Overcoming the Fear of Evangelism (with Special Guest Greg Stier)

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Have you ever felt like it was difficult to share your faith, especially with someone in your own family? Well, we've all been there.

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And with the holidays coming up, we know there's people in our lives that we want to engage, but we don't often know how. Well, today

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I'm joined by Greg Steer, the founder of Dare to Share Ministries. He teaches young people and adults how to clearly and effectively share their faith in Christ.

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So don't go away. Conversations with a Calvinist begins right now. Welcome back to Conversations with a

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Calvinist. My name is Keith Foskey, and I am a Calvinist. Well, it's funny how people cross your paths in life, and sometimes they cross your path at one point, and you don't realize it, and they're going to come back into your life at another point.

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And that's where I am today, because about 20 years ago, my ministry path crossed with a man named

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Greg Steer. I met Greg Steer at a Dare to Share conference, which was being hosted in Jacksonville, Florida.

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I brought a group of young people. I listened to him share his faith. I listened to him teach the young people how to share their faith.

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I always loved the fact that there were movie clips, and there's all kinds of stuff in his talk.

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It was really fun to watch and enjoyable. I remember very specifically a Mel Gibson movie made its way in there, and I won't talk about all that.

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But it was a very interesting talk, and I got an opportunity. The leaders went and sat down with Greg and asked him questions and learned some things, and I was always impressed by how he engaged with young people and encouraged them in sharing their faith.

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And to this day, I still use the gospel acrostic that he taught me many years ago when

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I'm teaching our young people how to share their faith or I'm giving the gospel to the young people in our karate program.

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So for those of you who don't know, I want to bring Greg in now. I want to introduce him. Greg, thank you for being a part of Conversations with a

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Calvinist today. Hey, Sig, I'm so glad to be a part of this. And yeah, 20 years ago, man,

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I remember the Jacksonville event. I remember we had a hotel that we went to that rented by the hour.

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And our team was like, hey, what does it mean? I go, some people need naps. We're going to get a different hotel.

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So we switched. We were in a bathroom down there in Jacksonville, but a great conference.

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And yeah, I love talking to the students, talking to the youth leaders. So nice to see you again, Keith, after all these years.

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Yeah, absolutely. And it's like I said, it's interesting how our paths cross and uncross.

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And I actually saw you recently on Twitter. And that's what I had been using the acrostic for years.

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I had told people about Dare to Share over the years, but I wasn't a youth leader anymore. I wasn't really connected with that world as much.

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So I didn't see you. But at the same time, I knew you were there. And when I saw you on Twitter, I said, hey,

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I got to try to connect and see if he'll come on the show. And you were gracious enough to do that. So I want to thank you. Well, you know,

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I watch your videos. And so, you know, for me, humor, you know, theology is important.

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Humor is a close number two. And so, man. Well, humor gets the message across for sure, a lot.

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It does. And I use a lot of humor in the way that I speak. So I appreciate what you do.

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And yeah, man, it's great. Twitter is bringing back alliances. So it's really nice to see you again after all these years.

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Absolutely. So, Greg, I know that some of the people in my audience might not be familiar with what you do.

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And they might not be familiar with Dare to Share ministry. So for the next few minutes, if you could tell us who you are, tell us the ministry, how you got it started and what its goals and purposes are.

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Well, you know, so I lead a ministry called Dare to Share. I'm a husband to one wife, 32 years.

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And then two kids, two adult children. Jeremy, who's 22, just got married.

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And Kaylee, who's 19, is going to World Life Bible Institute down in Tampa, Florida. And yeah, my family, you know, it's interesting because I was not raised in a typical

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Christian home. I was raised in a family full of what I call bodybuilding, tobacco -chewing, beer -drinking thugs.

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And that's just the women. My family was very violent. Inner city. I don't mean to laugh.

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That was just a funny joke. But I did catch your interview with Focus on the Family, where you told the story about your uncles and the mistreatment you received.

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And that was a very moving story, yeah. Well, my whole family was very violent, feared by the mafia in North Denver and respected by the mafia.

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You know, and a hillbilly preacher from the Deep South whose nickname was Yankee, for whatever reason, planted a church in the suburbs of Denver and in Adair, reached my family for Christ over the course of a couple of years.

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And I watch as a kid, my whole family transformed. I was a terrified student, you know, kid that just really didn't know my identity.

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I never knew my biological father. I was a result of my mom met my dad at a party. They partied.

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She got pregnant. He found out he got transferred. You know, I was raised by a single mom and, you know, apartment complexes and trailer courts and a very violent home.

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And all of a sudden, my tough uncles who were in and out of jail, oftentimes for violence, one by one by one, were transformed.

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I went to Yankee's youth group. Yankee, who believed in the power of the gospel and the potential of young people, invited me in.

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I went into the youth group actually before middle school. I was 11 years old. I snuck in and I saw hundreds of teenagers not being entertained, getting trained, equipped, mobilized, getting taught theology, getting going out and doing

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Friday night soul winning. You know, we didn't do advance and we did soul winning. And I got caught up in the whirlwind because it had transformed my entire family.

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And I remember at one point we had 800 teenagers in our youth group, only 300 adults in our church.

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Wow. So although Yankee was the lead pastor, he was really like you. He was a youth pastor with lead pastor clothes on, you know.

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He was a youth leader with authority and a budget. And I was equipped.

