‍Vince Vitale [00:00:43] Hey everyone, welcome to Ask Away. We hope you're finding this show useful. We're really enjoying recording again. If you are finding it helpful, give us a quick rating or review on your podcast app. That really makes a big difference to the show. We really appreciate it. We wanted to start today with a shout out to Drew Cordell, long time listener of the show from Australia, has been consistently encouraging us, praying for us over the years. That has been so cool of you, Drew, has really meant a lot. Been a real blessing to us. Drew just recently published a book titled Honest Christianity: Why People Still Choose to Believe. Big congratulations, Drew. I know this book has been in your heart for a long time. So awesome to see it in print and I'm very much looking forward to reading it. Now, the topic for today's episode was prompted by a conversation with a new friend of ours, where we were talking about how challenging it can sometimes be to share your faith, and especially sometimes with the people that you're closest to. So we wanted to address a question that many people have and that probably most of us have felt at some point. Why do I find it so hard to share my faith? And it's a question I really appreciate, because if you are asking that question, that means you're actually trying to share your faith. So you are seeking to honor God in that way. And it means you really care about your friends, neighbors, colleagues, family. You really care about the people in your life because you love them enough to long for them to experience the fullness of life that Jesus promises, and therefore, it can frustrate you when you don't seem to be able to communicate that reality as compellingly and as clearly as perhaps you have experienced it in your own heart. I've definitely known that feeling. I can certainly relate to that many times. So I have a lot of respect for this question, and if you're asking it, I think that itself is an excellent sign that God is eager to bless you in your efforts to share him with others. 

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Jo Vitale [00:02:43] Yeah, there are so many different directions that we could even take this question, but today we've just decided in this episode to offer some reflections on just one aspect of evangelism. And really, to be honest, healthy relationships in general that God has been zooming in on in our lives over the last decade or so. And that aspect is what we call the spiritual discipline of conversation. Now, we'll say more about what we mean about that in a minute, but we're aiming for this episode to be highly practical and some of it really simple. Hopefully there'll be some takeaways. If you have a pen and paper and you're not driving, you can even write some things down as we go through, just to put some bullet points down on paper. Things you can practically do that might make a difference in your own life. Because we honestly believe that if you just take these really simple pieces of advice seriously, then it will radically enhance the depth of your conversations, your enjoyment of those conversations, and the fruitfulness that comes from them as well. 

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Vince Vitale [00:03:42] Yeah, we really have found that. And I get really excited about this topic because I believe so many Christians are right on the precipice of effectively sharing their faith, and they don't realize how close they are. I often just get this image in my head of cycling up a mountain pass. And it's so hard when you're going uphill and it seems like you're not getting anywhere and you're never going to get there, but then all of a sudden you reach the summit and you start to go downhill and everything changes, and there's this smile on your face as you start to just fly down the hill. And I really believe that so much of the church is just below the precipice when it comes to sharing their faith, and with just a little encouragement and training, really can be ready to fly. And that's one of the things we get most excited about in ministry. Just seeing people move from a place of fear and lack of confidence, and sharing the faith to a place of excitement and joy. 

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Jo Vitale [00:04:42] Yeah, definitely more excited for them to be doing that in conversations. To be honest, I've never been excited about cycling up the mountain paths and then having to fly down the other side. That sounds awful, but in terms of conversation, it is exciting. And so I mentioned that we use this phrase, the spiritual discipline of conversation. And we want to focus in on conversations specifically for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because Jesus took conversation really seriously. If you've read through any of the gospels, you see that Jesus spent a lot of time talking with people, and if you were going to ask whether Jesus was more impactful through his preaching ministry or his conversational ministry, I actually think it's really hard to say. 

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Vince Vitale [00:05:24] Yeah. Which is really interesting, actually, because a lot of people want to be upfront speakers. But then if you ask any speaker about their highlight from the last month, certainly true of us, we'll almost always tell you about a conversation that is really where so much of the real fruitfulness happens. 

