Travis and Daniel continue their conversation about the magnetic points that are in every person and every culture that act as a bridge to the Gospel. They also talk about J.H. Bavinck, and how we all need to look at the methods of missiologists so that we might learn how to reach our friends and neighbors with the Gospel.

Daniel Strange is director of Crosslands Forum and the vice president of The Southgate Fellowship. He is one of the inaugural fellows of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics and is the author of Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions (Zondervan, 2015), Plugged In (The Good Book Company, 2019), and Making Faith Magnetic (The Good Book Company, 2021) (the book we are talking about today!) He is a contributing editor for Themelios and an elder of Hope Community Church, Gateshead, U.K., which is part of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches (FIEC).

It's a fantastic, fun, and faith-filled conversation that can help you build a bridge with unbelievers so that they too can know Jesus. This is a must-listen!

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Because I know in my life, I know that I can be pulled away and look for different connections or different deliverances or think that God's got it in for me or God doesn't know what he's doing. So as I apply the magnetic points to my life, I need to be magnetized, and then that will be the source to magnetize others.

But I can only be magnetized as I'm stuck to Christ or Christ is stuck to me.

It's watering time, everybody.

It's 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 on our show, we're having another one of our deep conversations.

You can't be magnificent magnetic if you aren't stuck to Christ. But what does that look like? Last time, we began a conversation with Daniel Strange about his book Making Faith Magnetic. Remember that?

It was pretty good. If you haven't listened to that episode, go back now. Do it now. Seriously, go back, hit pause, go back and listen to that one.

Because this one isn't going to make any sense without you listening to the first one. Daniel and I talked about what he called subversive fulfillment and the way he took this theologian missiologist by a guy by the name of J.H. bavink.

You need to know that name. It's a very important name. J.H. bavink, who had written about these magnetic points and brought them forward into our modern secular context.

He's talking about these connection points that everyone has within them, and we have the opportunity of bringing the gospel to connect with them where they are. And today in our conversation, we're looking at how these questions that people have embedded within their hearts are universal.

However, they may manifest themselves differently. We use the differences between the UK and the US to see how culture and situation impact the way we engage these questions in real life.

We talk about demeanor and apologetics.

Taken together, it sort of puts skin on the skeleton of the first part of the conversation and helps us to step into the missionary identity that has largely been lost in our culture today. I was actually chatting with a woman the other day about Apollo's water and what we do. She said something to me that I will never, ever forget.

She said, what a wonderful privilege you have to know that God has called you into this ministry and to know that God would choose you to create it is really remarkable and tremendously humbling. I Have to admit, I hadn't thought about it that way ever before. And when I did stop to think about it, it was extremely humbling. Who am I, after all?

I'm nothing but a servant. And I mean that. I then stopped to thank God for all the people he has brought alongside us.

Editors, writers, sound engineers, YouTube producers, directors of other ministries, designers, and people like you. Yes, you. I'm grateful that God has brought our path together. I truly am. I'm glad that he has called us into this ministry.

Not just me, not just our team, but he's called you as well. He's called you because we can't do this ministry without you.

We have ministry watering partners who are enabling us to do this kind of thing, people like you. And we need more of those watering partners.

And we want to hear more from these men and women of God who long to make a difference, who long for more. And if that's you, and I believe it is, then join us.

Simply click the link in the show notes and know that God has given you the privilege of being a part of something that is making a difference in the lives of thousands of men and women around the world. Now, without further ado, let's get to my conversation with Dr. Daniel Strange. Happy listening.

I think the missiological approach, and we actually call it the. Is your holistic approach. Actually, we have a kind of a name for it.

What we're trying to do, but you've really described it, is taking the missionary principles or principles that missionaries themselves have to do because they have to build a bridge. Like, you actually cite a Hindu in here, you cite Buddhists in here, because there are these ideas in their culture. They're embedded.

We just have to kind of like find the broom and you keep sweeping it away to find that place where that bridge is. I think of Don Richardson's the Peace Child. I don't know if you've ever read that, but in.

In that.

Where he had to find that bridge because the way that he was talking, they weren't, as you mentioned, finding traction. They weren't finding traction. And then when he found that image, that was the bridge. And these are actually in our culture, we ourselves have them.

We just don't know exactly how they connect always to our Christian faith.

And the mess in our context is that. And this is a great point that Bavinck makes.

