Interviewing a Former Atheist

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On today's episode, Pastor Keith welcomes Rich Suplita to the program. Rich is a former atheist and college professor who now is working to bring the Gospel on to college campuses. His story is so encouraging in regards to what God can do. You can learn more about Rich at his website askaformeratheist.com.

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00:24
Welcome back to Coffee with a Calvinist.
00:26
My name is Keith Foskey and I am a Calvinist.
00:29
On today's program, I'm going to be talking with my friend, Rich Suplita, whose ministry I've been encouraged by for quite some time.
00:37
I met him on Facebook and I've been watching him for a long time on his Facebook page, and Rich has not only a Facebook page but also a website, askaformeratheist.com, and he does ministry directly with students on college campuses.
00:53
He engages with them directly, he answers their questions about the faith, and again, watching him has been an encouragement to me because over the years, I've sort of adopted some of his methodologies when we go out and share the faith at our fishing hole, which for those of you who are members of Sovereign Grace Family Church, you'll know that's what we call our outreach ministry.
01:11
That's our fishing hole.
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So I want to welcome you to the show today, Rich.
01:15
Hello.
01:16
Hey Keith, appreciate the opportunity to come on and share some thoughts and ideas with your listeners.
01:23
Well, thank you again for coming on the program, and I want to begin by asking you to, if you would, share with the audience a little bit about yourself because you have such a unique testimony, and I was again, to remind myself today, reading through a little bit of your bio on your website, and I like what you said about with your wife, we're thinking about writing a book about how not to spend the first half of your life, and so if you could just for the next few minutes just sort of introduce yourself to the audience and tell them a little bit about who you are.
01:54
Yeah, absolutely.
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So, and I'll try to be brief, but I grew up in West Virginia, the north central part of West Virginia, and I grew up in a Church of Christ movement, going three times a week to that, and that was a big part of my background all the way up through my teenage years, and I would say even into my early 20s.
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I was sort of a non-traditional student when I went to college, right out of high school I worked construction for a few years as an electrician apprentice, and I was in the Marine Corps Reserves, and then when I finished that, I think I was 22 or 23 when I really started into the university, into college, and basically to summarize that, I went through a phase the first couple would say my Bible-based beliefs that I had up until that point grew weaker and weaker.
02:56
My affinity for the world and for certain categories of sin became stronger and stronger, and by the time I was finishing up my undergraduate degrees, I don't think I would have called myself an atheist by, I probably would have shrunk away from that designation, but I certainly was living as a practical atheist by that point.
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Got married in 1999 and moved to Georgia.
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That's interesting.
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I was married in 1999 as well.
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What month? September.
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Right.
03:33
Okay.
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So we were August 1st, so we were one month ahead of you.
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Okay.
03:38
Yeah.
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So September of 99, and so this is my now ex-wife.
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I'll get to that in a second, but we were married for nine years.
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She did her medical residency in Savannah.
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A year after we moved to Savannah, started a graduate, a PhD program at the University of Georgia, and it was called biopsychology when I came in, biological psychology, but then they changed the name to neuroscience and behavior.
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And so that's where I spent five and a half years earning my master's and then ultimately my doctorate.
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And I would say that's where the real deep indoctrination into very anti-theistic viewpoints set in.
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So I had not only the heart that, as we would say biblically, love to sin, even though I didn't recognize that at the time as such, but looking back, literally heart of sin, heart that loves sin, and then being trained in ideas that are fundamentally opposed to the truth of the gospel.
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And so I mentioned the divorce.
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So I was married for nine years.
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We got divorced in 2008, and that's kind of, not coincidentally, corresponded to the height of my atheism.
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And I think there's a lot going on there, but a lot of pain of a failed marriage.
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My wife divorced me.
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We tried to work things out, but it was, it went through as a no fault divorce, whatever that means.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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And so, you know, obviously a lot of heartbreaks.
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I have three daughters not being a part of their daily lives.
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And I think, you know, it was sort of the classic scenario of God does not exist and I hate him.
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That is the truth.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Absolutely.
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I remember a guy, I don't mean to interrupt you, but there was a guy I listened to.
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He was out on a college campus and he asked the questions.
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No, I'm sorry.
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He was in an atheist event.
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And he asked the question.
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He said, if it could be proven that God did exist, would you worship him? And almost every one of them said no.
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Even if we knew God exists, we would not worship him.
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Yeah.
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And I think that's true.
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Biblically, that's true.
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My understanding of any human being, none of us would unless God enabled that to happen.
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So that is very true.
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And so that's where I was.
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And I think it's a big part of, I guess, coping, sort of reorienting my life.
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I'm single again.
