Bakery Run #15 – Bread Garden

Pie Buddy: Oliver Tweeddale

Topic: Evangelism

The topic of evangelism had come up in one or two of my previous discussions, so I figured it was something worth chatting about. I decided that Oli was the man, given that it was a topic quite close to his heart. The venue of choice was Bread Garden, a Korean bakery on North-East Road at Glynde. Bread Garden definitely has a very authentic Asian feel to it, with the furniture, plants, music and choice of food. All of these things are very different to what you would expect in a typical Australian bakery. “This’d be a good place to come for a date I reckon,” Oli said.

 Instead of pies, this place has Japanese chicken korokes. They look vaguely similar to pies, but taste quite different. I don’t really know how you’d explain what it is – imagine a bread roll sliced in half, with a chicken curry paste smeared in the middle, and then the whole thing is deep fried. It tasted pretty good, although very different (much less meaty) to a regular pie. I also smashed down a big green tea flavoured cake, which turned out to be delicious as well. All in all a very different meal to what I was expecting, but a good feed nonetheless. And all for just $6 – definitely value for money at this joint! I’d definitely recommend Bread Garden to anyone looking for a unique bakery experience, although if you’re just hankering for a meat pie and a custard tart then this definitely isn’t the place.

With our food on the table, Oli and I got down to business. I knew that evangelism was on Oli’s mind, so I didn’t waste any time with small talk. “What is it that’s spurred you on? Why is it such a big thing for you?”

Oli thought for a second. “I grew up in a Christian household, so I knew what the Bible was about and what a good Christian looked like, because I had good Christian parents,” he replied. “But until last year, when I really took on faith, I never really thought about evangelism. I knew God loved everyone and he wanted everyone to be Christian, but I didn’t really understand how becoming Christian affects the way you act around other people.”

He then reflected on one of the big difficulties he had faced since choosing to follow Jesus. “When I became a Christian, I found it hard working out why God has chosen me, why he called me to become a Christian, and why other people weren’t called by God.” He reflected on Paul’s letter to the Romans, where Paul is filled with sorrow for non believers:

I speak the truth in Christ – I am not lying, my conscience confirms it in the Holy Spirit – I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, those of my own race, the people of Israel. Theirs is the adoption of sons; theirs the divine glory, the covenants, the receiving of the law, the temple worship and the promises. Theirs are the patriarchs, and from them is traced the human ancestry of Christ, who is God over all, forever praised! Amen. (Romans 9:1-5)

“When I became a Christian,” he continued, “there was a really sad time when I was coming to terms with not everyone knowing Jesus.” He discussed this concern with pastors at his church and listened to sermons on the topic, concluding that Christians should indeed feel anguish for those who don’t know Jesus. “I’ve got a better balance now between thankfulness and anguish for people who don’t know Jesus. I do really feel compassion for those people, and that drives me to want to tell them.” Recognising his calling from God is something that drives Oli every day.

“So how did that play out in your life?” I asked. “How did you respond once you started to think those things?”

“Basically all my friends are non Christian. I was just really excited to tell people that I’d changed. Something had happened in my life. I thought it was the best thing ever, and I still do. So I guess I just started telling people around me that I’d become a Christian. I told my parents, and they had been praying for me for ages, so they were really excited. I got some different reactions from other people. So it started with my friends who weren’t Christian.”

I knew he had started getting involved in doing walk-up evangelism (that is, approaching random people and talking to them about Christianity). “And then it got on to walk-up stuff? How did that come about?”

“After a while I thought to myself ‘you’ve only got so many friends’,” Oli replied. “I certainly wouldn’t say I’ve evangelised fully to any of my friends, because I think that takes place throughout a relationship. But there were only so many people I could talk to. I read a bit about old evangelists and what they did.” Oli then referred to a group he had read about, known as the Cambridge Seven, who dedicated their lives to evangelism – this included doing public sermons at university that attracted thousands, and establishing prayer groups. They ended up serving as overseas missionaries. “Evangelism seems to be mostly relational in Australia, and I think that’s really good. But I’d never really heard about this formal way, walking up to people and telling them straight up.” The pastor who gave Oli the book had talked about how he did walk-up evangelism during his time at uni, just walking up to people and chatting to them about Jesus. It made an impression on Oli.