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Jo Vitale [00:05:37] That's absolutely right. And then secondly, we want to focus on conversation because even though conversation is such a significant part of the model of ministry that we see in Jesus, we actually tend to spend almost no time on it. Maybe we spend time on the final conversation of how to lead somebody into a relationship with Jesus-- sometimes people call it the sinner's prayer-- but that is completely irrelevant unless we wind up in real life relational situations where the depth of interaction warrants extending that invitation in the first place. And if I were to ask you, do you know the Bible better today than you did 10 years ago? Well, hopefully, many of you would say yes, or at least you would have a sense that that's what you were supposed to say. But if I were to ask you, is your prayer life more consistent or are you a better leader? Hopefully, in all of those areas you've grown in somewhat. But if we ask the question, are you a better conversationalist today than you were 10 years ago? Does that question even really make sense to you? I find that most people, they kind of have this deer in headlights look when asked that question. It's such a hard question to answer compared to the other ones. And I think the problem is that we don't take conversations seriously enough as a spiritual discipline and as an essential aspect of Christian discipleship. 

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Vince Vitale [00:06:58] This always reminds us of a scene in Pride and Prejudice-- which, yes, Jo made me watch the long BBC version. 

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Jo Vitale [00:07:07] As far as I'm concerned, is the only legitimate version. 

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Vince Vitale [00:07:10] You can see that Jo feels strongly about this and made me watch it about 64 times or so. 

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Jo Vitale [00:07:16] Still not enough. 

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Vince Vitale [00:07:18] And I liked it. I liked it more than when I make you watch baseball, I think. 

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Jo Vitale [00:07:23] Yeah. 

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Vince Vitale [00:07:24] At one point, though, in the show there's this great scene and Mr. Darcy says, "I have not that talent which some possess of conversing easily with strangers." To which Elizabeth gives this brilliant response, where she says, "I do not play the piano so well as I should wish to, but I have always supposed that to be my fault because I would not take the trouble of practicing." And the thing is, if we're not a good conversationalist, we don't tend to see that as a spiritual weakness, but just as an unfortunate or maybe even enduring part of one's personality. We don't see it as something that we actually ought to work hard to change. If I preached a terrible sermon, that would weigh on me, and rightly so. If I let an obscenity fly in a moment of anger, I would be frustrated with myself. But if I have an uncreative, uninspiring, utterly boring conversation that literally put you to sleep, I usually just walk away and don't think twice about it. But I think that that's a serious error in our understanding of Christian discipleship. 

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Jo Vitale [00:08:32] Yeah, and in fact, increasingly, I would say that this advice only becomes more helpful because one of the things we keep hearing reflected back to us, especially after recovering from Covid and the pandemic, is that actually younger people more and more don't know how to talk to each other, and people are really struggling to build friendships, to build relationships, to know how to build community. But one of the building blocks of building relationships, it's conversations. Just in general, I think this is an area that we all need a lot of help, so that's where we're focusing that today. And you know that scene from Pride and Prejudice? It could actually be a commentary on Colossians chapter four, verses five and six which say, "Be wise in the way you act towards outsiders, make the most of every opportunity." Or another translation says, "Make the best use of the time." And how do we do that? Well, the verse goes on to say, "Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt (In other words, well prepared) so that you may know how to answer everyone." And note that it's not saying how to answer every question or every argument, but how to answer every person. So how can we make the most of every opportunity? Well, the Bible says by starting just with your everyday conversations. So we want to share a few pieces of advice, by investing more intentionally in conversation. There are about eight pieces of advice. Each one is pretty short, but we've personally found them to be really powerful when they're actually put into practice. 

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Vince Vitale [00:09:59] And so our first piece of advice or encouragement is to be multilingual. And that's wonderful if you can do that in terms of literal languages. But here we mean in terms of being able to speak competently about the things that matter most to the people who you care about and feel called to. And so one example of this in my life is that my dad is a big New York Yankees fan. And more than 20 years ago, when I first gave my life to Christ, it was hard on my family and understandably so. My parents sent a son off to college, and in a very real sense, after my freshman year, I was a different person that returned home that next summer. There was a real sense in which they lost a son. And at the time, I wasn't mature enough to really appreciate how difficult that would have been. And I was saying things like, "But I'm treating you better as my parents. I'm treating my brother better. Why can't everyone just be happy about this?" But I think from their perspective, they didn't care if I was better. They loved the son they sent off to college, and that son never came home. And that was challenging. And I also think that for my dad, again, I think very understandably, his role as my father was very central to his identity. And now all of a sudden, Vince had this invisible father figure who was in some sense his ultimate father and the person he went to first for wisdom and guidance. And I think that was hard to process. So dad and I had to work through a season where we were really trying to figure out how do we connect deeply as we always had previously. And I was praying about this, and I would honestly say that in one of the clearest promptings of the Holy Spirit that I've ever had in my life, I really sensed God telling me to watch baseball. And I thought, really, God? Baseball. Like, that's the grand plan for my relationship with my parents and my longing to share you with them? But God was prompting me to learn my dad's language, the language of a New York Yankees fan. I started watching the games regularly. Within weeks, I was just as big of a fan as my dad. And there's 162 games just in the regular season. Yankees are almost always in the playoffs, then you get all the off season trades. 

