On Evangelism and Preaching (Interview)

Jonathan Carswell: Hey, I’m Jonathan Carswell, and I’m here talking with Alistair Begg. We’re talking about ministry, evangelism, and sharing Jesus as we go about our daily life.

One of the things I’ve enjoyed about your ministry—well, your preaching ministry but also personally: You have a keen evangelistic heart. Was that modeled to you? Did you see that through, say, Derek Prime? Was that modeled to you? Where did that come from?

Alistair Begg: Hmm. You know, I haven’t really thought about that. I think it’s come from everywhere. It’s come from the fact that I was brought up in Glasgow, in an interdenominational mission hall which had been founded as a result of the evangelistic missions of Moody and Sankey. And so, in that environment, the combination of, you know, good news and good deeds was being worked out in the city center. And, I mean, I just thought, “Well, I guess that’s what you do”—you know, that the people are poor and are in need of food and clothing and help, but more than that, they’re in need of Jesus. And so, that was there.

As I went on in life, when, you know, the coffee bar scene was there in Yorkshire in the ’60s, the reason that we would want to do that is so we could tell other people about Jesus. It never occurred to me that that would not be the endgame, so that if someone said, “Well, what are you doing? You’re just singing songs”—well, no, we’re singing songs with a purpose. What’s the purpose? To see people come to know Jesus.

And then, of course, the influence of Campus Crusade when I was sixteen, seventeen. And those fellows were, you know, very direct in the way they approached things. And my first reaction to that was somewhat negative, until I really figured it out, and then I said, “No, these people are very helpful.” Because we can spend a lot of time just rambling and going on and on like I’m doing right now, and then sometimes you can cut to the chase. And I just love the way the Gospels and the disciples, you know, move very directly.

Jonathan: Over the years, with your preaching, have you intentionally changed or adapted the way you present the gospel? Or has it… You know, you’ve always done it this way, and…

Alistair: I think I’ve always done it the same way. Hopefully I’ve done a wee bit better as time has gone by. But I think, no, I guess I’ve seen it done well. I mean, for example, David Watson—the late David Watson, who was in York—was masterful at those evangelistic addresses. Dick Lucas of St. Helen’s Bishopsgate, with the business population, with—you know, establishing a framework of twenty-two minutes max and the constraint producing, you know, just pure gold. And I’ve always admired that—you know, the clarity along with brevity that doesn’t need to go on and on and on. And so, you know, it’s one thing observing it and trying to do it. It’s another thing doing it. I mean, it’s a challenge, isn’t it?

Jonathan: Oh, it is. And I was going to ask you, on a personal level: You know, as I was coming here today, I prayed before that I’d be able to speak to the Uber driver. Turned out he didn’t speak English, so it didn’t go so well. But, you know, my heart began to race. You begin to—“Oh,” you know, “how will it go?” Maybe a little nervousness. What advice would you give somebody that is—they just find it difficult, or it kind of makes their mouth dry and their palms sweaty?

Alistair: Yeah. Well, you know, venture. You know, venture.

Jonathan: Just try it. Just get on with it.

Alistair: Just… Just… Yeah. Sometimes, you know, the way that it will come is that you’ve created a context where the question comes to you. So, for example, the Uber driver: If the Uber driver says, “So, where am I taking you?” you say, “Oh, I’m going to such and such a place.” If you don’t want to get into it, you just tell him, “I’m just going to the hotel.” Say, “Well, actually, I’m going to an event. I’m going to speak.” I don’t tell him what I’m going to speak on in the hope that he says, “What are you going to speak on?” Now you’ve got an opportunity either to end the conversation by saying something, you know, sort of like “Well, I’m going to give a theological address,” or you can really advance the ball by saying, “Well, I’m just going there to speak about Jesus.” Now, that may end it as well. But if the guy goes, “Well, why would you want to do that?” now you’re off to the races, because he’s the guy who’s steering the conversation.