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I'm a scientist.
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I really latched on to what was called the New Atheist Movement, characterized by figures such as Richard Dawkins.
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Christopher Hitchens.
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Yeah.
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Right.
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Sam Harris, Dan Dennett, some of those guys.
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And became an aficionado, for lack of a better term, of a internet broadcast out of Austin, Texas called The Atheist Experience.
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And their main talking head was a guy who was a former Southern Baptist named Matt Dillahunty.
06:48
I'm familiar with Matt.
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He debated Seytembrugge.
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Yep.
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Right.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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So I spent a lot of time watching that program and getting the idea of, hey, Athens, Georgia needs something like this.
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And made some efforts to make something like that happen.
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It never really materialized.
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And then so my sojourn into militant atheism was about a three-year journey before I hit the wall and realized this isn't going to work out.
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And God started turning all of that around.
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Do you remember what it was that really showed you, and I know it wasn't one thing, but I want to share with you something real quick.
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When I was 19 years old, I got married and I got saved in the same year because I met an atheist for the first time.
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And he challenged me on what I had been brought up to believe.
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And I spent several weeks of pure misery because I thought maybe he was right.
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Maybe there wasn't a God.
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Maybe it wasn't true.
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And it was the closest I ever came to being an atheist.
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So for several weeks, I threw my Bible across the room because I thought it was the craziest.
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I went back and read the creation and the flood and the talking bush and all these things.
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And I literally, I remember getting to the burning bush and throwing my Bible across the room saying, this can't be true.
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This is the most radical thing in the world to believe.
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And it was that moment that God used to really begin working on my heart because it was the first time I'd ever been broken.
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And so telling you that part of my testimony, do you remember a specific moment when you were in this militant atheism where you would say, this was the moment where I realized I'd gone too far? Well, yeah, a few different moments actually stick out in my head.
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And I would say probably the biggest one, the single biggest one involved my oldest daughter, Annabelle, who is now 19.
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She's a freshman here at UGA.
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But at the time, I guess, you know, we're talking 11 or 12 years ago, something along those lines, at least a decade.
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So I say, I'll say 11 years ago, her mom, my ex-wife at the time had still been taking her to church, kind of like her, the way she dealt with the divorce was kind of like re-establishing community, joined a local church, just a typical SBC church outside of Athens.
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And I think it was either Sunday school or VBS, Annabelle had made a profession of faith in Jesus.
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And so I get a text.
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This is while, by the way, I'm like the acting faculty advisor of the Atheist Club at UGA.
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I get a text that Annabelle is going to be baptized on such and such a date and, you know, can I attend? And my first inclination was to say, no, of course not, you know, but then actually through talking to some of my atheist and secularist friends, it was like, well, the consensus seemed to be, you know, be a good father, show up, take the pictures, smile, you know, you can talk with her about these things later, but be a good dad, right? So don't, you know, try to fight this.
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So I did that.
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And my girlfriend at the time was a secularist Jewish girl.
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So she was basically an atheist.
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And so I said, next time we hang out with Annabelle, we'll go get ice cream with her.
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We'll sit down and we'll say, okay, so here's this thing that happened at church, you know, you were baptized, this is what that's supposed to mean, but in sort of a patronizing way, this is so common these days, say, you know, and it's fine if you, if you want to believe in some type of religion, that's fine, if that works for you, if that helps get you through the day, that's good.
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People need something to believe in, but come on, you know, there's not like really some guy up in the sky that's ready to zap you with lightning bolts if you step out of line.
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And so this was the conversation that was supposed to take place.
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And all I can just to make a long story short, we sat down with her to have that conversation.
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And I literally could not get the words out of my mouth.
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I couldn't even begin that conversation.
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I don't think like I was, God sent angels to mute me or anything like that.
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But it was just like, I couldn't, I couldn't express that to her.
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And you know, in psychology, we have a theory called cognitive dissonance.
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Maybe you've heard of it before.
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But the idea of cognitive dissonance is like, right, if I believe in something, a big part of my identity is a belief system.
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At that time, it was atheism for me.
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So much of my identity was bound up in that.
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I was advocating that, espousing atheism, trying to convince other people to become atheists on campus.
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And my daughter had professed faith in Christ and was baptized.
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And not only was I not able to contradict that in her life on any level, I realized that actually it was giving me joy.
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I celebrated in my heart.
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It brought me real joy in my heart of hearts to know that the person I love more than anyone else on the planet had made this, quote, decision for Christ.
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And that's major cognitive dissonance, right? Yeah, absolutely.
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What do I do with this? I don't want her following a lie all of her life.
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So do I really believe that Christianity is a lie? Maybe I don't.