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[00:12:20] It gave us something that we could connect about pretty much every day of the year during that critical time in life. And, in fact, I'd say that was one of the single biggest factors in my dad becoming more comfortable having spiritual conversations with me and ultimately taking his own steps of faith. Not because I figured out how to explain the gospel to him more clearly or more engagingly, but because I started watching baseball. And it makes me think of the fact that Jesus often spoke in parables about farming and sheep and hidden treasures, lost money, lost children, being in debt, about parties, building a house, about how to deal with money- not explicitly religious things at all. Not what you would have guessed the God of the universe would have spent his time talking about, but they were all good things, and they were things that people cared about. And he took them as his starting points to share with them deeper spiritual truths. And I'm just amazed at the humility in that, that Jesus spoke all of creation into existence and here he is on earth, spending his time talking about our unsophisticated farming methods. I mean, it's just awesome. And what I've learned from Jesus is that we need to start where people are, what they think about, what they care about, the questions they are asking. That's really the vision for this whole podcast. Initially, I was just frustrated that my family wasn't where I was, and I wanted to yank them over to where I was, whether they liked it or not. But that's actually not the model of Jesus who literally came to where we are, came to speak our language, to do the things we do, to see the things from our perspective. And so question, what would it look like for you to learn to speak the language of someone that you long to share about God with, but perhaps are struggling to connect with? What are they interested in? What do they enjoy? What do they care about? What is one concrete thing you could do to learn to better speak their language? Maybe spend some time thinking about that and praying about that later today? 

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Jo Vitale [00:14:29] I can attest to how seriously Vince took that spiritual discipline of learning the language of the Yankees, because that the last time they won the World Series was in the month that we got married. So we spent the first two months of marriage-- we were living in England at the time. The Yankees game started on the TV at midnight. 

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Vince Vitale [00:14:46] Right, 7:00 pm eastern. Five-hour time difference. 

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Jo Vitale [00:14:49] Midnight till 4 a.m. every night. 

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Vince Vitale [00:14:52] Yeah. Mariano Rivera was closing out the World Series, and Jo was just trying to stay awake. And I'm like, "Are you watching hun?" And she said, "Uuuhg."

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Jo Vitale [00:15:00] Yeah. I can now go the distance. All right. A second piece of advice [Inaudible]. Now, I've been so inspired by my parents in this. You've probably heard me say before, my dad is a pastor. And so after being in the church for a very long time, my parents just they found that their whole life basically revolved around the church. And they reached a point where they didn't actually know many people who weren't Christians anymore, because so many of their relationships were based in that church life. And so they decided that wasn't good. And so they set a goal. They joined a golf club, and then they set just this one basic goal of playing golf once a week. But every time they would go around in a different form. And the goal was that whoever they happened to be paired up with that week, they needed to have one faith conversation each time they were going around the golf course, and then they would hold each other accountable to that. They'd have to come back and talk about how did it go this week? And that was like a long time investment. And they spent two years just gradually sowing into that community, just talking about Jesus, showing the love of God. And then two years in, our church was having a Christmas carol service, which is always an amazing opportunity in the UK to invite people along to church. And so my parents decided, well, that year, let's have the carol service and then let's have a dinner party at our house afterwards. And let's invite our friends from the golf club. So I think they sent out 22 invites, and I think 21 people came and responded yes. Can you imagine how encouraging that was, that a member of the congregation just shows up for the Christmas services and sees that your pastor has brought 22 non-Christians to the evangelistic carol service? I mean, talk about setting the bar. But I loved that they set a goal and then they stuck with it. And out of that, out of that event and those relationships that continue, they've continued to see the most incredible fruitfulness just from taking that simple step of faithfulness a number of years ago now. So I want to ask the question, what about us? Are we intentional in setting goals to have meaningful conversations with our loved ones, our colleagues, our friends, the people we know we're going to see and the people we don't? Do we consistently find ourselves looking back and thinking, oh, well, I had a great time on that trip, but I'm not sure how that person is actually doing. We didn't actually get around to asking the questions I was hoping to ask. I just didn't make the most of that opportunity. 