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He was like the fastest way to reach the city was through the young. And so, you know, dare to share, you know,

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I took all the stuff that I'd learned. I scraped out the legalism because it was what independent fundamentalist church, spackled the cracks with grace and love and the

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Holy Spirit. And that's what dare to share is. I mean, basically we, you know, Yankee would have never used movie clips like I did at the

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Jacksonville conference. Yankee would not have done the music we did, you know, but he equipped us to share the gospel and he believed in us.

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And so dare to share, you know, we provide free curriculum, tools, resources, and we have a face sharing app we can talk about later.

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We do dare to share live, which is instead of the conferences now, we do a global day of youth evangelism where we have on demand videos that around the world.

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November 11th, we had 21 ,000 teenagers from 42 countries trained and equipped on November 11th and mobilized to share the gospel, just like we did in Jacksonville.

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We do. Everybody goes out and shares Christ, but now it's global. And yeah, that was one of the things not to interrupt you, but that was one of the things in your conference.

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We actually went out into the neighborhoods. I remember you sent us out. And if I remember correctly, we went out and we did like a food drive, but during the food drive, we were asking people to donate food and then asking them about their eternal condition.

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I don't remember the language we used, but that was essentially it. We were asking people, you know, questions about their life and those diagnostic questions sort of led into the gospel.

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So yeah, I remember doing that. I remember taking our youth group out and doing that. Well, you know what it does is it stretches a teenager's faith, stretches a youth leader's faith because it's scary.

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It stretches my faith. I've been sharing my faith for a long time, you know, and I still get nervous every time I go out, but it makes me depend on the

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Holy Spirit. I actually believe, Keith, that the missing element in our discipleship strategies is evangelism.

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You know, in the Western mindset, we have this thought that, well, it's just milk in a sponge. We just need better theology and to pour it into the sponge of the minds of our adults or our teenagers.

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What happens is if they don't squeeze it out, that milk rots, it spoils.

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And what I find a lot is there's a lot of, you know, some churches, there's no theology being taught, but in a lot of churches, there's a theology being taught and we think, well, that's the key.

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And I'm like, well, that's a key. But when students and adults begin to squeeze that out to their friends and make disciples, they come back thirsty for more and it keeps it fresh.

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So I think evangelism, we've turned it into the 401 class and that's a mistake. It needs to be right away.

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What was the first thing? Romans 10, 9 and 10 in the NIV 1984.

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The good NIV. The New King James is what they called the New King James Bible in 1984.

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Yeah, the good one. The text notes, when it says, you know, you believe in your heart and declare with your mouth,

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Jesus is Lord. The text note says that it was most likely the baptismal confession. So you believe in your heart and you got baptized and you stood in the water and said,

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Jesus is Lord. Well, you didn't do that in the confines of a church. You did that at the Jordan River. You did that on the south steps of the temple and everybody heard you do that.

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That was your first evangelism experience when you got baptized in public saying,

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Jesus is Lord. He's the way, the truth, the life. He's the king. He's the Yahweh you've been reading about in the Septuagint.

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He's Lord. So that declaration happened right away when you were a new believer and that it steals and seals your faith.

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So evangelism should happen from square one, not the 401 class.

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Because by the time you get there, you're institutionalized. My heart is, I believe in the power of the gospel and I believe in the potential of young people.

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And I believe the church is entertaining students instead of mobilizing them.

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And I think that's why we're losing our students. We need to give them a king of cause and a crew. King Jesus, you know, all authority in heaven and earth has been given to me.

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The cause go and make disciples of the crew. We're doing this together and surely Jesus is with us always to the very end of the age.

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So, I mean, a lot has changed since the 20 years you participated in Dare to Share in Jacksonville, Florida.

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But a lot has not changed. And that is, you know, we believe teenagers can shake their world.

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They come to Christ quicker. They spread the gospel faster and farther than adults. You know, the great awakenings in the history of the

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United States said young people on the leading edge. I'm like, why are we not mobilizing teens now to share the gospel?

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So that's what we do. Awesome. And, you know, we, you and I talked a little bit before the show, before we got started and sort of reacquainted ourselves.

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And as I said, I haven't seen you in a lot of years. And throughout those years, obviously, my theology has been shaped through my studies in scripture.

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And, you know, I went to seminary, but I didn't learn Calvinism in seminary. Interestingly enough, I actually was taught Calvinism kills churches.

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That's what I was taught in seminary. But as an evangelistic

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Calvinist, and that's what I call myself, because we go out and we do, you mentioned tracts.

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I carry tracts with me all the time. We write tracts. We give out tracts. Even my business card is a tract.

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We do tract ministry all the time. And do you find, though, that there is, in your experience, what has your experience been with Calvinists in general?

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Are they supportive of what you do? Are they negative about what you do? Or you said, you know, your pastor was sort of not, or what's his name,

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Yankee? Yankee was not a fan of Calvinism. Oh, Yankee. Yeah. He's still not.

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No. Here's the thing is, you know, I go to a church where J .T.

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English is the pastor. He wrote the book, You Are a Theologian, you know, definite, you know, full -on

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Calvinist. He's an evangelistic Calvinist. I mean, he's passionate about the gospel. I mean, I already preached through Romans, and man,

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Romans 9 -11, he just, he turned it into a case for evangelism to the Gentiles and Jews.

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I mean, it was like powerful. So, you know, my only problem with, you know, a

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Calvinist is, you know, if they're not sharing the gospel consistently. Whether you think, you know, okay, you know,

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I have to, this is on me. I got to do this. Let's reach as many as we can.

