#42 | Are There Different Christianities In The World? Pt. 2 | Craig Ott

It's watering time, everybody.

It is time for Apollo's Watered, a podcast to saturate your faith with the things of God so that you might saturate your world with the good news of Jesus Christ. My name is Travis Michael Fleming and.

I am your host.

And today we're having another of our deep conversations. It's a deep conversation, actually the second deep conversation with my friend Craig Ott.

Now, Craig occupies the Reach Global Chair of Mission at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, one of my alma maters in Deerfield, Illinois. His particular field of expertise include theology of mission contextualization, church planning and teaching across cultures.

Now, I want to help you what that means. Basically, it's this. How do you communicate the gospel in any given culture? In other words, how do you water your world?

And that's what Craig is about, about helping people communicate the message of Christ effectively, the gospel of Jesus Christ effectively, to people throughout all cultures all over the world.

And I want you to listen into this second conversation we have as we talk about the need for the new story approach or just the story approach, evangelism. We're also going to be talking about Bible storying and disciple movements around the world and asking ourselves the question, are we on mission?

Because looking to mission or missions actually helps us get to know how to reach our culture more effectively. We're going to re examine the nature of mission in our culture and how we can talk more about the gospel.

Is what we have to offer, not anything else, but the true heart of the gospel for the world and how we might prep the soil by works of compassion. We're also going to be talking about mental health issues and how to think differently.

And we're going to talk a little bit about some of Craig's books. But before we get to our conversation today, I want to give a shout out to Cathy Brothers of Keller Williams Innovate.

If you're looking to buy or sell a home in the Chicagoland area, then you need to call Kathy Brothers of Keller Williams Innovate and her team. She comes with years of experience and cares about her people. She's trustworthy and really does enjoy being with her clients and serving them.

I know because I'm one of them. She's my agent. She met with us and learned what we were looking for, presented us with the best options and helped us find what was right for us.

And she didn't only help us purchase a home, but has regularly checked in to see how we are doing. She's attentive to your needs and style and comes alongside you to help you discover and find what is best for you.

So now let's jump into the second part of the conversation that I had with Craig Ott as we continue to talk about mission and how we might fulfill our missions and how we might water our worlds. Happy listening.

So you're talking about preparing the seed. We're talking about evangelization. And I think it's my contention that we're seeing pockets of evangelization occur.

Of course, all over the world we're seeing it, but it seems like in the United States that that has fallen largely.

And I mean, it's not been something that the church has, I don't want to say not taken seriously, but it doesn't seem to have the emphasis that it has in decades past. Would you agree with that?

And if so, what do you think some of the factors that have come up in our culture that have led us away from having evangelism as part of our church ethos?

Wow. You know, even when we talk about the church in America, the church in America is so diverse, you know, which church are we talking about?

And there was enough of a general, even if people weren't committed Christians of any kind, there was sort of a general consensus of values. And yes, there would be a God. And somehow, you know, church is probably a good thing.

And so that older approach of just invite people to church, just, just get them in, you know, where they can hear a sermon, you know, that that kind of worked. But that is not the world we have today. People just, you invite somebody to church and say, why would I even do that?

Why would I even think of doing that? Why would I go there? And if they went, they wouldn't have that common.

This is something about secularization is we no longer have a common language, a common vocabulary. So if we use a word like sin, well, what do you mean by that? Does it mean you didn't keep your New Year's resolution? Or what does the word sin mean?

And we use the word God, my Goodness. What do you think God is? Well, God sort of a higher power. No. Or is God some kind of a personal being? Or we can't.

So we don't have a common vocabulary, we don't have a common conceptualization that makes evangelism in that the way we used to do it possible. And this is why these forms approaches that have a more story oriented or dialogical or more see evangelism more as a process at a point in time.

It gives people a chance to hear the biblical story, develop some biblical concepts that make the gospel sensible. Because for many people, if you just sort of start out with a cross, that doesn't make any sense at all.

There's no logical framework in which that could make sense to a person.

What resources do you find that people that could. That are out there that help equip people to use that story approach?

Yeah. So there's a number of Bible story sets you can go online.

And if you just Google Bible storying, there is no lack of different approaches that are taken. So there might be a set of 10 stories that take you through key elements from Genesis to, you know, the Gospels.

There are ones that have know 50 stories. But there's plenty of resources out there that can help you put together stories.

There are also some videos out there that sort of have the big story approach there. So, you know, I'm not going to recommend any specific one, but there are plenty of options because this has become.