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[00:17:18] Now, personally, I found the difference between whether or not those conversations actually happened in my own life comes down to the simple act of whether I set goals in advance or not. It's a small thing, but it makes a huge difference. Now, of course, it's not in my control what the results of those conversations are going to be, nor should it be. That's not even the point. The goal is to love people well, not to manage them or manipulate them to certain ends. But you know what? It is largely in my control whether or not those conversations take place in the first place, whether I take the time and make the effort to intentionally create the space for those meaningful interactions. And I know some people we may flinch at that idea of setting conversational goals because we just sort of think, well, conversations should just be spontaneous, right? We should just go with the flow and just see what God wants to do in the moment. And, of course, that is part of it. But we also recognize it to be true in other areas of our lives, that it's a good thing to set concrete goals. I mean, how many of you have ever successfully improved your physical fitness without setting goals? I know for a fact if I don't set multiple alarms to wake up early to exercise, it's never going to happen. Let's be honest, even then, it probably won't happen. Nothing is like trying to do a workout with a three-year-old and five-year-old hanging off your leg or climbing on your back. It's very entertaining actually. Our three-year-old JJ is now amazing at planks by the way. He's better than me, which is a little bit depressing. Why are we willing to be diligent when it comes to physical fitness, but not when it comes to sharing the gospel? The most important truth we know, and the one that actually has the power to transform a human life, not just momentarily in a physical sense, but in an eternal sense as well. It just doesn't make any sense. And I wonder if sometimes maybe the reason we don't like setting concrete goals is because it opens us up to the possibility of failing. But I actually think one of the greatest gifts about being a Christian is that Jesus' sacrifice should free us to be willing to fail, not to be afraid of failure, because we know that our identity and our value is by God's grace alone, and not by any record of our successes or failures. So we can just go for it. So a question for all of us on this one, what conversational evangelistic goals are you pursuing at the moment, and how are you then sharing them with others and pursuing them in the context of your community? 

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Vince Vitale [00:19:43] And that's good. I find that one really convicting, and I think about how many goals I've set in just a work context or a sports context, and often how few what the thing that actually means the most to me has [inaudible]. A third piece of advice now for conversation (this one's huge) it's to be question ready. Jesus was in the habit of asking a lot of very good questions. Do you want to be well? What are you looking for? Who's your neighbor? Which one of you is sinless to throw the first stone? To what then can I compare the people of this generation? What are they like? Why does this generation ask for a miraculous sign? Who do you say that I am? Why do you call me good? Which is lawful on the Sabbath? To do good or to do evil? To save life or to kill? What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul? There's something like 157 of Jesus's questions that are recorded in the New Testament. But then if you ask, how are we at asking questions? Well, as a society, I think we're generally pretty terrible. I mean, if you think about our most common questions in life, how are you doing? Did you have a good summer? Did you have a good vacation? What's up? How's work? How's school? Did you see the game last night? Isn't the weather terrible? I mean, easily 90% of our questions stay on the surface of life and can be answered with either yes, no, or fine. And the reason, then, that we find it so difficult to get from shooting the breeze to Jesus is because usually all we're doing is shooting the breeze. We wouldn't find it so difficult if we were in the habit of regularly entering into meaningful conversations, just that middle ground where maybe we're not talking explicitly about Jesus yet, but we're also not just having superficial conversation- meaningful conversation. Jesus makes his way into those conversations quite naturally. And so we need to be in the habit of asking better questions. Personally, I have a list of questions that I like on my computer, and I have a Microsoft word document, and there are questions that try to get beneath the surface and onto meaningful topics without being threatening. And then I try these questions out. Some questions I try work great. I keep it on the list. Others fail miserably, I take it off the list. And then I just read over that Microsoft Word document and amend my list of questions from time to time. Just read that over a few times a month. And that way, when I meet someone, hopefully, the questions that I just have rolling around in my head are hopefully ones that God has led me to and that are meaningful, rather than just conforming by instinct to whatever boring questions our culture tells me I should ask the person in front of me. 

