0:00 welcome back to the authentic christian and on today's episode we talk about how to share jesus in the coffee shop okay so today we're talking about how to share jesus in a coffee shop doesn't have to be a coffee shop it can be a tea shop or a grocery shop or whatever you want to cover whereas but we really want to talk about as christians we go through our life just day to day how do we share the gospel with people i mean uh it should be a way of life to us but i mean why is this important well uh there are many passages that deal with evangelism first of all we're commanded to to do that as we go right matthew 28 18 through 20 and jesus came and spake unto them saying all power is given unto me in heaven and in earth go ye therefore and teach all nations baptizing them in the name of the father
0:45 and of the son and the holy ghost teaching them to observe all things whatsoever commanded you and love them with you always even unto the end of the world the same thing mark 16 16 15-16 there's the great commission everybody calls it right and for right reason it's great and we're commissioned to do it we need to carry that out well if you think about it too sometimes the last words that somebody says before they leave and in this case this is some of the last words that jesus says to his disciples before he ascends to heaven and you look at how important it is and he tells them matthew 28 all authority's been given to me in heaven and earth basically i run the show now right the father gave jesus the authority it's been given to me so what do i want you to do go there for and make disciples that's the verb and then greek imperative make disciples
1:30 this that's what i want you to do and then after that it follows with um two two words that tell you how to think they're called participles that tell you how to do it and then it's baptizing and teaching yeah so he says i want you to go make disciples here's how you do it you baptize and teach and then you teach them all things i've told you so that means you make a christian and then you tell that christian hey you're supposed to now teach other people too it's kind of like a movie like you know when your favorite character at the very end it's his last words it's like the most profound and you always remember it's kind of like that right there yeah but i love this because we each have our own creativity in some ways whatever generation you're in and you can use that to be a positive light and ultimately try to share jesus you couldn't even share jesus without sharing jesus by the way you live yeah so i'm excited what we're going to talk about because there's i think there's many different ways that we can share
2:17 jesus in your own coffee shop that's right and like they said last words yeah go back to our last episode we talked about testament yeah yeah this is the testator yeah he said go teach yeah that's it and that's that's where he says you know this is how you make disciples you said mark 16 go into the whole world and basically make disciples of every creature i'm morphing matthew 28 mark 16. yeah every creature right that word means person right he's not saying try to evangelize your dog right he's saying every every human try and go teach the gospel to them he that believes and is baptized will be saved he that believeth not will be condemned okay so the end of that can condemnation salvation and condemnation that's one of the reasons that we ought to be we have to be evangelizing because number one if you care about
3:02 people's souls you're gonna do that one one verse if you ask me aaron why do i need to evangelize let me read you two verses this is second corinthians chapter five verse ten for we just got done talking about the assurance of the resurrection in the beginning of second corinthians 5 and in verse 10 he says we must all appear before the judgment seat of christ that's scary that each one may receive the things done in the body according to what he has done whether good or bad so the way we live our life is going to be something held against us on judgment day okay unless we become christians have our sins forgiven okay verse 11 knowing therefore the terror of the lord we persuade men so we know that there's going to be judgment day hebrews 9 27 it's appointed
3:49 once for men to die is it 26 or 27 hebrews 9 26 and 27 that way i hit hit at all it's appointed once for men to die than the judgment day so we're all going to have stand before god on judgment day and i don't want anybody to stand before him and not be a christian yeah not have the blood of christ matthew 9 37 and 38 the harvest is plenteous right pray the lord that he's going to send forth laborers into the harvest we need to be laborers for that harvest we need to teach others and we need to create more laborers for that harvest because there's a lot of people out there they all need salvation they all need the opportunity and we get to take it to them yeah yeah i heard someone once say like if you had the cure for cancer you know you just it's actually i'll give him a shout out phil carver said that as a great bible teacher of mine he said you know if you had the cure for cancer you'd run around sharing it with everybody yeah and it's like
4:35 i mean we have the greatest news of all time and sometimes you know none of us are perfect i'm not perfect and you we take it for granted i take it for granted you know it's like oh you know i'm a christian but it's like when you actually think about like your whole life the purpose of it goes back to all the previous episodes we've done building up to this but like it makes you really excited to know like how loved you are like what jesus did and does for you that the holy spirit through men wrote the bible like you know what that all that means for you as an individual and then you know just to sit back and be like well i'm never gonna share that even though it's incredibly awesome the gospel is the power of god unto salvation right yeah i mean you look at what jesus said his mission was luke 19 10 i think it is it says he came to seek and save the lost i mean