And the same on the plane. If you’ve got your Bible… And I’m very wary of that as well. I don’t want to be like, “Oh, look! I…” You know.

Jonathan: Your big, leather…

Alistair: Yeah, your big, huge, big Bible. No. People moving away from you, looking for a…

Jonathan: Pretending they’re asleep.

Alistair: Yeah, looking for an open seat, putting their earphones on, and saying, “Oh, Lord! Here we go.” But yeah, I mean, we want to approach things in a way that is humble. It’s genuine. It’s not formulaic.

Sometimes, the way that evangelism will come is that you’ve created a context where the question comes to you.

But I must say that any time I get a little grasp of what my line is… So, for example, you know, how would you explain things? Well, I’d start with “the good, the bad, the new, the perfect.”

Jonathan: Yes.

Alistair: Just that in my mind, I…

Jonathan: Have that framework.

Alistair: … have that framework in my mind, so I know it and say, “Well, did you see what happened with the plane crash that went down? Well, how in the world is this? Well, it’s just a devastating thing, isn’t it?” And the person will usually volunteer their view of the world. Then we’ve got an opportunity to say, “Well…”

And then, most recently, the fellow in Australia that I came across has just done this little evangelistic booklet where he says, you know, “God made it. We broke it. Jesus fixed it.” And to have that… And most people don’t have any framework in their mind. So it’s understandable that they’re afraid to launch into the conversation, because they’ve got no fixed points.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Alistair: They’ve got nothing to bring it back to.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Alistair: And that was always what you were taught in, you know, personal evangelism: Don’t allow the person to drag you off into a discussion about the Sphinx in Egypt. Say to them, “Well, that’s a good question, and we can come to that. But let me…” And so you control the conversation in that way. Otherwise, it goes pear-shaped real fast.

Jonathan: Well, a few things you said there. One is preparation—so, knowing the gospel for yourself; having that framework, whether it’s kind of through the Romans road outline…

Alistair: Sure. Yeah!

Jonathan: … or Two Ways to Live, or the ones you’ve said there. But then intention as well—like, “I’m going to seek to have a conversation.”

Alistair: Right.

Jonathan: Because, yeah, with that Uber driver, you can quickly shut it down if you don’t want to have a chat, you know.

Alistair: That’s right.

Jonathan: But you also picked up on something that I think does change the conversation—is when they ask a question.

Alistair: Right.

Jonathan: Have you thought about how… ’Cause in the conversations Jesus has with people in the Gospels, questions either that he asks or that they ask really change the conversation. In your conversations, have you thought how you can draw out those questions, how they can—or questions that you ask that you know will bring questions about?

Alistair: Yeah. I… Yeah, I mean, I think the… I mean, the foundational question—I was talking with… It’s just in last couple of days, and this person came to me saying that he has a Buddhist friend, and he’s done the cosmological argument with him, and he’s done this, and he’s done that, and he’s done the next thing. And I listened to him for as long as I possibly could. And he said, “You know, is there a key?” I said, “Well, yeah, there is a key, and that is that you present Jesus to him. Tell him who Jesus is. Tell him what Jesus has done. Say to them, ‘Look, there’s a ton of questions—philosophical questions, scientific questions—but here is the one question: Is Jesus Christ the person he claimed to be? Let’s give ourself to a consideration of that.’ And then allow the person to be very open in their questioning or in their pushback.”

Don’t become immediately defensive or take the high ground. Because it all depends, again, as you know, whether we’ve got a one-shot conversation here or whether we’re dealing with a colleague at work that we’re just having a coffee with. So we’re not trying to close the deal every time. We’re just trying to advance the ball up the field a little bit and be content with that.

Jonathan: Can I pick up on that specifically? Family can be very, very difficult to share the gospel with, because, one, they see your own sinful life, you know?

Alistair: That’s right. Yeah.

We’re not trying to close the deal every time. We’re just trying to advance the ball up the field a little bit and be content with that.