This whole idea of Bible storying has become just so important and so popular and it's used all over the world because people everywhere like a story. That's awesome.

Now also talking about disciple making because you said there's different movements that are happening around the world. What are some of these disciple making movements? What do they look like? What are you seeing? Because you really have a front row seat.

And that's just what's going on in American culture. But you're interacting with students and leaders from all over the world.

But what are these disciple making movements that you see that are taking off around the globe?

So there's depends on what specifically we're talking about. When we talk disciple making movement. There is sort of a methodology that has kind of coined this language of disciple making movement.

And so I'll talk about that for the moment. And essentially an approach to evangelism and discipleship, which is very, very simple.

And it works with people all over the world, especially people who have less education is in a very simple way you find a person which they will call, say a person of peace who is willing to host you as a Bible storyteller. And that person of peace will invite families or friends or other people to come. And so what you do is very simple.

You tell the Bible story, you have them retell it, so they kind of internalize what the story is about. And then you ask some simple questions. What does this tell us about God? What does this tell us about people? And what does this mean for your life?

How should we live differently because of this? So there's sort of an obedience piece that this is not just an empty story, but it should make a difference in our lives.

So this is sort of a simple approach that anybody can do, anybody can reproduce it. And then as people become believers, they also are telling other people these stories. And they start new groups and begin to sort of multiply.

And in some places in the world, this is multiplied to multiple generations. In other words, one person has started a group and then a person in that group starts a group and so on.

And then whole regions end up having these little disciple making groups that are basically just sort of reading the Bible or hearing Bible stories. Sometimes they don't read and write, they're hearing audio Bible stories on their phones or other media and then discussing these stories.

And so this has really spread widely. It's being used all over. And by some accounts there are many thousands who are coming to Christ with this method.

Now it does raise the question of what will this look like over the long haul? How do we train leaders of these movements?

Because they don't have church buildings, they don't have seminaries, they don't have all the infrastructure that we have in the West. And many people would say, well, that would be trying to make them be like, that is like putting David in Saul's armor.

You'd just be sort of weighing them down with unnecessary hindrances. But it does raise that question. So we're seeing a lot of that, this sort of Bible discussion approach that is easily reproduced.

And the local people are reading the Bible for themselves, they're telling their friends about it, and they're coming to faith in Christ. We're seeing a lot of that all over. And we're seeing it especially in certain parts of the Muslim world.

Are you seeing a lot of those kind of students come to the seminaries now that I mean, or are they finding seminaries there? How are these leaders getting trained?

Because I hear often about how, and I don't know where, if I got the stat, but about 5% of pastors worldwide have any type of training. How then are these guys getting training where they're at?

Well, it's a really good question. And this is one of the challenges that these movements face. I can give you an example. When I was in Nepal, there was a local person. He was Hindu.

His name was Krishna. He was obviously from a Hindu family, Hindu background, first generation believer in Christ. Christ. And the church he was in, by the way, for.

For a long time had said, well, we can't start new churches because we don't have money for a building. And so the idea you had to have a building if you're a church. Well, we did some church planning workshops in Nepal and they found out.

So we can actually have a church without a building. We can just do like a house church type thing. Yeah, kind of like in the New Testament that works. And so we come back a couple years later.

He's gone out to villages and he started seven or eight churches. And he's continued to do this. Now he has no formal theological training.

So for many of them, they're just going to seminars and workshops and getting what they can. And one of the places where he started a new church, the village shaman became the leader of the house church.

Now in that village shaman, he's not going to conferences. He's not, you know, listening to radio, Bible teaching or anything like that.

This is an enormous challenge right now where the church is growing and the church in Nepal is growing very rapidly. How to these leaders? It's a big question.

It seems so crazy to hear about how God is growing so many places around the world, and these leaders need to be trained. And yet it seems like the American church.

And again, I know this is a very broad term because there's such a spectrum of churches and movements and things going on. But it seems like with secularization as well as the politicization of so many different things, that the church in America seems to be waning parts.

How do we recover our focus on Christ in the midst of this? Because we are blessed with so many resources.

There are so many different theological schools and so many different resources we have at our fingertips. And God has done great things through so many different things in our culture.

How do we, though, recapture the mission and focus of Jesus in the midst of this world, Especially as we have so much diversity in our own culture and we see how God has brought the nations here, not not just for us to reach them, but many ways they're reaching us and revitalizing the churches that we see here in America. But how do we go about this. How do we go about recapturing what God has for us in the United States?