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Or you think, I'm the redemptive hand of God that he will use. You know,

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I do everything for the sake of the elect that they too may be saved. You know, I'm not like, hey, you're doing it?

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I'm for you. You're not? I was like, hey, let's have a chat, you know, let's have a conversation. Arminian, Calvinist, somewhere in between, you know, and so I think when

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I have a problem is when, and I don't think it's an indirect byproduct of some

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Calvinistic thought, and it's almost like subconscious that God's got this, you know, we don't have to worry about it.

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Somebody else, if we don't reach him, somebody else will. I never see that in the New Testament. I see Paul saying, I do everything, you know, for the sake of the elect that they too may be saved.

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I see him saying, you know, I become all things to all men that I may be all means save some. I see him saying, you know, not him, but Jude saying, snatch others from the fires and save them.

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How will they hear without a preacher? And that's right in the middle of Romans 9 through 11. So I, you know, I believe in the sovereignty of God.

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I believe God is sovereign. I believe, you know, Ephesians 1, Romans 9 to 11. I believe we're responsible.

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I believe we don't have to understand how those two truths intersect. I think sometimes we get, I think when we try to connect the dots between the sovereignty of God, the responsibility of man, and the responsibility of non -believers, you know, the responsibility of believers to share the gospel, the responsibility of non -believers to respond to the gospel.

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I think sometimes we get above our pay grade, you know, and I think we can live in the tension.

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I think if we rob God of his mystery, we rob him of his majesty. And just like I don't understand how

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God never had a beginning. I cannot comprehend that. We may never understand, you know, where those lines cross between God's sovereignty and our responsibility.

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And I think it's fine. I think we trust our dad, you know, and say, hey, he's got it. What scripture says is true.

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It's undeniable. It says what it says. We embrace it. And just because it doesn't fit in my puny mind, like Spurgeon said, you know, a person trying to understand

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God is like a gnat trying to drink in the ocean. Like, okay, well, let's accept what we can accept.

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Let's believe his word and let's go for it. You know, it's interesting. Do you know the

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Founders Ministries? Are you familiar with Founders Ministries? Tom Askell? I've heard of them, yeah. Yeah, Tom Askell is a very great guy.

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I know him and very thankful for his ministry. And years ago, he said the difference between a Calvinist and a hyper -Calvinist.

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He said a hyper -Calvinist diminishes the responsibility of man. And he says a true

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Calvinist will recognize that God is sovereign and man is responsible. And so I like that you use the word responsible because that's something

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I've always tried to impress. We are responsible to share the gospel. People are responsible to respond to the gospel.

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We believe it's God who empowers them to respond, but yet it is still our responsibility to proclaim that gospel and trust that God is the only one who can change their heart.

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But we can share the message. We can proclaim the gospel and that's what we're called to do. Yeah, and I do a thing called,

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I call it three -dot theology. It's God's responsibility to save. He's the one, salvation comes from the Lord. It's our responsibility to share.

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It's their responsibility to believe and don't connect the dots. Live in attention. Again, I think sometimes we have, here's what

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I would say too. You know, it says they worshipped and served created things rather than a creator. We have to be careful, no matter what our theology, because theologies are created things.

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And I find a lot of Calvinists and I found a lot of Arminians worshipping and serving created things rather than a creator who's forever blessed.

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And like we have to be careful to hold sound theology, but not worship the system. We worship the

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Savior. And so I always think that's a warning no matter what, you know, like there's a point like, you know,

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I've raised in a dispensational church, right? But there's a thing called hyper -dispensationalism.

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You know, dispensationalism was you could, you know, it's a way to see the scriptures like having glasses. Hyper -dispensationalism is when you, and this is true of any hyper -whatever -ism.

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You take off the glasses and you study the glasses, you know, and you're no longer studying the scriptures, you're studying the glasses.

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And I see that in all sorts of isms. So I think we just have to really be careful and really, you know, like don't get distracted.

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You know, you teach karate. I tell a story about Rodney. I met, he was a third degree black belt.

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He was, I was in middle school. He was in high school. He could literally work. I love nunchucks.

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He could work three nunchucks at a time. I'm not exaggerating and you couldn't see him. He used two as one. And then the other hand, and when he did,

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I mean, it was a blur. They look like propellers. And I said, man, I want you to teach me some stuff.

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And he goes, okay, I want you to hit me as hard and as fast as you can right in my face. And you know,

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I wasn't a tough kid, but I was from the hood. So I pretended I was like, man, I ain't gonna, and I went at him and I went hard and fast right in his face.

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And he blocked the punch by like, I missed his face by like a half an inch. And you know what he told me?

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He said, Greg, you don't have to waste all your energy blocking a punch. You just need to distract it by a few degrees.

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And I feel like Satan has distracted the church in all sorts of areas by a few degrees.

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And I think we have to really be careful from that and keep evangelism and disciple making the great commission or the greatest cause right at the epicenter of what we do.

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You know, we love God. We serve God by making and multiplying disciples. And so I just think whatever our bent is on those things, we have to really be careful.

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I had two guys when I went to Colorado Christian University, Manson Salvation class taught by Jonathan Smith, not to be confused with Joseph Smith.

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He was actually, he's one of the greatest theologians I've ever sat under.

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He was an old school Dallas Theological Seminary guy, loved the word. But every day before class, there was these two older students, probably in their 40s.