He says, look, you need to understand, you need to do some homework on what do Muslims believe, what the Hindus believe, what does your secular person believe? That's really important. But every Person that you meet always defies or counteracts what you've read in the textbook.

If you just go with the textbook, you know, there's so many, in our context, so many people who would be Muslim but have been, who have been also very influenced by the west and secularism. And, you know, it's as I have a relationship with each person.

That study that we've done is really important because it does mean that we do kind of know where people are coming from generally, but the relationships that we have with every person is really important.

So you need that mixture of what you might call kind of knowledge, but also relationship and knowing that people are messy, people believe all kinds of things that don't fit together.

But that's where I think if we know, and this gives us encouragement that in any encounter we come to that these are people who are in a relationship with God, they know God, they're wrestling with him.

And then we just enter and we, you know, we move that relationship on, either calling me, calling them to Christ and, you know, the Savior of life or the Savior of death in that sense. So that's crucial in the preaching of the Gospel.

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You even mentioned that with Hinduism, which I thought was even great that you mentioned that Hinduism is not just one religion, that it's one title that's been given to all of these different religions that have been kind of bound together, but even they have embedded within it these same types of magnetic points. It's just again, up to us to find out how do they categorize what's the terminology that they use to describe that point? Would that be right?

Yeah. And if there's one thing that I could do away with is the way in which we.

We sometimes put ourselves in the faith communities or a bucket called the people of faith, that, that. That just plays into this problem that we've had for a long time, which is not Christianity, it's the Enlightenment, it's modernity.

That said, there's religion and there's the secular, there's facts and there's values, and we've bought into that. And this is a great thing that Newbig and pointed out that modernism put a distinction between fact and value. Whereas what we need to.

What we need to understand is that more holistic view that there is no uninterpreted fact, and that we all come with a worldview and increase. I mean, I hope one of the.

Although it's very painful, I'm hoping we're starting to see that a little bit more as people in our context at the moment, there's a live issue of a candidate who wants to run for public office, who is a very strong, devout Christian. And people are thinking, this is a terrible thing. And it's kind of pointing out, well, we've all got worldviews.

We all come into the public sphere with certain commitments, ultimate commitments. You don't have to call it faith. That just annoys people. But we all have ultimate commitments.

And again, we all have the ways in which we answer these magnetic points. So let's have that conversation. But I think the key thing there, Travis, is we need to do it in a way that is civil. I mean, this is a big.

You know, in some ways, civility is what you might call pre. Pre evangelism, because the fact. We just need to be able to talk to each other and say hard things. Of course we do. That's what the gospel is.

There is a confrontational aspect, but to do that in a way that's civil. And again, I just think the way that we're. The culture's tearing itself up in terms of the discourse is very unsavoury.

And I think we need opportunities.

And maybe the church can help here in just getting us to sit down and talk about where we're coming from and why and what our different views are, and then be able to have an opportunity then to say something about the Lord Jesus.

I want to transition just for A moment, because you mentioned you go from the magnetic points to magnetic preaching. That's the appendix that you put on the book. Let's talk about that for a moment. How do we preach these points?

I mean, they don't necessarily lend necessarily. You have chapter and verse.

I mean, you actually do chapter and verse, but the points are such that when you describe them, there's not a verse that actually just says totality. See what I'm saying? So because people go, Christ, Christ centered, God centered. They like, why do I need to know all this culture stuff?

It would be the worst. It would be the most boring preaching if every week you thought, oh, I need to talk about a magnetic point.

The way I think it works in preaching is, and let's take our example from the puritans. The Puritans had these preaching applicatory grids where, you know, you can preach this passage, and here are 16 ways that you could apply it.

And, you know, it was a kind of a way of applying the text. Well, I think we should use the magnetic points like that in our study as we're preparing. And for me, that would be kind of week to week exposition.

Going through a book would be okay.

In this passage in front of me, not that this is a foreign alien structure, but as it comes out of the text, because the Bible is talking about people and it's about, you know, that these points are what might be one of the magnetic points, that. What might be the itch here. That. That, that. That can be scratched.

You wouldn't talk about it being a magnetic point, but it's a framework that you can then like. Like a scaffold, which you can take the scaffold down. And I think, you know, that people do. You know, Keller has his own version of it. Pipe.

I mean, pipe. I'm trying to find this bit where Piper was saying about he has his version of people ask the same kinds of questions, that kind of idea.

So I think it would be a help to preaching, knowing our congregation to know, okay, this passage in front of me, what might be the magnetic point here that I could hit? Not that you mention it, but it could just be a helpful framework, just like those Puritan beaching grids used to be.

