sitting around in some dusty, dark room of planning meeting.
Speaker 3:Yeah, dungeon dark inside the hallowed halls of St Andrews Hall, actually in Melbourne, if you believe such dark hall that is, but St Andrews Hall, the mission's training centre for the CMS is where actually a group of us gathered, Although that was to come up with this title Meet Jesus. But the genesis really went back to how do we increase the temperature of evangelism across?
Speaker 1:the country. So it's the same question that, elliot Scott, you were starting your thinking on the university campus this year, correct? And how do you increase the temperature of evangelism across the country?
Speaker 3:Well, firstly, ensure that we share our heart with God's heart, which is a heart for the lost. It's Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. It's an adoring Christ for who he is, because when we understand that he alone is worthy of all glory, honour and power, only then will it start to convict us of what we need to do with our lives. And so it's firstly understanding who Jesus is. And one thing's for sure our knowledge of Christ is small, and the bigger it is, that's when we start to think big thoughts his way. So it's the heart.
Speaker 3:And then, of course, it's relying on human prayer. And so one of the big things, really even though we've got this meet Jesus thing happening is prayer. And so we've tried to come up with this simple two for two thing, which is praying for two unbelieving friends for two minutes daily, and we can get all our people doing that, our ministers doing that, our staff doing that, our student leaders, our parishioners, our elders and the like. If that's the first thing that we do, two minutes of every meeting that we go to, that alone would be revival. Who knows what God's going to do with those prayers to start off with. And then, secondly, if we model that and we're doing that, and we see the people whom we pray for on the streets or whatever. We're going to do something about that, aren't we? So it's prayer foundationally, and then the other stuff with regard to the meet Jesus theme.
Speaker 1:We did come around. How did that title come about? That meet Jesus title?
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, we argued about it. So what was this? What was this?
Speaker 1:What were the some of the ones you?
Speaker 3:threw away. Encountering Jesus. Jesus is great, jesus is king. Do you know Jesus? You know a number of things, so we put it in the categories of questions, of statements, of imperatives. But we figured that meet Jesus At one level.
Speaker 3:A number of us thought that was the lamest of the titles, but in the end we could see that that was a generic one that really did work well and to allow the individuality of application across the country, we said why don't you come up with your own taglines, just meet Jesus, or meet Jesus, find life or whatever it is. But meet Jesus, in the end, was the substantive, generic title that we thought we could all go with as the background noise that we hope could be there for everyone to actually engage with. And then we could do our own individual taglines. But the big idea behind that on top of prayer, of course, which is the foundational thing is to create this background noise across the whole nation, where possible across our churches, our campuses, our cities, so that people will think what's this meet Jesus thing? I'm going to see it and it's the same branding. So the secret is branding. You thought it was the gospel, wasn't?
Speaker 1:it, but it's branding.
Speaker 3:But it's branding that, of course, is inconsistent. I'm sorry, it's consistent with the gospel itself.
Speaker 1:Okay, let's go to Perth, and to Rory Shiner, I take it. Rory Richard rang you up and said I've come up with this plan.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So Richard did ring me up and we heard about this meet Jesus campaign. As with my TGC hat on, we were very keen to jump on board. I think for a couple of reasons. Firstly because I think the Missiology is right, as in the campaign is that very simple pray for two people and seek opportunities to read the Gospel of John with them. To our mind that is that's exactly right. That's the kind of interpersonal, low-key but achievable way of thinking about mission in our particular context. And the second thing was you had that advantage of the national profile Really powerful, I think, to have. You know it's not a Billy Graham 1959 big events type of approach, but it is that taking opportunities with the internet and a variety of partner organisations to just make the meat Jesus idea more plausible, as it's just around, as you can kind of point to the advertising and the graphics and so on. That's the thing that we're really excited about with the meat Jesus campaign.
Speaker 1:Now Baden Stace, your senior pastor at St Stephen's, Norman Hurst, but working witha group of churches. How did you grab hold of this idea and run with it?
Speaker 5:Well at the local level. We're always trying to promote confidence in evangelism. We're trying to promote a culture of evangelism, always trying to talk at church about people coming to know Jesus and how that happens. We're trying to promote a context for evangelism in church and one-to-one discipleship and investigative courses.
