Your Church Needs You! – An interview with Rico Tice

Rico Tice is Senior Minister for Evangelism at All Souls, Langham Place in London and the presenter of the award-winning Christianity Explored DVD. In this interview he reflects on the struggles of outreach in a post-Christian society and how that has fed into a brand new edition of the Christianity Explored course.

You’re Senior Minister for Evangelism at a central-London church. What does ministry for you look like?

I’m just a normal pastor at All Souls; I’ll be seeing someone who’s got cancer on Saturday and taking communion at his bedside. I’m just doing the normal work of loving and serving a church family—but with a particular emphasis on equipping God’s people for works of service in evangelism.

An evangelist should be doing two things: he should be doing evangelism himself, but also engaging in the battle to get the church family to do it. And that second task is often much harder than the first. The tension is with the church family—to say “come on, guys, we’ve got to do this,” but going on loving them even when they don’t. I think a lot of evangelists and pastors can get quite angry when church members are not doing what you want them to do.

So how do you go about equipping a church family for evangelism?

It’s two things. It’s giving them the tools to do it—training, books, courses—but also trying to help their hearts long for the lost, when all of us can just get caught up by other things. One way we can equip church members is by being honest with them that there is going to be some rejection when we speak about the Lord Jesus. Some people will respond with hostility, and others will respond with hunger. Just the other day my wife took a neighbour to an evangelistic event at our church. My wife really loves and cares for this woman. But actually this woman didn’t respond positively, and there was a bit of a stony silence coming home. So for both my wife and I there was pit in our stomachs the next morning. But that’s exactly what the church family experience too. It’s important for the church family to see us engaging in evangelism ourselves—and experiencing the same feelings as they do.

Do you think evangelism is getting harder in our cultural context?

In the UK we’re definitely seeing a culture change—and that we have got to get better at going out to the individual. Our default has always been to say to people, “come and hear”—come to this outreach event or that guest service. But now more than ever Christians need to “go and tell,” because as our culture drifts further from its Christian heritage, people feel less comfortable coming to church events. Church leaders have to equip the church family to do more. Every church member needs to have the confidence to be able to say to unbelieving friends, “Do you want to look at the Bible with me?”

What would you say is the best model for evangelism?

This might sound arrogant, but I’ll hold to this to the day I die: If we said to God, “What’s the best way to do evangelism?” I think he would say, “Why don’t you go through the biographies I’ve given you about my son? I’ve given you these Gospel accounts—use them!” We’ve got to let the Gospels tell the gospel. That’s the heartbeat of the Christianity Explored course. Each week we get Mark’s Gospel open, see Jesus walk off the pages, and let people ask any questions they like. And as Christians we pray that they see who Jesus is, why he came, and what it is to follow him.

The other advantage to going through a Gospel in evangelism is that you then put a model in place for new Christians to follow for life. So as part of Christianity Explored, each week guests hear a talk from Mark’s Gospel and study it in a small group, and they’re also encouraged to read it at home by themselves and meet one-to-one with the course leaders. That reflects the four key vehicles for Christian discipleship—preaching, small group Bible study and fellowship, personal Bible study and prayer, and one-to-one mentoring.

There’s a new Christianity Explored edition that’s been released this week. What’s different about that, and what’s the same?

Well, what’s the same is we’ve found these three words that unpack the heart of Mark: “Identity, Mission, Call”. Identity—who is Jesus? Mission—why did he come? Call—what does it mean to follow him? So that’s the heart of it—that’s the same. But I’m just delighted with this new production because it’s clearer, it’s simpler to use. People will get hold of the new Leader’s Guide and just go: “Gosh, that’s simple. I can do this.” That’s the phrase we’re always longing for people to feel: “I can do it.” Another new feature is that you can download the videos so you can play them on an iPad or a laptop. So in a nutshell, the new material is clearer and more flexible which we hope means that an ordinary Christian can take their mate through Mark’s Gospel wherever and whenever they like, instead of waiting for a formal group to start at church.

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