Something.

I just need you to let the light fade away Even through the darkest stay I got oh, I got to see the light and the one I follow yeah he makes it easy I know I don't got it all I got it figured out but with every fall he told me I'll make it out Just the way he planned it out. All I gotta do is trust in him and all that he will work it out.

Let's say that we take these magnetic points. Being a ministry leader, I want to go, how do I then incorporate this in my church?

And it may or may not fit, but I'm thinking of people coming in on a Sunday morning. And again, I was in a context where people would come on a Sunday morning. I know that other places that's not happening.

Where do you find or how do you go about building those relationships? How do you find the connecting points, to present the connecting points?

So I think the first thing there, this is answering the question, but taking a step back is back to equipping the congress, the congregation in discipleship in their own lives, but also as a church. So what I'm encouraging people to do is take the book, read the book as a group, as a church, and say, okay, in our local area, what are the.

How are people answering those magnetic points? What are the big, you know, what, what are the itch? How are they scratching those itches that, that they have? And then I think original already.

Just as Paul wandered around the objects of worship, what are the versions of the unknown God in your community?

And then, yeah, then it's finding a way of, of then resonating or building up the bridge that you've been talking about into the community to be able to go where people are and where those magnetic points really resonate in their own friendships and lifestyle.

But also I think in the ministries that you want to do in terms of, you know, when Keller in Stenachurch talks about theological vision, it's that idea of what does the gospel mean in your particular area? Contextualized. And I think that could be things that you want to do formally and informally within the church.

It's also about equipping the saints for good works, helping them think, be magnetic. So I think again, it's just a. A helpful framework. The problem is, is that I think we need to. The programmatic kind of.

People are suspicious of programmatic stuff increasingly. And this is about wisdom. This is about being flexible.

This is about knowing the gospel in your life so well that you can talk about Christ in a way that resonates and might touch on one of those magnetic points with others. So I think my answer is this idea that evangelism follows discipleship. As pastors, we're wanting the body to self grow.

We wanted to teach people, well, that they have a solid faith, that they're magnetized. And then I do think if people are magnetized that will attract others in their life in what they're doing?

Of course, if we're only doing church stuff all the time, then we have no chance to interact with those outside the church. And I know that that's a problem as well. And of course we model that in our churches as well.

What do you see then as the differences how that British citizens and American evangelicals, British evangelicals and American evangelicals, or let's say UK Evangelicals. Sorry, what are the differences in how they go about church in your opinion?

I laugh at this, but sometimes when people say, well, we're worried about becoming too triumphalistic as Christians, I mean, in our context here, that's never going to be the case really because we are so small in terms of Bible believing Christians. So I think there's a big size difference.

But I do think in the ways that I think some of us are thinking and trying to talk about that influence of missiology and how we would do cross cultural ministry here, you know, in some ways, you know, if you think the three big problems for any Christian are still the kind of money, sex and power, then in some ways we don't have. We, well, we do have power issues, but in different ways. There's an economy of scale there.

But maybe in the political influence that you have, which I think again, I'm not someone who would say we need to give back on our political influence. I think the church is political and politics is religious. I mean, that's important. But not everything is political. I think that's key.

So I think that's a big difference that you still have influence in terms of the political sphere that at the moment Christians don't at all. I think the other thing I'd say is the importance of global Christianity.

You know, you know, I know it's a cliche again, but you know, the, the typical Christian in the world is a, a lady who's 19 in Africa or something in that sense that we need to be learning from the majority world Christians and increasingly helping, asking them to help us with our blind spots and vice versa. This, I, this is a time, I think, for Christians across the world to be collaborating under the gospel.

And we are so tribalized, we're so kind of monocultural. And again, I know that you've got a passion for kind of that global Christian vision, but this is a time when we need each other.

We need to be looking at, under God's word. We need to be looking at things from multiple perspectives.

That's how the body kind of helps itself to kind of make sure that, that we're not kind of dealing with blind spots.

So the more that you can do cross cultural communication in a podcast like this or in any kind of context is important because as you know, someone from the outside can see something that you can't see. And I think that that's the true. That's the same for you looking at our culture as well. So we need to help each other. Is that iron sharpening iron.

And I think that's a, that's, that's one way forward in how do we be, how we constructive in that. But yeah, overall to your question, I'd say, and again, we need to be doing more of it here.