12:37
Wow.
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That's, that's powerful thought.
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That is.
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That's awesome.
12:43
Well, good.
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That's that, man.
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And okay, so how long after that would you say, if you were, you may not remember specifically, but how long after that did you begin to, did the holes in the dike begin to display themselves with atheism? I would say pretty quickly, within a matter of maybe six months at the most, you know, I just kind of pushed it to the back burner at first.
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And then I remember very distinctly the winter break, we used to call it Christmas break, right? They've trained us all to be PC now.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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Regrettably, I just said that.
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No, I'm with you.
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Yeah, I understand.
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The break between semesters of 2010, 2011, I just remember really going back and I was still in some of my, my atheist routines, watching the atheist experience, but I was watching it with a new desire, a new bias, we'll say, right? A different perspective.
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I wasn't just kind of like to jump on this bandwagon.
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That's not my intention now, but I want to really think maybe the right, maybe the wrong.
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And I started noticing some, some major, just some huge flaws in their reasoning.
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Some, some major inconsistencies, or I would say philosophical failures with the atheistic philosophy.
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I know we don't have time for a bunch of them.
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I'll just give you an example of one, but the one that really comes to mind, since my background was in neuroscience, cognitive sciences, if, if materialism atheism is true, then there is no such thing as, as choice.
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We are automatons.
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We are robots.
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And I don't notice, I'm not using the word freewill because that gets us into a whole different conversation, but I think pretty much all Christians would agree that humans make meaningful choices.
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We make choices.
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Absolutely.
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In fact, I've had this conversation with people who are nonbelievers and I say, if what you say is true, if I'm, if I'm essentially stardust and all of my thoughts and feelings and emotions are simply the expressions of my mind's chemical reactions, then I'm not in control of that.
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I'm not a free thinker.
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I'm the, I'm the product of whatever my mind has grown to be.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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And so it's not free thought.
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It's not free thinking.
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It's, it's byproduct.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
15:18
I love that.
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Yeah.
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That's exactly where I was going with that because, you know, the atheists, we, when I was part of that movement, we would pride ourselves, we're the free thinkers.
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That was like our favorite designation for ourselves.
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Uh, they had proposed the brights for a while.
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How condescending is that? You know, we're the brights, but they're like, okay, no, we're the free thinkers.
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Exactly what you said.
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If, if the ultimate reality from beginning to end is stuff, some type of stuff, stardust, whatever you want to call it, some iteration of physical matter and energy that obeys fixed physical laws, there is no wiggle room for any type of choice, any type of volition in there whatsoever.
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Stuff just does whatever stuff has to do because of physical necessity.
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And I realized that, okay, well, even if that were true, which takes an enormous amount of faith to believe that nobody lives like that's true.
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And so if your worldview requires you to believe something's true, but in terms of how you live your life at every turn, you've got to contradict that.
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I would argue that worldview is not a very good worldview.
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Amen.
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Absolutely.
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Absolutely.
16:36
Um, so you said that was back in 2011.
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So you're, you've been in, so you've been in ministry or it was after, how long after that did you decide I got to change and go into ministry? Yeah.
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So, okay.
16:49
So, uh, I'm trying to be concise, um, I knew, and I know people can go read this.
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I just, uh, hearing you tell your story, I could listen all day, but, but go ahead.
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Um, I, I knew, okay, so coming into that spring semester of 2011, I knew for sure that I was leaving atheism.
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I knew that, okay, I didn't take this real far at the time and it was, it was a long, in fact, in terms of like, am I going to go back to Bible believing Christianity kind of along the lines of what I grew up with in some way? The answer I would have had at the time is absolutely not.
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I have no intentions of going back to that, but Hey, I really do believe there's a God.
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I believe there's a God.
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It's a personal God.
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I was very, you know, we're, we're to a certain extent, we're a product of our cultures.
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Um, nobody would deny that that has an enormous impact on, on how we think.
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So sure.
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So I, you know, it's real easy in America to buy into the God of love, right? I mean, when we would say God is a God of love, we've got to balance that against all of his other attributes, but just jump on board.
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I'm going to join some church that just, uh, you know, appreciates God, worships God as a God of love and nothing else, and just kind of embraces everyone.
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That was really, um, where I thought I would go with it going into like spring and summer of 2011.
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Um, sort of a, you know, a therapeutic type of, of, of loose, low obligation, low commitment Christianity.
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I understand.
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Yeah.
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Um, what was, when did you finally join a church? Okay.
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Yeah.
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So I don't, I didn't become a member, but I was, um, I was intercepted late that semester.
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It was on Good Friday of 2011 by an outreach.
