You are starting off on the wrong foot!

Laurence Singlehurst (former National Director of YWAM) talks with Mark Greenwood to explain why you are failing to connect the good news message of the gospel with people from this generation.

Mark: Laurence, so good to spend some time with you today, chit-chatting. Just tell us a little bit about how you have seen the culture of the world change and the time that you've been involved in mission and evangelism.

The world has changed, and the church has changed. But have the changes that the church made been changes that have kept pace or almost been ignorant of the change in the world?

Laurence: Well, the world has changed beyond all recognition, in the sense, if you think that when Billy Graham was here in the 50s, we were a secular nation but living on a Christian moral foundation.

So the Sunday school movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, 70% of all children went to Sunday school.

The generation of the First World War and their children got the Second World War, they had Christian morality. 20% of the nation still did all sorts of rock and roll and sex and drugs and the rest of it.

But there's this great thing, and we knew if you asked your granny certain questions, you got some very definitive answers. And a good clip around the ear for asking in the first place.

And then what we didn't realise, and I think what the church, we were like the frog in the boiling water. We did not see postmodern culture coming.

And so postmodern culture arrived, but we're still preaching and reaching out as if people still understood sin, born again, repent.

We're preaching the message of forgiveness, which, after the Second World War, when people were a little bit naughty - I've read my mother's diaries! They had a sense of conscience, which we don't have today.

Billy Graham comes around and preaches about forgiveness. I mean, they are queuing up to get in, okay, because they have this sense. But people don't have that sense today. So why are we still preaching it as our first foot forward?

That's not to say forgiveness is not part of the gospel. Yeah, but it's not the first foot forward because it's not a felt need. People have shame. They have all sorts of other things that we could be talking about.

So the world has changed, and we have stayed the same.

I did an exercise, so I still do it a little bit, trying to listen to all of the well-known gospel preachers, and listen to the people preaching on the streets.

And sadly, I watched a girl preaching the other day. Enthusiasm, bravery -  staggering. Content gobblygook. Complete gobblygook. Nobody understood what she was talking about because it was all in religious jargon.

And if we are going to be effective in missionality, we have to move on. We've got to understand the culture today.

What does postmortem mean? What has it done to people's heads and what has it done to their language?

Mark: What would you say it is because I agree with you? I often talk about when sharing the gospel. Sometimes we can be in such a rush to get everything across, we get nothing across.

And I talk about what's the starting point. Let's make sure with the individual person you talk about you plant that plant first before you move on.

Would you say as a general rule, what would you feel would be a good starting point? I mean, this is without necessarily talking on a one-on-one where you don't understand somebody's narrative.

If you're presenting the gospel to a group of people, where would you feel would be a good starting point?

Laurence: I would want to start with a problem.

I might want to start with selfishness. And talk about the story of selfishness in our world today, both at a personal level and the corporate level and the governmental level and how it's destroying things. What are we going to do about this problem?

And then I might want to talk about Jesus and his solution to it.

Or I might want to talk about - you matter.

I might want to talk about green issues and go back to Genesis and say, look, we should steward the gospel.

I want to talk about justice. I want to come in at a level where they're feeling a need or a link point. I might want to talk about, and I do talk quite a bit about the world's best friend.

There's an Australian theologian who wrote this little booklet that really said the gospel is the gospel of friendship. God created us for friendship.

Adam, where are you in the garden? God lost his friends, and it's the redemption of friendship through Christ. And Jesus says to his disciples, I no longer call you servants, but friends.

We all want a best friend. And God's my best friend. He knows my secrets, not because he knows, but because I've had to shuffle my feet and tell him.

And I can tell him the good things, but I have to shuffle my feet and also tell him that things are perhaps thought that I shouldn't have thought and done that I shouldn't have done.

And I really did shout at Alish and I'm really sorry, Lord. Embarrassing things.

This is my friend. So I think friendship so there are lots of little things I'd want to come in on. And so I tend to start with a problem, but try to use different language.

I wrote a little booklet with Grove called The Gospel in Postmodern World. What's the sort of language, what's the sort of stories you might tell? So we're lost. You've got Jesus, you've got the story to go through.

I think the other observation is that Talking Jesus research showed that 40% of the people out there aren't really sure that Jesus is a real person and they don't know the story.

I'll tell you what was one of the most frightening things, listening to all these famous preachers whose names I won't mention, is actually they don't talk about Jesus at all. The only bit you get is the cross and the resurrection.

So it seems to me that if the parable of the pearl is important, this pearl of great price, so wonderful that you give up everything to buy it. Have we told enough about Jesus that they can fall in love with him.

I was saved in the Jesus movement. So for many years, I was a Jesus freak. Hair down on my shoulder, I had my bag and my badge.

Mark: You got any pictures of that, Lawrence?

Laurence: Yeah, I might have somewhere! Jesus was what it was all about. But I'm really worried today that people know very little about Jesus.

So I am beginning to think, in my head, actually, as preachers, a good framework might be the supernatural birth, the amazing story, and, of course, that incredible death and resurrection.

Mark: I'm really pleased to hear you saying that, because when I'm teaching people about sharing their faith, I say to them, now, imagine you met me on the day that I was born and the day that I died. How could you make a judgement about what I was like as a person?

And I said, if we only ever talk about Jesus in the context of his birth and death, how on earth can people make a judgement about what he was like?

Laurence: And I loved the middle bit. Telling the story - Jesus and the woman at the well. Jesus with Zacchaeus. Jesus with the Samaritan woman. Jesus touching the leper. Who touches lepers?

My Jesus touches the people no one else touches.

If you're an outcast, if you're lonely, you feel that you're disgusting, Jesus will touch you.

And that's what moves your heart, then you want to follow this man, give you a lifetime. But if all you know is a tiny bit here and a tiny bit there, I wonder if that's a real problem and whether Jesus is the best kept secret of the church.

Mark: Yeah, good shout. I agree with you.

So, really, in a sense, the principle of finding the connecting points has stayed the same throughout how church has changed and the world has changed. It is just what those connection points are that have changed.

Laurence: And are we actually preaching a connection point that was good in its day? But ain't good today.

Mark: So that's a good reflection in it. Is our connection point still good today or do we need to rethink?

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