That kind of missiological mindset, the cross cultural mindset, I think is more, more important in both contexts.

O my I so praise him for he is your help and salvation.

You have talked a lot today about a variety of different things and I know a lot of this you said was originated with Bhavik. If someone wanted to go further and learn more on Bhavik, where would you recommend that they begin?

Great question.

Well, there's a book that Bavinck wrote which was only published after he died and was actually based on a series of lectures he gave in Chicago at the Federated Theological Seminary. And it's called the Church between Temple and Mosque.

And it was published by Odermans and it's been out of print until this month because Westminster Seminary Press have done a new beautiful edition and I've done a longish essay at the beginning about how we can best read the book and understand Bhavik. So the Church Between Temple and Mosque published by Westminster Seminary Press. It's a great intro into Babik.

He talks about the magnetic points and again, my point in the introduction is he's talking about different world faiths. But we need to translate this, transpose this for your average none, your none in America and the uk. So I'd say that that's a great place to start.

The church between Temple and Mosque.

I love that. One of the things that we do when we kind of finish up our show and thank you for being so generous with your time, by the way.

This has been a delightful conversation. I feel like you just wrote the Apollos water manifesto right in front of us. We often like to give people what we call the water bottle for the week.

This is what you sip on throughout the day. What is one truth that our, our people can just cling to and sip from? Based upon this conversation today.

Yeah. So, okay, in Acts, when Philip is talking to the Ethiopian, remember, the Ethiopians in the chariot doesn't understand the book of Isaiah.

Phillip says, explain it in the. In the esv and in the niv, it says something like, and Philip began to talk to him about the gospel or proclaim to him the Gospels or Jesus.

But in the. Actually, I don't use it. The King James, I think, is more accurate. It's literally, and Philip spoke unto him Jesus.

And I think it's this idea that we are presenting other people with a person. Yes, the gospel is a message. Yes, the gospel is a worldview that encompasses everything. But fundamentally, we're presenting people with a person.

And that relational aspect of showing people the person and work of Christ, or Christ clothed in the Gospel, as Calvin had it, just reinforces the relationality of what we're about. I want to be magnetized by Christ.

I want people to see right through me and look at Jesus Christ, because we're presenting people a person, and in him is all the wisdom, and that's who we need to be pointing to.

Well, thank you, Daniel, for coming on the show. I appreciate it. It was so much fun. I highly recommend this book to others.

And I want you to come back and talk about the church in the mosque with Bobby. Would you be up for that?

I'd love to. I'd love to. I'd be well up for that. Thank you.

Awesome. Thank you again for coming out of Paula's water.

Thanks, Travis.

You are presenting people with a person. Not just an idea, not just some type of morality, not just some type of better life, but a person.

You are supposed to be so magnetic that people are drawn to Christ. I know it's overwhelming and just let the guilt set in here for a second. That's not what I'm trying to do, though. Really.

That's not what I think God wants us to do, but he wants us to join him, to believe him, to trust him, and to recognize that those common ideas, the common questions, still are operating within the world, even in the midst of this crazy secular time in which we find ourselves. They may not look or sound like they used to. The way they come across is different. And yet the underlying concerns are still there. But like J.H.

bavink, who is serving as a missionary in Indonesia, or Daniel Strange in the uk, the ways that those questions show up are different. They are different because the experiences and possibilities are different. The kind of questions that a society asks are different.

The ways our society is taking these Questions is different than it was in the past. And we have to adapt the way we interact, just like missionaries do when they go to different countries and cultures.

We need to adapt a missionary mindset if we're going to fulfill God's mission in our world. Seriously. It means we're going to have to stop separating facts from values, ideas from lived experience.

We're going to have to recognize that all too often we have reduced the gospel to something less than it actually is. As Daniel said, hope is holistic. We believe that in Christ God saves whole people, not just minds or souls. We're not brains on sticks.

All of who we are, all of who you are. When God saved you, if you are a person who has claimed Christ, he saved all of you, not just a part of you, but all of you.

This is why we believe in a missio holistic approach. God has sent us all on mission to be magnets in Daniel's language, in all of life.

Not just our minds where our intellectual beliefs, but in the predispositions that we have in the day to day.

Going about our lives as we go about our vocations, as we raise our families, as we interact with our spouses and our friends, as we engage our entertainments and our leisure. All of these things, not just Sunday morning. So much more.

Our role here at Apollos Watered is to help you to stop and think, to ask questions of yourself, your church and culture in ways that we don't ordinarily think about. I mean, we don't. You don't just tell me. I mean, be honest. You don't think about your culture all that much, do you? Or maybe you do.