Jonathan: But it is. It’s an ongoing relationship. It’s often at Christmas. You know, you’re not meant to mention politics or your religion or your money. But you also want to share Christ. Have you any advice for people in that situation?

Alistair: Well, again, I think you’re hoping for somebody to leverage Jesus into the conversation, and you’re hoping that it isn’t you—that there’s someone says, “So, what happened when you went to that thing?” And I may have thrown that to you so that you can get the opportunity to really say what was going on at the thing, and not in a manipulative way. But…

Jonathan: But again, it’s planning and intention, again.

Alistair: It is. Well, and it… Yeah. If you aim at nothing, you’re sure to hit it.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Your church situation, where, you know, you’re pastoring a large congregation—how did you help the church think evangelistically—as individuals, perhaps, some of what you’ve said—but then also corporately, as a church? Did you have a particular pattern for evangelism? Did you have a minister that was in charge of evangelism? What did you do at Parkside?

Alistair: Well, you know, when I go back to the good old days in Scotland…

Jonathan: I thought you were going to say Yorkshire.

Alistair: Yeah. No, no. Well, I’m coming to Yorkshire.

Jonathan: Okay.

Alistair: I’ll be in Yorkshire in a bit.

But you know, Charlotte Chapel in Edinburgh was a city-center church. And once a month, we had a guest service. Everybody knew that in that evening service on that particular day, there was a peculiar opportunity to invite friends to come to church. And in the week preceding that, we went door to door in the flats and apartments of Edinburgh, knocking on doors—say, “I would like just to leave an invitation for our church. It’s here in the center.” Not everything lends it to that. But I followed that pattern, then, in Hamilton and did the same thing. And sometimes we would do a series of, you know, ten that would be printed on a card so that everybody knew where they were, when they were, and what they were. And again, that gave the member of the congregation something to actually present—not just like “Would you like to come to a talk?” but the—we chose provocative titles, if you like.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Alistair: You understand this.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Alistair: When I came here to the States, then I think I spent more trying to mobilize the people themselves. I did a thing called FRANgelism—friends, relatives, associates, neighbors, and I don’t know what S was. FRAN. It was only F-R-A-N. Yeah.

Jonathan: I’m dyslexic. You can do it however you like. It’ll work for me.

Alistair: I’m pretty close myself, to tell you the truth, as I just proved. But…

Yeah. But here’s the thing, though: People become like their minister, for good or for ill. And if there’s no sense of sort of evangelistic zeal that is coming out of the pulpit on a regular basis, it’s unlikely that there will be sort of a picked-up “evangelism explosion” in that context—so that they respond not only to the exhortation to be a part of it, but they respond actually by realizing what it is that we’re doing when we do that. I mean, they’re saying, “Well, he might do it in a small section of a long talk, but I can do a small section in an environment.” And they learn—I think they learn by example.

Jonathan: If a minister is examining themselves and thinking, “Oh, well, yeah; I’ve an evangelistic gap there,” what advice would you give to him to develop that? ’Cause you’re absolutely right: The congregation will, for good or bad, end up like their minister.

Alistair: Yeah. Well, you know, models—again, like I mentioned. For example, when I was a teenager in school, as a Christian, when I went to that evening service in St. Michael le Belfrey in York and that David Watson guy did what he did, I said to myself, “Wow! I want to be able to do that. I want to learn how you do that.” And so, I could never do it as he did it, but you got to pick guys that you can at least get close to. There’s no point in picking some genius who starts apologetically with the cosmological—you know, that’s not going to be me—or somebody who uses scientific arguments to get to the place. I can’t do that, because it wouldn’t be me.

But at a different level, involved in… Let’s say if your brain is wired to the arts and to music and to stuff like that, then go with what you’ve got. Don’t go and try… And if you know about baseball, then use it. But if you don’t know anything about baseball, which I don’t, then don’t try and use those illustrations. Because the people go, “Nah. He doesn’t understand that.”