Now, in many other parts of the world, Africa, Asia, Latin America, churches know that they're on mission. Christians are a minority. They've often faced persecution. They know that they're on mission.

They know that they need to engage the world they live in. In the West, Christianity has had a privileged position, we call it Christendom, where for a long time church and state were joined at the hip.

And even when there was a formal separation of church and state, the church still kind of had a special role in society and people respected the church. And that has changed. But many churches are still working sort of on the assumption, like, hey, we're special.

We should be able to have a privileged place in the society and, and sort of traditional church going ought to be sort of the norm for everyone. And why aren't they doing it? We've got to get out of that mindset.

We've got to see our role in the west as mission churches, as if those churches were planted in the middle of the jungle somewhere among people who'd never heard of Jesus. That's the mentality we have to have.

And certain writers like Leslie Newbiggin were saying this a long time ago, but many churches are still working sort of on the Christendom assumption.

So I think to answer your question is we need to re examine the missionary nature of the church and that God has called us as Jesus, as the Father sent the Son, so the Son sends us John 21. And until we get that, we're always going to be sort of scratching to try and regain the past of the old Christendom. And that's not the future.

I totally agree.

And I think one of the things that I've really wrestled with and tried to help people see, because many my friends who want to do ministry, who want to see other cultures come to faith in Jesus Christ, but they have really attached modernity to the message, meaning that when they think of mission, they think of going to a majority world culture where there are not the resources that we might have here and bringing those resources in the gospel at the same time, where you can see tangible results. But yet we have. One of the most unreached countries is still Japan.

And it's one of the most Modern countries that we have seen, how do we, how do we go about changing this mindset where we really see the mission of Christ and it's not just always attached to the items that we bring.

Because I think many people can say, well, I could go to Africa or India in these developing countries and provide a tangible thing that will show that we're accomplishing something.

But many churches just, or Christians that I know scratch their head and they don't think about even going to Japan on a mission trip because they have no idea on, I mean, again, putting aside the language for a moment, but they have no idea on what to offer them. What do we do, how do we approach that? Because that's a hard thing for I think a lot of Christians to put together.

Well, of course, ultimately we have the gospel to offer, but we're not always presenting in a way that they think it's good news. It doesn't sound like good news to them.

Now, just sometimes we do need to prepare the soil, as it were, for the gospel by works of compassion or ways of showing people that we care about them. Now in affluent societies saying Japan, but in America, mental health issues are skyrocketing. Mental health.

So we don't have the problem in the United States of people, not many, certainly that would be facing hunger or starvation. And you know, we do have modern medicine. It's not accessible for everybody like it could be.

But certainly, you know, we're, we're way ahead of many places in the world. But, but mental health issues are absolutely staggering.

And so ministries like various 12 step programs, the offering to, to serve people in this way with groups that can deal with some of the challenges people are facing with addictions and with, with depression, with bipolar, these.

And then what's happening of course, with the younger generation now, younger people that are the social media generation, the, the, the data is in and the generation of young people now who live on social media. Depression is way up. Suicide is way up, Self harm is way up.

The shaming and the imaging and all of that that goes with that is just, and the church is just beginning to even become aware of this and say this is a huge need in our society. Do we have answers for it? I think we do, but we're going to have to start thinking differently than we have.

Yeah, how do we go about that? Because you just named a ton of stuff and I'm looking at that going, wow. Yeah, I totally agree. But how do we make that even connection?

Because that seems like a massive paradigm shift and you're talking about mental health. I still think that there are so many issues that the church doesn't understand with mental health.

And I personally have tried to figure out how do you differentiate between mental health and just the spirituality of so many different things when it comes to, for lack of a better term, demonology, how do you differentiate between those things? And I know I just asked you a ton of questions and we'll have to have a whole nother episode that.

Was a loaded one. Stay tuned. Right. Well, some of them are not as complicated as we think we know.

The data is also in that where the father is at home, where the family is intact, that the children face dramatically fewer of these mental health problems. So some of these things are not as complicated as we might think.

There are programs like Celebrate Recovery that are very Bible oriented Recovery, sort of a 12 step type program that's really, really helping people and integrating, integrating Christian spirituality with the recovery program again. And these are not terribly complicated. They work similar to other 12 step programs like Alcohol Anonymous.

You don't have to have a lot of professional counselors to run these programs. And yet they do tremendous. They help tremendously. And we still need professional counselors and mental health experts.

