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Hello and welcome to the Bible Matters Podcast. In today’s episode, Molly and I sat down with Dr. Kevin DeYoung. Kevin DeYoung is the senior pastor of Christ Covenant Church in North Carolina, and on a recent visit to London, I asked if we could sit down with Kevin and talk about a book which came out a couple of years ago, The Not-So-Secret Secret to Reaching the Next Generation. It’s a really short book, but a really wonderful meditation and consideration on how we as believers reach young people with the gospel. I found this to be a really helpful conversation, and I hope you do too.
This is the Bible Matters podcast, encouraging you in faithful Bible teaching and ministry.
It’s absolutely wonderful to be here today with Dr. Kevin DeYoung, all the way from North Carolina. Is that right? That’s right. Very good to be here. Came out just for the podcast.
Oh, that’s very kind of you, and we’re definitely not paying for your Well, you’re not. That’s true. Yes. Well, I don’t know if you’ve been following it at all, but obviously a lot in the news about people trying to get to the US at the moment for the World Cup, not being able to make it. I know.
Yeah. You chose this week to leave amidst all the— Yeah. So I hope, hope they’ll let us back in. Yeah, that’s right. Are you following it at all or?
Yeah. And, uh, at least tomorrow as we’re recording this is England’s first game. Yeah. So I’m excited to watch that. It’s coming home, I hear.
It is coming home. Will you be watching? Face paint on, do you think? Uh, no, likely not. I do think I might come to regret this.
I might have to edit this out, but I am fairly convinced we’re actually winning it this year. You think so? I really do. I mean, I could go into it— It’s your best chance in a long time. It is.
It is. Yeah. Best chance. I think it’s the climax of an 8-year journey for this sort of generation of England. How well do they have to do for Brits not to be disappointed?
Um, even if they win, some people will probably complain. That is true. They’ll complain about the manner in which we won or that we let in too many goals. Um, or if we win, the fans often go a bit raucous and that’s usually what makes the headlines. But, um, English fans get raucous, huh?
Yeah. I know. Who’d have thought it? Um, but it’s really good to have you here. I didn’t realise until this afternoon that you’re just here on holiday, actually.
It’s really Very, very grateful. Is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to while you’re here? So I came out here with my 2 oldest daughters. We had been here as a whole family in 2016. I come about once or twice a year somewhere in the UK.
And then my oldest daughter who’s with us, she came out 2 years ago, so she wants to see some things again. And then my younger daughter, she was 4 when she was here, so she doesn’t really remember anything. So we are doing a lot of the, the typical— now the dad list is heavy on Imperial War Museum. Oh, nice. War Rooms, British Museum.
Yeah, National Gallery. Uh, the girls are high on, uh, shopping. Yeah, I want to go to Notting Hill, which I haven’t been to before, but apparently there are the shops. And my daughter has some, some fancy restaurant that she’s getting reservations for tomorrow that’s going to be expensive on Dad’s credit card. But we’ve been, we’ve been enjoying it.
It’s been good weather. We’ve just been walking around seeing all the things. It’s an amazing, amazing city. Yeah, that’s delightful. Well, yep, great to have you here.
I emailed you a couple of days ago when I found out you were coming, and, uh, I’d love to ask you a bit more about this little book. It is very little. It is very little. Possibly a few comments about that later. Um, before I jump into that, just to give a sense for our listeners, I mean, some will be familiar with your works and your books, but just tell us a bit about what you do back in the US.
Ove? Uh, my main job is a pastor. I have been at 3 different churches, 2 as a senior pastor. So I was in East Lansing, Michigan, which is in the northern part of the country, snowy, for 13 years. And then 9 years ago, I moved to North Carolina, Charlotte.
And so I’m a pastor at Christ Covenant Church. It’s PCA, Presbyterian Church in America, which is the, the biggest of the conservative Presbyterian denominations. It’s about 1,500 churches, 400,000 members, so still small in the scheme of things, but it’s a good denomination. It’s growing a teeny bit, which is— most places, most denominations are shrinking, so any little growth is good. It’s one of the bigger churches in the PCA, so we have maybe a couple thousand members and have a big campus and have lots of ministry.
We got some campus ministry mostly through campuses not near our church, but people sent off to other places. We don’t have a major university right by us. And then we have a school for K through 12. I don’t know, do you call it high school or secondary school? Yeah, secondary school before uni.
So we— yeah, it’s a great place. That’s mainly what I do. I also am a professor of systematic theology at Reformed Theological Seminary. In Charlotte. It’s just about 5 miles from our church, so it’s really convenient.
So I teach 3 classes there a year, and we also have about 8 to 10 interns. In fact, we’ve had— we have— we always have 2 or 3 Brits who are over and enjoy doing that. And then I write books and write some articles and have 9 kids. So that’s a lot of good things. Busy, but a great privilege.
It is. It’s amazing. I, you know, I understand why some pastors have a— there are very hard churches, and sometimes the fruit can seem very small, and it can be painful. So I don’t want to mitigate any of that. I feel like pastoring is the best job.
I love being a pastor. I think what a privilege— what everyone else has to do after they, you know, have to take care of the kids or go to work, and then they have to read their Bible in the morning or at night, or they got to pour in for a Sunday. I get paid to spend a big bulk of my week reading the Bible, learning about God, and then announcing the good news on Sunday. So I love being a pastor. Yeah, praise God.
That’s wonderful. And just Charlotte Christ Covenant Church, I think that’s right. Just a bit more of a picture. What kind of people have you got there? Like wide range of demographics, any particular challenges?
Yeah, Charlotte is a booming city in the United States. It’s one of the fastest growing cities. So it’s in the south, but kind of mid-south. So you still get 4 seasons. Okay.