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Um, it was their first ever, uh, event at UGA, a, a, a big, uh, Southern Baptist church just south of, of Athens called Watkinsville First Baptist was having a, an outreach event called the Great Exchange.
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And it's a survey based, um, have you heard, maybe you've heard something about that? I don't think I've ever heard of it.
19:05
Um, but it did, the students were giving out surveys or.
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Yeah, it's just like a, it's a nine question survey.
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That's the idea.
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You know, um, you have a little piece of paper.
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I've actually helped them with subsequent events since then.
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Like, first question is describe your spiritual background.
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What was that like? And then as you work your way down through the list, there's a question who, uh, who was, who do you believe Jesus was, who is Jesus in your opinion? Uh, if you could know God personally, would you like to stuff like that? And so I stopped and I took the survey and, uh, ended up in about a two hour discussion with, um, one of their assistant pastors, uh, who's now the, the, the lead pastor or whatever you want to call it, senior pastor for lack of a better term at, at my home church, Living Hope Church.
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Wow.
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David Holt.
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And, uh, I kind of explained to him the journey I'd been on and, and, uh, kind of where I was.
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We started meeting at Starbucks for the next three or four weeks, just having coffee, which is a great way to do evangelism, right? Yeah.
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Praise the Lord.
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Yeah.
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Absolutely.
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Just meet with them, get to know their story, where they're coming from, what their questions are.
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Um, and the Lord really used that.
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What I would say is the next really big step was when, uh, when David, uh, he invited me, he's like, well, do you, do you still have a Bible? And I knew I had one.
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It was my old NIV study Bible that I had as a teenager in church Christ.
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And I knew exactly where it was in my apartment.
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I never read it, but I knew where it was.
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And he's like, I said, yeah.
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And he said, well, um, would you agree to do this between now and, you know, we'll meet again like next Friday at 3 PM or whatever it was, uh, between now and then, would you agree to just sit down, take a couple hours, sit down by yourself and read through the gospel of John? And uh, cause I told him, I said, you know, I do believe in God now.
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I think Jesus was not just a man.
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I think that he probably, there's a good chance he rose from the dead, but I don't know.
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I can't be sure.
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I told him I still believe in evolution, which I don't now, by the way, different topic.
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I always believe that because, Hey, I'm a scientist and this is what scientists believe.
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Um, and I have a real problem with the doctrine of hell.
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He said, yeah, but what, I want to focus on this fascination with the person of Jesus.
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I really think it's from the Holy Spirit.
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And he's like, I would just be fascinated to see what the Holy Spirit would do with the time.
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If you sat down one sitting, just read through the gospel of John and just prayed before you begin, uh, God, if, if, um, this really is your word and what this is telling me about Jesus is true, then help me understand that in a, in a way that I cannot deny.
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And, uh, so, so I did that, uh, and, uh, made it, you know, here's what I thought at the time, Keith, I thought, well, I already know what the gospel of John says.
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I had to memorize Bible verses as a kid, right? My logic and reason and stuff like that has brought me to this point, but just reading the gospel of John is not kind of like, I didn't say this to David, but I'm thinking this to myself.
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It's not going to get me past this 50, 50 mark.
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Um, but you know, I, I went ahead and did it and, uh, the story sounded very familiar for whatever reason, I still don't know.
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The Holy Spirit decided to use John 11, Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead and specifically that, uh, interaction he has with Martha where, you know, she says, you know, Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn't have died.
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She says, you're, he's going to rise again.
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And she says, yeah, I know on the last day when everyone is raised to rise and Jesus is like, no, that's, it's not what I'm talking about.
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He says, I am the resurrection and the life and just a little light bulb, right? Comes on.
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Jesus is not talking about what he has the power to do.
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He's talking about his identity.
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He didn't say, I can raise the dead and I can give life.
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He says, I am the resurrection and the life.
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And then at the end of that statement, he, he turns to Martha and he says, do you believe this? And I just knew in my heart that, that Christ was asking me the same question.
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And I knew in my heart that my answer was not 50, 50, that it was a hundred percent yes at that point.
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So that is just stopping right there for a minute that, that, that is enough to give you chills.
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Just, that's, that, that's, that's awesome.
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And I know when folks hear that, that's going to, that's going to resonate with a lot of folks.
23:54
Yeah, that's awesome.
23:57
So continue.
23:58
I'm sorry.
23:59
Oh yeah.
24:00
So I will say this.
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I don't want to paint any, you know, it'd been great if that was the moment I was baptized the next day and just the sanctification work just kicked in and you know, I was basically Billy Graham six months later.
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That's not how it worked.