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[00:22:38] So here are some questions I like. If you find some of these useful, I'll just run through them really quickly. But feel free to write into the show if you want. I'm happy to send you my list. Here's my list at the moment. What was the best part of your week? What was the worst part of your week? Even just that change, instead of saying how was your week and somebody responding, fine, but saying what was the best part of your week? An open ended question that allows someone to share, big change. What's been on your mind most recently? What was the happiest time in your life and what made it so happy? What are you good at? What are your dreams for the future? If money wasn't an issue and you can do anything you want, what would you do? Or similar, what would you do tomorrow if you knew you could not fail? Or what do you wish someone could do for you that you can't do for yourself? I like asking about a person's family history. What were you like as a child? Do you think you're different now? What is your best childhood memory? Who in your family are you most like? Who are you most different from, and in what ways? Who are you closest to in your family? Are you close to your other family members? That helps to surface any potential family tension or conflict? Who's your best friend and what's the best thing about them? How would your best friends describe you? I find that often gets a better response. And tell me about yourself. People feel uncomfortable kind of just talking about themselves- at least most people do. But I think at least you should. 

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[00:23:59] But asking about your best friend describing you, you often get kind of a fuller answer there. Who's had the most significant influence in your life? How so? Or a bit more vulnerable here, what would you change about yourself if you could change one thing? What's missing in your life? I was asked that question just a few months ago, and really it gave me pause and I really had to think about it. There wasn't an obvious answer jumped to mind, but I thought what a great question. And I got to thinking about it for the next day. And so I added up to the list. Did you grow up in a religious home? I find it sometimes a less threatening question than, are you a Christian? That could just feel like a litmus test. But if somebody says, "Yeah, I did," then often I'll respond and say, "Well, was that a positive experience or a negative experience or a combination of both?" I'm giving someone an invitation to share their story in their culture rather than just an interrogation or a litmus test. Would you raise children the same way as you were raised? Why or why not? And what's the most frustrating thing about religion to you? I learn a lot about how to interact with people by people answering that question. What do you live for? Where do you find the most peace in life? What's your greatest fear? If you could have the answer to one question, what would it be? And send it in to Ask Away. Just a couple more. Sometimes I enjoy asking more creative questions. If there was one law you could make, what would it be? If there was one law you could break? What would it be? What causes 80% of your stress in life? And I always remember this question because the very first time I ever asked anyone that question, they just, without missing a beat, responded, "People like you asking me questions like that."

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Jo Vitale [00:25:42] Great response. 

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Vince Vitale [00:25:43] It was so good. One of the best responses I ever got. But I just said, well, what about the other 20%? And we still had a great conversation. And then perhaps my favorite question, have you ever had an experience in your life that made you think there might be a God? And I just love this question, because if I asked this question of people who have even explicitly told me they don't believe in God, and if I give them a little time to just ponder it and just wait through a little uncomfortable silence for a few seconds, rather than just kind of saving the person by jumping to a different topic, so often they'll say, well, there was this one time when... And then they'll just bust out the most remarkable, clearly miraculous story that you've ever heard in your life. And now you're just like, wow, that happened to you? Wait, and you told me you don't believe there's a God. Well, that's so interesting. Okay, tell me about how those things fit together in your head. And oftentimes they don't. Oftentimes it's just that that experience doesn't fit the narrative of life that they've already established. And so it kind of gets pushed into a corner and it doesn't get processed. But asking that question brings it back to the surface. And you can process through that incredible experience. I really believe that most people in life have a couple of experiences like that, where God has been reaching out to them. And it may be that he wants you to ask a question that helps them to finally process that experience. 