Jonathan: This may be unfair, and you may not like doing it, but how would you assess what you do? Is it story and illustration and quotes? ’Cause you call to memory song lyrics and poems. How would you describe your own sort of way?

Alistair: On a good day, it’s a dog’s breakfast. You know, here’s… If I really thought about it and analyzed it afterwards, I probably would never preach again. Because when I actually, sometimes, hear what I just did, it doesn’t endear me to myself. Now, I don’t mean that in the sense of false modesty. I mean it absolutely honestly—that I go, “Oh, golly! Maybe I could try that again, but not just like that.”

Years ago, Don Carson asked me if I’d go to Trinity Seminary when I was here in the early days.

“Well, what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to come and be part of the practical theology department.”

I said, “Don, no.” I said, “I couldn’t do that.”

He said, “Well, why couldn’t you do it?”

I said, “Well, ’cause I only have, like, one talk. I mean, once I did my talk, I wouldn’t… I can’t just have the same talk every day!”

And he said, “Oh, well, you’re just being self-deprecating.”

I said, “No. I’m telling you the truth. And secondly, the reason I don’t want to do it is because I want to play. I want to play. I don’t want to coach; I want to play. I want to be on the field.”

And that sense of being on the field and that genuine fearfulness that comes with running out onto the field is all part of the deal. You know, ’cause eventually, you’re just up there—you and Jesus, on your own, with your notes. And most guys—and this will sound self-serving, maybe (I don’t mean it to)—but most guys who do what they do naturally don’t know what they’re doing. And so they’re not good people. Like, Alec Ferguson was a great manager; he was just an average player. But guys who are instinctive in what they do… Or move to golf. Take a guy like Severiano Ballesteros. He wouldn’t have been a guy to teach golf on a range. But he was able to do stuff and attempt stuff that nobody else ever should.

And so, there is a sense in which there is freedom in that as well—that we’re not trying to meet a certain standard. We’re trying to meet the standard of humility and integrity and honesty with the Scriptures. But beyond that, I always tell my colleagues, “Be yourself and forget yourself.” And the forgetting of yourself is part and parcel of that process. ’Cause if you’re monitoring—if you can hear yourself preaching while you’re preaching—it’s not good.

Jonathan: Yeah. That balance of self-critical, improving, developing, learning from others while also not spending too much time thinking about yourself…

Alistair: Right.

Jonathan: How do you get that balance?

Alistair: Well, I think balance is always hard, isn’t it? Because you only get balance by trying to correct situations—that from being out of balance, we’re trying to get back in line.

This is where colleagues come into play. This is where at least one good friend comes into play. This is when listening to the people that you know have your back comes into play. I’m not talking about just soliciting. If you solicit things, people may seek to, you know, encourage you when you don’t deserve it or pull the rug out from underneath your feet because they think it would be something you deserve—which, of course, it might be.

I think it’s like, how do you… They always ask the same thing. You go on the road ’cause you’ve got to do all the thing for these, and the people say, “Well, how do you balance the time with your family? And what about time with your wife?” Well, I don’t know what you say, but I say some weeks I get it wrong, and some weeks I get it right. And the weeks that I get it wrong, I know I’ve got to try and get it back on track.

And the same is true both in terms of every aspect of preaching… Volume, like Nancy down here: I ask her, you know, “Am I getting that horrible tone in my voice?” I ask her, “What about pace? Am I starting to go like a steam train or an electric train?” All those things. But most of all… You know, because homiletically, it’s either, “Are you loud or quiet? Are you very fast, or are you slow? Are you high, or are you low?” You can do all of that, but the real issue is tone. Tone. What is the tone that comes out of you? Does it come out as “Hey, I know”—or, worse, to come out “I don’t know, and I don’t know if anybody wants to hear.” That element of it… And that element…

If you stand up and do books—which you do masterfully well—in the first thirty seconds, everybody in the room is going, “Is this guy for real?” That’s all they’re asking. And the same with your preaching. I mean, in that initial encounter, they’re actually making very fast judgments. They may prove to be wrong judgments overall, but they want to know that the person up there is not at himself.