Not much winter, hotter summers, but the Atlantic Ocean is about 3 hours away and the mountains are about 2 hours away, which in American geography is pretty close. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Over here, that’s one side of the country. Yeah. That’s one side of the country. That’s just 2 sides of the state. Sure.
So a lot of people are moving to Charlotte. And we benefit from that. So it’s a great city. Charlotte’s about 1 million people. It’s about 2.5 million people in the whole area.
You know, there’s a professional football team, American football, professional basketball team, so some people would have heard of the Charlotte Hornets or the Carolina Panthers. Our church, like I said, it’s around 2,000 members. It’s a wide-ranging demographic. So there would be a lot of people in our senior adults Sunday school class. So these are 70 and older.
I forget, we have, you know, we have several hundred people who are over 70. But then we also have in our, just our birth through 5th grade, we have about 300 people. And then we have like another 250 in kind of primary, secondary school. So yeah, there’s a good mix of people with a lot of young families who are just moving there, starting out. Now we’re the middle-aged ones and then a lot of people, you know, and some grandparents who just, I’m gonna go live somewhere, my kids are here, or where’s a nice place in the country where it’s more affordable than New York or Boston and I get, it’s not too hot, I get 4 seasons.
So yeah, it’s a pretty good demographic age-wise. I mean, it’s almost entirely, kind of monocultural in that it’s mostly middle class, upper middle class, and, you know, some people, some internationals, not as much nearly as I had at my last church, which was a university town and certainly nothing like you all have in London. So some of that, but it’s a great place to minister. So we’d love to talk to you today about this book, which is The Not-So-Secret Secret to Reaching the Next Generation, which I think both of us have really loved reading. Yeah, I think I initially chose it because I was like, oh, what’s Kevin published in the past few years?
Oh, this one’s small. It’s very small. It’s embarrassingly small. It came in the post and my wife said, is that a book? She said, I think you’re going to finish it in 8 minutes.
There we go. But actually, you know, not just saying this, really worth its weight in gold. Absolutely. And my daughter, she’s 1. And she loves, um, she loves books in general.
She loves turning pages, but she likes turning real pages, not the kind of board books. Oh yeah, yeah. Yeah. Um, and so she’s, if you think mine’s looking a bit dog-eared, I think it’s probably— It’s your 1-year-old. Yeah.
Well, I think maybe because the size in relation to her, it’s kind of like a normal book. Yeah. It’s a book for, for 1-year-olds. And she is, you know, the next generation. She is the next generation.
When, when Crossway wanted to publish it, I said, That’s really— that’s so— it’s like a pamphlet. But they did a nice job. And the thing about little books is people read little books sometimes, even when they take 20 minutes. Sure, sure. Yeah.
And so initially, I think I’m right in saying this was a chapter in another book that you published about 15 years ago? Yeah. Yeah. Another book. It started out as a talk that I gave in a few different places.
I, I can’t remember, probably someone in the States, and I did it here in the UK too, a variation of it. But I think because I wrote with my friend Ted Kluck, Why We’re Not Emergent, which was a big thing for a small time, and that book came out in 2008 or ’09, and that was sort of a hip thing for Gen Xers back then. And so, and I was young at the time, so people would say, oh, well, you’re a pastor of a church, a university church, and So you’re not doing this, which seemed to be the cutting-edge thing. You’re going to have art stations in your church or whatever. So what are you doing?
What? So I would get the question a lot and sometimes even be asked that way. So what’s your secret? How do you have university students at your church? So that’s when I thought about these 5 things and developed it in a talk and then gave that in different places and it became a chapter in a book.
And then that book is no longer. So just, just tweaked a few things and then came out as this little book. Was there something— so I think this came out a couple of years ago. Was there something that prompted you to think, oh, actually this would be a book that would be really useful in kind of 2024 or ’25? Well, it sounds, sounds funny or like it’s not very humble, but just a lot of people gave nice feedback when I would, when I would speak on it in places.
People would say, can I get that in writing somewhere? Or I’d love to have it. Okay, it might be in a chapter somewhere. I’d love to have that and be able to just pass out a whole bunch of them to our church leaders and our ministry leaders. And to your question, was there anything culturally?
It’s amazing how the— what prompted it were some of the cutting-edge things maybe 15 years ago, and they might be different things, but it’s the same. It’s the same impulse that just resurfaces. So I’m old enough now So when I was studying in seminary in the early 2000s, you can sort of track these generations. It was a lot of Rick Warren, Bill Hybels, and there’s a lot of kind of seeker church stuff. And that was sort of how do we do ministry for boomers?
And then I was the young person and it was kind of how to do ministry for Gen Xers. And then millennials was a time that sort of tail end of maybe my wife, and then it’s Gen Z or whatever comes next. Yeah. So it seems like there’s never a shortage of Christians who are saying, if you only do this, this is sort of the secret. And I want to be fair, you know, God’s gracious and he reaches people in all sorts of different churches.
But I, I feel as a pastor and pastors I know, it can feel so discouraging to feel like, wait a minute, so I need to retool my ministry now. I just, just when You can count on it. When Christians figure out what’s cool, it’s not cool anymore, right? It takes us like a half generation to figure it out. And then you start doing some— there’s probably Christians right now who are doing, you know, Harry Potter themes for their— it’s like, guys, that was a long time ago.
But I guess they’re coming out with a new— it all comes back. It all comes back. Yeah. And they’re going to be a new Pride and Prejudice. So you saw it all comes back.
But it’s amazing how often We, we feel like we need to know there’s got to be some secret code, and then I would be relevant to this next generation. And you just— you don’t have to do it. And in fact, there’s a few people who might be gifted for it. And most of us mere mortals, 98% of the pastors who try to do it, you just look really silly. You look like you’re trying to be something you’re not, or you’re trying to be an age you’re not.