But these are just some simple sort of ways in which we as the church, I think, can do more to address some of these needs and totally integrate them joyfully. Not apologetically, but joyfully integrate them with the gospel.

And that's not always easy to do. I mean, there are so many different facets to that.

But as you said, some of that is relatively easier in the solution, just with keeping the family intact, helping equip people to be better husbands and fathers and wives and mothers, and giving them the tools necessary in order to work through their marriages and cope with the perils and obstacles of modern society.

And some of those things will go away, but other of those things we're still discovering, trying to learn, trying to figure out how to integrate them and understand how to deal with these other issues that are mental or spiritual. I know I was talking with a friend of mine that I had met. He'd been a professor at Harvard as an adjunct in mental health, and he was a Christian.

And I asked him the question, and I said, how do you differentiate between the mental and the spiritual? Because sometimes they seem to be so intimately connected. And he said it's very hard because they are.

I mean, we can't just separate one part of our being to another part because they're so intimately connected. And so they take a lot of different or they need a lot of different multifaceted solutions in order to combat them.

But I know that we could talk all day about all this stuff and perhaps we'll be able to pick this up again. But I don't want to take up any more of your time.

Yeah, Let me just give you one simple sort of my own personal experience with this. Now, when I was doing more direct church work before I got into academia, I never considered myself a good counselor.

In fact, I was always afraid of counseling. I didn't like counseling. I much rather teach and do evangelism, that sort of thing. But God has a sense of humor.

Coming back to the States, I was looking for opportunities to get involved in the community and so on, and ended up volunteering in an addictions treatment center and end up as going in and working with parents of teenagers that are struggling with drug addiction and other mental health issues. And so, well, pre Covid once a week I was in there volunteering and contributing. And that was not a Christian program.

The people who ran it were godly people, but it was not an explicitly Christian program. But I saw it as an opportunity to be salt and light. No, I couldn't go in there and talk about Jesus every night and that sort of thing.

But I could be there to care for people and God would open doors where I could pray for people and where I could in a subtle way, appoint them to Christ and give my testimony. Just say, this is my story. And so I think we need to encourage Christians. There's good programs, like I mentioned, Celebrate Recovery.

It's a Christian program. But there are plenty of ways that we as Christians can be out in the community.

And our churches need to encourage people to do that and celebrate that and say, that's great that you're in the PTA or that's great that you're out there with that community cleanup program or whatever that is. The Christians are getting the old get the salt out of the salt shaker.

And churches need to encourage that and strengthen us to be able to do that better. And that's not happening very much. Churches are tending to get people involved in their own programs, in house programs. So we need both.

But if we're going to start having impact beyond the four walls of the church, we've got to get people out of those four walls and telling them, empowering them to be salt and light out in those secular spheres.

Why do you think that we have such a hard time doing that? Because it seems like, and I've heard some say we're over Programmed.

We're doing this attractional thing where we're getting people to come to the doors all the time, but yet we're not engaging in society. Does it. Is it because we feel like we're compromising the faith or we're just simply too busy? Or is it some other factor altogether?

Or is it just all of that together?

Yeah, probably all of the above. You know, we probably have more programs than we need.

I think there's often just not visionary leadership at the top of the church, whether it's the senior preaching pastor or others. You know, it's a lot of work to keep a church program going.

And the larger the church, the more, the more work it is to just keep the electricity on and the carousel turning and good things are happening inside the church.

Don't misunderstand me here for one moment, but if you don't have leadership from the top saying we need to be impacting our community, we need to be seriously questioning how we're salt and light, then it's going to be the initiative of individuals, and that is not going to have the impact we could have. And that, by the way, just as a sort of shameless plug.

This is why I wrote the most recent book I have, the Church on Mission, A Biblical Vision for Transformation Among All People. It's really a short book. It's, it's, you know, 120 pages or something.

I have a discussion guide that goes with it you can get online because the whole idea is to get the church thinking, how do we become salt and bite? How do we become transformational?

That we individual Christians are transformed, our relationships with one another are transformed, and we can have a transformational effect or influence in our communities and to the ends of the earth. And so we've got to be thinking more intentionally about this and not just kind of keeping the ship afloat.

I love that. I love that. I'm glad for the shameless plug.

Thank you.

How can people follow you? Learn more about what you're doing and pick up some of the.

I mean, we could go to Amazon and just, just Google Craig ott and I mean, or see that in the search bar and all your books will come up there. But how are other ways that people can follow or learn more what you're doing?

