Focus on the Family

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John Fuller: This is John Fuller, and please remember to let us know how you're listening to these programs, on a podcast, app, or website.

Dr. Heather Holleman: Well, our best advice is to form a warm connection with people and then what happens is the gospel naturally enters in. So sharing the gospel will never feel like a sales pitch or an awkward pivot. And the two skills you need are so easy: asking good questions and telling great stories. If you have a couple of stories of what God's been doing in your life and you're able to ask good questions, you will be amazed at what God's able to do.

John Fuller: That's Dr. Heather Holleman, and she and her husband Ashley are with us today on Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. Thanks for joining us. I'm John Fuller.

Jim Daly: John, as believers in Christ, we're called to share our faith. I feel like when I was a fairly new believer I did that more intentionally, more passionately. So I say that with my self-conviction that every day we should get up and say, "Hey, Jim Daly here reporting for duty, Lord. What do you have for me today?" Sharing the faith with people around you should be pretty natural. We want to help you today. We want to equip you. I don't think if you're introverted that's okay, if you're extroverted and it comes more naturally that's okay. The whole goal here is how to encourage you in sharing your faith with those around you for their benefit, so they can have eternal life and bring the kingdom of heaven to this earth right now.

John Fuller: This is a high calling for each of us as followers of Jesus. So we're so glad to have Ashley and Heather Holleman here. They're popular guests here and their heart passion is to help you engage others well. They've actually have their own organization, their own ministry called Seated and Sent. Heather is an associate teaching professor at Penn State. She's a speaker and an author. The book that they've written together is called *Sent: Living a Life that Invites Others to Jesus*. This is an imminently practical way for you to reorient your life so you're really aware of the people around you for the cause of Christ.

Jim Daly: Ashley and Heather, welcome back to Focus on the Family. So great to have you.

Ashley Holleman: Thank you so much for having us again.

Dr. Heather Holleman: We're so excited to be here together.

Jim Daly: Thanks for traveling. Sometimes the viewers and listeners don't realize you're flying across the country to be here in studio with us. It takes a lot of commitment and I really do appreciate it.

Let me start with a bit of an out of the field question here. We had Gary Thomas on a while back, and in that context, Gary was talking to us about the me-focused-ness of our culture today. We're thinking of ourselves so often, even in the church it has seeped in. He was talking about eternal salvation. At the core, if you think Jesus died and rose again only to give you eternal life, you're not thinking correctly, because what He wants is to give you eternal life, but that other impact is so that you can bring the kingdom of heaven to this earth and share the gospel with others, to bring kingdom to this earth. I went, "Wow, I don't think I've had that broader perspective like that." What do you think of that comment?

Ashley Holleman: I love that. At some point we are going to leave this earth and be with Jesus, and that's going to be an amazing, better life even than this. Why not take us now? If God wants the very best for us, maybe it's because He has really great things for us to do here, being on mission with Him, the adventure of that.

Jim Daly: Absolutely. We've got that great series from Ray Vander Laan, *That the World May Know*, and his RVL Discipleship series. He's a Jewish scholar. We've been doing that with Ray for 30 years. In there, the main point that Ray connected with me and so many others with is when sin entered the world, chaos entered the world. Jesus came to bring God the Father's Shalom, His peace into this chaos.

That's what you're talking about. How do we do that with *Sent* and how do we identify "This is my main mission, Lord. Thank you"?

Dr. Heather Holleman: Really what happened to me was I was reading the book of John one summer and I noticed the number one way Jesus describes the Father in the book of John is the Father who sent Me. I kept thinking this is the most important thing Jesus is calling to mind about His own identity. So imagine the chills I got when I read John 20:21 where Jesus says, "As the Father has sent Me, so I send you."

I thought there is something I'm missing about this idea of this sent identity, which Ash and I have really worked out over the years. What does it look like to really know you're sent? What are the mindset shifts you have to have? It's changed my whole world to think this is the most important thing about my identity and that Jesus is seeking and saving the lost and He's inviting me to do it.

Jim Daly: You heard me in the opening talk about that clumsiness. You start with energy in this area of evangelism. In that context, with the church specifically, how are we fumbling a bit in this space when it comes to knowing what the book of John says and then applying it to bring honor and glory to the Father?