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Now they're younger students compared to me, but you know, they would just talk. They would argue about Calvinism and Arminianism every single day.

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One was a staunch Calvinist, one was a staunch Arminian. And I'll never forget the day

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I had had enough before class. I go, that's it. I go, you know what? Every day I walk in this class and I hear you two guys arguing about Calvinism and Arminianism.

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When's the last time either of any of you led anybody to Christ or shared the gospel with anybody? I go, you

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Calvinist, you believe you're the redemptive hand of God to bring in the elect, you Arminian. You believe it's all on you.

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Both of you have no excuse. So until you start actively sharing your faith, I don't want to hear one more word out of you.

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And yeah, anyway, I wasn't the most popular guy at CCU. But it is very true that and oftentimes we become just so fascinated with what we know that it's all about growing our own brain rather than pouring that into someone else.

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I like the sponge analogy and hopefully it makes it into the recording. I know we had some recording issue earlier, but you mentioned the sponge that if the sponge.

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Well, let's mention it. Let's mention. Yeah, tell us. Say it. Say it again. Tell it.

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You tell it because I shared it. You said the milk goes into the sponge and if it stays in the sponge, it rots.

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So it has to be squeezed out and then you get fresh milk. And as we receive theology, if we're not squeezing it out into others, if we're not sharing it and proclaiming it, then it's going to rot in the sponge.

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And I just thought that rotting in the sponge sounded, that resonates with me. That makes sense.

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Yeah, and you nailed it. And that's what evangelism is. It really is. It's not just squeezing. It's squeezing out theology, the theology of soteriology to those that don't know

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Christ and then helping new believers grow. It's squeezing out the rest of the theology, helping them grow in Christ and they come back thirsty for more, ready for more.

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And so I really feel if we want to get serious about discipleship, we got to get serious about evangelism because of Matthew 4, 19 -20,

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Jesus forever linked evangelism to discipleship, follow me and I'm going to turn you into fishers of men.

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You're going to evangelize. If you're going to follow me, you're going to evangelize. You cannot follow

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Christ and not evangelize. You know, like Acts 2. Let's take a look at Acts 2. All right,

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Acts 2, they're in the upper room, right? They're praying for the Holy Spirit to come. Holy Spirit, you know, comes and the mighty wind and I would be expecting a dove again, you know, you know, or something, eagle, something comes in as a tongue on fire, which is crazy.

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A tongue, like a tongue, which is the ugliest cut of meat. I was in the butcher's store the other day and I saw a tongue and I'm like, that is the ugliest piece of meat on an animal.

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It comes fluttering in on fire. It's, you know, tongues of fire and it breaks up into smaller tongues and falls on all the believers.

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And I think we missed the point. We make it about tongues. Are they for the day? Aren't they for the day? I think the point is the first sign of the indwelling

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Holy Spirit is he sets our tongues on fire for the gospel. So when somebody tells me they're full of the spirit,

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I'm like, when's the last time you shared the gospel? Well, I don't really do that. It's not my gift. Why not? You may be full of something, but it is not the

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Holy Spirit, right? Yeah, so we have to be evangelizing.

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I have an interesting question that goes right off of that because you just fed me a good question. And this is something

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I have a fellow elder and he's just the most God -honoring evangelist

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I know. He open -air preaches. He hands out tracts. Every day he tells me, he calls me on the phone. I had a gospel conversation.

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They had a gospel conversation. That's just him. And what you just said, you know, about evangelism being a gift, he'll often say it's not a gift.

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It's responsibility. It's like, how do you feel about that? Do you think that the evangelism is a spiritual gift or is it?

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How would you say that? Well, I think it's a gift. But I think that the gift of evangelists, my gift is not to evangelize as an evangelist.

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I do that. That's my duty as a believer. But my gift and my gifting is to equip

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God's people for works of service. Whether you call that an office or a gift, the role of the evangelist, primary role is not evangelism.

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The primary role is to equip God's people for works of service, is to get everyday believers to share the gospel every day.

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That's the primary role. And I think we burn a lot of cash doing the big event evangelism.

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And I'm for, I want to say the qualified, I'm for big event evangelism. I do big event evangelism. I toured with Winter Jam for two or three years.

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I mean, I do festivals and all that stuff. Yes. Yes. Yes. Praise God. But we are missing the key.

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If we don't mobilize believers to reach their oikos, their circle of influence, their co -workers, family, neighbors, friends, children, you know, then we're never going to, we're never going to get to a movement.

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We're always just going to be at an event. And so the role of the evangelist is to equip

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God's people to evangelize. And so I'm like that dude that your elders should be training the people of your church to share the gospel and he doesn't have tools and resources.

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Yeah, he does. I love it. He's doing his role that teaches classes. We actually go out with him. He will do open air preaching and we hand out tracks while he's preaching or he will.

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We've started. We've started a thing now where we actually do video ministry where I will film him interacting with people so that we can take that film back and show it to the church.

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We say here's what it looks like when somebody's sharing the gospel. Here's the responses he gets. Here's the feedback.

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He will say, yeah, so I love it again, evangelist, evangelistic

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Calvinist. We got it. Yeah, there you go. That's right. My favorite kind of Calvinist.

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That's well good. Good deal. We can we can stay friends. All right. So when we talked earlier about your acronym and I as I said,

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I've learned it from you and so many years ago. You still use it to this day.

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I still see it on the website. Actually, I looked up a five -minute video of you doing it. Watched you do it. It was basically the same thing.