5:21 jesus many you look at luke 15 when he tells all these parables of the lost coin the lost sheep the lost son the prodigal son and all of those are to get back to what we've sinned you talked about having the cure i mean we got the whole coronavirus stuff right i mean first of all cancer i think is going to kill way more people than the chronovirus but you look at sin is basically a spiritual cancer i mean romans 3 23 says all have sinned and fall short of the glory of god romans 6 23 says the wages of sin is death spiritual death eternal separation from god but the free gift of god is eternal life in christ yeah so christ the gospel his blood is the cure and we have it and it's like if i had the cure to coronavirus do you know i think i'd be like i'd be although i'd be like hey do you have you ever heard of the chronovirus can i tell you about the cure you know but why way more serious yeah
6:08 way more serious i mean the chronovirus if you get it and you have pre-existing conditions and maybe it kills you but i mean everyone's gonna die every single person's gonna stand before the judgment seat and you know i heard someone at sermon say that it's called the great commission but sometimes we make it the great omission you know where it's like we're supposed to tell everybody but we're like yeah you know they might they might not like me if i tell them yeah yeah what if i say it the wrong way and then they'll never want to listen again yeah like yeah we come up with great what if you don't say anything yeah what if you don't say anything you know judgment they never listen at all period that's right and what a film you know i think about the ethiopian eunuch in acts chapter eight and you okay i wanna tell this story this is my introduction really into uh like coffee shop evangelism right here we go i've had a couple occasions
6:54 where i'd be seeing someone reading their bible in a coffee shop and i'd go up and talk to him but in acts chapter eight you have the ethiopian eunuch and philip is told to go to him and he goes and he runs to him and the eunuch says do you understand what you read and he says how can i unless someone guides me right god trusts philip if you read that story he didn't tell him go teach him he just said hey go see this guy phillip already knew he had to be teaching so i did a wednesday night devotional on can god trust you like the ethiopian eunuch or like philip that if you see somebody reading their bible you'll talk to them right i did that on wednesday night i drove back then i worked in the biotech industry i drove to i think it's like anderson south carolina near clemson for a meeting the next morning i go to a coffee shop you know it's in the coffee shop oh boy tell me about it i just got done the night before telling the congregation if you see somebody in a
7:40 coffee shop or somewhere reading their bible can god trust you enough to go up and talk to him right and i was like are you going to share i did that in front of everybody right yeah the next day that's exactly you got your test i'm sitting there i'm sitting there drinking my coffee and i see these two young high school guys over there studying a bible and i thought all right well lord i guess i got two options one is to be a complete hypocrite and just walk out the door or the second thing is to go talk to him i knew it was gonna be awkward but i basically walked over and told them that i just said this last night and i had to go talk to him or i'd be hypocrite that was a good ice breaker for me and ended up giving them like a couple copies of muslim shovel the girls working at the coffee shop are like what is that book so it went really well but i'll say this it's awkward sometimes talking to somebody is awkward and i'll be the first one to admit that it's still awkward for me today i mean you've told me a lot of different
8:26 stories you're like you'll come back to work be like man i was at this coffee shop and i was at this coffee shop over and over and it's like uh but like what would it happen if you'd have never done that i know i know what if you would never share the gospel those two guys you know who knows and i believe providentially god gives people he's not a respecter or person so providentially you know i can't prove it but i believe that god gives people different opportunities to hear the truth but like what if that's my isn't that exciting though to wake up every day and know you never know who you're going to come into contact with that day that you could share the gospel with it might become a christian yeah yeah you never mean you know we're we're we're going to be made we need to make ourselves all things to all men but there's a there's a point at which yeah in our culture it's going to be awkward because we're heading down that path towards don't really talk to each other too much in public but you know we gotta find
9:11 ways to just be a little more charismatic maybe be a little more outgoing and just do it yeah i like that like you're talking about culture i think we've been talking about this last couple days like so there's different ways of talking to people even scripture talked about using your words wisely um so like you guys if i see you at a coffee shop i might be able to know how to relate to you in some way if it's someone that's a little bit older there's ways of reaching them and maybe they are reached the same way i think it's so cool that each culture kind of has different on you know the 50s 60s 70s 2010s all the way up everybody there's a fad going on there's a different kind of culture style going on and i think it's so cool because i'd heard this quote saying like if jesus came back like how would you be using your strategic plan of reaching that type of culture and so like maybe today i might see a young person and