“I thought to myself ‘I really want to do that’. The idea was really nerve-wracking, but the more I read the New Testament, I couldn’t see a reason not to try it.”

“How’s it all going so far?” I asked.

“It’s been good,” Oli replied. “Me and another guy at uni started a group where we do an hour of walk-up evangelism a week, and it’s been really good. It’s hard to get people to come along though. I think people are a bit scared, which I can totally understand, I was scared too. It’s a scary thing.”

“Does that disappoint you a bit, that more people don’t get involved?” I asked.

“Yeah, it’s a bit disappointing. But I do know it is really nerve-wracking. And I know God doesn’t require me to create an army of evangelists. He works in many ways, some of which I see in front of me, some of which I can’t. So I don’t want to let that disappointment change my opinion of why I’m doing this.”

Oli then considered the pluses and minuses of walk-up evangelism. “A lot of people say walk-up evangelism isn’t good, for a variety of reasons. They say you can’t build up a good relationship with someone, so how can you tell someone about Jesus if you don’t know them, which I can totally understand. Also, there are a lot of people that do front-up evangelism with the wrong point of view from Scripture, so I guess in a way that’s tainted the early evangelists like the apostles. It’s pretty sad, because they were the ones who did this thing, which we have in Scripture. But then people have taken the Bible and misinterpreted it. The Bible does give evidence about why this is a good thing to do.”

Oli continued, focusing on how walk-up evangelism could have a positive impact on relational evangelism. “To me it’s been really good just to work out how to explain Jesus to someone. There will be a time in your life when you meet someone and they ask you why you go to church, or who Jesus is, or what Christianity is. And you may only have five minutes to explain it. Walk-up evangelism is a really good tool to be able to explain your faith concisely and effectively. It’s really good just for relational evangelism. It helps you to back up what you’re saying, using memorised verses for example, to be able to create an argument. The confidence that you get from that, you might be able to go back to the people that you’ve known for ages and work out a way with some of the objections they have to come at it from another angle.”

“And I guess it works both ways,” I said. “The more you talk to your friends about it, the more that will equip you for walk-up stuff. The more you’re talking about it and engaging with people, the more you’ll improve at the walk-up and relational sides of it.”

“Yeah, definitely.”

I was interested to hear the impact that this was having. “How’s it been going so far?”

“It’s been really good,” Oli replied. “I reckon we’ve had about four weeks of doing it, and each time I’ve talked to maybe two or three people. There’s no real limit or quota that you need to reach, there’s no pressure. I’m currently reading the Bible with two guys that I met, which is awesome, seeing the fruits of the labour. I can tell them about Jesus using my own words, but what I’d much prefer is to tell them about Jesus using the gospel. So that’s been really good being able to read the Bible with these guys that I randomly met at uni. And I know other people have had similar stories. I’ve heard people say that people just don’t relate to that sort of thing anymore. I don’t reckon that’s true at all. When I’ve talked to people, heaps of people have been willing to chat and willing to listen to me explain the gospel to them. And also, some people are even willing to meet up and talk about it further.”

“I suppose the fear of rejection is a big thing for people thinking about doing this,” I suggested. “No one’s scared of getting physically hurt or anything, it’s more just the fear of looking bad, getting ostracised a bit. I know I’ve had times where I’ve been thrown into walk-up evangelism, and it’s difficult. It’s something that intimidates people. Listening to you though, you seem to get it. You get what it means to know Jesus and what it means to not know Jesus. There’s no sense of embarrassment, no shame of the gospel. You realise it’s not you they’d be rejecting, it’s Jesus.”

“Yeah, that’s so true,” said Oli. “And I’d say before I became a Christian, I cared heaps about what other people thought about me. I really wanted to be successful with sport, uni and that sort of thing. God’s been really gracious to me to call me and to show me that it only matters what he thinks. He’ll be with me in any conversation or situation. I don’t need to be eloquent or have some amazing comeback to their questions, so long as I have the heart to want to tell them about Jesus, that’s all he requires.”