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I learned 20 years ago, but you now have a way for people to mobilize that digitally.

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So first of all, what I'd like for you to do if you don't mind, can you share the acronym and then can you talk to them talk to our audience about the app because I think that's helpful.

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Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we have we have an acrostic actually have it on the backside of my business card as well, right?

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And it it's just, you know, what 32 years ago when we started dare to share, you know, one of the things

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I wanted to do is have a way for teenagers to understand the message of the gospel and I don't consider the gospel classic as a methodology.

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I consider it the message. We have methods to go with it, but the illustration

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I use when I go into a restaurant steak restaurant, I don't go for the plate. I go for the steak, right?

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The staff I want it served on a plate, but the steak is why I'm there. Well, the gospel message is like the steak the methodology we use to serve it up is the plate, right?

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And so what the gospel acrostic does is it is it does a couple things it ensures a little bit of a quality control to make sure teenagers or if adults are using it.

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They they're sticking with what scripture says, but it also becomes a way that you can memorize and articulate it naturally.

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So the illustration I use is these six points of the gospel. It's like chords on a guitar. You don't just pick up a guitar and start playing you have to learn the chords.

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Well, you want to you want to you know, learn the chords of the gospel so you can make it your own. And then the other thing is you want to tell the whole story, you know,

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Paul says in Acts 20, you know, I didn't hesitate to proclaim the whole counsel of God to you.

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So we want to make sure we tell the whole story especially we live now in a post -christian, you know nation where a lot of people especially young people don't they have not heard this.

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We're not in the 50s anymore. They've not heard the the story a lot of teenagers don't even really understand that Jesus died and rose again.

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I mean that there were bits and pieces of it. So how do we tell that whole story? So we use the gospel acrostic

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G -O -S -P -E -L to tell the whole story of the Bible from Genesis 1 to Revelation 22. G is

28:13

God created us to be with him, you know, Genesis 1 and 2, God made Adam and Eve to be in the garden together with him.

28:20

They walked together in the cool of the day. God, you know, handmade Adam in the mud, you know, in the dust of the earth and breathed into his nostrils a breath of life.

28:31

The first thing Adam saw when he opened his eyes was the muddy, smiling face of his creator.

28:37

And then later on he reaches into Adam's side and takes a rib and makes Eve. He got muddy to make

28:43

Adam. He got bloody to make Eve. It sounds like, you know, he got in the mud and the blood and the crud. Sounds like a country western song to be with us, right?

28:51

To be in relationship with us. But then, oh, our sin separated us from God. Adam and Eve sinned.

28:58

They broke God's, you know, command not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when they did, they immediately became depraved, deprived, rebellion against God, hiding from God.

29:10

And we've been hiding from God ever since, you know, Genesis 3, our sin separated us from God. Ultimately, that separation is eternity in hell, you know, but that death, you know, spiritually dead at that point.

29:21

Then S, sins cannot be removed by good deeds, Genesis 4 through Malachi 4. The blood, the sweat and the tears of, you know, the blood of the

29:31

Old Testament sacrifices, the sweat of trying to obey the 613 commandments, the tears of contrition when they failed.

29:37

All of that, you know, it was like putting white frosting on a burnt cake, right? So sins cannot be removed by good deeds.

29:44

P, paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. The substitutionary atonement of Christ, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus, you know, became one of us, fully

29:51

God, fully human, lived a perfect life that we could never live, died the death that we deserve, died in our place for our sin, was buried, rose again, left as our pastor,

30:01

JT English, says he left all our sins in the tomb and rose from the dead, victorious over sin and death.

30:08

And E, everyone who trusts in him alone is eternal life, you know, salvation is that transfer of trust from depending on what

30:15

I do, depending on what Christ has done, and it's trusting him alone. It's not Jesus plus baptism,

30:22

Jesus plus works, Jesus plus Buddha, it's Jesus alone, the savior of our lives.

30:27

And then that's the book of John, you know, you see the one book written on believers, believe, believe, believe, or trust, rely upon him, and then

30:35

L, life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever. It's a personal, permanent relationship with God that can never be broken by us and will never be broken by him.

30:44

And it doesn't start when we're in heaven, it starts as soon as we believe, it's not just a ticket to heaven, it's a train ride on earth to identity, belonging, and purpose.

30:53

We find out who we are and why we're here and all this stuff as a result of that eternal life, knowing this is eternal life that they may know you and the son whom he has sent.

31:02

And so this great opportunity, this gospel acrostic, even though there's six simple sentences, are packed with theology.

31:10

So we have students memorize it, and then help them understand it, and then articulate it, and then personalize it.

31:18

So that gospel acrostic, again, becomes the framework for helping them understand gospel or gain gospel fluency.

31:26

So it starts with gospel urgency. Why should I share the gospel? If you went to Dare to Share, you remember

31:31

Friday night, we did some drama about something to get the heart, gospel urgency, then gospel fluency, what is the gospel?

31:38

And then finally, we give a gospel strategy, and that would be our app, or we also have cards that they can use as well.

31:46

But again, that's the plate upon which you serve the gospel. So I'll show you that real quick. So the app's called

31:52

Life in Six Words. And what's cool about this app is you can see an active map of where there's current gospel conversations taking place, gospel engagements of some kind, which is super encouraging.

32:07

So that's marking people who are currently using the app, and showing you where they're at. Yeah, it's like the last eight hours or something like that, but it shows you where they're at.

