#93 | Misconceptions of Persecution & Pain in Contemporary Christianity, Pt 1 | Nik Ripken

Because believers in Somalia were killed for who they worked for and they were killed for who they worshiped with. And they were killed because they were given a 12 pound Somali Bible that they could not securely handle.

And I submit to you that being killed for being caught with a big green Somali Bible is not the same as being killed for who Jesus is.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's time for Apollos Watered, a podcast who saturates 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 one of.

Our deep conversations.

A deep conversation with author and missionary Nick Ripken. Here's the question. How should we respond to persecution?

Honestly, we're terrible at dealing with even the thought of it, because in the west we don't think of persecution that much. It's always over there.

Or if we do address it, we have some political idea that we feel that has been placed upon us, keeping us from practicing our faith in the way that we feel is God honoring. I'm not exactly sure that's the same thing.

I mean, what if persecution is the means God wants to use to make his gospel known to the end of the earth? See, this is what I love about Nick Ripken. He challenges how we view it.

We look at persecution on a surface level like an armchair quarterback removed from the action, sitting comfortably at our desks as brothers and sisters around the world lose their homes, their power, reputation, their families, perhaps food, freedom, and their very lives. Honestly, we really don't know much about it personally, experientially, at least in the West.

Now I know that there are those who are listening in India and in Pakistan, in Malaysia and Indonesia. And you have a different idea of what persecution really is. This is what I appreciate about Nick. He changes how we view it.

He reminds us that Jesus told us that we would be as sheep among wolves. Honestly, that's not a pleasant thought.

For.

It conveys this image of vulnerability, powerlessness, danger, susceptibility and the like. If we're honest, we would rather be like lions among wolves, right? Strong, victorious, powerful, ready to pounce.

Nevertheless, Jesus metaphor is clear. We go as powerless, not the powerful.

I wanted to talk to Nick because he is a guy who takes the Bible seriously and he likes to shed light on texts that we often want to forget. And today he's going to shine a light on what the Bible says about persecution. Happy listening, Nick. Welcome back to Apollo Slaughtered thank you.

Travis, how cold is it where you're at right now?

Oh, it's. It's 18 with a chill factor of 01. Something like that. It's not Florida.

True. But it got cold here the other day. We actually had freezing and frost on the windows for about an hour. That's about it. But still.

Yeah, that's tough for Florida.

It is. Hopefully shuts down, but here we go. We're gonna do a new segment because you've been on the show before. We're gonna call this Favorite four.

Are you ready for the Favorite four?

All right, brother, here we go.

Favorite TV show or movie of all time?

Nash.

Okay, good. That's a. Did you watch every episode? Did you watch the final episode?

When we were overseas, we actually bought DVD set and Ruth and I watched them. We treat ourselves to one episode a day, and we've gone through all of them.

I see myself as Hawkeye Pierce, but I think just that covert, loyal, opposition type person.

It's good. I like that. All right, besides the Bible, favorite book?

Probably Leon Uris book, Battle Cry.

I don't know that book. Tell me about the book.

Leon Uris is a Jewish writer. He's got a lot of great books. Exodus is another one that I just love.

But he made a name for himself doing a book on World War II and taking this young white kid that's sort of like you and I when we were 18 years of age, just idealistic and wanted to change the world and took him all through the horrors of World War II and making a family in the Marine Corps and then seeing all the horrific stuff of war and. And falling in love in the midst of that. And it just captures human nature. And I really like Ryder.

I'll have to check that out. I like to read about World War II, but that sounds like a fascinating read. How do you spell his name?

U R, I S L E, O N. Leon Uris.

Okay, I'll check that out. Now, we also know that you have done a lot of interviews. You've met a lot of different leaders.

Out of all the interviews you've done, what was your favorite? And I know that I'm sure every single one of them had something in it that you loved.

But what's the one that just sticks with you that you kind of hold on to and go back to 2?

The fifth one I ever did of Dmitry in Russia, the guy that had been in prison 17 years. It just changed the entire trajectory of what I found faith to be.

And then the guy in Central Asia that had been a freedom fighter and killed over 100 and some people with his own hands in Central Asia, and then had a radical conversion and just went through hell and back and just, you know, I had to fly in. I couldn't find him for two years.

And finally he calls me out of the blue and has me fly into a country, and then I had to call him, and he had me fly into another city, then call him, and then fly into a regional city and call him, and then fly into a very small city and call him and get a taxi and drive into a neighborhood and call him.