Ashley Holleman: The greatest thing that's happening in the course of human history is that God is keeping His word and drawing a people to Himself. It would be enough to be a part of that, and that's what we celebrate. We've forgotten somehow to celebrate we get to be a part of helping others be a part of what God is doing and being a part of God's family.

That's what really caught my attention 20 years ago. I grew up in a great church that taught me to share my faith, a very gospel, Christ-centered church. I was like, "Yeah, that's never going to happen." I'm more introverted, I stumble over my words, and I think of the best things to say 14 days later. I thought of sharing my faith like going to the dentist. Once or twice a year I probably should do that, but something bad is going to happen and it probably will hurt.

I don't know if we've intended to do it or not, but in the church, at least in the West, we say, "Yeah, we all know this is bad and hard to do, no one wants to do it. Go do it anyway." What we've discovered is this is a great thing to do. As Heather said, "as the Father sent Me, so I send you." It is this grand invitation that we get to be on adventure with Jesus. He's doing the heavy lifting. Can we just join Him in it and see God unfold beautiful things? We have to start somewhere different.

Jim Daly: Heather, let me ask you—it's a ball of yarn in there. What I mean by that is my ability. If I'm more extroverted, as Ashley was saying, I might feel more equipped, capable of engaging a stranger, walking up and saying, "You know, I had that piece of cake once and it reminds me of God." Some extroverts can really connect those dots. You go, "Wow, that was amazing."

But speak to that idea that even the gifting part of it. Is this something that we could say to the Lord, "Lord, I'm not strong"? Who else? Moses had this issue where he stuttered and said, "Lord, don't send me. Send someone else. I can't communicate." That's right at the heart of the whole thing. Even in a more forceful way that caught my attention. Of course, you're the word PhD, so I'm going to leave this to you. But this context of evangelism becoming more of an identity than an activity caught me.

Dr. Heather Holleman: It's who you are and not what you're doing. As someone who's an introvert who doesn't have the gift of evangelism, Ash, you had to learn to do it by faith. What Paul tells Timothy: "do the work of an evangelist." Behind that is there's a great God who's going to empower us and who's going to go ahead of us. It's not all on me, and I get to see it unfold if I will just take the next step of faith.

Jim Daly: Speak to that equation of effort and outcome. For us, again, it's this equation where we're almost saying like we've got to accomplish it. It doesn't leave it to the Lord. I read somewhere that there's 11 touches before somebody comes to Christ, 11 encounters with believers. I don't know if that's true, but I like the concept of it, that you're not necessarily going to close the deal. We as extrovert evangelists love closing the deal.

But to understand a person is going through a process of investigation, inquiry, trying to match their heart and the yearnings of their own heart—this is the seeker person. We come along, different Christians, to touch them in different ways that the Lord is orchestrating. Getting to the point is trusting God is the maestro and that we don't have to do the conducting. We just need to be the faithful moment person to say, "Hey, have you ever thought of God?"

Ashley Holleman: Exactly. For years I thought, "I'm going to screw this up," and like God is wringing His hands, "Oh, don't let Holleman in on this. He's only going to make it harder." I have to tell you a story that set me free from that. Years ago, I was struggling with there were days I felt really good at this, like, "Man, I can do this," and other days I felt really inferior, like "I'm horrible at this. Why would God ask me to do this?" I needed a different reason of why I was sharing my faith, living out the calling God had called me to.

God took me back to the most inglorious moment of my life as a parent. Here I am on Focus on the Family sharing this story. But we get snow in Pennsylvania. I love to shovel the driveway efficiently and effectively. Don't slow me down and don't drive over the driveway until it's clear. Very rigid. My daughter, who's like three at the time, comes out in her Ralphie's brother from *A Christmas Story* snow suit.

The Michelin Man. She goes, "Dad, Dad, I'm here to help." My first thought is, "You're just going to slow me down." I tell her, "You're just going to slow me down. Go back inside. See your mom." You would have thought she'd taken acting lessons because I had crushed her spirit. She drops the shovel and she slumbers back inside.

Immediately the Spirit was convicting me. "Ash, did you ever think that maybe she just wanted to be with you? And did you ever imagine that maybe, possibly, perhaps that might be a little bit more important than how effectively or efficiently you shovel the driveway?" I'm like, "God, why are you bringing this up? This was 10 years ago, we dealt with that."