32:17

So it's really encouraging, got some in Africa, South Africa, India, the Philippines, you know, it's really cool to watch.

32:25

But when you open it, you just push start a conversation. So teenagers, you know, the most common way for a team to talk is not like this.

32:34

It's like, let me show you this video. Let me show you this TikTok. Let me show you this app. And then they ask their friends, if you were to describe your life in six words, what would they be?

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There's words like relationships, fun, God, meaningless, freedom, family, adventure, struggles, etc.

32:52

So they choose the six words, and when they choose the six words that best describe their life, they ask their friend, why did you choose those words?

32:59

So you hear their story. And you get to know them, and you know, people just open up. Then you say, can

33:05

I share with you my six words? And this is how you share your personal testimony. And you tell how Christ redeemed you from your past life.

33:13

And they kind of share with you God's words. And then that's when you walk through the gospel acrostic. We tell teens, if you can swipe and read, you can share the gospel.

33:22

And then you pull a verse of the little scripture icon. Just walk through the gospel and explain it as you go.

33:29

You know, and if, you know, they're ready to trust Christ, you click that.

33:36

You can lead them through a prayer. Then water comes out and baptizes them. No, that'd be cool. But there's 20 different languages on here.

33:45

So there's, you know, Spanish, to Swahili, to Russian, to, I mean, all sorts of languages that you can use and it changes the app and changes the whole app.

33:55

You can create what we call cause circles of all the people you're praying for to come to Christ, put their names.

34:01

It's really cool. And it's free on your app store. So it's called Life in Six Words. But again, it's the plate that you can serve that message on.

34:12

Well, like I said, I, the, you know, the acronym has stuck with me and funny because of how long it's been.

34:20

But even in our karate class, I, you know, we have to, they have to, they have things they have to memorize.

34:25

They have to memorize the Ten Commandments as a part of their learning their belts and that because it's a program done in our church.

34:32

So we do it as a, and it's free. So it's a ministry to the community, but it's also an opportunity to share the gospel.

34:39

And so we share the, the Ten Commandments, but we also say, okay, and you learn the gospel and how, and for me, the gospel is easy.

34:45

You write on the board, G -O -S -P -L, God create us be with him. Our sin separates us from him. Yeah. Put it right there.

34:51

Yeah. And, and, and, and got it all. So, like I said, I, from a, from, from just the standpoint of telling the audience, my audience, how, again,

35:03

I haven't seen you in 20 years other than Twitter. And yet I still remember that. So it's definitely, it's definitely a, so that's, so this is, this is exactly what we want is we want to create.

35:16

So there's a, there's a theological reason for this. So first Corinthians 15, three and four, what

35:24

I receive. I also pass on to you as first importance of Christ died for a sense according to scriptures. It was buried rose from the dead according to scripture.

35:30

Right? So that is what theologians call a pre -Pauline

35:36

Creed, right? So somebody had trained the apostle Paul in that exact verbiage.

35:41

He memorized it and then he trained the Corinthians for what I received. I passed on to you as a first importance.

35:48

So I look at the gospel acrostic as creedal. And it's, it helps Christians understand.

35:54

Okay, Christian teens understand. Okay, this is the gospel and adults too. When I was a pastor, I was a pastor for 10 years. I was pastoring and doing dare to share on the, on the, as a side hustle for a while.

36:03

Right? And then the Columbine high school shooting happened. And I'm like, this has got to be my main focus reaching these teens, but we trained all of our adults.

36:12

They knew they all knew the gospel acrostic. They're able to share their faith all the time because you get it.

36:17

And again, then you can articulate it, make it your own and you're ready because you know what to say. I think a lot of Christians don't share the gospel, two reasons.

36:26

They don't know what to say and they don't know how to bring it up. And so we have a whole strategy for bringing it up outside the app and I can, if you want,

36:34

I can just share with you three simple words. I was going to say, and that moves into gospel. Yeah, that moves into what

36:40

I wanted to talk about, which was because with the holidays coming and one of the things I had asked you before coming on the show is with the holidays coming.

36:47

I wanted to think about, okay, I know there's going to be people that are going to be sitting around tables with people.

36:52

They may only see twice a year, you know, Christmas and Easter or whatever. And this is an opportunity for them to maybe speak into someone else's life.

37:00

And yet they won't know how to start or they might not feel comfortable starting. I know I've been there. I've spoken to thousands of people at one time, but talking to one person is harder for me than talking to 500 people.

37:13

500 people is no problem because it's me. But when I'm talking to one person, I can be like, oh, like my tongue gets stuck at the roof of my mouth.

37:22

So yes, please share that. So this has been really freeing for a lot of people because we used to just have the diagnostic kind of, do you know you're going to go to heaven?

37:37

You know, if I could tell you how you could know, would that be good news? And those are fine. I'm for everything, right?

37:45

That gets a gospel conversation going. But it only appeals to a certain slice of believers, you know.

37:55

There's different styles of sharing the gospel. So we developed a style and actually we did a reality series years ago called

38:07

Gospel Journey Maui. We took a Mormon, a Muslim, a Buddhist, a

38:12

Jew, sounds like a setup to a joke, into a bar and we met a priest. Well, we took him to Maui, like six or seven different worldviews, and I watched my buddy

38:24

Zane. Zane was a surfer, former drug dealer, radically converted.

38:29

He was there as kind of one of the participants, but kind of as a guide. He took something from everybody's belief system.

38:36

He listened to them and he wove together, day one, this beautiful gospel presentation. I'm like, my goodness, how did he just do that?