9:57 talk to them in a certain way about something and then see like i don't know an older person and be able to you know just use different words um and maybe they're like really hip and cool and they use the same words but yeah you know just being able to talk to different kind of people about jesus yeah i know as far as methods let's talk about some methods one of the things that um that i like to do is i look in the gospel uh not the gospel the gospel of acts the book of acts and i see that where did paul go every time he goes to a new city ah the religious senate he goes to a religious center right whether that be the greek religion or the the the jews go to the synagogue yeah so he always went where religious people were right where there were gatherings of people so what i've tried to do when i travel for work is if i go to like a gospel meeting like i'm going and back into a place in alabama
10:43 later i think in august i went there last year i'll try to find like a coffee shop in each you know like if i'm in this city i've done i'll say okay there's pretty big city or some small town still but 10 minutes this way 20 minutes this way so every day i'll just go get a cup of coffee in the morning sit there publicly and read my bible and just wait and say like okay wonder i wonder who i'm going to run into yeah and i've had so many cool conversations where i mean if i'm honest i'm going to i'll go and open up to a part of my book that has like lots of highlights and like verses and then i'll try to see if other people are reading their bible and if they are i'll just like start a conversation you know i had a buddy um somewhere in mississippi i won't say where i don't want to embarrass anybody but he was reading his bible in a coffee shop so i went like sat within like like
11:29 a direct eye shot of him and like opened mine up and was just like reading and like watching and waiting until he looked at me and i was like oh hey i was like waiting for eye contact and started talking to him and had like a really great conversation you know but i'm gonna be watching for you at the next coffee shop like aaron but but i mean i'll say it again it's awkward yeah if you think if you think well like i bet those guys are just it's natural to them no it's not natural it took hard work i mean it's like if you saw like an olympic marathoner and you were like man the lord just you were just blessed with being a great runner yeah he was probably an athletic person but everybody had to work at it too you know everything didn't just come easily to everybody small talks of skill right you gotta learn that you gotta practice that you gotta be able to carry that out in a in a natural way yeah and
12:14 that comes from practice just getting through the awkward moments the awkward phase you just gotta do it and then you gotta keep doing it yeah it's hard that's a small time it's hard i think you just ask questions about them yeah how are you where are you from how's your day what are you reading you know what oh you have a bible open hey what are you reading what are you studying right now you know rob whitaker said a quote recently i love that guy yeah evangelist awesome guy reaching a lot of people for jesus so rob quitting said that um i think he's quoting someone else but he said people won't listen until they know how much you care and it's like you know i think some people think well maybe you have an hour with someone 30 minutes maybe a minute you know and then maybe have like you work with somebody at a grocery store and you have like a whole week or two or whatever but like you know you get to build that friendship they trust you and then maybe they'll listen to you more and how you care about their love
13:00 on them like you know then they'll open up like you know that guy does respect me and he cares about me so i'll have to listen to what it says even if it's something really hard yeah i mean i guess the point of mentioning like small talk and getting to know people it's it's in our culture and most people don't want to talk about two main topics most of the time if they don't know you they don't want to talk about two things what are that politics and religion politics and religion right so if you're gonna get to talk to somebody if you're gonna make modern methods of evangelism and we're talking about everyday evangelism then you have to learn to speak to people you gotta build rapport you gotta learn those skills and develop that use biblical language too i mean you know just in your day-to-day conversations sometimes people ask you about certain things and uh if you get a chance to explain
13:45 something through an illustration that you know from the bible where something that you know just any little piece of biblical information you can insert into a conversation may stare that conversation that you've started with your skills from small talk towards them towards a bible study eventually that's your goal i make them curious they hear you say something like scott what what did you say you know the lord what did you mean by that you know yeah yeah and give biblical advice yeah right yeah i mean i mean how many times are you sitting around and you've got friends somebody you've known you're maybe grown up you're still in school if they're dealing with the situation and they ask your advice about it well if you've been studying the bible and especially if you've been reading things like proverbs and the psalms and other wisdom literature you've got a lot of good wisdom that