Jonathan: Yeah. Yeah. And that genuine—the grounded, kind of, real…

Alistair: The Yorkshire.

Jonathan: Okay, yeah.

Alistair: It is.

Jonathan: Not everyone has the privilege of being from Yorkshire, so…

So, good friends. I know you’d say Sue, your wife, has definitely kind of helped with that. If somebody is in a ministry position and they’re looking around and thinking, “I think I’ve got a weak spot in that I don’t have close friends like that,” what advice would you give to them?

Alistair: Well, keep looking. I’m sure there’s somebody in the context. It might be an unusual person. It might be a doctor in your congregation who has a wonderful bedside manner, and you don’t have that sense of empathetic dimension. He’d be a good guy to go to. Maybe a carpenter who is used to cutting things at angles and moving directly, and you tend to be all over the map; this guy could help you. An engineer who’s putting together a bridge and knows that the pieces have to join up, and he’s been listening to you for a while, and he knows that your stuff is full of non sequiturs—you know, that you apparently got from A to C without going to B, but everybody else needed B to get to C. Yeah, that kind of thing, I think, is…

I remember… I don’t like doing this. Some of our colleagues, they do this regularly: They prepare the material, sit with their pastoral team, let the pastoral team pick it apart and make suggestions, say, “What else?” My ego can’t…

Jonathan: Not for you!

Alistair: My ego can’t handle… I don’t know if it’s my ego, or I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to do that. Once I got picked apart, I would be such a basket case, I could never use it.

But… And so, very seldom do I ask somebody to give me a critique. ’Cause I’m too afraid of what it’s going to be. But I remember I asked Dick Lucas. I said, “Dick, you know, if I send you a couple of my tapes, would you do something?” Well, very reluctantly, of course, Dick said, “Oh, send it to me. Send it to me.” And eventually I got a reply: “Dear Alistair, I listened to the tapes. Slow down. Dick.” That was it. He says, “You’re speaking too fast.” That was all I got from him. But it was enough! It was enough!

Jonathan: Yeah.

I just want to ask one final question as we finish, about preaching and just trying to draw in a few things that you’ve said there. One thing I notice with a number of preachers these days is they seem to present the truth, but it seems to be a harsh truth.

Alistair: Right.

Jonathan: And one of the things I’ve admired from you is a clarity on the truth—as you have said frequently, keeping the main thing the main thing—but a gentleness while also not watering down the truth. Can you help us think through how you’ve gone about that, to ensure there is a softness—a warmth, perhaps—while also holding true to the truth of the gospel?

Alistair: Again, I think it comes back to the influences on our lives—that I’ve tried to get the best out of every fellow that I’ve had contact with.

James Graham from Gold Hill Baptist Church in the ’70s: He was Roy Castle and Fiona’s pastor—Scot, clever, but he had a winsomeness in his delivery that, for a while, I tried to even talk like him until my wife said, “You’re not Jim Graham.”

From a distance (although I heard him up close), Lloyd-Jones, who could be as direct as anybody, but I never got the impression that he was talking down—that he would say, you know, “And you don’t need to listen to the voice of a little man,” you know, “because that’s not the voice you’re listening to,” and actually believing that. And then, you know, just going down that line.

And part of it is, you know, I said today in this thing I had to do for the grandparents’ conference, “You know, I’m convinced that children are given to us for our sanctification”—more than that, but they have certainly been, in my life, that. When your own children are not where you might long for them to be, that will either put a harshness in you, or it’ll put a softness in you—that it will soften you in relationship to… So you’re not going to play the card about “Well, and some of you have got kids that are just…” You know, that sort of thing? Because no. You got that…

And also when you’re aware of your own sinful propensities. You know, somebody asked in the Q and A two nights ago, “So, what has been the biggest problem that you’ve faced, you know, in forty-two years?” I said, “Me.” And they think you’re being funny. But no, you’re not being funny. Because it’s your own sinful heart. It’s your own pride. It’s your own neglect of prayer. That’s the issue.