And he tells me to look at a certain building and go to the fourth floor of that building and open a door, walk in, there'd be a light shining in my face. Stand in front of that light. Don't move. And just setting up that interview was horrendously difficult because of his security.

But standing under that light and listening to him for six hours, a guy that had killed over 100 people, and he said, I. I took great joy of sneaking up behind an enemy soldier and cutting his throat with my big. It's more than a knife. More like.

I don't know, like a machete or something.

Yeah, anything but sharp. And letting their blood run over my hands as an offering to Allah.

And then just to watch how God took the blood on his hands that he began to see in his sleep and his waking hours. And finally he knew he was going to go insane and take his life.

And he dreamed, and Jesus appeared to him and said, find me and I'll take the blood off and take it upon myself. And there began his journey to faith. And by the time I met him, oh, they had broken his bones. They had thrown him in prison.

They had almost left him to freeze to death. And he was just the toughest man I'd ever met.

But between him and Dimitri, they redefined what commitment and love for and sacrifice for Jesus really is.

Mmm. It's hard to transition from such a heavy subject about your interviews to this last question, but we're gonna do it anyway.

Your favorite place to visit in the U.S.

My goodness, it has to be Grand Canyon. And I love. We just got back from Colorado Springs. I just love Colorado, the snow and the mountains. But we.

We actually were fortunate enough to take our son there, sort of like his senior trip, welcome back to America, let's go to college type of thing. And we bought a car for him, a church. We flew into the east coast, flew all the way the west coast from Africa, which was really dumb.

And a church helped us by a car. And then he learned to drive, driving from California to Kentucky.

And I remember going through Kansas, and he says, dad, I haven't turned the wheel for 15 minutes. Dad, I haven't turned the wheel for 30 minutes. Dad, I haven't Turned the wheel for 45 minutes. How am I going to learn to drive in this place?

And we passed these little country churches, and he said, dad, where are the people that go to these churches? I haven't seen a house for 30 miles. And.

But we were able to take him to Grand Canyon and take a helicopter into Grand Canyon, and that was just an awesome experience. We actually. There was a hailstorm as we went into the Grand Canyon, and then there was a rainbow from that over Grand Canyon.

And then to take that helicopter into that. It was just breathtaking.

That is so cool.

Other place that I. That I would love to go back to is Cashmere, up in those mountains.

And I lived on a lake for about two weeks in a houseboat, but I couldn't live in Grand Canyon, of course, but Cashmere, my goodness, the Himalayas collected in the lake that I stayed on. And.

And you stay in these houseboats and canoes come by, and, like, one canoe will have paper products, and another canoe will have vegetables, and another canoe will, you know, will have fruit or meat, and they even make these big islands that might be 20ft by 20ft that they've woven wire in, planted grass on, and they pull sheep and goats up to your house boat, and you can buy that and have fresh meat. But it was just an awesome experience. The believers up there were very scattered, and they were very alone and afraid. But politics and.

And the faith and the beauty of the place. I just was enamored with it.

Do you miss the mission field?

Oh, I. This has been the hardest two years of my life. Without a doubt. Without any doubt whatsoever. It's just been very hard.

That's saying a lot, though, considering the ministries you've been involved in and the places you've been in. I mean, Covid has taken a hit on everybody.

But I think for you, you seem to be a guy that thrives to be in the midst of it, in the thick of the fight, to be out there with people, to be engaging, and then to not be able to do that, that has to be able. That has to just really play on you, I would think.

Well, to come in to the racism and materialism of America, to come into. We've owned a used car for 35 years. We've never really paid taxes, we never had a mortgage, we've never owned vehicles.

So this has been a really, really hard adjustment. And then have Covid and back surgery just put me in the house for a year.

So I go from being a global citizen and working in some of the hardest places on planet to being in my house. And there's just been. I would not wish that on anybody. I have been very impatient and with God on this transition.

Well, let's take that and talk about that. Because you bring up something that I find to be not necessarily unique to you. You mentioned racism and you mentioned materialism.

And I finished reading your book the Insanity of Obedience and you draw both of those exact subjects out in that book and you talk about the hardest reach to reach places in the world. That's where you've mentioned going to reach those people.

But you and I had a discussion in the pre show walkthrough about how hard it can be in our culture because our culture doesn't feel like it needs God or it's their own creation of God. Other cultures know exactly what they're getting into.