So ditch the secret. Yeah, I know, that’s helpful. So your— the premise of the book is, well, you kind of have 5, uh, 5 recommendations. I don’t know what you’d call them, uh, so I’ll try to do them by memory. Grab them with passion, win them with love, hold them in holiness, challenge them with doctrine.
Yeah, or truth. Truth, that’s it. And amaze them with God. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’d love to just kind of go through and get your thoughts just briefly on each of them?
I mean, just as an overview, kind of what led you to these 5? Yeah, I think when I first started thinking about it, you know, I just started jotting down what are, what are some of the things that seem transferable across time and space and seem to be what we see in Scripture, what we see in the apostles’ ministry. It’s not everything you can come up with, and there’s all sorts of other things you could say. So I started noticing some things in the Word, started noticing some things in ministries that I respected that seemed to be vibrant even when the minister got older or they would reach people younger than their staff demographic. Just what are you doing?
So it was noticing in the Bible, noticing in Scripture, kind of looking at the things from models that I had in history and then try to put them in some memorable phrases. So with those, 5 things. So yeah, to grab them with passion, thought, especially as the word is authenticity, and I often don’t like that word. I think it can be kind of over-therapeutic.
Sure. But I think it’s true. People want to know, do you really believe something? Yeah. And I think we see it with politicians, sometimes you just want, can I just get behind the mask?
Are you act— do you ever say, do you have any real things that you actually believe? Yeah. So I think even though we have a, you know, much more so in Britain, a non-Christian or post-Christian culture, and in parts of America it’s like that and it’s becoming that, but I think it— with the challenge, there’s an opportunity that people say, well, would you just tell me? I’m going to walk into your church, or you invited me. Don’t Don’t sugarcoat what you believe or pretend that, that, that hard verse is not in the Bible.
So tell people the truth. That’s, that’s the 4th one. But also show me that, that this means something to you. Think of the Apostle Paul. Do not be slothful in zeal.
And that doesn’t have to be a personality type. I think of someone who said boldness is to be clear in the face of fear. So I think that’s part of it. It’s a boldness, it’s a clarity, and it’s a zeal that, wow, heaven and hell hang in the balance. And that’s going to come through, you know, in an English mood different than an American mood, different than in Pakistan.
It’s going to sound and look different, but people can tell, should I lean in, that this really, really matters. I don’t know if this matters to me, but it matters to all these people, the way they’re singing, the way they’re praying. Is like there’s someone listening and there’s something that really matters. And I think that grabs people. Yeah.
I mean, it’s interesting, the kind of advice number one for this kind of media, the podcasting world, that kind of thing is authenticity is the secret sauce, as it were. You know, people are— millions of people are willing to watch someone on TikTok interested in trainspotting, having never cared about it before. Yeah, it’s actually— it is exciting to see someone so excited about trains. Could I ask though, because you are— you mentioned that you don’t like the word authenticity. What are you actually referring to there?
What is the downside of it?
So I think that the downside that I hear sometimes, at least in our context, is, uh, you know, if someone is authentic, they’re just— they’re so— they’re so real, they’re so honest, they’re so vulnerable, all of which can be good things except when you think of Well, you could be vulnerable about— and you’re not actually a person worth emulating, or just because you’re honest about your faults. So I think there’s— here’s my danger before I get to the good side of it. I think the danger is our young people, but just in general, our kind of Western mood so values authenticity, it can be a shortcut to other kinds of authority. Meaning if you have someone who, who doesn’t like someone kind of spilling their guts, telling their secrets. Yeah.
So if somebody— you could get up in church and a minister be trained in being vulnerable and authentic and sort of just share about, I want to really— man, my wife and I have been fighting all week and I’ve been, you know, really struggling with porn for the last year. And that’s a kind of authenticity, is really being honest. First of all, there’s probably a holiness— there’s a holiness problem, definitely. And people are drawn, can be drawn to the wrong thing. They can be drawn to, you have problems, I have problems.
Great. This is a, this is a place for problems. Well, there’s something good in that. The gospel is about addressing those real-world problems. But if it’s just a therapeutic mindset that says, come here, we’re a fellowship of people who are honest about our problems, See, even that phrase, I bet there would be some churches who would say, love it, that’s what we do.
Well, maybe implied is something further, but let’s, let’s state what’s further than not just come to a group of people who are honest about their problems, but know the only one who can forgive our sins and can make us better. And the word problem is pretty tame. Compared to what the Bible says our, quote, problem is, is that we have sins, transgressions, iniquities. Yeah. So that’s what I mean.
There’s a way of speaking even brokenness language Christians are— yeah, that’s true. I say that’s about 1/8 true. It’s true we are broken, meaning we don’t work the way we should. But if that’s mainly how we talk about it, you realise that’s not a Bible category. The Bible uses righteousness, unrighteousness, God’s anger, his wrath, sin, all those words.
Brokenness translates well. People like it. But if we’re not careful, we’re giving people— they’re hearing something that we’re not saying. So all of that is why I think the authenticity by itself is not enough. But if it’s authentic toward Jesus in the Word, Good.
Hi everyone, I hope you’re enjoying this episode. I found it to be a really fascinating conversation, and I hope you are as well. Just a very quick message from me to say that the Bible Matters Project is entirely funded by the generous gifts and donations of its listeners. At the moment, we are fundraising for our future. We have big hopes and ambitions in our goal to bring faithful Bible teaching into digital spaces.