He goes, "Ashley—" and this is sensing God's Spirit speaking to me. I sensed His Spirit saying, "I really don't need you to reach the grad students of the world. You might actually slow Me down. You're going to make My work harder! But when I thought about reaching this part of My kingdom, before you were even born, I thought of you. I wondered if maybe you might enjoy doing this with Me.

How special it might be that we would go after this part of My kingdom together. That's why I invited you into it. It wasn't about your greatness or lack of greatness. It was about My greatness and kindness to invite you into this." That has set me free since that day of saying, "Well, God, I'll try not to slow you down, but let's go do this together."

Jim Daly: I think the question is this idea of waiting upon the Holy Spirit because we, certainly in the West, we're not good at waiting. We're wanting to dictate to the Holy Spirit. "Lord, come on, Lord, we've got to get going." Speak to that idea of presence and waiting and sensing the Lord's movement and then moving with Him, not out in front of Him.

Dr. Heather Holleman: Ashley, I think, is better at that than I am with the long-term investment and good conversations. Someone that he was able to lead to Christ, it took four years of listening, being able to have good conversations, and listening to the Holy Spirit. Once you have a warm connection with people and you're sharing your life, what you're doing is as you're talking, just checking in with God. I do think God has put questions on your mind or given you insights into what to say.

Ashley Holleman: Even Jesus said to the disciples when He says, "You'll be My witnesses," He sends them to an upper room and they wait and they wait. They don't wait for a better cultural situation or they don't wait for another strategy. They actually wait for a person. They wait for the Holy Spirit to come. Then when He comes, He fills them, and now we have the church and everything is different. Let's not get out ahead of God. He's really good at speaking and leading and directing our lives. He knows exactly what the person we're speaking to needs and where they are.

John Fuller: So what I'm hearing so far is don't get out ahead of God and also don't miss the opportunity in front of you. This is Focus on the Family with Jim Daly and our guests are Heather and Ashley Holleman. We're talking about their book *Sent: Living a Life that Invites Others to Jesus*. This is a winsome book rich in stories and biblical wisdom. There are questions at the end of each chapter, so at the least get this and go through it with your spouse, but maybe consider a small group study. This would be a great way to have a community to reset your thinking and to go on mission with God together. We have the book here. Get a copy. Call 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY or stop by FocusOnTheFamily.com/broadcast.

Jim Daly: Ashley, John mentioned my plane experience. I think you had a better one. What was your plane experience?

Ashley Holleman: This was remarkable. I'm always this close from screwing it up. Hopefully we're giving people a lot of confidence that anyone can do this.

Dr. Heather Holleman: Well, just that you used not to be this way. Once you understand your sent identity, you're waking up thinking, "God, who are you going to send me to?" You really believe that the person you're sitting next to, you've been sent to, which is crazy for an introvert!

Ashley Holleman: One of the things we talk about in the book is just how do you develop a mindset for living the sent life. Part of it is this identity part. You are this, just like we're playful people. Why do we share our faith? Because God has made us sent people. The other way we talk about it is just developing a great appreciation for the goodness of the good news and the lostness of people, and how do you cultivate that?

I was really counting on that. I'm sitting on a plane and I was like, "Okay, God, help me to remember the goodness of Your gospel and the lostness of people. Motivate me to share Your good news with them today." A guy sits down on the plane and he's being followed by his wife, a child that's having a hard time on the plane, and presumably one of their mothers. He, instead of going back to help take care of this family, even before the flight takes off, starts ordering drinks.

All that kind of goodwill on my heart just evaporates because I'm like, "Dude, go put your drink down and go help your family." I'm just trying not to get mad. That's going through my mind. "Well, God, maybe I can intervene somewhere. Give me Your mercy. I don't have it. Holy Spirit, help me here."

I ask the most innocuous question, "Hey, where are you headed?" He goes, "We're headed to X and X place. My father-in-law just a few hours ago passed away from a major heart attack. I've been consoling my wife the entire night. We have no idea what we're going to do when we hit the ground. She's destroyed. I'm just trying to hold my family together."

I had totally misread the situation. All the compassion, all the empathy, all the goodness of the gospel floods back into my soul. You paired the sent-ness with the goodness of the gospel. We just started a conversation and I tried to understand and ask good questions and see where he was spiritually. They were believers. I didn't need to introduce him to Jesus that day. I just needed to remind him of the goodness of Jesus and point him back there. By the time we got off the plane, he was like, "I can trust God with this, can't I?" I said, "You sure can." That's where the Spirit leads. God is the great maestro. He was already doing this.