14:30 people that don't study the bible people that aren't christians don't have yeah and you can just wow them with that sometimes you just throw something out there and it's like it comes from proverbs yeah and then maybe that'll beat their curiosity maybe then they'll come to you for other biblical questions and you can get into that conversation further yeah so anyway i mean i think you're right even if they don't believe the bible you could be like hey look i know right now you don't think the bible's from god but what do you think about this piece of advice they may say it's pretty wise actually you know answer answer a fool according to his folly don't answer a fool according to his folly and it's like yeah basically there's some people it's a waste of time trying to give an answer to and there's some that if you rebuke it it's helpful you know a wise man you rebuke him and he'll love you for it you know yeah just establish yourself as that source of biblical wisdom yeah and even if they're not at a place in their life where they're willing to
15:15 listen where they want to become a christian you'll be there yeah they'll know who to turn to later yeah that's really smart yeah so what are some what are we talking about a little bit about methods what are some things like you talked if you just meet somebody for like a short period of time i mean i know i've had times where so many times where you'll run into somebody in life what maybe you're traveling like i travel a lot so i'll be traveling and maybe it's a gas station and i'll have like a 10 second exchange with this guy and i'll get back in my car and be like man like i wanted to talk to him more he just seemed like a really nice person curious more about where he is spiritually but there's a lot of eight people behind me i mean what what kind of things would you do to try to i don't know i guess make more connections with people even if you're only going to interact them for short periods of time i mean here recently
16:01 i mean we've we've bought cards for the podcast and it has all the information on it and we know like the podcast talks about jesus and all right and so like you know here recently like uh we went to a coffee shop me and you on a road trip and you just you hand it out or you leave at certain places you know i i was walking around like at walmart the other day and i was like what is a great place to like prop this up like someone's gonna see this tucker leaves he leaves the authentic christian podcast cards everywhere well i know because it's going to point back to jesus like maybe somebody yeah and this kind of goes into like culture stuff like you know not even talking about the authentic christian but just like let's say you built a card and you put something like that'll strike your eye on it like man that looks cool you put that somewhere someone would be like man that's cool flip it around maybe they'll look into it and then have that open door um i said i'd be looking for a a loaf of honey wheat right there next
16:48 to the price tag i'll see that carb wedged in there it's like man that's some authentic christian bread right there you pick it up and that's it but then you never know they'll hear the gospel from it well you know too it's also sometimes it's i gotta say in my life has been a progression there's been a progression for me of like the way now i'm i'm so comfortable with people saying no i mean what's the worst that's going to happen in our culture right um i got basically yelled at and walked out into starbucks once yeah i guess i've been chewed out yeah before that happened i would be like man i don't know what i would do if somebody chewed me out and this guy flipped out on me in a starbucks we're having a conversation stood up like stormed off that's right and i mean later he reached out and was like hey man i'm sorry about that it's cool man don't worry like you know he's a good young guy um but when that
17:35 happened i was like whoa and i remember driving home to go talk to my wife and you know what i remember i remember thinking well that wasn't as bad as i thought it would be i mean it really wasn't i thought before then like man i'd be so embarrassed i actually kind of felt good because i was doing what i'm supposed to do as a christian and something bad happened because of it and i thought wow i must be doing like this at least did the right thing yeah yeah i mean really we've got it pretty good right compared to like our brothers and sisters and uh oh in christ and other places yeah maybe the people they're dealing with some persecution in like china or the middle east maybe if there's some people in africa oh you you do a lot of trips to africa yeah right some of them they deal with yeah they're much tougher situations right now yeah we have to deal with from it well there's i mean even today not to
18:21 mention in the first century i mean you look at nero in the first century burning people as lamps taking christians and saying you know what make a good lamp in my garden a christian i mean covering them in animal skins and letting dog wild dogs that's disgusting and you talk about you think we have it rough today when someone deletes they s when facebook censors your your photo or your video and or your post and they say well it's hate speech it's like come on man you don't have it rough nothing compared in in india right now i have a lot of people in india that i a couple missionaries that are buddies of mine and we talk and some one of them actually is from india and they have the caste system over there still and he's told me that under indian law you have human rights unless you leave the hindu religion and become a christian or a muslim and he's told me about christian villages they just get burned
