Episode 015 – Evangelism & Mission

5 June 2021

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This transcript has been edited for clarity.

 

T: What episode number are we up to now? Fifteen?

B: Let’s go 15.

T: Episode 15. So this one’s all about evangelism & winning souls.

B: Mmmm. It’s that sense of mission.

T: Yeah that’s right, so in this one we’re going to talk about what we told people, how we told them, why we told them, motivations, all that kind of space, so yeah. So get your tracts out, people. We’re gonna go hand out tracts and win some souls.

B: Well, speak for yourself. This was something I really struggled with as I’ve spoken about before – being up front with my faith and trying to win souls, it was very, very difficult. But I’ll have a couple of stories about how I attempted to do it.

T: Yeah well, I was the opposite. Again, T is the opposite of B. I think that should be a Sesame Street song. (sings) T is the opposite of B. Um, but yeah as you know, I lived in this space and you even said it in the last episode, that I was constantly the evangelist. It doesn’t matter what I’m pedalling, I will evangelise. I think my personality type – I’ve done a couple of those personality type assessments, and I have this sort of persuader, kind of personality. That’s where I sit in a couple of them. But I also lean towards helping, so I often times think I’m showing people the better way for their own sake, not just for my own agenda. But that being said, I’m going to start with the Revival Centre. The Revival Centre have what – I guess what evangelicals would call a false gospel, or a different gospel. Very similar to what in America are called the Oneness Pentecostals, Oneness Pentecostals are trinity deniers. The Revival Centres weren’t necessarily trinity deniers, but they did believe that you had a one two three salvation message, which is you must repent, you must be baptised, and you must be filled with the Holy Spirit, with bible evidence of speaking in tongues. And until you have that bible evidence of speaking in tongues, you are not a Christian.

B: What’s bible evidence of speaking in tongues?

T: Well exactly, what IS bible evidence of speaking in tongues? I don’t believe that there is such a thing, but that’s what we used to say. So the bible evidence of speaking in tongues was the bible evidence of one’s salvation, meaning that you are imitating what is in the bible, which is that you will speak in tongues like they did in the book of Acts. 

B: Ahh.

T: So that was their message, we would go out there preaching the gospel, and we saw people like the AOG and other Pentecostals – who spoke in tongues – as being lukewarm, perhaps even having lost their salvation despite the fact that they spoke in tongues themselves, because you have to preach speaking in tongues. In fairness, the Revival Centre message to get saved is pretty easy – one two three, but to stay saved, fucking hard as you know, and if you cross any lines you’re out, for life, missing the resurrection and all that kind of stuff. But anyway, like most cults, we were really big on evangelising, big on telling people and bringing people into the fold. So we had lots and lots of leaflets. We called them pamphlets, we didn’t call them tracts. They were leaflets and pamphlets that were given to us. Oh that was the thing about the Revival Centre, we weren’t religious, we didn’t have church services, we had meetings. We didn’t have sermons, we had talks. We didn’t have tracts – so they tried to move themselves far away from all that religious language, while being more religious than everybody else, right. But we were given all these leaflets that were full of out of context bible verses, and end times, speaking in tongues – all these different leaflets. As a teenage fundamentalist, I would have a number of these in my bag at all times, and I would give them to people in the street, give them to kids I went to school with, and Catholics are Revival Centre enemy number one. So it was my mission to try and bring as many Catholic young people into the Revival Centres, so I used to hand out leaflets and talk to my friends, and bring them along, and the school found out and put a stop to it. They actually came to me, and had a chat to my mum, my mum was very, very embarrassed because she wasn’t part of it all, and I was told I had to stop handing out leaflets.

B: Did that just embolden you because you were obviously doing the right thing?

T: Yeah I guess so but – I mean, I did stop. I stopped handing them out at school, I honoured that because you don’t want to be kicked out of your school, especially when your mother’s whacking you across the back of the head and telling you stop. But certainly it was like more proof that Catholics were of the Devil, because they’re stopping me from preaching the gospel, right. But I can remember they used to mobilise us. We’d go to the youth group, we’d have a youth service – well, a meeting, it wasn’t a service. We’d get all motivated and excited, then they’d take us into the city and we would hand out leaflets. We’d invite people back for coffee – just for instant coffee, it was in the days before soy lattes…

B: That’s terrible.