And we've said how blessed we are though in this culture God has blessed us, but so much so that we've delighted in the gift rather than the giver. And we're lost in it. And sometimes it's harder to reach a culture that has all the gifts than those that have nothing. How do you respond to that?

I mean, I think your book is such a. I don't want to say assault, meaning that it's a book that challenges people's thinking. Both of you. I mean, all of your books have done that.

But what do you hope to have accomplished from this book? I mean, what was your background and who are you responding to?

Because I felt like you had a definite audience in mind in the Insanity of Obedience, which was a lot different than the Insanity of God. But I know I've asked you a couple of questions. Take which one ever you want.

Well, the insanity of God. Inspiration. The insanity of obedience is perspiration.

There you go. That's actually a great way of classifying it.

And we wrote Insanity of God for men because men are not showing up. Like I think we said last time, we have seven single women for every one single man. And we're actually dealing with that everywhere we go.

But the insanity of obedience, brother, is we can't change being sheep among wolves, but we don't have to be stupid sheep. And what I find in places like Somalia and Afghanistan and the harder Places we're very foolish sheep.

And, and a mistake that I would make, for instance in the Kenya or Somalia, I mean Kenya or Malawi or South Africa might hinder relationship or the growth of the body of Christ. I make that same mistake in Somalia and somebody dies. And so we had 150 believers in Somalia and all but four were killed.

And something I almost never say because it takes time to unpack it.

Every believer that was killed in Somalia and I'll never take Jesus away from them because if they weren't followers of Christ they probably would still be alive. But the timing of their death had more to do with their relationship to short term Western Christians than it did to their relationship to Jesus.

It's an interesting book because like I said before, it was so different than the insanity of God. And I like how you said the insanity of God is inspiration. This was perspiration.

This seemed to be more of getting down into the how to's and dealing with the misconceptions around persecution from those in a Western standpoint. I mean you go so far as to mention we have persecution and understanding it wrong. A Westerner reaction is get them out right, stop the persecution.

And you're saying no, no, no. And again you use Joseph as the example. God might be wanting to keep them in there for a reason and for a period of time.

And so I find you in the book and as I was reading I thought he's addressing some of the modern misconceptions, not just that Westerners have, but missionaries have, mission agencies have.

In many ways it's a how to manual, going beneath the surface and taking people on a journey saying I think we've understood a lot of this wrong and I want to help show you why and how. I mean, is that kind of some of the mindset that you had in going through the book and writing the book?

Well, you know, some trustees once asked me when I was unpacking the premise of incentive obedience. And they do this, they trap you with scripture. They say, don't you believe that God can use everything for the good?

You know, like do you not believe Romans 8:28? And I just flippantly because I couldn't think of anything at the moment. Yeah, but why do we make it so hard on him?

But the next time that I was asked that question by some very powerful individuals, I said, yeah, I believe in, in Romans 8:28. And what we learn from this situation in regards to how God uses everything for the good is what God teaches us through this situation.

Don't you ever do this again. Because the believers in Somalia were killed for who they worked for and they were killed for who they worshiped with.

And they, they, they, they were killed because they were given a 12 pound Somali Bible that they could not securely handle. And I submit to you that being killed for being caught with a big green Somali Bible is not the same as being killed for who Jesus is.

And that is the whole point. Being killed for who Jesus is always brings a deepening, sometimes a broadening kingdom, but certainly a deepening, deeper kingdom.

Being killed for who Nick is, all you learn from that is don't you do whatever it was that you did to get them killed and they were killed. Who they worship with, work with having a Bible.

100% of those who were trained to evangelize using evangelism tools that we use in Texas or even here in Kentucky, 100% of those people we paid to evangelize using Western ways of evangelism are dead. None of them survived it.

It's getting workers to look at their default setting on how we do church and how we do witness and saying, you really have left the Bible on this one. You don't have a biblical foundation for doing what you do, especially as an outsider.

That's a lot for, I think for a lot of Westerners because we don't think, and I think this is what you're trying to deal with. We don't think that we have a western way of doing things. We think it's just this is the way of doing it.

And those are the massive blind spots that we have. As you said, those are not just blind spots, they're, they're opportunities for people to get killed.

This is serious stuff and you need to rethink about your methods and how you go about things. Because there's not a one size fits all here.

You need to understand the culture that you're going into and the serious nature of what you're advocating. And while you think you're getting them a Bible and it's helping them, you're actually could be causing more harm than you realize.