19:07 and there's you don't have any human rights there's nothing to do we don't say this to scare you no what we're saying is we don't have it like that here most of our listeners be thankful that you can still share the gospel free that's right and go do it yeah and go do it don't worry about that stuff that's right yeah you know it can be awkward sometimes but there's a lot of riding on it [Music] hey guys thanks for listening to the authentic christian podcast this podcast has been sponsored by gbn gospel broadcasting network you can download the app and start streaming every show watch every episode and discover the answers to life's biggest questions today if you were gonna if you were gonna maybe advise somebody let's say that someone watching is a christian and they're nervous about how to talk to somebody um what
19:53 what's some advice that you might give them yeah um i guess for me like being a videographer um if i was gonna try to reach somebody especially like kind of what we're doing now um i'll go back to high school like so i know how to run a camera and all that stuff so i want to be able to use what i know how to do for jesus and so maybe i'm not the greatest at talking to somebody but maybe i can make a video and be comfortable doing that so like my friends and i we made a an hour movie about christian friendship and we got the local uh people that owned the theater to put it in the movie theater in two different towns so like that was one way we just said like what can we do that we're comfortable with and even it was uncomfortable many times but just like using what you have so like the whole episode titles like your own coffee shops like we all are good at different things yeah so like what is your skills to make
20:39 your coffee to go like to share at a coffee shop you know what is your way that you are really good at that maybe you're the only person that can do it and use that you also made a movie oh well we did that too one day yeah yeah like tucker when he first got to gbn where we all work he said hey i have a i want to film a movie about like my conversion how i became a christian and more like cool and so it's called little couple wisdom i'll promote it whether he will but it's on our instagram tv right it's on ig tv it's is the movie version or the ten episodes i think on ig tv it's the time of okay episodes but then movie versions on youtube but hey i guess all right it's all because you guys like it's the teamwork it's the dream team yeah right we said do it and he did all the work so we'll take credit for it no but it's called little couple wisdom um it's a great movie i mean that's that's one way you know sometimes
21:26 people feel uncomfortable talking to people i know i did for a long time i mean i was probably 25 and you know how many bible studies i had by the time i was 25 with people zero i don't i mean people that like i meet now guys are somewhere though yeah people that i meet now may think man aaron's been studying bible people forever no i didn't for a long time and i started out slow because what i did is i carried little cards around and if i met somebody that i really thought you know what i'd like to study with this person i would give them a card and it was to like a being saved.org or something like that or why are there so many churches i would hand them that card thinking you know what and now i'll say i that got easier for me yeah and then later i got to the point where from studying my bible where i felt like i was ready my worst fear was if i asked them to have a bible study and they say yes i'm going to be like what do i do you know i would recommend
22:13 if you want to have a bible study with somebody and you don't know how there's a great book series of booklets there's three booklets called back to the bible um you you don't really have to know anything except how to read how to find books in your bible it'll literally be like page one you're talking about the authority of the bible read this bible verse fill in this blank so if you're looking for a place to start that's a decent place to start too yeah absolutely and if you're talking about how do we how do we break through the awkwardness i'll just say it i mean at the end of the day you just got to do it yeah yeah um and it's just like when i when i was in school i had to go preach you know how nervous i get when i walk up in front of like 300 people it's not any better now yeah but you just got to go up and do it and it gets a little bit easier as you go through that but uh you know we're
22:59 talking about also well what do you do when you're not exactly comfortable i like how you said that well i also made a movie just throw that out yeah it was pretty that was pretty we did it together yeah but um uh you did a great job with that but uh another thing you can do just to draw attention to yourself if you're afraid of approaching them to start off get with somebody you know like let's say aaron and i yeah we're gonna go to the coffee shop yeah and we're gonna have a bible study yeah we're both christians we know each other well we're comfortable so we can sit and talk kind of like we're talking right now yeah and then people around us will hear that and they will approach you i've seen it happen i've been there when it happens it happens all the time yeah talk about the bible when the people who are interested in that come in there and get their coffee they'll hear you they'll walk up to you i promise you it'll eventually work just go and start doing it yeah just like fishing kind of right you're fishing for