We’re hoping to expand our team as well as create more and more content to bring good Bible teaching to the people who are going into digital spaces to find answers about the Lord Jesus. And so if you are interested in joining us and partnering with us in this mission, well, we would love it if you could consider donating to Bible Matters. There’s more information on how you can do this in the show notes wherever you’re listening or watching, and it would be a real privilege for me to be able to partner with you in this way. I really hope you enjoy the rest of this episode. Win them with love.
I mean, one of the accusations that gets thrown at, I suppose, conservative evangelicals here in the UK is that we’re not loving. Now, I’m not saying that that’s true, but in terms of how the world sees us, because we don’t subscribe to many of Satan’s lies regarding sexuality and all sorts of things, the first thing in people’s minds are they’re not a loving people. Do you kind of have any reflections on that and how you actually be loving when you take the archetype of an unloving person in the world? I know, I think it is helpful for some of us to— for us to realise that sometimes there is— there’s nothing we can do to change a wilful misunderstanding. So if someone has the equation in their head, affirmation of my whatever I think are my deepest feelings and desires is love, we can help people understand, well, you don’t— you’re not consistent in that.
You wouldn’t say that to someone who’s a racist. You wouldn’t if you’re a parent and your child’s deepest desire is to take a bath with a toaster. You tell them that’s a wrong— I know you feel that, but don’t— you shouldn’t do that because part of loving you. So we understand that in, in a logical sense. But people aren’t logical and they may not have the willingness to be corrected of their wrong views.
Now, what we can do as Christians is not give them more ammunition than they’ve already invented. And when we do sin, we can say we’re sorry. I don’t think Christians sometimes say they’re sorry for a bunch of things they really didn’t do just to sort of say, look at us. That’s not good. Yeah, but I think the best thing, you know, Rosaria Butterfield is great and she’s a friend and she’s, she’s the most amazing person with hospitality.
I mean, having people in her home and really laying out a vision for the church to do this. So I think the only way to overcome that stereotype is person by person. And what she’s so good at is saying, invite people into your home and then live like the Christians you are. So if you have them into your home for a meal, then pray like you’re a Christian. You have family worship, read it.
So the whole world is saying you have to tailor everything to the way the world wants you to be in public. By all means, when you bring them into your home, don’t do the same thing. Now, you don’t have to be as obnoxious as possible. Just be a normal Christian in your home. So part of win them with love is you may not be able to win people, but if you win people with something that’s not love, you’ve won them to the wrong thing.
I mean, one of the little sayings is whatever you win them with, you win them to. And so if you win people, quote unquote, to the gospel with them, with pyrotechnics in your service, yeah, or just the most awesome praise band, or you win them with a false, you know, sexual ideology, yeah, and you may say Well, I’m just being hospitable. I’m just belong before you believe. And then later I’m going to tell them, well, no, you’ve, you’ve won them with something else. But, but love is both easier and harder than what the message.
So it’s, it’s easier in that, you know what, you don’t have to pretend to be into what everyone else is into. Yeah, you don’t have to. So when I was in Iowa, there was a lot of farmers. I didn’t pretend I was an expert in farming, and probably University Reformed Church was the closest because I, I do think like an academic. I do like sports, and there’s a lot of sports stuff in a place like Charlotte.
But you got people who do hunting, fishing, guns, all that. I’d never been— I’d never been around that. I don’t do any of that. So you don’t have to pretend that you’re into what everyone else is into. Just give them the gift of your curiosity.
We all know people their whole life. See, if you, if you love, you never become irrelevant. Yeah. And you never have to reinvent yourself in one sense. Even, even the person, you know, you can just tell the person who is trying so hard to kind of relate to the young people.
Yeah. Like the young, the quote young people are the ones who sniff that out. I mean, my kids are always like, Dad, don’t. Don’t talk about Taylor Swift. You don’t know anything.
Don’t mention anything that we’re into. Don’t say, yeah, all of the, you know, because I pick up these, you know, whatever they’re on the TikTok, little slang things like, Dad, please, please do not put that in the pulp. And you don’t need to. You don’t need to. And you just look silly, but love people.
Yeah. It is the thing that I hear most when I, so I’m a youth worker. I work with 11 to 18s. And when I’m trying to recruit new volunteer leaders, constantly what people say to me is, oh, I just don’t think I can work with teenagers. I’m not cool enough.
I don’t have TikTok. And I always say to them, good, you just need to love these kids and pray for them and share Jesus with them. If you tell them you have TikTok, they will just be confused because they think you’re ancient anyway. I started this job at 22 and they still thought I was ancient. So there’s no point in trying.
They don’t want that from you. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and yeah, the youth worker who comes up, did you see that TikTok? Like, just, just don’t, don’t even.
I, I remember my, my friends will always make fun of me of this. This was years ago, uh, giving a talk at university and I thought I was dropping in. I said something about Kanye West. It turns out his name’s Kanye. Oh, you know, I didn’t see the N and the Y and the, you know, transpose.
And so you see. And then afterward they’re like, just, Pastor, stop. Just, yeah, don’t try to do it. But I mean, you put— like you say, the apologetic power is just remarkable, isn’t it? I mean, we, um, we help out with a summer camp and it’s children— I mean, it’s, it’s a mix, but really quite a lot of children from homes without father figures, that sort of thing.
And, and you talk about love, and this is maybe getting on to the next thing too with with the holiness and the sort of character and people that we are. Yeah, but it’s related to the people that we maybe can’t convince we are unloving. Here’s what— to have a godly character and be a loving person both helps the person who grew up in the church, and at some point they’re tempted to deconstruct, and they do have somewhere in their brain They may still do it, but they have somewhere in their brain and their heart and their psyche. But the Christians I knew were some of the best, godliest people. Yeah.