You might be hurting them in the long run. Even though you think you're helping, you're actually hurting. And you need to rethink how you go about what you're doing. Is that right?

I watch. It can be argued, it can be argued that it's never a real tragedy for a believer to get to go to heaven early.

That can be used as an excuse in regards to our 16 year old son's death. I took great comfort in, in that.

But I'm looking, I'm looking blocks away and I see a Muslim guy because I know all the believers walking through Mogadishu carrying that big green Bible. And before I could get to him, Ali Tahad walked up behind him and put a gun to the back of his head and blew his brains out.

And he goes to eternity without Jesus because someone gave him a Bible. Now, Western response is, oh, Ripken is against us giving Bibles out. I say, no, how many, how many tracks? How many scrolls? Oh, even more than this.

How many literate tools did Jesus ever use outside of the synagogue and temple? And the answer is he didn't use any of them.

See, this is why I love your approach. Because in the church that I was serving in in Chicagoland, we started getting people in the church that just couldn't even read right.

And most of the stuff that I see is a Western solution is have another class, have another class, have another class.

But you have to do ESL first.

Because you have to understand the language.

Oh, here, here's the, here's the one.

The big ones, brother, is that we are so addicted to literacy is as if the power and authority of the Bible itself is predicated by literacy rather than the Holy Spirit of the living God.

I don't know if you're familiar with Larry Osborne. He pastors out in San Diego. He wrote a book called well Intentioned Pharisee. And in the book he talks about. In the book.

It's a short book, but in the book he says, basically a lot of churches are not raising up disciples, they're trying to raise up pastors. And he said, we're giving them so much. He said, my parents could barely read and they were some of the most faithful people I ever knew.

Not to say that we don't advocate literacy. I mean, we are people of the book, but we have to be careful of not putting ourselves on certain levels.

I used to tell my folks at church, I would say, you know, I laugh that the Churchill of Thessalonica is planted as Paul preached there for three consecutive Sabbaths and that's it. No more.

I said, you have heard more sermons in your lifetime or in the, you know, the last few months than many of these people ever heard in a lifetime. And they were out going to make disciples. Now again, you can take that too far and say people don't need training. No, they need training.

We need to do all of those different things. But I feel like our modern Western understandings of discipleship are so myopic.

And they don't take into consideration the people that they're interacting with, that they're irregular people. These aren't things theologians, not in the same sense.

These are just normal, everyday people that need to hear about Jesus and they want to hear the story. Tell them the story. Well, the best. Am I wrong there or what?

I want to tag on that some of the best leaders and theologians I've ever met on the mission field couldn't read or write a word. And when you look at persecution, you don't have to smuggle Bibles into Saudi Arabia. Now listen, for me, the Bible is not negotiable.

But here's the premise that I operate on. And I wrote this for one of the most well known missiologists.

I was writing a monthly article and when it came to this one, they finally took it to their executive committee and to the big dog himself.

And they called me and said, we believe what you're saying and what you're teaching is true, but this would generate too much heat and we can't use it. And the premise of this is God always keeps his Word, the Bible in oral forms to rapidly transmit truth.

And God always, it's not negotiable, keeps his Word, the Bible in literate form to preserve the truth. So I just doubled your ability to get the Bible into hearts and minds and you don't give up one page of the literate Bible.

But Jesus never once used a literate tool, not one time in the marketplace. But so you do that oral stuff so that the Bible can radically rapidly be translated across borders.

You don't have to smuggle books into Saudi Arabia when you're the container for the word of God and believers in persecution. Highly literate in the Soviet Union, in China, some other places, some places, almost no literacy.

They have committed 70% of the stories of the Bible from Genesis through Acts to memory. Oh yeah, the Bible is not negotiable the way it's packaged, whether it's an oral form or literate form is what we have to do. Both.

We're only doing one.

But you have to find that means to help people.

Even then.

I remember at our church we made sure that we had languages, we had Bibles in the heart languages of all the people that did come. Right now, again, we're in a Western context, so this is totally different.

But my thing was, is, yes, I want you to learn asl, but you need to follow Jesus in your own heart language too.

You need to have him speak to you, if you can read, if you can't read, that's a different story because then we need to get into a reality and somehow to communicate. And that's what I hear you saying, is saying, hey, we need both of these and we need to be able to read the situation.

Sometimes the situation requires the person to get that actual hard copy. But there's other times where that hard copy, if not done properly without laying a baseline first, could actually result in great harm.