And we don't do this as a ministry just because it's interesting, even though we think it is. We like to geek out over this stuff all the time because this is what consumes us. This is what God has called us to.

We believe that God has called us at this moment in time to help the church go forward. Because we believe the gospel is true, that Jesus Christ is the king of the world, the son of God, the Savior and Lord.

We believe the gospel is both true and subversively answers all the questions that people have. But we also believe that our culture is at a crossroads right now. I mean, it's crazy. And many people aren't even asking questions anymore at all.

They're just going along like sheep.

Like Glenn Scrivener in our episode last week, people aren't even aware of how they have been influenced by the Bible and how its message Both lays the groundwork for and answers their unasked and un understood questions. Here's the thing.

We who are Christians living in the west have been able to get away with assuming people get where we are coming from and basically have the same way of looking at the world that we do. But increasingly that's not true anymore. I mean, think about it.

If you're talking to someone from a Hindu background who has a multiplicity of gods and goddesses, they don't have the framework that you may have if you are listening to this and you come from a certain background in the United States of America.

But if you're listening to this on the other side of the world, I want you to think about what you have received from other people from around the world and some of their biases and the way that they did theology in a different culture may not be exactly true where you are today. We have to be able to re examine those beliefs.

That's what we heard from Daniel and it's what we heard from Carl Truman when we talked to him about the rise and triumph of the modern self and a host of others. We can't just assume people understand or know where we're coming from anymore. We have to really dig down deep and do the work to find that out.

And if we, the church and I say we, that's you and me, are going to be renewed. We need to take a hard look at ourselves in the mirror that our culture has put up in front of us.

Because the culture is showing us that hey, it's not working anymore. And we're around going, no, it's true.

And we start saying the words over and louder as if we're talking to someone who, who, who doesn't speak English. And we think by saying it louder that they're going to grab a hold of it. No, that's not it at all.

We have to learn to speak the gospel into their language, into their understanding. And that's what these magnetic points are all about.

I think the reality is that when we start looking at it, we've actually settled for a gospel that is too small. I mean, we think that we have this full gospel idea. And I'm not talking about the charismatic gifts right now.

That's not what I'm talking about, okay. I'm talking about the, the holistic nature of how much the gospel speaks to the entirety of our existence.

We've made it just a part of who we are, not seeing how great God is and what he's really doing in the world. I also think that we've attached our own culture to the gospel in such a way that we can't separate the two.

And when the broader culture changes, we no longer have anything meaningful to say to it because they've moved on. Where have we gotten so complacent that we have allowed sin to creep into the point where our calls to repentance and salvation to them ring hollow?

I think that's a question we all have to ask ourselves.

In short, what we want to do is help you to rethink, to reimagine, to bring that imagination in that God has given you, and then redeploy you in the pursuit of Christ's mission, where you are, with all of who you are. God has you where he has you right now for a reason, for a purpose.

He has you interacting with the people that you're interacting with for a reason and for a purpose. He has divinely appointed you at this time for a mission, and we invite you to embrace that mission. You know, Jesus gave us the Great Commandment.

We talk about the Great Commandment to love the Lord your God with all of your heart, all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength. And he gave us the Great Commission to work that Great Commandment out. And the two can't be separated from one another.

But what we often fail to see is that he gave us the great community because we couldn't do it alone. That's the church that it's the great community that shows the reality of the Great Commandment which is expressed in the Great Commission.

The three are completely interconnected with one another.

We invite you to be on mission with us to help the culture, to help the Christians in this world to rethink, reimagine, and redeploy in their pursuit of Christ.

Mission, just like Strange has showed us, there are magnetic points within the culture that we can use as bridges to invite people to cross, to embrace Jesus, who is the Christ, the Son of God, the Savior of the world. This concludes our conversation for today. What questions do you have from this episode?

I'd really like to hear what you took away or what you didn't like, what you did. Like something that you want us to go deeper on. We would love to hear from you.

Simply email me travispollowswater.org or connect with us through Facebook, Instagram or our YouTube page where you can watch this conversation and many of our other conversations. And also please be sure to hit that subscribe button.

You will feel so good knowing that you did that and helped partner with people trying to water the world. I want to thank our Apollos water team for watering the world. This is Travis Michael Fleming signing off from Apollo's Watered.

Stay Watered. Everybody.

Sa.