24:16
That's not what I, and honestly, just, just to summarize, cause I do want to make it clear to people.
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I spent about, and I really wanted to follow Christ.
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This led to a genuine decision in my heart to, Hey, this is, I understand my life needs to be about this cause I do think it's true.
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But then, um, just a lot of compromised, lukewarm, uh, Christianity trying to do one foot in the world, one foot in the church for, which, which doesn't work for two, two and a half years to, until God brought me to a point of, of a genuine and complete surrender.
24:54
And when you surrendered to the ministry or when you surrendered to him, that was that the lead into ministry or was that you, you knew that was where he was taking you? Yeah, in pretty, in pretty quick order.
25:07
Um, I think I, I knew for sure by, uh, spring of, of 2015 that, that the Lord was leading me to be on campuses and to, um, defend, present the gospel and to defend the gospel.
25:26
Uh, I, I consider myself more of an evangelist than an apologist, but I really see the, the two as, as married together.
25:34
Sure.
25:34
One of the things I love about our ministry with, uh, Roshio, Roshio Christi, it's like the Latin word ratio and then Christi, just Christ with an I at the end, reason for Christ, which is a, um, just a great, uh, apologetics organization on campuses because Roshio Christi doesn't just, it's not just like, let's sit around in a circle and read C.S.
25:57
Lewis and talk about what we think he meant.
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You know, some apologetics groups are like that, and maybe there's a role for that, but it really is a, you know, let's talk about apologetics, but let's also find ways to take truth out there, outside of these walls and interact with the students, our, our peers, our coworkers, so on and so forth.
26:21
Awesome.
26:21
Awesome.
26:22
Uh, your first time going onto campus to do that, do you happen to remember that, that event and how, how it went and how you felt? Well, I joined, um, the first time I went out to do public evangelism on campus, um, well, okay.
26:40
I was with a very seasoned, uh, campus preacher who had done a ton of this stuff for the last three or four decades.
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A guy, um, he's still a very close dear brother of Christ, um, lives in Columbus, Ohio named Tom Short and, uh, Tom has been on easily over a hundred campuses, thousands of times preaching the gospel and engaging in kind of like street level apologetics, practical apologetics.
27:11
And, uh, yeah, it was, it was, uh, it was tense, you know, I felt like I had a target on my back.
27:17
I remember that same sense when I first went on the street corner with Bobby McCreary and Alex Byrd and some of these guys to preach the gospel in downtown Athens just felt like the, uh, I just felt very vulnerable, right? Like the, like the, the field mouse that's, uh, suddenly finds itself out in the middle of the field when there's hawks circling above.
27:42
I understand.
27:43
And, and did any of the old guard, any of your old atheist people give you a hard time? I don't remember a whole lot of that, um, interestingly enough.
27:55
So certainly I had, it was, I was doing outreach in Athens, uh, when some of my former students were still around, which was very strange.
28:07
Um, I think I did have a couple of people who were formerly, formerly knew me primarily through the atheist club who came to have conversations with me.
28:19
But interestingly, and I think I can at least think of two, maybe there was three and none of those interactions was anybody hostile.
28:26
It's like they were just like genuinely curious.
28:29
And one of the two actually had quit being an atheist himself, although he certainly wasn't following Christ.
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And we just sat down and talked for a couple hours.
28:39
That's awesome.
28:40
And that's, that's, I was going to say such a, such a massive change to see in someone.
28:44
And I know it was over a period of years.
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It wasn't like you went in a week, you know, you mentioned 2011 and 2015, but still such a massive change to see in someone's life is certainly going to be something that people can't just, can't just turn their nose up at.
28:58
They gotta be a, they have to notice that's, that's a real, something real has happened here.
29:03
Right.
29:04
Amen.
29:05
Well, I'm going to, I'm going to ask you a few questions.
29:08
Uh, I appreciate you sharing your story with us.
29:10
I'm looking forward to, uh, to our people on our, our listeners getting to know you better and even members of our church who listen to this program.
29:17
I want people to, uh, get on your website.
29:19
I want them to watch the video of your interview and do a few and learn.
29:23
I think that you have a lot to, uh, a lot that you can say to folks and, uh, but I want to ask a few questions.
29:30
I know I told you I was going to ask you a few things just to sort of just a few things to maybe help some folks out that are, that are listening.
29:37
The first is if you knew someone wanted to do an on-campus ministry, if, if they said, you know, my heart is to reach college students and I just don't know what to do, do I just go stand on a corner and hand out tracks? What advice would you give? Uh, yeah, that's a great question.
29:57
Um, I would say just get out a notebook and write down some different ideas is not a bad place to begin.