38:44

Because I just wanted to scarface evangelism, you know, say hello to my little friend, pull up my Bible, you know, and he was asking, he was admiring.

38:53

So we said, hey, there's something in here, ask, admire, admit, ask questions.

39:01

So I was asking the questions, actually, they were all sharing and then Zane started to admire something about their belief system.

39:09

And he's, you know, this former drug dealer, surfer guy, he was like, bro, so I was listening to you talk,

39:15

Jost or Muhammad, you believe in one God? I do too, bro. His name is

39:20

Jesus. And he's like, Emma, you're a Buddhist and you want peace? Guess what

39:26

Jesus calls himself? The Prince of Peace. And he took something from everybody's belief system and he wove together this gospel.

39:34

And you know what it made me think of? Paul in Acts 17, with the men of the Areopagus. What does he do?

39:41

I see, instead of landblasting their paganism, he takes these

39:48

Epicurean and Stoic philosophers and he compliments them because I see you're very religious people. I even saw an altar to an unknown

39:55

God and he quotes a pagan poet. He finds common ground. And you know, in our apologetics world, we just want to go at him.

40:05

And you know what Paul did in a society that did not believe Jesus was, you know, who he was, didn't even know who he was.

40:14

He found common ground. And then he told the story of the gospel.

40:21

And he used apologetics at the very end. He's given proof to this by raising Jesus from the dead. That's when somebody, some reject, some say we want to hear you again, and some believe, right?

40:32

So ask questions, admire what you can. You meet a Muslim, man, you pray five times a day.

40:37

That's about four times more than the average Christian does. You meet a Mormon, man, you guys, you know, you're committed to mission, committed to family.

40:44

You have excellent cardio because of all the biking, whatever. You meet, you know, you meet a different world, you know, somebody who's

40:52

Wiccan, you know, well, they believe in the supernatural. Well, you know, I believe we believe in the supernatural. We believe in a spiritual world and spiritual realm.

41:00

Find common ground and then share the story of the gospel. And yes, there's times we need to break out the apologetics, but let us break out the apologetics once we're actually having a conversation.

41:13

And let's don't play, you know, tic -tac -toe. I mean, we're, you know, that's, those always, once you're past five years old, those end up in a draw, right?

41:24

Well, the Book of Mormon is better than the Bible, the Bible is better than the Book of Mormon, you know, it's, you know, it's a draw, it's a draw, it's a draw.

41:31

We want to win people. So let's start by asking, admiring, admitting, and then sharing the gospel, and then let's open up the can of apologetics because now we're listening to each other.

41:43

So ask, admire, admit. I think that's been, in the last probably 15 years, probably been the best thing on just practical evangelism that we've been able to see.

41:55

And again, I saw it, I give Zane the credit, you know, for pulling that off almost intuitively on a volcano in Maui, the

42:06

Gospel Journey in Maui. So could you clarify, I understand ask and admire, can you clarify, admit one more time?

42:13

I'm just not sure I picked it up. I want to make sure the audience understands. So, so admit, yeah, I don't think I shared it.

42:18

So admit is, you admit, admit that you need Jesus more than anybody.

42:24

So this is when you share your testimony. You ask questions, you admire, and then you admit, man, you know, and, and this

42:30

Jesus saved me. And, you know, I, you know, my life was like this before I came to Christ.

42:35

And then I heard this message. And since then, God has radically transformed me, you know, and so that's when you admit your own need of Jesus.

42:43

So it's really, it's kind of the opposite. It's not going high. It's going low. You know, it's, it's, it's one beggar showing another beggar where to find the bread.

42:53

Yeah, it's not I'm better than you, but I'm a, I'm a sinner saved by grace and you can have that same grace.

43:01

Amen. I had a man come to the church one time who needed food. We have people come where our church is located.

43:07

We have a lot of people who come and need need things. So I took him into the fellowship. Paul is giving him some food and I was trying to share the gospel with him.

43:14

And I said to him that that apart from Christ, I have nothing and I'm desperate without him.

43:20

Just like what you just said admitted my need and he looked at me and he said, oh, oh preacher, you can't think like that.

43:26

You got to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps. And I said, first of all, the irony is you came here because you're hungry.

43:35

You don't have anything that there's there's irony in your words. But second, I said, dude, I don't have any boots and I don't have any straps when it comes to my salvation.

43:43

I don't have anything I can grab ahold of and do myself. I either have to trust that Christ did it all or I have to trust in something

43:51

I've done. And if I trust in something I've done, I'm going to come up on the day of judgment and be found wanting. I have to trust completely in what

43:58

Christ has done. So yeah, no boots, no straps. It's all totally and it's

44:04

I was doing a podcast a couple days ago when we do a podcast here at Dairy Share and I was talking about the ladder versus the chair, the ladder approach.

44:17

Every world religion has got a ladder approach where you there's certain rungs. You got to climb, right?

44:23

Judaism got 10, the 10 commandments. You got, you know, Muslim, you have the five pillars of Islam, you know, and you know,

44:31

Mormonism, you got the doctrines and the covenants and you know, Catholicism, you have penance and confession and you know, whatever.

44:37

Every ism has got that rung approach of some kind to Nirvana or paradise or heaven or whatever you want to call it.