Jim Daly: So often when we're encountering especially angry people, there's always a story behind what they're expressing. I've tried more and more and not to match emotion for emotion. You're angry, I'm angry too, and let's get out angry at each other. How do we say, "Okay, what's at the root of that?" That really is what Jesus would do. The woman in adultery, the woman at the well—he was so good at asking the right question. He did that: "as the Father sent Me to the woman at the well, so I send you." We're living with that expectation that that's not a once-in-a-lifetime thing. That's going to be normal for a sent person.

Dr. Heather Holleman: For listeners who don't travel like we are all giving plane examples, it's changed our entire neighborhood. It's changed how I see myself as a professor. I think I'm sent to these students to be an agent of blessing. It's no accident if you're in my class. I tell my students this.

Jim Daly: This is a good little sidebar because so many times I worked in the business arena before coming to Focus. I had a really good business mentor and he said, when I was thinking of coming to Focus, "We need good Christian business people in the business world who can reflect Christ." We are doing ministry no matter our vocation. Whether you're a pastor or you're working with a company, be the best believer in Christ you can be because you're going to be doing ministry in that setting. Wherever you are.

Dr. Heather Holleman: It's the most exciting thing when we teach on living a sent life about the theology of place. What if it's no accident where you live? What if it's no accident the doctor's appointment you have or the grocery store you shop at? Over the years now that we've been living this way for most of our marriage, but really intentionally the last decade, it is amazing what happens. Life becomes such a great adventure.

Jim Daly: It's so true. In terms of having those spiritual conversations, you have to be a good listener. You've written other books on this, Heather. The ability to hear how a person's coming at you is beautiful. That professor said, "I want to know everything you know about Jesus, and I don't know anything, so tell me." That's pretty wide open.

But it often will come through a person's pain. They're in an inflection point in their life: they lost a child, they got a divorce, or their father died. You have to be in tune and be emotionally capable of pulling that conversation along. Other people, it's loneliness, it's disappointment, or loss of a job. Speak to that ability and perhaps how some people can be fearful that they're not really gifted that way or they don't feel equipped and they don't want to say anything stupid to do harm to the gospel.

Dr. Heather Holleman: You don't need to worry about that. When we pair the *Sent* book with this *Six Conversations* book, which you've had us on to speak about, the best thing we learned in all our research on how to have better conversations was how to listen to people's core values, and then you're able to share the gospel through that. I was talking to an atheist professor who was really struggling with her semester, and all I said was, "Tell me about your semester."

She was talking about how embarrassed she was because she had to do a presentation that didn't go well and it wasn't her best work. All I said to this professor was, "It sounds like you really value excellence and you have a really hard time when you haven't done your best work." She said, "That is exactly how I am." Here's what she said: "What do you do, Heather? How do you recover when you know you haven't done your best work?"

I said to her, "Well, you know I'm a Christian. So when I don't do my best work, it doesn't change how much God loves me and cares for me." She was so fascinated by this. She said, "Can you come back next Tuesday? Come back to my office. I want to talk more about this." You're listening for what people are sharing and you're connecting it easily to what God's doing in your own life.

Ashley Holleman: Part of what makes us different is Heather's really good at that just happening in the moment. I joked I think of these things to say 14 days later. But that's okay. The great maestro can help us with this because I'll go back to a person and say genuinely, "I've been thinking about you over the last two weeks, and I had this thought or this question. Could we get together again and talk more?"

They're like, "You were thinking of me?" It's a natural thing. It's not meant to be a trick. It's just how God uses it. Can we extend the conversation? Can we talk more? You can recover from even, "Oh, I had this great conversation, I wish I would have asked them this." Go ask them! Go have another conversation.

Jim Daly: Some of this is wrapped in courage. It does take a bit of courage. I guess the other thing is practice. You may not do well every time, but you need to keep going, keep trying, and keep doing, because the Lord will hone that skill in you. Speak to that idea of perseverance through our fumbles.