30:04
You mentioned like standing on a corner and taking some good tracks with you.
30:09
Um, certainly that's a viable option.
30:12
Uh, some other ones, you know, I do believe that the Lord has, is calling more men to, to preach open air than who actually do it.
30:24
Uh, so, you know, again, you got to take that before the Lord.
30:28
Maybe that's a possibility.
30:29
If that's something a person wants to do, I would say certainly there needs to be some conversations with their church leadership, their elders, uh, praying over that, uh, asking the Lord to make it really clear.
30:42
Um, one of the main methods, I don't know if you alluded to it yet or not, but is using a dry erase board.
30:48
Uh, that's an approach where you can just take a dry erase board, put a question on it.
30:53
Who is Jesus? Who is, and sometimes we'll have like categories where they can vote.
30:57
Who is Jesus of Nazareth, Lord, liar, lunatic, kind of the old CS Lewis trilemma and people walk by a handout, you know, offer them the marker and say, Hey, uh, we're just doing kind of an informal survey here.
31:13
Can you, you mind weighing in on this and whatever they put, you know, if they put Lord and say, okay, so I see you, you would, you say that you believe Jesus of Nazareth is Lord.
31:22
Can you take a couple minutes and just explain to me what you mean by that? How did you come to that conclusion? Right? Uh, that's a great method.
31:31
I can, so I think you just got to kind of say, well, uh, what are some different possibilities? Is there a group on campus? Is there like a ratio Christie on campus? If you're around the campus, uh, if a person's a student, they're great organizations to get involved with, uh, because they are deliberate about taking the gospel out there.
31:53
And, uh, I would say, so those are some good ideas, but also, um, not that you have to go with someone else, but I would say if you can, there's a reason why Jesus sent out the disciples in groups of two.
32:09
I think it always helps to take someone else with you for spiritual, but also just for practical reasons.
32:16
Um, it, people, you know, it's no secret that the campuses and just the public in general is, uh, trending towards a more hostile stance, uh, with regard to the gospel and people can and will make false accusation against you.
32:34
Uh, so having another witness there who says, no, they didn't call this person that they, you know, whatever is, is a good idea.
32:44
Amen.
32:44
And what you said earlier about the person you went with first was a seasoned, uh, open air preacher.
32:50
He was a seasoned, uh, minister on campus that, that was huge.
32:54
That was helpful for me because honestly, this, this is, this is, I've been open air preaching before, but we have a minute, a man in our church who is a much seasoned, much more seasoned open air preacher than me.
33:05
He's one of my fellow elders.
33:07
So when we go, he takes the lead, even though I'm the pastor, he's, he's, he's, I'm following him because that's his, he's been, he's, he's been spit on.
33:16
People have thrown things at him.
33:17
He's been in situations where he's had to endure things that I never have.
33:23
And so be, you know, when I go with him, he's, he's, he's the man, you know, and I, and I'm learning from him.
33:29
Yeah, absolutely.
33:29
I think that's a great, you know, like, uh, and, and, and most of the open air preachers, I know pretty much all of them.
33:36
If you said, Hey, do you mind if I tag along with you? They're probably not, I think it's probably not wise to, to invite a person to, to preach until you kind of get a good, solid understanding of how well do they know the gospel? Can they present it in a, uh, in a reasonable way? Uh, what is their demeanor likely to be like out there? So going alongside a person who is seasoned in preaching and just handing out tracts and talking to people and praying with the preacher and for the preacher, those are all good ways to kind of get your feet wet.
34:11
Awesome.
34:11
Awesome.
34:13
Um, this next question really is, is I want to be clear.
34:17
I'm not asking to down any type of ministry or church, but where do you think are some of the weaknesses in churches in reaching young people in college students? And I would say like for me right away, um, you know, I, I, I know where our weaknesses as a church are.
34:37
And I, and if somebody said, Hey, this is a weakness and we shared it, I wouldn't be offended.
34:40
And I hope we wouldn't offend anybody by saying these are areas where the church is weak.
34:44
And what do you think are some of the greatest weaknesses? Yeah, I, okay.
34:48
That's a great question.
34:49
I mean, that could be like a whole series, right? Yeah.
34:51
I don't know the show.
34:52
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
34:54
Um, yeah, I would, I just want to reiterate, you know, just first of all, before I say anything, you know, praise the Lord for the church.
35:02
Thank God for brothers and sisters and people who stand for truth and who love the Lord.
35:08
Um, but we, yeah, we want to be open to critique and I would say as far as what I see on campuses, um, it, it, it probably the biggest weakness is people have bought too much into what you might call friendship, friendship evangelism, or the, you know, what, what is attributed very often to Francis of Assisi, right? You've heard it, uh, whether he said it or not, you know, preach the gospel at all times when necessary, use words, which he probably didn't say.