Speaker 5:But the fruit of our meat Jesus initiative really grew out of the fellowship of five senior ministers on the upper north side of Sydney and we've been gathering together for prayer and encouragement for over about 18 months. And we would just ask each other how are you going? What are you doing, what are you trying? What's working? How are you feeling? Can we do something together? And we began to think about a focused season of mission which, as it happens, was already pre-planned to be the April of this year. We contacted more college and we want to connect with the feeder ministry of more college, and so we have arranged four mission teams around about 70 more college students to come to these five parishes on the upper north side of Sydney. We've arranged one signature event with Kinesh Garafal, the Archbishop of Sydney, coming to preach at a large scale event.
Speaker 1:We're hoping to fill a large venue and the invitation he was telling me last week he's pretty excited about his visit.
Speaker 5:We're very excited. We're really hoping and praying fervently that we will fill that venue and that it'll be a significant moment for the Gospel. On the upper north side of Sydney and all of the churches have been praying praying over a series of months and we're getting down to the weeks leading up to the mission and we're praying weekly together and in the final 24 hours we're praying 24-hourly. So we're really praying for a great season and we've got these more college students about 70 coming to live with the families and the parishes and to do a whole range of mission activities in the parishes themselves. So one signature event with Kinesh Garafal. Kinesh Garafal has a wonderful story to tell himself of meeting Jesus. A person gave him the Gospel of John when he was a university student. He read it so compelled by the person of Jesus that leapt from the pages. He gave his life to Christ.
Speaker 5:But the invitation to meet Jesus and to do mission under this banner came sort of later in the piece. We were sort of workshopping ideas. You know what kind of theme could we be doing this under? And it was really the invitation of AFES to use the material that they had put together. That we thought was terrific. In fact, it was Kineshka who emailed the senior ministers of the diocese with this invitation to say AFS and making this material available to you. I'll leave it with you. So we workshopped that idea as a bunch of senior ministers. We thought it was great. The tagline was just nice and clear and simple and not an oversell we just want you to take the first step of meeting Jesus. That's how our Meet Jesus initiative has taken shape and we're really excited.
Speaker 1:Elliot, as I've thought about it, there's really two sorts of churches. There's the church that's already got an evangelism plan and already got a pipeline structure going, and then the, I suppose, the less organized, less planned ad hoc church. You're definitely in the former category. How are you making use of the Meet Jesus campaign?
Speaker 2:Yeah. So at a micro level and for the church that's just wanting to take a small step, we're simply running a Meet Jesus event and using the uncover gospel of John. But I want to suggest that at a macro level, we're actually trying to imitate a lot of the principles that AFS are modeling here. And just a shout out to the way that I've observed over many years, afs has a gospel generosity that goes beyond the people who are gathered. Afs has for many years given people a vision of evangelism to take the gospel out, but also sending missionaries overseas. And I was at a conference recently with CMS Summer School or the Church Missionary Society, and they said university campuses have outstripped parishes in having a global vision and sending missionaries. And that's a challenge in my parish, that we want to actually rise to our global passion. And what I'm seeing with Richard and with AFS is that there's a generosity of we're offering our resources. We're offering you know, we're building the brand. We're doing all these things Not because in our patch we will get all the benefit, but because we want glory to go to God. So there's a gospel generosity that I want to copy in my parish and what that means in Christchurch and I's is that at a macro level, we started the year with a vision for mission, just as you've said about for AFS. You could have started the year with all kinds of visions, but you said I want Australia to get behind this thing where everyone can meet Jesus, and I want to pray and I want to gather people to pray and build momentum about people meeting Jesus.
Speaker 2:So at Christchurch we're organized from the beginning of the year to the end of the year every year around setting a big vision, talking big vision every Sunday and helping our groups that meet during the week to keep orienting towards that vision.