44:47

Only Christianity is a chair where you just rest on what

44:52

Jesus has done. You just rest on the finished work and I love that illustration because you know, he did, he did all the work and it's called the finished work for a reason and man praise

45:09

God and it's it's, you know, a transfer of trust from what we do to what

45:16

Jesus has done. So that's that's what the gospel acrostic helps reiterate. And I think the ask, admire, admit is a simple on -ramp.

45:25

And then at the end, we use the idea of a takeoff to touchdown, you know, fly. How do you, how do you begin the conversation?

45:31

Ask, admire, admit. What's your flight plan? The GOSPL? How do you land the plane? I asked two questions.

45:38

One is, does that make sense? Make sure they understand the gospel because there may be parts of it. They don't understand and re -explain.

45:44

If it does make sense, here's the question. This is the invitation question, but I love the way this is phrased because it doesn't, it doesn't feel to me like you're forcing somebody to say yes.

45:57

You ask the question, is there anything holding you back from putting your faith in Jesus right now?

46:04

And if they say, yeah, there is, then say, what is that? And then tackle that objection the best you can.

46:10

And if there's nothing, say, would you like to put your faith and trust in him now? You know, and then boom, they have given the opportunity to say yes to Jesus.

46:19

I'm much more concerned that they actually say yes to Jesus in their heart than they do just, you know, just to me, you know, and like, you know, asking a question that almost makes it impossible to say no to.

46:30

I want them really to understand the gospel and put their faith in Christ. Amen.

46:36

Yeah, I worry sometimes, and I know we're going to draw to a close soon, but I would like you to speak to this as we draw to a close.

46:42

I worry that some methods will lend themselves to producing false conversions and false statements of faith.

46:50

And you just said something. Oh, yeah, you said you don't want that. So speak to that for just a moment as we begin to draw.

46:59

Yeah. So when I give an invitation, I'm very clear. I'm talking about a public invitation, and I'm also one -on -one that so many invitations mix salvation and sanctification, and you get a heresy smoothie because they want to get the response to you, like, you know, if you're ready to, you know, you want to get saved and walk this aisle or say this prayer and stand up right now or do that.

47:25

I'm like, hold on, hold on, hold on. Make sure they believed in their heart and have been justified first, then they can make that public profession, right?

47:38

That yes, I believed in my heart. I believe Jesus is Lord. I believe he is who he claimed to be, which was the baptismal confession.

47:45

So I think we have to really be careful. I mean, I've heard people say, you know, if you want to, if you're, you know,

47:52

I had one preacher at a huge evangelism outreach say, if you don't walk this aisle tonight, you can't be saved.

48:00

I ran the aisle. Everybody thought that Dare to Share guy was getting saved. I was just going down to witness to the people down that walked the aisle because they had,

48:07

I talked to two Latino guys and they go, why are you here? And they said, the guy said, we couldn't be saved. We don't walk the aisle. I said, do you understand the gospel?

48:13

He said, we had no idea. So I went or I shared the gospel with them. I went around sharing the gospel, you know, taking them from counselors like you guys don't want that because we don't want false conversions.

48:23

We don't want people to just raise their hand or stand up or walking out and I have no problem. I do responses like that, but you make sure the best that you can that right now you, you know, if you put your faith in Jesus, if you trusted in him, there's going to be a lot of people in hell who said the sinner's prayer, but never trusted in Jesus Christ, their

48:44

Savior. And again, I lead people to a prayer, but I always say saying a prayer does not save you.

48:50

It's your faith in Christ. Amen. His finished work on the cross. So I think we have to really be clear.

48:58

Amen. Well, Greg, I've been very encouraged by you and again, 20 years, man.

49:05

I had to, I had to see you sooner than this next time. But but I do want to just as we close,

49:11

I want to thank you so much for being here. And if you would just one more time, tell people how to get the app, how to connect with Dare to Share and any events that you have coming up.

49:20

I want to share with our audience. Sure. So we have you can get the app.

49:26

It's called life in six words free on your app store. Dare to share .org.

49:32

It's a number to dare to share .org this summer. We do a week -long event called lead the cause which is kind of our

49:40

Navy SEAL boot camp for students and evangelism and youth groups and their student leadership groups here in Denver, Colorado.

49:46

It's awesome. It's the best thing that we do and it put November 9th next year on your calendar.

49:52

Dare to share live. That's a free event there to share live and you can go to dare to share live .org

49:58

for more information. Follow me at Greg Stier, S -T -I -E -R. I'm on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook and all that but Greg Stier and yeah,

50:07

I wrote a book if anybody's like to read Unlikely Fighter that tells the story of my family's radical conversion because this hillbilly preacher it's on Amazon or wherever books are sold and every dollar every dime goes back to mobilize more students for the gospel.

50:22

So we won't stop until every teen everywhere. Here's the gospel from a friend. So don't underestimate the teenagers in your church in your youth group mobilize them and let us help you do that.

50:35

Amen. Well, thank you Greg again for being a part of today's show. One scene baby.

50:42

Yeah, and I want to thank you audience for being a part of conversations with the Calvinist today. Again, you heard everything about Greg and how you can follow him and get in touch with him and I encourage you to do that.

50:51

And if you'd like to know more about what we're doing here at Conversations with the Calvinist, you can find us at Calvinistpodcast .com.

50:56

You can send an email directly to me at Calvinistpodcast at gmail .com. If you have a question that you'd like for me to answer in an upcoming show and if you'd like to follow me on Twitter, you can do that at your

51:06

Calvinist on Twitter. I want to thank you again for listening to Conversations with the Calvinist. My name is