T: I know, it was the day. And we’d bring them back, and we’d try and convert them, or we’d talk to them out in the street. So that was really where I got my training. You just did it, and it wasn’t so much about befriending people, loving people or helping them – no, no, it was just telling them.

B: What was your strike rate?

T: Pretty low. But it’s a number’s game. I was successful in bringing a couple of friends into the Revival Centres from my Catholic school. One in particular is still a Christian to this day. He ended up leaving the Revival Centre, so then I went and found him and brought him into Great Big AOG, because I thought this’ll fix ya. And yeah, but he and I are still friends, we go out for lunch from time to time, and talk and laugh at those days. He’s still a Christian, but I can say he’s also still a very nice guy. So not a huge strike rate, but enough. Enough.

B: So you obviously really honed those skills in the Revival Centre. How did that translate into Great Big AOG? Were they accepting of that?

T: Well, yeah. There was a street team, it was a group of people that was committed to going out on the weekend. We’d go out on a weekend night, we’d hand out tracts and we would preach, we’d stand on the chairs in the local shopping strip and start to shout out (in a preachy voice) oh I want to tell you today that Jesus died for you… – quite literally like that. We were the God botherers out in the street. Probably more intense even than the Revival Centres in the fact that we would street preach. People would bring guitars, and we would sing all those typical sort of street preacher songs – like J E S U S, etc and out we go and start preaching to people, and trying to bring them in. So it was very similar to the Revival Centre, but the message was a lot less harsh. In the Revival Centre it was almost everyone would be mobilised to go out and do this on a certain night or a certain church meeting, whereas in Great Big AOG it was smaller groups of people. It was almost an insignificant percentage of people would be involved in it. 

B: It was interesting, I did try and be part of it and I’m sure you remember this. I remember being absolutely petrified – how the hell do I sit down and talk with someone? As I’ve said in previous episodes, externalising my faith, talking to other people about it, it sat incredibly uncomfortably with me. I remember going to the street team with you, and it was terrifying. It was absolutely terrifying. I remember when the guitar came out I got up the back of the crowd, as far as I could, so I could still feel part of it but I didn’t want to be seen. I remember talking to people, and I remember being quite emboldened by the fact there was maybe 15 or 20 of us, but I remember being petrified by it. It was something I found very confronting and uncomfortable, and I think that the first church I really became involved with – I think I spoke about it again in an earlier episode – we used to go to the local train station and we would talk to people and try to win their souls for Jesus. We had this manic street preacher who used to absolutely fire hard at them and tell them there was a frying pan in hell with their name on it – turn or burn. It was literally that message. I remember going to that twice and thinking this is really messed up, I can’t be part of this. It never sat comfortably with me. So for me, it was a scary time being able to be part of that, because I felt like you had to be part of it, and it was a bit of a personal challenge too. I just couldn’t do it, so God knows how you could do it – well I know how you could do it, you’re a born evangelist. Whatever you set your hand to.

T: Yeah, whatever I happened to be pedalling. But you didn’t show it. You certainly didn’t show that you were struggling with it, you’d get out there and jump in.

B: Fake it til you make it. It’s my motto to this day. But I think for me it was just really difficult. Whether it was a lack of conviction on my own behalf, if I just didn’t know if I fully believed everything I was trying to tell people, or whether it was a confidence thing – even to this day I’m not quite sure. Maybe it was a  mix of both, but it wasn’t me. I wanted it to be me, but it just wasn’t.

T: The Great Big AOG message was somewhat different to the Revival Centre too, it was more John 3:16, for God so loves the world that whoever believes will be saved, so it was a lot easier to get in. That was the first thing. But I think the message, whilst it certainly ultimately wasn’t a message of grace, it certainly appeared to be at the start. We would talk more about Jesus loving you, Jesus dying for you. But we would certainly pray for people out on the street, I don’t know if you remember we would lay hands on them and pray for healing, expecting that God was going to do some sort of miracle. Never saw one, by the way. Never saw a single one. I think if you’d asked me back in the day I might have told you that I’d seen one or two, and it wasn’t that I was lying as much as I was more convinced that coincidences and other things that had happened had been miracles.  Did I see anybody actually healed? Did I see any sort of supernatural manifestations or anything like that? – no. I didn’t. That doesn’t mean they don’t happen, people claim that it happens, but I never saw a single one. But we used to go out there expecting that God would do miracles. Do you remember we used to have prayer meetings before we’d go?