I mean, and it just— it’s like an anchor that keeps them from totally drifting, hopefully. And conversely, I mean, I saw— I heard an apologist use this analogy, which always stuck with me. It’s like putting a pebble in someone’s shoe. So when you’re— when you’re And Peter says in, you know, 1 Peter, to live such good lives among the pagans that though they accuse you of doing wrong, they’ll glorify God on the day he visits us. So the idea is there will be some people— it’s not that you converted them by your lifestyle, but they saw the way you lived.
And then 1 Peter 3:15, they asked you for the hope that you had. There was something different about you that there will be some people that are noticing and they don’t want to believe what you believe, and they don’t like that you don’t put up the pride flag, and they don’t like that you believe Jesus is the Son of God, maybe because they’re Muslims. But boy, they’re really good neighbours and really interested in me and kind, and their kids were nice to our kids. And there’s something that’s a pebble in their shoe. So the analogy is you keep walking, but you know, after a while, think, don’t think about the pebble, don’t think.
And then eventually you stop and you have to take that little teeny pebble out of your— out of the shoe. So that may be the thing that’s some years down the line you never even see. Somebody says, all right, that person who shared the gospel, and I knew they were Christians living next to me, were such good people, maybe I’m gonna sit and take that pebble out and actually read a Bible or learn something about this Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, hugely.
I mean, the holding of holiness, I think, was the one that jumped out at me most actually in this book. I mean, you had this incredible, you referred to this incredible, was it research or a quote or something about that, about the people who tend to stick around in churches are the ones who are kind of, they’re either pastored at home within the family or they’ve created, formed these connections within the church, which are sort of familial connections. That’s right. It’s just remarkable. It’s one of those ones where it sounds remarkable, but actually you think about life and you can just see the— yeah, yeah.
It’s the ones who have connections to some mature Christian adult. You, you need to see an example of it. What, what would I look like as a mature Christian? And that’s what you need to, to have. Yeah.
And again, I think, I think people, they may not mean to do this, but I think they chase after some of the secrets because it’s, it’s a shortcut. Holiness is hard. Holiness takes a long work. So one of the things about this little book, say over and over again, it’s being a Christian is easier and harder than we think. Yes, it’s a— it’s harder because dying to yourself is hard, being holy is hard, loving people different than you is hard.
But it’s also easier in that you don’t have to have multiple degrees. You don’t have to be the smartest person. You don’t have to be a with-it person. You don’t have to know the latest technology. A, a godly person— so yeah, the 1 Peter or 2 Peter, if you have these things in increasing measure, love, knowledge, brotherly kindness, and you will not be ineffective.
I mean, think about that. God always has a place for people bearing the fruit of the Spirit. And you cannot fake that for a lifetime. You cannot replace that. If you’re bearing the fruit of the Spirit, you will be fruitful in other people’s lives.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how do you encourage your— we didn’t ask about your staff team, but I presume you have quite a big staff team with as many demographics and people in your church. And like you say, you know, it’s great relief to know that we don’t have to be with it and culturally relevant, but actually to, to be a, to be a brother to someone who’s having a tough time is so, so hard. Um, and you know, to have that as part of your role working for a church or as the senior pastor, I mean, you’re kind of taking on the father figure role in some respects.
I mean, it’s, it’s a privilege, but it’s a real burden. Yeah, that— I mean, we have, you know, we have a big staff team, a lot of elders. We have about 10 pastors, and then we have a senior staff that’s a little wider than that. So a lot of the, a lot of the pastoral work I do, it, it’s different and the same as a smaller church. I, I, I think— I, I never think that I’m a better pastor than any one else.
In fact, I know people— in fact, probably people at smaller churches have some gifts and some are better pastors than I am. I think at a bigger church there are some different skill sets that are sometimes necessary, but my pastoring looks a lot like pastoring the staff and the team leaders and elders and key folks. And you’re absolutely right, it is a It is a privilege. And I don’t want to exaggerate that who you are and what you’re into and your age doesn’t matter. I mean, there’s a reason that our pastor of our senior adults is in his 70s, though he started it when he was 47.
It’s really amazing. He’s been doing it all this time, and he just always loved senior adults. And there’s a reason that our youth pastor is in his 20s. That’s usually how it works. But I will say he just got ordained, our youth pastor, and his dad’s a minister and he’s, he’s been in youth ministry his whole life.
And so now his dad’s in his 50s. So you don’t, you don’t, you don’t have to age out of it. Yeah. But yeah, there’s some just, there’s some intuition sometimes that, that work better. But I, I think being a ministry leader is, it’s really, it’s being a mature Christian.
In people’s lives, and it’s being available for a lot of small, regular things and then being available and interested when there are those unusual big things. So, I mean, I think phones, for what a pain they are, it’s never been easier to keep in touch with people. It’s never been easier to send a text that say, how’s your day going? I’m praying for you. How, how was the test?
How was the surgery? What’s going on? Yeah. I mean, those little things really, really make a huge difference for people. We— I guess we’ve had quite a number of scandals in the UK around particularly relationships like that, these kind of quite intense mentoring relationships that have really gone wrong.
Yes. And I think as someone involved in ministry with young people, we talk a lot about how do we do the kind of sharing life with one another in the way that Paul talks about it, say, in 1 Thessalonians 2. In a way that is safeguarding people and is healthy and is transparent and all of those things. Is that something that you guys have thought through in your context, or is it a little bit different? Yeah, and you’re right that those relationships can be same gender, different gender.
They can go wrong in a lot of different ways. So I would say it’s, we’ve not had this we’ve had different kinds of scandals, so we’ve not had the same ones in some of the same institutions that I think you guys have. So I would answer in 2 ways. One, just the formal safeguarding ways. So yes, we’ve had to, you know, bring in groups to do training for all of our leaders who have, you know, Ministry Safe is a group that we brought in that does the safeguarding stuff.