And when you actually, in your heart of hearts, believe that—like, you know, the old stuff, that what you are in your bedroom on your own before God is what you are and nothing else—when that really dawns and stays with you, then I think that is a contributing factor to a genuine winsomeness. A winsomeness.

And the use of humor as well. We could talk about humor, but…

Jonathan: All right. Well, let me put you up on humor. Because you use humor in your preaching.

Alistair: Right.

Jonathan: Is there a place for humor in preaching and ministry?

Alistair: I think so, for sure. I think there is. Not telling jokes. I would distinguish between “Hey, did you hear the one about the rabbi and the priest?”—you know, that kind of stuff.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Alistair: And also, humor ought not to be used unless you’re humorous. I mean, so, like, trying to be funny…

Jonathan: How do you know?

Alistair: Well, I think you know by testing it, really. You know what I mean?

Jonathan: Yeah.

Alistair: If you said something like, you know—whatever it might be—and the people said, “I never thought about it like that before.” The ironies again of both… They’re not necessarily funny all the time, but, you know, for example, the disciples, right? I mean, they are rich in humor.

Jonathan: Yeah.

Alistair: Right? “He who seen me has seen the Father.” Philip says, “Show us the Father, and that will suffice.”[1] You say, “Philip, were you in the room, or what’s going on here?”

You know, the disciples… Jesus. And the disciple said, “Hey, hey, hey, hey! Get back with the kids. Jesus is doing evangelism.” And the disciple turns around and says, “Pardon?” He said, “Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. No. No, bring ’em. Bring ’em. Bring ’em.” That’s funny!

Humor ought not to be used unless you’re humorous.

Or they come back from the evangelistic campaign, and they say, “It didn’t go too well. Shall we call down fire from heaven?”[2] And Jesus said, “No, not right now, I don’t think.”

So, I just see things fun ny. But so did Spurgeon. I mean, Spurgeon was hilarious. In fact, he could shut the place down with humor. And they criticized him. And he said, “If you knew how much I held in, you would compliment me.”[3]

So, you know, interestingly, Alec Motyer—unlikely guy in this respect—he told me that sometimes, when he was in the midst of something and he felt that the pressure was building up in the room, he would, for no other reason than that, introduce some humorous element in order to allow the congregation to breathe. ’Cause it was, like, building up, building up, building up. He’s got to let the steam off.

Jonathan: Interesting. And Warren Wiersbe says of humor that it can be a lubricant that removes the tension, in a similar sort of saying.[4]

Alistair: Well, that’s good. Maybe Motyer got it from him. Yeah.

Jonathan: Well, maybe. Yeah. He also said—and I found this helpful on a lot of occasions—that in ministry, there may be room for wit but rarely comedy.[5]

Alistair: Right.

Jonathan: And I think that is helpful—of the difference between the two. This isn’t just jokes.

Alistair: Yeah, no. That’s right.

Jonathan: But it can be something that…

Alistair: Yeah. Yeah. But, I mean, it’s a humorous picture—the angel at the gate, you know. And if it wasn’t humorous, it probably wouldn’t have stuck quite the way that it did. So we’ve just gone full circle.

Jonathan: You’ve been listening to me, Jonathan Carswell, talking with Alistair Begg from Truth For Life. I hope you’ve enjoyed our conversation. You can find out more at truthforlife.org.

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[1] John 14:7–8 (paraphrased). See also John 14:9.

[2] Luke 9:54 (paraphrased).

[3] The Autobiography of Charles H. Spurgeon, vol. 3, 1856–1878 (Chicago: Fleming H. Revell, 1899), 346. Paraphrased.

[4] Warren W. Wiersbe, On Being a Servant of God (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1993), 54.

[5] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Dynamics of Preaching (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999), 50, 82.