And they may not even know Christ because of just their association with us. Right.

Even again, listen to the principle. You keep it in oral forms to rapidly transmit the truth and oral forms to preserve the truth.

And it's very interesting that I wrote on paper in my Bible for 15 years. This kinds of things drive my wife crazy because I, I just can't help but to see connection of dots.

And for 15 years in the western style churches, whether it was in Cairo, Mexico City, Germany, Moscow, United states, Canada, Europe, 85% of all the sermons I heard we've heard for 15 years, the text was taken from Romans to Revelation, 85%. And if you take out Christmas and Easter, 10% of the sermons are taken from Genesis through acts and 90% from Romans to Revelation.

And we should be doing that because who's in churches, Christians and Romans to Revelation is believers talking to believers.

Right?

What's being is us telling the stories from Rev from Genesis through Acts in the marketplace. That's what we're not doing. We're doing the pastor teacher thing. We're not doing the evangelist, church planner thing.

I think of course we need the full counsel of God's Word. To me, you can't even understand a lot of those passages until you understand the stories and the backgrounds behind them.

Why would you want to teach the Old Testament?

I did not come to Christ until 18 and I watched my wife when we read Romans to Revelation together, her mind will tell her all those stories of the New Testament and Old Testament. I didn't have that on my hard drive. And so doing that proof text in Romans Revelation, and that's not a bad word.

I don't have that story to tell myself. And so you've got to tell those stories.

But lost people, you're going to focus on Genesis through Acts and within the believers you're going to focus on Romans revelation. Romans revelation don't lend themselves to stories.

Oh no, not at all.

But, but, but the thing is the more you're with Christians, the more you're going to can be consumed by Romans Revelation how do you, how does Paul mentor Timothy? What's the role of women? What's the role of spiritual gifts? What do you do with your money?

How do you Prepare for the second coming when 4 billion people haven't figured out the first coming? And so it's, how do you use these two things in balance? You never give one up.

You cannot give up because every culture we've been in, if you have the Bible in just oral forms, the leaders that emerge will manipulate that Bible for their own agenda. And there's always gotta be someone looking at that literate book and saying, no, you can't do that. You can't say that.

That preserves the truth and keeps us from heresies. But, but you can't stop those stories from going everywhere.

We're getting people killed because of, of inappropriate ways of distributing the Bible without teaching people how to securely handle that. You can't say, I'm against Bible distribution. I'm against getting people killed for other reasons than who Jesus is.

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I remember being in one of the churches that I pastored, and when I got there, they had a high regard for the Word of God. That's what they told me.

As time went on, though, you found out that they had such a high regard of the Word of God, that it was, I would say, bibliolatry. They placed the Bible over the person of Christ and it's the Bible that testifies about who Jesus is. And I think we often get lost in that.

We put the Bible at such a high place that we forget it's testifying about Jesus and that's what gets us into trouble. It's not, as you said, it's not that you're against handing out Bibles.

It's not understanding the culture in which you've come into and understanding how you said secure, transmit and share it in a way that builds the proper foundation when there are needless pains that are happening that shouldn't happen or could easily be dismissed had they received it and they're entering into a Christless eternity because of it.

Reading the book, you have people that are under the threat of persecution, overt persecution, or let's call it hard persecution, as you've said before several different times, there is no persecuted church or a non persecuted church. It's just the church.

And I try to differentiate in people's minds, I might say a harder persecution where the government has come against it in a very hard, violent form and a softer persecution which is much more ideological and cultural. If we can just use that temporarily.

The softer and what I call covert persecution is more effective.

And here, you know, in, of course, In A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, he said it's more that people wouldn't read books because they wouldn't need it because they were so addicted to the pleasures that came. And I think in our culture today we have that.

That is the killing us softly, the secularization, the materialism, these thought processes that we've slowly imbibed that are slowly suffocating our faith and proving it to be ineffective. My friend Charlie Davis used to be the head of team. He's one of our advisory team at Apollo's Water.

And he said the church is like a 747 in the air, in the west, he said the church is like a 747 that's ran out of gas and doesn't know it yet.

Oh, wow.

And I think there might be some truth to that because I find that we are holding on to something that is either a cultural influence. And you mentioned that in the book a bit. But my question is, is what do we do in our churches?

Because you also advocate and mention 90% of our resources, and I'll forgive me if I get the stat wrong, you can correct me, but are aimed at reaching the 90% and not many of the unbelievers that are out in the world that are lost? Why are our resources dedicated to those who are unbelievers? And yet, I mean, not unbelievers, excuse me, the saved.