35:41
Yeah.
35:42
But you know, the, the gospel is an explicit, uh, message.
35:46
It's, it's a propositional truth and it has to be expressed that way.
35:51
Uh, it's great to hand out bottles of water to people who need them.
35:55
I see people doing this sort of thing as outreaches, cup of hot chocolate, cookies.
35:59
And I don't have a problem.
36:01
I don't think those are wrong per se, but we don't want to confuse those with actually doing evangelism.
36:07
That's being nice to people, being nice to people might get your foot in the door, but it's not actually preaching the gospel to people.
36:15
And so I'd say that's probably the single biggest.
36:17
They want, people want to go out and be nice to people.
36:20
Uh, hopefully if you give them enough cookies and enough hot chocolate, they'll start asking you about Jesus.
36:25
That's probably not going to happen.
36:28
Yeah.
36:29
Yeah.
36:29
That it's amazing.
36:31
Uh, you know, cause you and I, we know each other through Facebook, but we don't know each other very well, but we're, it's amazing how, how, how linked our minds are on things like that.
36:40
Cause that's, that's exactly what, you know, one of the things I was thinking was, and of course, Tony Miano, uh, I know, you know, Tony, uh, through, through, uh, you know him personally, or have you, have you met him? We crossed paths in person a couple of times, but mostly just through, uh, yeah, Facebook and such.
36:55
Years ago, he, he put out a thing about friendship, friendship, evangelism.
36:59
That was very helpful to me.
37:01
And, uh, it's actually kind of convicted me because I recently moved to a new neighborhood.
37:05
And he, and he asked the question, he says, when you move to a new neighborhood, do you, do you go and invite your, do you go and share your faith with your neighbors or you do you go and make friends and hope that over the years you can build up enough energy or, or.
37:18
You know, personal capital to share that your faith with them.
37:21
And so my wife and I have been trying to think through, how do we want to share our faith with our new neighbors without it having to take years of building up a friendship? And it, it's a little easier for me as a pastor.
37:33
Cause it's like when you introduce yourself, hi, I'm a pastor.
37:37
Yeah, it's, it's a little easier just because I have that, that, um, I can automatically start, you know, and people, Oh, you're a pastor.
37:44
What church? And, and, and it automatically opens a door for spiritual things.
37:48
But, uh, but anyway, I didn't mean to went off the subject there for a minute, but yeah, friendship evangelism is, um, is certainly, um, you know, you wait years and years for the opportunity and then you don't take the opportunity because you're afraid you're going to lose a friend.
38:01
Yeah.
38:02
And you know, I, I don't know if you follow like the Barna polls and stuff like that, that come out, but, uh, the most recent one, you know, they, they asked, I think millennial, and then we're at the Gen Z now, Gen Z, uh, evangelical Christians.
38:16
So I'm not sure exactly what their definition was, but usually that's a person who says they're born again.
38:21
They believe the Bible's work, God, so on and so forth.
38:25
Um, half, if I remember the statistic correctly, half of our younger evangelicals, uh, say that evangelism is wrong, that we should not actually be going out and verbally sharing our faith.
38:40
Now this isn't talking just about street preaching.
38:42
This is like any type of verbal explanation of the gospel is wrong.
38:47
We shouldn't be doing that.
38:49
Yeah.
38:49
What a, what a, what a major change it is to hear that.
38:53
And wow.
38:54
Wow.
38:55
Well, brother, I want to, I want to start to draw to a close here again.
38:58
I thank you so much for giving us your time today.
39:00
And I don't want to take any more time away from your, your family or your ministry there, but I do want to ask, um, what are some, um, what are some goals that you have for your ministry, whether it be your website or your, your, your campus ministry and, and how can people help you reach them? Uh, what, what can we do as a church and, and obviously prayer is, is first and foremost, but what are, what are some things that, that, that people can do? Share your website.
39:24
Do you think, share with us, you know, some of your goals and how we can help.
39:27
You know, the website is, is, is new.
39:30
We're, we're in the process of building it right now.
39:33
It's, uh, it's certainly accessible and there are some things on there that might be useful.
39:37
There should be a lot more in the near future.
39:39
We want to, to upload, um, various teachings, uh, on different topics.
39:45
It's so, you know, a strong focus on, uh, apologetics, what we do with Roscio Christie, the kind of evangelism we do on the street.
39:55
So I want to add a lot of resources to that, um, both in terms of, uh, things from book reviews to some, some of my own ideas and the goal there is just sort of a connection point for all of the ministries that we're involved in.