B: Yes.

T: So we’d meet at the church building, and we’d pray for half an hour, 45 minutes, lot of praying in tongues, lots of praying that God would soften hearts, we’d have a bit of a worship time, ask the anointing to come, and then we’d jump in cars and go down into town, hit the streets and start talking to people.

B: It terrifies me, even thinking about it, absolutely terrifies me. I got thrown into those situations quite often and it was me thinking I had to do that, I had to be like that, otherwise I lacked faith. For me it was never natural – I do remember I ended up, when I was at bible college, there was an offer to go overseas, to go to Estonia which is right next to Russia. It’s the old Communist bloc. We were invited to go over and speak to young people about this positive message. For me that was scary, but I also thought hey this would be good, there’s anonymity, so I can go over there and be part of it but it won’t be as confronting.

T: So you went on a short term missions trip, brother.

B: The old short term missions trip – I did. But to build up that we had YWAM – Youth With A Mission – come to us and train us a little bit. There was maybe a dozen of us that went over, we would do street theatre in the city.

T: Was it in English, or did you learn some Estonian? Or did you just speak in tongues and hope that they understood you?

B: Hey that would have been good. No, it was no words so it was completely through the art of movement, which if anyone were to try and associate the art of movement with me, it just doesn’t work. I’m a quality dad dancer, that’s about it. But it was good, it took me out of my comfort zone, I actually enjoyed it and it was a lot of fun but also going over to Estonia I preached lots. I preached in quite a few churches over there – obviously everything is through a translator. I went and spoke in a lot of schools, quite often you weren’t allowed to preach about the gospel in the schools, there was still a lot of hangover from Communism, it was around 1993 or 94, so Communism had only fallen a couple of years prior to that, so you couldn’t be that open when you were there. I spoke in a couple of prisons over there, it was quite amazing and I felt quite emboldened by it, but there’s no way I could do that in my home turf. So it was an interesting time, it was life changing even when I look back on it now. I think some of the things I learnt about myself while doing that was quite incredible – that sense of mission regardless of the fact that right now I look back on it and go that is just ridiculous, why would you even do that, it was an opportunity to learn a lot about myself.

T: So that’s what you got out of it, but when you were there, why did you go?

B: Well, it was about winning souls. 100%. This was a ripe field, Communism had just fallen, with the godlessness that was over there it was a prime opportunity to go sow some seeds of faith and Christianity and win some souls for Jesus.

T: And save them from hell, right.

B: Oh absolutely. Hell’s not a great place, good place to visit, you wouldn’t want to live there. But I think it was a pressure also, because I was at bible college and I was trying to professionalise my Christianity, it was time to move into ministry so what better way to do it than to leap into this space.

T: And you talked about going to bible college and ending up in debt, so this would have been all at your own expense as well.

B: Yeah, that was full on. So this was where I was told – I was really clear, I said this is an act of faith if anything, and I was told oh it’s a great test, if God wants you to go, it’ll happen. Lots of things happened in the lead up, but when I look back on them – I was asked to go and speak at a regional church prior to going, to tell them about what was coming up. I got a really decent offering of $4-$500 given to me that night. It was a fair bit of money back nearly 30 years ago, and that paid about half the airfare, or maybe a quarter of the airfare. I put a little bit of money in myself, I was raising the money for the airfare, we got a couple of things that were subsidised through the church, but a couple of days leading up, I had zero money to go with. So I was leaving to go to the other side of the world – we’d also booked a Eurail pass for about 10 or 14 days afterwards – I think there was half a dozen of us that were going to travel through Europe, and have a bit of a holiday afterwards. I got to the airport with $20 in my pocket. I remember my father coming out to the airport and shoving $200 in my pocket. That was literally all I had, that and a credit card. I owed nothing on the card, but I could get a cash advance and I remember on the way we got to Germany I thought stuff it, I’m going to get a cash advance. So I cash advanced my whole credit card which was about $1,000, then on the flight from Germany to Estonia, one of the pastors – actually, slight side note, when we were in Germany at the airport we caught up with Brian Houston, who was on the way to preach in Kiev in the Ukraine. This was quite early days, 93 or 94, but remember feeling so encouraged by that. We didn’t know that we were going to run into Brian at the airport and I felt incredibly encouraged – right, I’m on the right track. 