And we're not reaching the unsaved.

Do you think that because our focus has been so internal, that's one of the reasons why we've lost our fire and lost our zeal as a Western evangelical whole? Let's say. Not that there aren't remnants in there, because there are in churches people that have that right perspective.

But do you feel like that is what's happened to Western evangelicalism and why we've lost our fire right now? Or is it more of God's pruning the vine in order to make us more effective?

I'm afraid repeating it might. Might make listeners stop listening.

But again, the fact is we get an A plus for raising up pastor teachers and a D minus for raising up evangelists and church planters. About 93% of everybody baptized in our churches were born in the church. Then about 3% come in through vacation Bible school.

Another 3% come in through our clergy, doing a fantastic job in weddings and funerals and reaching those unreached families. And 1%.

1% comes into the body of Christ from intentionally going to the marketplace, having non believers in our homes, being in their homes for meals, and bringing them to Christ. 1%. And so we get so locked up in Romans and revelation is because we're just talking to Christians and we're just being with Christians.

And so to intentionally. My brother, I've asked clergy, my seminary professor friends, and this is, this is not being ugly.

And the body of Christ is one of the greatest treasures that I have in the universe. And, but, but when I ask leaders, how are. Let's just get real.

How are Caucasian Americans finding Jesus who have never once been in a church building? And we've never been. We've never received an answer. Never received an answer.

And the way that Caucasian Americans are finding Jesus and the process that they go through to belong to him is more how a Muslim and a Buddhist and a Hindu and a communist comes to faith than it is someone who's born in church. So we don't even know how these people are coming to Christ because if they don't come to church, we don't reach them.

So that's awesome. To me, that's the new Begin approach Leslie Newbegin obviously advocated.

He said after he had been in India and he'd come back into the uk, he found that the UK was harder to reach than it was out in India.

It's my contention that the missionary methods that have been established in different cultures and countries are what Western leaders, evangelicals, whatever you want to label it, the modifier there or the adjective, that's what needs to be adopted. And I don't think that's what seminaries and Bible colleges are advocating for.

They're fighting some of the arguments of past generations rather than the current understanding of the current landscape. I think churches are waking up and leaders are waking up now that they have to be able to do this, but no one really knows how.

In the mission field, what did you have to do? And I say the mission field, it's a mission field that we're in now.

But let's say that when you're in that culture that was not your home culture, you're not native culture, how did you have to go about making disciples in those places?

Learning the language and culture is the open sesame to people's heart. And for every time you have a challenge in evangelism or church planning, it's because you're not telling yourself the right Bible story.

And when you tell yourself the right biblical setting, the right story is that everyone, no exceptions that came to Jesus in the New Testament, came to Christ through a local language and local culture. No one came through translators. No one came through a third language or a Western language, if you will.

And so learning the language and culture is the number one way of getting in their lives. And most Muslims globally, even in America, come to Christ by sharing meals in our homes.

But more likely us sharing meals in their homes that take four, six, eight hours with extended family there. Evangelism in America and globally is not brain surgery. It is time consuming, and thereby comes the rubber.

Having our neighbors in our homes and being in their homes, it takes too much time where you live. I have talked to many, many of the larger churches, but in America, most. Let me just. I'm going to make this up.

But in staffs with more, with four or more staff members, they haven't shared meals in each other's homes. And if most lost people are coming to Christ through sharing meals with people like you and I, with our kids, with our spouses, how are we?

How are we? How would we imagine we're going to do that with non believers when we're not doing with believers? Our culture, our lives are so filled.

Covid has changed so much. I'm sorry for shifting gears.

No, it's all right. We shift gears all the time on this show.

I've been listening to secular people, talking about what Covid taught them was about all the things they don't need. And they don't need that second salary. They want to be with their family. They want to go camping, they want to sleep out in the backyard.

They want to have their neighbors over. And they're not going back to those jobs because they'd rather be in their community and with their kids and with their spouses.

And as singles in their communities, the singles have found that they don't need to spend tens of thousands of dollars on expensive alcoholic drinks in bars. They found it so much fun, more fun to have their single friends over to their apartment playing board games.

Taking time to be with lost people is the number one challenge that we have. Because we don't have the time.

We don't have the time, which I would agree with. I remember talking to Ruth and she said the same thing. Busyness. We're too busy.