23:45 men right yeah that's what you'll do yeah that's a good way to start and that'll help you to get more comfortable talking to people you don't know because then it's not you starting that conversation and then you can work up to that well whenever jesus sent out his disciples the apostles on the limited commission he sent him out how many numbers uh in twos twos he sent them out in twos why do you think i think one reason is because it's a lot easier to do something when you're in when you're two people you know it's like there's strength in numbers so if me and you are at a coffee shop and someone comes up and asks me a question i don't have to know every single answer to every single question bounce off each other yeah you know and that's another thing too when you go out to try to teach somebody the gospel if they ask you a question you don't know you know what's okay to do say you know what i don't know yeah i remember so when i got out of college
24:32 i i wanted to go to medical school so i got a job in the meantime for a year and it was a like a biotech consulting job so i was dealing with all these medical labs like all over the east coast and it was really like a difficult job because i'm having all these phd scientists ask me all these questions about our products and i'm like a lot of the questions i didn't know and it was really surprising when this really smart person would ask me hey you know what are your reagent costs on this and i would say you know i really don't know but i'll look it up and get back to you you know how many people ever were like i can't believe you don't know that yeah none yeah every single person was like okay cool everybody was okay with the fact me saying you know i'm not sure about that but let me write it down and i'll get you an answer back people people should be okay with that you know you don't have to know every single answer to the bible before you can actually have a
25:17 study with somebody absolutely it's also nice that god gave us a book you want to study with somebody you don't know where to start hey let's get together and read the bible together yeah um find ways to start conversations basically at the end of the day uh we're talking about everyday evangelism at least for us most of the time you're trying to find a way to start a conversation that's going to lead to that bible study later on you're not going to be able to sit down with somebody the first time you meet them and hit them with deep theological discussion or something like that and that's not your goal no you're trying to you're trying to get started and you're trying to work up to that bible study it often takes more than one bible study to convert somebody anyway and i think too be excited yeah about the gospel yeah i mean when someone asks you hey what are you getting to this weekend you're like oh saturday i'm gonna watch the game sunday i gotta go to church it's like man can you stop that please you know like
26:04 why would somebody want to obey the gospel become a christian if it's so boring to you you know i mean i've almost like you want to be a good advertisement for jesus there are times when i hesitate to even say this but i'm going to say it there are times where i meet people that are so like depressed about being a christian i'm almost like can you just for the rest of us don't tell anybody like if you're going to be miserable being a christian don't tell anybody because you're going to ruin it for that person like the fact that no matter what happens in my life i know that if i'm faithful when i die i go to heaven it's a good life i mean my wife my wife and i've literally had people before ask us like are you guys like what's wrong with you like like what do you mean like you're so happy all the time it's like yeah because if i die i don't have to go to hell that's right um i mean is that not good news look our congregations give us so
26:50 many things throughout the year anyway that we can get excited about so start using that if you get a bunch of events planned out for us every year we've got this thing coming up where we're gonna all get together get excited about it and use that to start some conversation especially if you already know that person yeah ask them to come along yeah and just be happy about it saying this is going to be a great time it's not something i have to do yeah i'm excited exactly it's an opportunity it's not an obligation it's an opportunity yeah i remember when i was 16 i started working at the grocery store and i remember like i was bagging groceries and one of the guys was like man you're happy like that'll that'll fade within a week you'll you'll meet people and just to relate that i always remember that but you relate that back to the bible it's like there are going to be some really hard days but you just take a moment and then you go back and just refocus i remember when i worked we got about 30 seconds left but when i worked i got married and these guys i
27:35 worked with were like how's how's your marriage it's great they were like give it time yeah it's like five six years later how's your marriage awesome better than was when i got married why because we both put god ahead of the other person amen and when we do that we follow god being a christian makes me a better type of husband a better type of wife for her so thank you guys for tuning in to the authentic christian we hope you'll catch us back on the next episode and thank you for watching [Music] hey everybody thanks for listening to the authentic christian podcast this podcast is sponsored by the gospel broadcasting network or gbn for short you can hop on the app store search gospel broadcasting network
28:22 and you can download the app and there's this show many other great shows that you can watch or listen to start learning more about the bible and why we're here what our purpose is thanks for listening