40:11
So that's, that's a great thing to check out.
40:13
It's, uh, askaformeratheist.com altogether.
40:17
Just ask a former atheist.
40:19
Uh, so we're really wanting to grow that.
40:21
I've been asking the Lord to, uh, to send me a couple of young men who have a real zeal for, for wanting to, uh, wanting to do public evangelism, uh, in its various forms, and so that's a great prayer request, just that the Lord would, would raise up, would put it on the hearts of these, these young men and call them, uh, to, to, to come out with us.
40:49
We've had some success with that, but it's, you know, the, the follow through where someone comes out and then really becomes committed to this type of ministry that tends to be where the breakdown is.
41:02
And, uh, so that, that's something I would really appreciate prayer for.
41:06
Um, sorry, I'm forgetting what the other part of your question was.
41:11
Oh, just, is there, you know, that, that was it, you know, your short term ministry goals and how, how people, you know, if, if somebody in Jacksonville said, Hey, you know, I, I, I appreciate what Rich is doing there and we want to support, can they support you through the website? If somebody wanted to help, uh, help you financially, is that something they could do through the website? Uh, we are very close to that.
41:30
Thank you for bringing that up.
41:32
Like I said, we're just now, we're still building the website.
41:35
Um, my fundraising still goes through Tom short campus ministries right now.
41:39
Okay.
41:40
501 C three.
41:41
Tom is one I mentioned based in Columbus, Ohio.
41:44
So do you, do you function like a missionary through him? And he, he gets, okay.
41:48
I'm, I'm on staff with, with KSCM, but my wife and I just recently, uh, launched our own 501 C three, our own, uh, nonprofit called ask a former atheist, which is listed under educational.
42:04
And of course the website ties into that.
42:06
So we're probably within the next, within the next month, I think we will have the donate.
42:12
We have an account set up for it.
42:14
We can take checks, but then there has to be, but there will be a donut donut.
42:20
Yeah, great.
42:22
Now you don't have to, uh, maybe we'll put a donut donut tab on there too.
42:26
I don't know, maybe that would work, but a, a donate tab, uh, to support the cause on there.
42:32
Um, but I would encourage people to just to, to go ahead.
42:35
It can't hurt to check out, uh, Tom shorts page.
42:38
You could go to truth on display.com and you'll see kind of the ministry he's been involved in.
42:46
Uh, uh, you, you can follow, um, there's, there's an option on his to, to support what you can get to me.
42:55
It's just kind of difficult because you have to go through the interns tab, even though I haven't been an intern with Tom for like five years now I'm on staff with him, but I started out as an intern, but that's one way to do it.
43:09
Um, yeah.
43:10
So, so just some good ways to check out, but yeah, within a month or so that website will include a, a donate a feature on it.
43:18
Awesome.
43:19
Awesome.
43:20
Well, I want to remind everyone, uh, just a few things as we're drawing to a close.
43:25
One, if you want to see Rich's website, it's askaformeratheist.com.
43:31
That's all one word, askaformeratheist.com.
43:34
There are some videos, there's information about his ministry.
43:38
And very soon there'll be a donation ability for that.
43:41
Uh, and Tom shorts website was the name of that was.
43:44
Yeah.
43:45
Truth on display.
43:46
Truth on display.
43:47
Dot com.
43:48
And, uh, again, listener, if you have a question that you'd like to send directly, you can do that, uh, through his website or even through Facebook.
43:57
If you want to reach out to him on Facebook, or if you'd like to send a question into this program that you'd like for us to maybe address at a future time, you can send a question to calvinistpodcastatgmail.com.
44:09
Again, that's calvinistpodcastatgmail.com.
44:14
Well, Rich, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your ministry.
44:18
We're very thankful for men like you, and we want to see you be supported, uh, by the church as you go out and take the front lines in the ministry of the gospel.
44:27
So again, we're very thankful for you.
44:29
Thanks so much, Keith.
44:30
Yes, sir.
44:31
And thank you for listening today.
44:33
Listeners to Coffee with a Calvinist.
44:35
My name is Keith Foskey and I've been your Calvinist.
44:38
May God bless you.
44:39
Thank you for listening to today's episode of Coffee with a Calvinist.
44:43
If you enjoyed the program, please take a moment to subscribe and provide us feedback.
44:49
We love to receive your comments and questions and may even engage with them in a future episode.
44:56
As you go about your day, remember this, Jesus Christ came to save sinners.
45:02
All who come to him in repentance and faith will find him to be a perfect savior.
45:09
He is the way, the truth and the life, and no one comes to the father except through him.
45:15
May God be with you.