Speaker 2:At a very practical level, what that means at the moment is all through our church, through our small groups and everywhere, we're training people to lift their eyes to specific names to pray about for mission. And we're moving towards Easter where at Easter we will invite people to take the next step, because you get guests at Easter and the next step will become and meet Jesus at the Meet Jesus event. And then at the Meet Jesus event, we'll be inviting people to look at Jesus in the Gospel of John using uncover. So it's quite a long answer just to say that at the macro level, we want to set a big vision or year, but the Meet Jesus thing if you want to just take a small step, you can simply start by running one event and stepping in to think at that event what am I wanting to achieve and what's my next step? And how can I help people look at Jesus in the Gospel, in this case in the Gospel of John, so that they might discover how great he is and want to follow him?
Speaker 1:I like what you're saying there in terms of pipeline. You really thought through pipeline well.
Speaker 2:Well, I suspect that churches that have the time and energy that give thought to pipeline will spend a lot of time constructing a bit of a schedule for the year where you're not only imagining a vision, where you get people on board and get people involved, but you're also reinforcing that regularly with storytelling and celebration. So it's quite simple really. In the end, all we do is keep gathering with eyes lifted to the world, the Bible. Whenever you preach a scripture, it doesn't just apply to people in the room, it applies to everyone in the whole world. It's a universal message for all people. So why do we often stop at application within the room? We want to, every Sunday, be lifting preaching to think global. We want to meet in growth groups and small group gatherings where, instead of just applying it to the needs in the room, we're thinking how does this apply beyond the room and within that culture? If you have a plan, any plan that gets people working together, it increases a culture of evangelism.
Speaker 1:Rory, if we could just ask you to take off your hat as chair of the Gospel Coalition Australia and put on your hat as senior pastor of Providence Church in Perth. Can you talk to us about how you guys are hoping this will play out on the ground in your local context?
Speaker 4:Yeah, look, we are using it very similar to what Elliot has described. We're actually doing it now. So the big focus for us will be in August and there's an evangelistic event that's a kind of city-wide AFES hosted event. So there'll be an increase in kind of public presence then. But at the moment actually, in fact tomorrow night, we have our second reading, john meet Jesus by reading John's gospel session, and we've put the word out this year Every quarter we run an evangelistic kind.
Speaker 4:Of course we normally use a taste and see course, but this term we're doing John's gospel and it's just been fantastic. We've been preaching through it on Sundays and we have a. I think there were like 11 people there last week and it's just. We literally just read through John's gospel, use these five R's, five questions. It's very easy to run and it's always encouraging because we've also got that two for two thing people praying for two people that they know that they want to know Jesus and just as well as bringing them before God, it means that they're in your mind so that whenever you say, hey, we've got a group reading John's gospel, we know that people in church are thinking about the people that they can invite along. So we've seen some early fruit for that and it's.
Speaker 4:It is one of those things that once you, once you see it, you can't unsee it. Once you think, oh, there is such a thing as people, and quite a lot of people, who, given relational capital, would come and read the gospel of John in a kind of safe and cheerful environment. It's a real game changer in the way you think about the mission field. You think, wow, they're out there and they would, you know, put aside time and energy to meet Jesus through the gospel of John. So that's what we're doing and, just as a local church pastor, I'm very excited about the prospects for the year.
Speaker 1:Richard, what about the church, where actually it's not going that well in evangelism?
Speaker 3:at the moment. A couple of thoughts there. I really love what our brothers are doing. In the first place, they are embodying the culture that we hope to nurture across all our organisations and churches. Firstly, with Elliot, it's embodying the long game, the infinite game, to use cynics. To them, it's about world mission, it's about seeing the gospel go to the ends of the earth and the finite game is the Easter services. So it's actually the big thing in terms of what Baden is doing. He's actually collaborating with a whole bunch of churches and what we're seeing is being able to collaborate with this little tool, really. And so for the church that perhaps is less organised because of lack of opportunity, I want to suggest it's thinking about that long game but nurturing a culture of evangelism.