T: You’re such a fucking name dropper, look at you. Oh, ran into Brian.

B: Oh look, he didn’t talk to me. We were nearly late for our flight – they were calling our names for the flight and we missed it because we were having coffee and they actually ended up taxiing the aircraft out on the tarmac and had to shuttle bus us out – those were the days when a plane would actually wait for you. But I remember on that flight from Germany to Estonia, the pastor was sitting in front of me turned round – I don’t know why, no one at this time knew I had no money, no one. But he turned round and said someone gave me a gift before we went, and I feel I’ve got to give you that gift. And it was $100. I remember thinking we’re going to Estonia, things are dirt cheap over there, this could last me a long while. Anyway, long story short, while we were there I went through all my money. I was down to my last $100-$150. We got put up while we were over there, we stayed at a Living Bible College so they paid for all our food, gave us accommodation. I decided – obviously it was my lack of faith – that I had to come back early. It was time to come back to Australia, I changed my flight. Everyone else was going through Europe. I didn’t want to, the fact that I had $150 to go to the five or six countries we’d booked into, I thought I really need to get home, and I’ve got a credit card debt now, so if I cash in my Eurail pass at least I can pay some of that credit card debt. Just before I was getting dropped off at the airport, this same pastor came to me and he said because you haven’t completed the mission, I feel I’ve got to take that money back. So he took the money back, I was left by that time with $30 or $50, and I remember thinking I’ve got to get back to Germany, I’ve got to stay a night in Germany, I’ve got to get some food, and then I’ve got to fly back to Australia. What the hell am I going to do? So I got back to Frankfurt airport in Germany. I got something to eat – things aren’t cheap in Germany – I had practically no money, I didn’t have enough to get onto the train and go to the backpackers in Frankfurt, so I had to stay on the cold, concrete airport floor but it was all in faith so it was fine, and I had to stay there until the next day when I ended up finally falling asleep and then was almost late for my flight. I lined up – it was back in the day where you could still smoke on a plane – and the only seat I could check into was in the smoking section. I’d given up smoking, so I just sat there and passively smoked about 14 packets of cigarettes all the way back to Australia while I spoke to this guy who was around about my age, a German guy, going what the fuck, you’ve just been on a mission trip? What is this? He thought I was the strangest dude ever, which I was.

T: You know what’s funny about that, that same pastor – because obviously I know who that was – I had people sponsoring me through bible college, right. Remember I told you it was $40 a week, so I had four people giving me $10 per week for bible college, right? He found out that I was also getting the dole, and he came to me and told me I heard you’re asking people to give you $10 a week – in the 90s $10 a week was still not a lot – it wasn’t enough to live on, it was just paying my fees. And then you’re also getting the dole, I don’t think that’s right. And he told me off and told me I wasn’t living by faith and I had to either choose the people giving me the $40, or the dole. Of course I chose the dole, but then I got myself into debt with college because I couldn’t afford my fees. All the while, he’s getting a salary, he’s driving his Falcon, he’s living in his McMansion – the whole bit. 

B: Falcons were big amongst the pastorship, weren’t they.

T: They were – the sedans. 

B: I did see the occasional wagon amongst them. But they all had Falcons. EA and EB Falcons.

T: I totally get that, but in terms of mission, the fact that we would suffer like that to win souls – to go out there and bring people to Jesus because it was the ultimate commitment, the Great Commission right – go ye into all the world and preach the gospel. It’s basically what we were put on earth to do after accepting Jesus.

B: One thing that just popped into my mind that I completely forgot about was the fact that that pastor didn’t have to pay their own way there or back, so we all paid a loading amongst the 12 or 15 of us to pay for their ticket as well. That was part of it, because they were going as our shepherd. 

T: And he took the $100 back.

B: Took the $100 back. It shattered me. I had an incredible amount of respect for this person, and I remember at the time my heart just sank, I thought this is incredibly wrong. Even at that time I remember thinking so was God wrong in telling you that I needed that money, because that’s what you said – that God had told you that I need that money but now, because I haven’t lived up to your expectations, maybe God was wrong.