And of course we have there’s forms that you have to fill out and you have to do background cheques, and there’s rules about, uh, how many people, you know, you gotta do things with 2 people in this setting. And I mean, some of the things that, you know, even when I started out in ministry 25 years ago, just like would— and most, most of the time nothing bad did happen, but now it would just be crazy, I think, to have like a, you know, a guy in a hotel room with a, you know, a youth leader in a hotel room with nobody else and just the things that, yeah, that went on. So all of those things which hopefully are common sense to us, to us now. So we do all that. But then just on the spiritual level, it’s incumbent upon the person doing the mentoring realise you— it’s good that you you— this is a nice relationship, but you— there— this sounds almost wrong, but there, there has to be a level of this.
This cannot be your friend in some ways as you’re mentoring someone. That sounds wrong. Well, of course we all have friends in ministry, but no, this, uh, you know, really beyond this huge danger— we’ve seen these signs sometimes when it looks like you as the leader are needing to receive something from this person as the— either the student or the trainee or the person you’re mentoring. You need some validation from them. You’re sharing in a way like you’re unburdening yourself to a friend or a colleague.
Huge red flags. And it doesn’t mean that everyone who does that is a predator. Though some have proven, but it could just be you’re very unwise and you really need help to realise there’s some appropriate boundaries that need to be there as you mentor to someone and train with someone. And I guess we’ll get onto it when we come to the 5th point, which is all then with God. But actually, yeah, the thing that we are trying to do in those relationships is point people to Jesus, not make us the centre of the relationship as the older person.
But actually be all about the Lord. But the 4th point then was challenge them with truth, which I really loved. So the idea that we are not kind of dumbing down the message as we hold it out to people. Can you just tell us a bit about that? Yeah, and I love what you said earlier about, you know, someone who is trainspotting or something, and you won’t be able to tell this by my very impressive physique, but I am always in search of the perfect push-up.
I do like to do push-ups. There’s more than one kind? Yeah, well, what I found is once you search in YouTube or something, perfect push-up, then the algorithm thinks I’m— I just get all these really beefy guys. Yeah, ads for like protein powder. Yeah, right.
And everybody, it turns out, has the perfect push-up. Okay. But there’s a way— I say that because they all come on and they do have sort of a formula. Like the lead-in is, you’ve been doing it all wrong. Yeah.
And if you’d follow these 4 steps in 3 weeks, it’s all— that’s all lies. But it’s amazing. People can talk about things that you’re vaguely interested in, but they’re interested in, and they start taking you. So, I mean, you, you all probably— the, the Rest Is History podcast. I mean, that’s like one of the most famous podcasts in the world, and 2 Brits do it.
The, the other Tom Holland. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s very confusing. Spider-Man. Yeah.
Dad, you listen to Tom Holland’s podcast. Tom Holland the Elder. Not parents when they are, right? Not— what do those guys do well? They for hours talk about history.
Well, one, they know their stuff and they’re interested in it. And I think in the, in the church, a good teacher can teach almost anything, and a bad teacher can make the most exciting things in the Bible seem dreadfully boring. Yeah. So it’s, it’s not that the truth is the problem, uh, and, and not everyone’s going to be the same kind of teacher and the same giftedness. So we do have to know the sort— what, what we can do or what we can’t do.
But everyone who’s immersed in the Bible can help people understand the Bible. And things like, you know, if you just drop in the word propitiation in a sermon or in a lesson, and maybe people are like, that’s, that’s, that’s boring, I don’t need to know about it. If you’re excited and you tell people, now listen, it’s in the ESV a few times and it translates this Greek word— people don’t know anything about Greek, but you’re telling them people actually want to know about the Bible. And if you say, here’s what it is, break apart the word, think of it as propitiation, propitiation means how God becomes pro-us. It’s how his wrath is assuaged.
It’s how an angry God becomes for us. And you can tell people about the mysteries of the Trinity, the 2 natures of Christ. Yeah, uh, I mean, we have a, you know, a congregation that I think is well taught to enjoy those things, but I, I find even with Like at our high school, so your secondary education, you know, these are 15, 16, 17-year-olds. They’ve been to chapel service. It’s a Christian school.
They tend to be bored, but they can be bored because people are telling them the same thing every time. Ask Jesus into your heart. Well, you should. That’s good. But challenge them with something.
Throw people into the deep end of the pool sometime and just give enough of a life preserver that they don’t drown. But all of the— from the TED Talks to the podcasts that people listen to for 4 hours, people are not uninterested in learning new things. Yeah. And we have the most important thing to learn. So, so, so give people truth of God’s Word and doctrine, theology, church history.
They can learn it and they, they want to if we’ll teach it to them. I mean, it’s so interesting. I am over the summer, we’re probably on this podcast gonna release some John Stott talks from his Cambridge University mission in 1977, which is in our archive. And I mean, what’s amazing about them is, firstly, you look at it and each talk is over an hour long. Yeah.
And, uh, John Stott’s one of the few people you can listen to on 2x speed and it sounds genuine. I know it does. But evangelistic talks, I mean, albeit they are Cambridge likes to think they’re smart over there. Like to think. Fairly smart people.
But man, the depth with which John Stott goes into these evangelistic talks. I mean, not only that, you get a kind of full comprehensive theology of all sorts of things. And there’s one of them where he’s talking about sexual ethics, really, I mean, teaching on sexual ethics. I think a lot of churches would be nervous of teaching just in their Sunday service, let alone to a room full of non-believing students. And then he gets up a student who’s become a Christian last year, who’s had to break up with his girlfriend because of the relationship, and gets him to tell his testimony.