Speaker 3:I've got a simple acronym which has actually been embodied through what's been said, and that is MAPS. It's modelling, it's articulating, it's praying, setting up a system, and the system involves telling lots of stories, and I've just worked this S in celebrating. So it's MAPS, right. So how do you do it? You model it first with your own heart. That is, you adore Christ. You see the lost who needs to be saved. You articulate that to the people in front of you, you pray about it in your own lives, and if this two for two things takes off, then you're just praying that with your elders, with all your Bible study group leaders, with the people in the pew. You're asking to do that. That in and of itself should do something, doesn't it? And then the system well, here's a low hanging fruit system. Jump on board with us, a branding thing called Meet Jesus. The greatest weapon we have outside of prayer is the Word of God. Right, it's the sort of the Spirit which is the Word of God. Hence, read John's Gospel with someone, these five R's that Rory was talking about. It's very simple, anybody can do it. You don't need a degree, it's just you get to someone with someone, you look at John 3 with Nicodemus and you ask you retell the story together. Then you ask how do the characters like Nicodemus react to Jesus? What does it reveal about Jesus? How does Nicodemus respond to Jesus? How should I respond to Jesus? They're the five R's. It's really simple, isn't it? Anybody can do that. And so, in terms of a system, we can actually have a go at doing that, inviting unbelievers to actually read the Gospel of John with them, and then we just tell stories.
Speaker 3:The last night we had a prayer meeting on Zoom. We have a monthly prayer meeting. We had over 100 people there. We shared stories, lots and lots of stories.
Speaker 3:I wanted Baden to share his story about the collaborating with Jesus. Unfortunately he couldn't make it, so I told his story right. And then other people were telling stories and it was people having a go and people failing and people crying, but also people having a go, and the story after story after story helps people to understand. Oh, my goodness, maybe I could actually do that. I could actually pray for starters, even if I haven't opened my mouth about Jesus. I can actually pray for starters and make that a two minute thing. I can actually have a go at the shopping center and bring my tote bag that says no Jesus on it and see what happens, or something like that. To have a go or say God bless you at the counter or something like that. To have a go and see what happens. So it's people having a go. Last story, if I may, is that there's Mark Devo, who many of us know. I've had the privilege of going to his church. We Baptist pastor in Washington.
Speaker 1:DC.
Speaker 3:Baptist pastor in Washington DC In his congregation. In the evenings they gather and they're just telling stories about their evangelistic efforts and, if I understand rightly, they're baptizing about eight or 10 people each month. Right, and he starts to get a twitch if they're not baptizing people. And in the Baptist setting with Mark Devo, you know they're really converted. Right, they're really converted before they're baptized, because they really are, and I think there's a culture that's going on there of having a go. And so for the church that is less organized, let's go with maps, modeling it and articulating praying. Setting up this system and telling up stories with one another is my suggestion.
Speaker 1:As a since we have this moment. I really like the idea of justice having a common brand, and I'm watching in a Facebook group I'm in and somebody said my Easter advertising has fallen apart. Can you share and help me with what Easter advertising you've got? But actually, and then a whole lot of people have put up their different Easter banners. But actually we've all invested energy in having a creative department that has, to varying degrees of success, produced a Easter banner and yet actually the work of communicating the gospel with a banner and a brand at our place in Annandale is not that different to Norman Hurst and not that different to Sonnoves. And you guys have provided us with a service of of the bare minimum, giving us a banner that we can operate together in a united way. Do you agree, babe?
Speaker 5:You're not I do. We're immensely thankful for the Gospel generosity and vision of AFES in this initiative. It's blessed us tremendously.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so I say, let's do it again next year.
Speaker 3:We're very open to that. That'll be wonderful, but just do keep praying about it. I really have seen that in and of itself do something to shake the nation in terms of raising that temperature, and I'm hearing this two-for-two thing happening and you know, last night in that prayer meeting it was my two-for-two is this, and my two-for-two is this and my two-for-two is that, and I just love that language and one of our sisters.
Speaker 1:Well, even when we were on the phone the other week, we prayed for our two-each. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's right, and if that just becomes that culture, then that in and of itself is going to ripple, is it not? And if you have, congregations to that.
Speaker 1:The thing that came out of out for me in my conversation was that with you was I thought ah, if I really want this to take hold in my church, then every conversation I have with every leader about whether I'm talking to them about what went wrong with the production team last week or whatever I've got to be doing those two-for-two prayers as part of that conversation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it's two minutes, the first two minutes of each conversation. Wouldn't that be a great thing to do, with people, obviously, who are comfortable to pray? That'd be great, okay.