T: I remember that. Mate, I remember how much that rocked and upset you at the time. It was devastating. 

B: I think it was one of the things that led to me leaving bible college the next year. One of the things – there were several. But that was definitely one of the things where I just thought this is shit.

T: Do you remember – and this is testimony to how much of a poster boy for Great Big AOG I was – do you remember that there was a TV station that was doing a youth television show, it was network station.

B: I remember this well.

T: Yeah, they approached the church and said we’re doing this show on different religions, and we want to look at some young people in your church. The church actually put me forward as the only one from our church, so I had a film crew follow me for an entire week, they came with us to the street team, they came with us to youth and the services and all that kind of stuff. Do you remember they followed us out onto the streets, and there was that guy.

B: He loved his drugs.

T: He came up to me – the cameras were there, I was talking to someone about Jesus, it wasn’t staged, it was all legit, but it was for the cameras. He comes up in the middle of the interview and goes I tried Jesus and it didn’t work. I just looked at him and said who do you love more, Jesus or your drugs? And he goes oh I tried Jesus and I said no no, who do you love more, Jesus or your drugs? And he goes oh – and I said just give me an answer! I was full of grace and love right? Then he goes I guess I’d have to say I love me drugs. And I turned to the camera and said yeah well see why that didn’t work, because he loves his drugs more than he loves Jesus, and that was my answer to drug addiction – you just gotta love Jesus more. So that’s somewhere on film somewhere in some sort of vault – well who knows. But you know what I’m saying. It exists. I was a shit. I was a total evangelistic knob.

B: Yeah you were an asshole. I remember that incredibly well and what was that – almost 30 years ago?

T: Oh yeah almost. I lived it B, I had a best friend at the time who was very similar, we would talk to people on buses and trains, we would go to markets in not even officially church sponsored events, we would stand up on the chairs and start preaching and preach against the drug paraphernalia that’s being sold at that store, and nearly getting our heads kicked in, because we were challenging their livelihoods. I remember getting up and saying drugs – the scourge of the nation. Who in his 20s uses the word scourge, other than the born again?

B: To be honest we’ve got a national anthem that uses the word girt, so I mean, I think it’s very Australian to use scourge.

T: I was actually challenged by a Canadian once because I was saying I reckon, I reckon this, I reckon that and he said you reckon do ya?  You sound like you’re from the 1800s, you’ve got a bit of a reckoning going on. Apparently we use those words, but seriously though it was part of what I did. I lived this and it was a big part, even after I left Great Big AOG and went onto other denominations I was very much involved in missions, and urban missions. Not so much the overseas stuff, although I did start to pray for China. I started to read a lot of books about China and what was happening in the Chinese church and the persecution, then I started giving money to mission organisations that specifically focused on China, and then I started to believe that I had a call to China as a missionary, and that one day I was going to live in China as a missionary. Ironically of course, later on having left the faith, I ended up living in China for seven years, learning the language, the whole bit, but nothing to do with religion. I consumed a lot of Chinese píjiǔ, being Chinese beer – that was my life in China, just working and living. 

B: Maybe that was your mission.

T: Of course that came back into my mind, I felt called here, I was supposed to be here, maybe that’s what this is somehow. You still have that niggling little believer’s voice, or as Kenneth Copeland would say The Believer’s Voice of Victory brother – it’s still in there niggling away saying this is what you’re supposed to be doing here. And I wasn’t. I had to push that back and say that’s all make believe. But I was right into China and right into the missions work and I was giving money to quite conservative evangelical mission organisations because I didn’t want to be giving it to the Pentes – I’d moved away from that kind of thing. I flirted a little while about joining YWAM, but as you mentioned, you needed to come up with all your own money and sponsorship, and I just couldn’t do it. While I might have been great at preaching at people, I wasn’t great at the fundraising, to be honest.

B: Not everything was bad – I’ve brought forward some really good positive stuff from back then to my life now, and I’ve learned a lot. I really love seeing those comments because there’s nothing worse than feeling like you’ve wasted your life. As we’ve spoken about a few times, always find the opportunity to pull the positive into your future, and leave the shit in the past.

T: All right mate, that was awesome. As usual, I will go see my therapist and unpack everything we’ve talked about this week, and I’ll see you next week.

B: Sounds good. See ya.