And you do just think, I mean, obviously we can’t all replicate what John Stott did, he was kind of one of a kind, but actually compared to our evangelistic efforts these days, and I don’t want to be down on them, but It is quite different. And the thing that you can replicate with Stott, I mean, his genius was clarity. Yeah, master of organisation and clarity. That’s why you have to, you know, as a preacher, I have to read his commentaries last, because when he has 3 points, you always think, yep, those were the 3 points that God himself gave. Yeah, but I, I really do think it’s an, it’s an opportunity that people are— there’s so much biblical ignorance.
Yeah, but they want to know. They don’t even know what they can learn and what they want to learn. Just give one example. I was, I was a chaplain for a Sunday at a baseball game. I know that’s very American.
It’s like cricket, but a major league baseball team. And so the Christian players have a little— you do a church service for them before they play their games. Maybe they shouldn’t have been playing on Sunday, but they were. So The chaplain and I was doing the service. I said, any— he said, there’s going to be, you know, 15 guys in there.
He said, whatever you do, don’t talk about baseball. Okay. Which was really good because he just said, we get a lot of pastors who come in and they think they’re clever and they’ll say, you know, it’s going to be a home run with Jesus or, you know, use whatever the— what do you, what do you, what do you call it? A 6 in cricket? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, or, uh, is that when it clears the fence? Yeah, that’s right. Yeah. I mean, I actually know so little about cricket, but I think that’s right. So it just, it was such brilliant advice coming here.
Don’t, don’t tell them what you think, that they want a really clever sports illustration. They’re actually, that’s what they do. They’re tired of it. Just give them a passage of the Bible that challenges them as a Christian. And I really love what you say, I think, in the book about we keep our bar too low for young people.
Like, we think that they need dumbed-down message, and actually then they meet our expectations when they’re low. And we’ve really seen it here with the youth group where the 14 to 18s Bible study group is our youth group that has had the most growth. And we have maybe, I don’t know, 80 teenagers perhaps coming to sit through a 45-minute, hour-long Bible study. And have dinner. That is all we do.
And we have guys coming from other churches, like youth workers, saying like, what is it you’re doing? Like, what is this? Again, what is the secret? You know, and they’re putting on foam parties and doing video game evenings and all of these things. And we just tell them, no, like, we are literally just doing a Bible study.
It’s essentially an adult-level Bible study. We are letting them look at a passage and chat about it together, and they love it. There’s kids coming who have never been in church before, and that’s what they want. They really want to learn. Yeah.
If what people don’t want is a secret esoteric language or jargon that puts them on the outside. But if you’re explaining it, and I think it’s even fine to explain to maybe not the, the, the most Bible-educated person in the room, but toward the top and the people who don’t know, will feel a little honoured that you think they know more than they do and that you’re bringing them along. And it’s amazing how much people can learn. I mean, what, what, what 18-year-olds who go off to university are being challenged with stuff that adults have long since forgotten and can’t, you know, help their kids with math homework anymore. And then we think, but in the church, you can’t be expected to know anything.
It’s just silly. Yeah, and one of the things you said was your driving passion behind this book specifically was for the kind of average church member to go deeper in their faith. And you— I think you mentioned that there’s one night in college where you realise you have lots to learn that prompted you to write this. Can you tell us a bit about what that was? What prompted you?
So I went to a school which was at least ostensibly a Christian university, but it was really a mix of Christian and lots of non-Christians. And I’m not saying this was anyone’s fault. I grew up in a good Christian home and went to church, but I was late at night at the restaurant with 3 friends. My roommate, who was kind of a nominal Christian, he had a Bible on his desk, but he never opened it, never went to church. And then one guy was sort of New Age.
He was into crystals and things. And another guy who was— I mean, he, he was out and out. He just said, He came to college and he’s— I think he said, I’ve had sex twice in my life. It’s the greatest thing in the whole world. That’s what I’m here for.
Oh, man. Wow. I actually came into my room one time and he was with his girlfriend in the— so won’t go down that hole. So these are the guys I’m talking to, but they all had kind of some knowledge of Christianity and they were asking me typical sort of questions, you know, where do good— where do good people go when they die? How could God not save the good Buddhist?
And do you believe in free will? And how can you trust the Bible? You know, Jesus was just a good person. And it’s not that on one level, as an 18-year-old, I needed to have buttoned up, here’s my apologetics degree on all of these questions. It’s perfectly fine when people ask you those questions.
It’s all, you know, it’s always fine to say, I’m not sure I know the answer to that, but I know people who do, or I know there’s a book on that. And would you really be— now, often they’re not really interested in learning more. But what I left realising was I know, I think, the right answers, but I don’t know how I got to those right answers. I don’t know why I believe it. I don’t know how to connect all of the dots and it, the Lord used it to ignite a fire in me to read things.
I was a, you know, a good student, but I wasn’t, it’s not like I read for fun. I didn’t love to read. I wanted to be outside and do sports and things. Mm-hmm. And then from that, you know, my freshman year at university, mm-hmm, the Lord used a bunch of different things to just spark in me reading and wanting to read theology.
And when I realised I can read John Calvin, I can read things that are 500 years old. Mm-hmm. I can read Augustine, I can read these things. And sometimes the older classics, there’s a reason they’re still read and they’re classics because they’re better. Sometimes they’re, they’re easier.
You get more out of them than the new stuff. I mean, it was just so enriching and changed my life. Yeah. So go read dead people. And I think we’ve mentioned it already, but the 5th suggestion that you give is to amaze them with God, awe them with God.