Dr. Heather Holleman: Our best advice is to form a warm connection with people and then what happens is the gospel naturally enters in. So sharing the gospel will never feel like a sales pitch or an awkward pivot. The two skills you need are so easy: asking good questions and telling great stories. If you have a couple of stories of what God's been doing in your life and you're able to ask good questions, you will be amazed at what God's able to do.

People are amazed when we talk about living the sent life. They're like, "Oh, I can actually do this. I'm going to go talk to my neighbor." When they ask me how I'm doing, because I have a warm connection, I can say, "Well, actually I'm really struggling with a lot of fear, but I have to tell you what I read in the Bible, how God's been helping me with that." Because you have a warm connection, they're not going to say, "Oh, I don't want to hear about that." They're going to listen. It's going to be life-changing.

Jim Daly: I had a Christian friend who is a well-known national ministry leader and he said, "You know, you just shouldn't go out of your way to be hated." Because that's not the gospel. Wearing badges of cold connections is not an achievement. In watching Jesus Himself, He spoke the truth. Why would the woman at the well go to the village and tell everyone, "I've met the one, I've met the one"? She had to have had a warm interaction even though Jesus was speaking truth.

Ashley Holleman: He did. Let's just go love people really well.

Dr. Heather Holleman: Also, we have a really good tip we've learned just last year: make the problem you're having in conversation the topic of conversation. In other words, you can say to people, "I've never done this before and I'm actually really nervous, but I want to tell you about Jesus, but I'm afraid it's going to be really weird."

Guess what? The Yale Relationship Lab talks about awkward conversations. They end up liking you more! When we told a pastor, he said, "I really want to live this way and share my faith, but at the gym, if someone says what do you do for a living, it shuts it down." We counseled him. We said, "This is what you say. You say, 'I want to tell you what I do, but I'm really nervous that when you hear what I do, it'll shut down the conversation.'"

That conversation partner's going to feel a warm connection because of his vulnerability. He's tried it and it's gone really well. Make the problem the topic of conversation and you'll find a warm connection.

Jim Daly: For me what that is evidence of is how God created us. That's so self-obvious. He made us for relationship. So when we treat things with relationship, people's hearts open. Yale can tell us this and all the psychologists and scripts tell us, but more importantly, God'll say, "Yeah, they're discovering the way I created you."

Dr. Heather Holleman: Even Philippians 2 is really the most important passage of Scripture for us that's guided us because it talks about the mindsets of a loving connection: valuing others above yourself and taking on their interests. You'll find that living your sent life becomes really easy—not easy for you. You still have to trust God every day. But it gets better, you say.

Ashley Holleman: Someone asked, "Does it ever get easier?" I said it doesn't get easier but it gets better, because the more I do it, the more I practice, the more comfortable I am with it and the more I see God show up.

Jim Daly: This has been great. I think you get the idea of what's happening here. *Sent*, so many good principles about being willing to share your faith with others. You guys have really brought thoughtful ideas and concepts.

Let me turn to you, the listener. Focus on the Family is here for you. We want to help you have a thriving relationship with the Lord so you can pass along your faith to your family, your friends, and others you meet. That's what we're here to do as believers in Christ. If you're not sure where to begin, we have lots of great resources to help you. Our website is full of articles and insights to encourage your faith walk.

Another outstanding resource is Ashley and Heather's fantastic book, *Sent: Living a Life that Invites Others to Jesus*. I'm telling you, if you want to learn how to reach others for Christ, this is the book that can help you. It will give you a solid foundation and equip you to speak boldly about what you believe. If you're in that spot, you really do need this book. We'll send that to you for a donation of any amount today. No amount is too small. When you give to Focus on the Family, you're actually participating in the ministry and helping us reach other people. Over the past 12 months, we've helped close to a million people grow stronger in their faith.

Guest (Male): Which is just incredible.

Jim Daly: It is. This kind of ministry is only possible with support from friends like you. You're helping couples strengthen their marriages and parents learn to raise their children in positive, healthy, biblical ways, and others who are just trying to navigate life's struggles. Beyond that, you're reaching people for Christ, which is the theme of today. So please donate and be a part of the ministry.

John Fuller: Give us a call. Our number is 800, the letter A and the word FAMILY, or you can donate and get resources at focusonthefamily.com/broadcast. Thanks for listening to Focus on the Family with Jim Daly. I'm John Fuller, inviting you back as we once more help you and your family thrive in Christ.