And we have adopted a view of time because we have so many different possibilities of what to do with our time. I mean, we even use terms of finance. Spending time, wasting time, investing time. We've used that for our time.

Time has become our most valuable and precious resource because we have so many things that are competing for it. And we think in the west that we have to do everything. We have to be involved in everything. We don't. We really don't.

And I think Covid has brought a lot of that out. Just as you've mentioned, we're starting to see the need for embodiment to be with people, to build relationships.

But in the West, I have found, and this might be because we're getting a little bit. I mean, you're older than I am, but.

Stop it.

But if you go back, I think people had a harder time being with unbelievers because unbelievers are messy and do things that other believers cringe at.

That's why you don't bring them to church. They come to church and they get. They get so embarrassed when they realize that the way they're dressed is not appropriate.

Using that curse word during a worship service is probably not appropriate. Coming with different women on different Sundays is not appropriate. And so we wrote an article.

You can Google online the seven reasons why you don't bring new believers to church. Brother, this is not anti church.

It's just that when the moment you bring a seeker, a new believer to a church like the one that you and I love and the pastor that I love tremendously, is that they're basically told to come in sit down, be quiet. You don't have to study the Bible because that guy up there is going to study it for you and give you what it means.

You don't have to learn to sing, somebody's going to sing over you. You don't have to learn to pray, somebody's going to pray over you.

And the moment that you come into a traditional worship service, the people on the platform are going to be active, you're going to be passive. Ruth and I do, we just beg that when we do our three day workshops in churches for a weekend, find a room with tables, get out of the sanctuary.

If we are forced because of space or whatever that we have to teach in the sanctuary, we lose 60% of our interaction because people are, they are trained to go, come in, to sit down, be passive, be quiet, to listen and not to participate. And so it is that real just for our teaching sessions. But bringing new believers into typical church setting teaches them.

I don't have to study for myself, I don't have to write my own songs, I don't have to pray. These special people are going to do this for me and I can just be a, I can be a consumer.

So how do we make people be more active participants in the worship?

You've got to be in for 70% of the church globally, they meet in homes, house to house. And you can't hide there. You can't hide. And you're going to be telling your story.

You're going to, if you don't sing that, someone's going to talk with you.

You stumble and cry and maybe even use inappropriate language, but you're going to talk honestly to God and, and it's just, you gotta change the venue.

I love Nick, I love Nick's heart because Nick has this allergic reaction to anything that keeps people from knowing who Jesus is.

And oftentimes we have all of these unnecessary hoops or expectations that we communicate through our body languages, what we say to people all the time, we use it as a means oftentimes to keep them down and to elevate ourselves. But when we realize that Jesus came to seek and to save the lost, that's you and me, then that changes the game.

It helps us to see God or see them through different eyes, eyes of patience, eyes that understand that there's a process to these things. Some people, when they came to Jesus Christ, they were in darkness. And then they came into the light like a light switch. It was on and it was off.

Others of us though, are on a dimmer. Switch. It's taken a while. It's been a longer process and let me tell you, that process is messy.

One of my favorite proverbs is Proverbs chapter 14, verse 4 and we read this without oxen, a stable stays clean, but you need a strong ox for a large harvest. Allow me to give you the Travis Michael Fleming version. Without people it's easy.

Church isn't messy, but you need those people to really reach the world and expand the kingdom of God. DL Moody once said that God takes a crooked stick and can make a straight line. He uses us.

Each one of us is broken in a different way and God uses us.

I think that the takeaway from today's episode is for us to rethink a bit on how we go about church and are we creating unnecessary problems and barriers keeping people from saving Faith in Jesus and I want to encourage you and let you know that if this episode has been a benefit to you so that you can water your world and I really hope and pray that it is because God has placed you in the world that you're in and God has called us to help you water your world where you are, then please share this episode with other people. Go to your podcast platform, share it.

Also rate us and give us a review because it helps other people find Find this show and we are looking for watering partners and we need your help.

We can't create content like this without your help and we are about 25% to our goal and we need and are looking for watering partners to help us water the world for Jesus Christ.

And if you want to do that, go online to ApolloSweater.org and in the upper right hand corner click Support Us and then pick whatever amount you want and a thank you in advance for doing so. I also want to thank our Apollos Watered team, Kevin, Rebecca, Melissa, Donovan, Eliana and Audrey. Water your faith. Water your world.

This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollos Watered. Stay watered everybody.