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Jo Vitale [00:27:06] Yeah, I think this list is so helpful. I think we can be a bit suspicious at the idea of someone coming into conversations with questions that are already planned because I think there's a part of us that we really don't want to feel like a project, do we? Or like someone has an agenda when they walk into a conversation with us. But you know what? I actually just think if you really want to know the answers to those questions, if you actually really want to care about the person in front of you, then actually isn't it loving them more because you've taken the time to say, "Hey, I don't always trust myself in the moment because I don't always come up with the best things on the spot, but I really do want to know you. And so this is my way into doing that." Yes, conversation is an art, not a science. But we also would want to say that God is sovereign, both in a conversation and several days before it. So let's not limit the work of the Holy Spirit in any direction. If God put something on your heart to ask somebody you know before you get there, lean into that because you might just have the most fantastic conversation that really opens things up, gives them a chance to share, to understand their own hearts better, for you to connect more closely with them, for you just to deepen the relationship. And I just think that's actually a more loving act rather than being somehow manipulative in some way. So don't be afraid of that. 

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Vince Vitale [00:28:23] Just one more thought about questions. This can be revolutionary. Train yourself to ask joined up questions. This is something I was taught in a counseling context, but it very much applies to sharing the faith and just to good conversation generally. We tend to stay on the surface in conversation and to ask disconnected questions. So in other words, we say, "What did you do this past weekend?" Somebody gives us an answer. Then we say, "How was lunch?" They give us an answer. And we say, "How's your family?" And they give us an answer. So each of these questions are just completely independent. Every time we get an answer, we shift gears to a completely new topic. And the answer that we get to one question has no bearing on what we ask next. But joined up questions go deeper by responding to the information someone actually gives you in their previous response. So let me give you an example of this from an actual conversation in my life. I had just met someone. I was sharing a meal with them and a couple friends. I said, "Well, what did you do this past weekend? And he said, "I was renovating a room in our basement." Now, usually I would just say, "Cool, do you have any plans for this coming week?" And I would just shift the topic. But in this case, I stayed on topic. I asked a question about the answer he had given. So he was renovating a room in his basement. So then I said," Well, how come you decided to renovate this room in your basement?" And then he said, "Well, my wife wants her sister to move in." And now I thought, okay, this is getting a little bit more interesting. And then I said, "Was that an easy decision for you guys to have, your sister in law move in or was it a difficult one?" 

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Jo Vitale [00:30:10] Oh, boy. 

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Vince Vitale [00:30:11] Yeah. Then everything just came out about all this relational tension between him and his wife, about this sister-in-law moving in and the brokenness in relationship, and how are they ever going to forgive each other and the possibility of reconciliation through repentance. Literally, that's what we were talking about. So now we're just right in the middle of all of these gospel themes. And it was just below the surface. It was like two more joined up questions below the surface. But we so rarely get there. Linking our questions in this way allows you to go so much deeper in conversation. And it's not a trick, it's just a matter of actually listening well to the information that someone discloses to you, and caring enough about them to want to get beyond just the initial superficial answer. In fact, in my experience, a person's first response is often almost a subconscious test to see, are you really listening? Do you really care enough to hear about the mess, which is only two questions away? That deep place of honesty and transparency is usually only 2 or 3 questions away-- but 2 or 3 joined up questions away. And, sadly, we almost never get there. Most people very rarely get asked a third or a fourth joined up question. And the other thing about this, which is just fantastic, is it makes conversation so much easier. Because you don't have to come up with 100 different questions on 100 different topics, and you can actually listen to what the person in front of you is saying rather than spending your time not really listening to them, but thinking, "Oh no, they're almost done with their answer, I'm going to have to ask a question about a different topic. Which topic should I go to next?" No. Instead, you can just ask more about what that person has actually brought up. You just roll with what the other person gives you and it's actually exponentially more fruitful. 

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Jo Vitale We’re so glad you joined us for Ask Away.

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Vince Vitale If you have a question that needs answering, we’d love to hear it.

Send us an email at askawayquestion@gmail.com or call and leave a voicemail at 321-213-9670.

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Jo Vitale Ask Away is hosted by Vince and Jo Vitale, and produced by Studio D Podcast Production.

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Jo Vitale The best way you can support Ask Away is to leave a review. All you have to do is open up the podcast app on your phone, look for Ask Away, scroll down until you see “Write your review” and tell us what you think.

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Vince Vitale See you next time. And remember, if you have a question, it’s worth asking.

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