What was it that made you include that as well? You know, I think there’s sometimes the best evangelism is a doxological evangelism, to walk into a church and realise these people are really singing. There’s, there’s a whatever kind of building you’re in, there’s a transcendence, there’s a holiness, there’s an otherness. God is, is bigger than me. I think because people’s lives are filled with trivialities, sometimes we want to meet them in the trivial.
Their TikTok lives, you know, meet them in the— give them transcendence. I don’t know what it’s like in the UK, and I think it’s exaggerated a little bit in the US, but there’s definitely the case that kind of high Catholic, Anglo-Catholic, Eastern Orthodox people are attracted to. It’s like, wow, this is so— you got a black beard and you wear a black robe and there’s— you use a different language. Something. Now, what is it people are— they’re sort of grasping after?
That seems countercultural. That seems so different. That seems— and there’s things about that that might be good, and there’s things about it that aren’t as good. But what we have an opportunity is far better and beyond whether you got robes or not or a beard or not. Yeah.
The, the doxology and the transcendence of God’s word and through the preaching of God’s Word or opening the Scriptures one-on-one with people to amaze them with God. And part of what I think I said in there, what connected the dots for me was going through Revelation. That’s always been one of my favourite books. I just did a class on it last week because the 7 churches have all these different problems. They’re loveless, they’re overtolerant.
They’re, you know, one might be a fundamentalist church, one might be a liberal church. They have all these problems, real-world problems. And we forget that chapters 4 and 5 come after chapter 2 and 3, which is to show us the first antidote for their problems is to look at him who sits on the throne and the Lamb, to have a big picture of God. That’s why Revelation 1 is about the Son of Man and this glorious picture of Christ. So give people more of God.
That’s what they need. I mean, reflecting on all of it, Kevin, I, I don’t know if this is overly simple, but in some ways what you’re essentially saying is to reach the next generation, you just need to live a Christian life. Yeah. Yeah, there’s a lot. There’s a lot of that.
Be a Christian person who loves the Christian Bible, loves the Christian God. Tell them about— that’s why I said over and over again, it’s, it’s harder because to be a real Christian is not easy, but it’s also easier because Anyone with the Bible and the Holy Spirit can do this. Of course, yeah. And just one final question, I guess, in respect to the reception of these kind of ideas. You said it was very well received, it’s been very well received before.
It’s just interesting, uh, with this project Bible Matters seeking to bring faithful ministry into digital spaces, modelling a ministry we want to win people to. I go to a few, you know, a few kind of events or kind of fundraising things hear pitches from people who, you know, really great faithful brothers, really creative in what they’re thinking about and with a real heart to reach the next generation. It does feel that when you are pitching donors and that kind of thing, to simply say, well, we just want to be Christians, just want to live a Christian life, those are often the projects which don’t get funded. I mean, what do you kind of think about that in terms of kind of winning people to the ideas?
Yeah, I think there’s a good place for the innovation on the, the delivery mechanism sometimes, and that doesn’t mean other than necessarily speaking in words. But so like, we have a ministry, Clearly Reformed, and, you know, it’s a, it’s a pretty shoestring budget, and it’s a podcast and it’s sermons and it’s a website and it’s articles and a lot of the same, same things. So it’s not cutting edge in that way. But, you know, we try to have the— try to have top-notch people who know how to do SEO, search engine optimization, and try to understand the digital space like I wouldn’t and know how to do graphic design. So none of this, and I’m sure you’d agree, none of this is to say Yeah, we should just be as bland and as boring and throw it up there and just see what happens.
You know, there is a, there is a real place for, you know, digital innovation and people who are real experts to know how to get things out and get the, the, the breadth of it. But as far as the content, yeah, I, I think we just need to be unapologetic that what, what we need are— we need more of the truth out to more people. And here’s why we’re maybe saying something that can reach some people and is— and I think even to say this may seem to a donor or something, this— you may think this is just, well, everybody’s doing this. But really it’s, it’s, it’s not what everybody is doing. Yeah.
In this, in this space. And a lot of faithful, ordinary, talk about good books, talk to good Christians, open up good things. And, you know, one of the pitches too would be, you know, the, the podcast is, it’s, it’s the medium of the day. I hope people still read books and, yeah, you know, we’ll pass around sermons and of course go to church on Sunday. That’s irreplaceable.
But man, there was a switch I noticed about 10 years ago that people— I would ask our young interns, would you be more likely to read an article that took you 15 minutes to read or to listen to a 2-hour podcast? Like, oh, the podcast for sure. Wow, that’s interesting. So I still write articles. I’m a writer first of all, so I believe in the written word, but it is some of the medium of how people receive information.
Yeah, the Areopagus of the modern day. Yeah, that’s exactly right. I think that’s right. No, it’s very helpful. I mean, it’s funny, isn’t it?
I do, I do wonder if the whole Gen Z thing— Gen Z, um, if you’re on that side of the sofa. I know, translate the Z. But I mean, there’s so much focus on it, but actually the reality I think is people are people, aren’t they? I know. Yeah.
And you know, people 50 years ago they were sinners who needed the word of God just as much as people like Molly, Gen Z, are sinners and needed the word of God. Yeah, that’s right. Kevin, thank you so much for your time, and thank you for this book. I am hoping to give it to as many of our youth volunteers as I can. I just think it’s so worth their time, and for everyone listening, really worth your time as well.
So thank you so much for coming to speak to us about it. Yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for listening this episode of the Bible Matters Podcast. If you enjoyed it, please like, comment, and subscribe, as it really helps us to reach new audiences. This episode was produced by me, Molly Piper, as well as Leo Elbourne.
This is the Bible Matters Podcast, encouraging you in faithful Bible teaching and ministry.