Speaker 1:Head, heart and hand. Where are we getting it wrong?
Speaker 3:I watched the episode with Andrew Herd and also with Archie Poulos and I think they're on the money. It's that famous phrase in it if the pain of not changing is worse than the pain of change, you're not going to change. So it's the conviction in those areas, but certainly in terms of systems that you're setting up, if it's just status quo and you know that that's painful you're not going to do anything unless that pain really is worse than the pain of actually changing. So I think it's all three really. It's looking out at the streets and recognizing most of these people are heading to hell without Christ. It's that burning passion and then the conviction that will lead to a change of some kind. And we hope that this Meet Jesus campaign is a simple change, beginning with prayer. Right, it's not the branding, that's the first thing, it's the prayer thing that is part of the whole package, and so the heart will lead to the prayers, and the prayers we pray will lead to a simple change with things like branding and other things.
Speaker 1:Rory Shiner head, heart and hand.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I think that's part of the attraction of the whole process, that if you begin, as Richard says, with prayer, I think it fosters your heart because you're praying for actual people, you're not just praying generically, and that does move your heart toward God and toward those people and it actually when you throw that vision out there, I noticed that on average, the average Christian in the average church really loves Jesus and really wants people to know him, and so it changes hearts but also reveals hearts, and I think it's to my mind, it's overwhelmingly a good news story that when you give people a plausible way of being involved in the work of Jesus, in evangelism, people rise to that and on average they're like yeah, cool, great, I love Jesus and I love my friends. So I think heart is where it needs to begin, and I think it's one of the most attractive things about the campaign is the way it begins with actual names of people and bringing them before God.
Speaker 3:Pardon.
Speaker 5:Dominique, there is a sense in which there's no perfect time for evangelism, and yet it's always the perfect time for evangelism. It's the sovereignty of God that drives us to reach the lost. I think at that moment with the Apostle Paul, acts 18, he's discouraged, he's tempted to give up, and the Lord says don't give up, keep speaking. I have many people in this city and it drives him to continue his ministry. And it's that conviction in the sovereignty of God that we know God has purposed to save people that drives us to get busy, to try new things and to get busy in evangelism. And even if you look back to the historic Crusades, it's not like they just happened or appeared. They found themselves surfing the crest of a wave that was ordained by the Lord in many senses, but as a conglomeration of churches they got busy, they collaborated, they prayed and in time those initiatives built into something far bigger. And I see that sort of thing and those possibilities happening in this sort of initiative and tremendously encouraging Haley at.
Speaker 2:Temple. A final word I'll piggyback off the sovereignty of God and say I feel that we struggle to trust God in our evangelism and when we pray, god is listening. And I have a quick story that there was a man who started to pray for someone he hadn't seen in two years. We're encouraging everyone to write down some names and pray about them. And he wrote down a name, went home and prayed and then he had a phone call from that man saying I don't know why I chose to call you. I just felt like I hadn't thought of you in a while and I wanted to call you and speak to you. And the man who's in our staff team said I know why you called me. It's because I prayed for you this morning.
Speaker 2:It was a story of coming back to prayer everywhere. I keep hearing Richard saying this is a movement of prayer. When I spoke to you on the phone, all you wanted to talk about was prayer, sovereignty of God. God listens to prayers and when we aim, as God does, for people to surrender the need to Jesus here's at work with us we can take confidence. Let's not aim so low that we have a goal of just getting a few people to an event. Let's aim to introduce people to Jesus, opening the Bible and letting him run off the pages of scriptures and into their lives as we pray, trusting God will do it.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for coming in my guests on the Pastors' Heart, elliot Temple. He is the Mission Pastor at Christchurch, st Ives Baden Stace, the Senior Minister of St Stephen's Anglican Church in Normanhurst. Rory Shiner, the Chair of the Gospel Coalition Australia and Senior Minister of Providence Church in Perth. And Richard Chin, national Director of the Australian Fellowship of Evangelical Students. My name's Dominic Steele. You've been with us on the Pastors' Heart and we will look forward to your company next Tuesday afternoon.