“I think everyone, myself included, struggles with wanting success on their own terms,” I said. “We want to be in control, we want people to think well of us, that sort of thing. And that’s a big barrier to evangelism, people not wanting to stand out from the crowd. There’s the whole excuse of ‘it would do more damage than good going up and talking to someone’ but I think that our worldly mindset is probably the underlying cause of that excuse. If we’re being completely honest, there’s probably more good than harm in going up and talking to someone. Unless you really  misrepresent the Bible, what’s the harm in doing it? If someone told me to start following netball, it’s not going to make me any less likely to follow netball. It won’t necessarily make me follow it any more, but it puts the idea in someone’s head and gets them thinking about it. Not everyone will be interested and you can’t push it too far, but it’s worth giving them the chance to respond.”

“It’s really good for your prayer life too,” said Oli. “We always pray before we go out, and there’s always three or four people that I’m trying to pray for regularly. You can’t think to yourself ‘what do I pray for, life’s pretty cruisy’. Maybe there is nothing drastic going on in your life that you need prayer for, but it’s awesome to be praying for non Christians.”

“I think it would be great for your Bible reading too,” I said, “because you’d definitely read the Bible with more evangelistic intent. You’d read passages and think ‘how would I explain this to a non Christian?’, ‘how does this apply to them?’, it would make you engage more with the Bible.”

“Yeah definitely,” Oli agreed. “And one thing I have done is try to write down the hard questions I get, because there have definitely been questions I get that I really struggle with. So I try to remember those questions and follow them up, to have an answer next time I get asked that question.”

“Yeah, constantly equipping yourself day after day, trying to make sure there’s nothing you don’t have an answer for,” I said. “I mean, there’ll always be something you don’t have an answer for, but trying to make sure there’s less and less. Making sure you understand the rationality of faith, understanding that Christianity is rational, it’s not a crazy thing to believe in. That’s a big part of it, getting your head around all the questions and answers that you get.”

“Yeah definitely,” Oli replied, “and that’s why it’s been so good for me. I guess I’ve been thrown in the deep end – I haven’t really studied the Bible that long, so I wouldn’t say my overall Bible knowledge is particularly large, but I know the gospel. That’s all I really need to know. Questions related to creation and stuff like that are really good learning tools, learning how to explain stuff like that to a non believer.”

“How important a role do church and Christian friends play in all of this?” I asked.

“At church there are people who are also keen on this, and they’re always keen to hear stories, and other people are also keen to get it going at uni and at church. I reckon it’s one of the best conversations you can have with other Christians, telling them that someone you knew has become a Christian, but also telling them that you’ve explained the gospel to someone. That should be our bread and butter, it’s what we want to see happening. I’ve found that people have been encouraging for me, and I think it’s been encouraging for them too to hear these stories.”

Oli then brought up two Bible passages that had shaped his thinking on evangelism. The first one was from 2 Timothy, talking about how we are called to do the work of an evangelist, and how many will reject that message:

In the presence of God and of Christ Jesus, who will judge the living and the dead, and in view of his appearing and his kingdom, I give you this charge: Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction. For the time will come when people will not put up with sound doctrine. Instead, to suit their own desires, they will gather around them a great number of teachers to say what their itching ears want to hear. They will turn their ears away from the truth and turn aside to myths. But you, keep your head in all situations, endure hardship, do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry. (2 Timothy 4:1-5)

The second passage was from 1 Corinthians 2, where Paul tells how the Spirit – not Paul’s persuasive speaking – is powerfully at work:

And so it was with me, brothers and sisters. When I came to you, I did not come with eloquence or human wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness with great fear and trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power. (1 Corinthians 2:1-5)

Oli discussed the humility shown by past evangelists and missionaries, who reflect on how little they’ve done in their lives for God. “I think it just shows how much they understand why they’re doing it,” he said. “They’re not doing it to get praise, and they’re not doing it by their own power. They’re doing it for God.” Oli gave particular mention to William Carey, a well-known English missionary, known as ‘the father of modern missions’, who requested his epitaph to read ‘A wretched poor and helpless worm, on thy kind arms I fall’.

“He understands that it wasn’t him doing the work, it was God,” Oli said. “It gives me peace knowing that God will be with me the whole time.”

I don’t have anything to add to this. I think Oli’s words say it all. Praise God that this guy, who up until less than a year ago had turned his back on Jesus, is now fired up for an evangelism in a way that is rarely seen. This was hands down the most encouraging bakery chat I’ve had so far. And probably the most challenging too – what’s stopping me from unleashing the gospel message on the world with the same enthusiasm that Oli is? I hope you found it as helpful as I did.