Oh, you know, I'm a social media dinosaur. You know, it's, it's a, it's not that easy. Hey, come and study at Trinity and then I'll tell you a lot more.

But so, yeah, you'll find my books at the Amazon. I think we have a link to the author page. You can see the different books that I have there.

But I'm a much more of a person to person, let's sit down and have a cup of coffee kind of thing than to be putting a lot out in the electronic world, in the cloud there.

But picking up your books. No, no, no. There's nothing to be sorry about, but picking up your books.

There's a lot of stuff that you've written on secularization, you've written on being on mission and even teaching other people how to do this and engage cultures and church planting. So in many ways, it's reading a lot of your books and material and finding more out about that.

So I would highly recommend getting some of your books. I mean, you've written a lot of stuff. There's a lot of material out there, and I heavily encourage people to check that out.

And I just wanted to thank you for coming on the show and God bless you and continue to work and teach and train this next generation to.

To be the salt and light wherever they go, so that the kingdom of God might continue to expand, that people might water their faith and water their world.

Well, thanks for having me. It's been fun.

All right, take care, Craig.

Okay.

That was a great conversation that Craig and I had, as we do talk about how we might fulfill the mission of Christ in our world. The reason that I wanted Craig to come onto the show is because he is a missiologist.

Now, I know that many of us don't know what that term means, and we talk about that often on this show. And I believe that missiologists can help us.

You see, missiologists help us examine our cultures, especially cultures around the world, and how the mission of Christ might be accomplished. How is the gospel shared? It's my contention that our culture has changed so quickly that it's become a mission field.

Now, I know that there are many out there that would say, yes, of course, we're in a mission field. But it's changed so much in that we don't have a common language anymore to even talk about who Jesus is.

So it's up to us to learn to study our worlds and to look at those who study mission and draw from their conclusions on how they believe.

It is best to share the mission of Christ as they look to honor God through his word by being faithful to what he has revealed of himself and yet sensitive to the cultures in which they find themselves. They've studied Christ's mission, and that's what Craig has done. So this is your water bottle for the week. You need to study your world.

If we're to have our faith watered, which is what this program is about, it's so that you can go water your world. What is your world? We want to hear from you. We need to know what kind of world you're living in. What are you dealing with?

What are the obstacles that you face on a day to day basis in sharing the gospel of Christ with those around you.

Maybe you live in India, maybe you live in a small village, maybe you're surrounded by Hindus or Buddhists, or maybe you're in a secular workplace where it's frowned upon to talk about Jesus Christ in the middle of New York City. Maybe you live in a small town in Iowa, a small village. Maybe you're in the South.

Maybe you're dealing with all kinds of different people in different spaces, in different places. We want to hear from you because we want to provide resources that really do water your faith so you can water your world.

That's what Craig was talking about. As we are considering ourselves on mission, our world has changed very quickly.

We are no longer a Christendom culture where Christianity is the majority and everyone shares the same language and outlook on life life.

We're living in a pluralistic society and we need to know how to share the message of Christ effectively in this world that is so antithetical or antagonistic to the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

So help us to help you, go on our Facebook pages, our social media or email me travispolloiswatered with your questions, with your concerns with your world. Describe it for us because we do want to create content that helps you water your world.

It's our second ever men's retreat because we want people to be equipped to live in the middle of their world and have their tools and resources necessary in order to live and share the Gospel of Jesus Christ no matter where they are. I would invite you to come out for that and it's going to be from Friday through Sunday.

There's going to be teaching from God's word, worship merchandise, giveaways, fellowship food. It's going to be a great time and I would encourage you to sign up. Also, would you consider being a partner with us?

We are looking for people to continue to pray for this ministry and offer up to God and asking God to help us that we might be able to effectively communicate the Word of God as we should, so that people can grow and have their faith watered and that they can water their worlds. And if you are able, would you consider being one of our financial partners?

Just go online to ApolloSWater.org for other resources and click the Support Us button. There are many different options ranging from $2 a month all the way up to whatever amount you want to give.

We're looking for partners to help us to really launch ministry into the place that others might know and that they might have their faith watered so they can water their world.

I also want to give a big shout out to my ministry running mates, Kevin O'Brien, our chief strategy Officer and Executive editor, Eliana Fleming and Rebecca Bedal, who always managed to make our social media look good, and Brian Dana, our audio engineer. We would be honored if you subscribe to this podcast, go online, give us a five star review and share this episode with other people.

Water your faith, Water your world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered.

Stay watered everybody.