When Rico met Roger

EN brings together British evangelists Rico Tice and Roger Carswell for a conversation about outreach to the lost and their new books

Roger: Rico, you are an Anglican clergyman by qualification, so why are you an evangelist and not a vicar?

Rico: The turning point for me was watching my grandmother die. She died without any hope in Christ and I had said nothing.

I leave her in God's hands but I came out thinking, Rico, if you really believe the gospel to be true, if the cross is God's escape route from hell to heaven, and you love people, then the priority in your life will be to tell them and warn them. This caused me to see that my focus had to be evangelism.

Roger: I agree. Since my conversion in the Lebanon in 1965, when I understood for the first time that God had laid on Christ my sin, I have felt that I must get the message out. I often wonder when I look on a crowd, about how many of them are lost. Their desperate need of the gospel is the motivation.

Rico: There is that feeling in your heart of bleeding for the lost. The sense of being in debt to them and I think this is fundamental to an evangelist's mentality. Jeremiah wept for the sake of his people and I pray for a heart that weeps.

Roger: Yes, I too long for a more compassionate heart. I find when I begin to speak to people about the Lord and I see their great need and ignorance, it leads to me being stirred. The love of Christ constrains us, and it is a love that comes from Christ as well as love for Christ so that when you talk to someone you see that the greatest need they have is for the Lord.

Rico: Which makes me think there isn't a worse job in the nation than that of taking the funerals of people who are not converted. To know that they will have to stand before Christ in judgment and pay for their sin themselves is heartbreaking.

Effectiveness?

Roger: Although this can lead to an unhelpful desire for greater effectiveness. An evangelist is a driven person, and greatly desires to see people coming to faith in Christ. One wants to see definite conversions and certainly only God can save souls, but as an evangelist one does look to be used in the work of evangelism.

Rico: The issue of effectiveness is fundamental and we have to work it through or we will come out of the ministry. We have to remind ourselves that our job is to preach Christ and it is God's job to open blind eyes and the results are His. The key passage on this is 2 Corinthians 4.1, where we are told quite clearly that we are to preach Christ by life and lip and that God will open blind eyes. Therefore we entrust all the results to Him.

Roger: So this is your prayer for the new evangelistic course book Christianity Explored?

Rico: Yes, Christianity Explored is an opportunity for people to investigate the person of Jesus Christ as he walks through the pages of Mark's Gospel. Relational issues are all important too. They think that we are going to lecture them but we begin by listening, we want to share our life with them. I Thessalonians 2.8 says: 'We loved you so much that we shared with you not only the gospel but our lives as well'. We look for people's headaches, but then we have the answer to their bigger problems. Once we have explained with tears about sin, and that the result of sin is a place called hell, then the wonder of grace becomes amazing.

The authentic gospel

Roger: Christianity Explored and friendship evangelism are excellent and incredibly effective, but what about those people that it is not touching? Who reaches the people who go to bed when I get up, and get up when I go to bed? Who reaches the big queues waiting outside the night-clubs at the weekends? How can we reach them?

Rico: Roger, I think that you are brave enough to address questions that we have just stopped asking. Life is becoming increasingly privatised so we need to work harder at reaching people. I can diagnose the problems, just as well as you can, but how we get to them makes my head hurt. How do we present to them the authentic gospel about the cross, repentance and a life lived in obedience to Jesus?

Roger: The problem is that the people we are meeting are not only ignorant of the Bible but they also have misconceptions about what a Christian is, so we really are having to start from back beyond scratch.

Rico: So how do we reach them?

Roger: Well, we are in a stage of trench warfare now and we have to do what we can. 'Knowing the terror of the Lord we seek to persuade men'. Even if it isn't the best method of evangelism, people may never hear anything else. Let's use the web, and emails evangelistically. Let's think creatively about making opportunities for people to hear the gospel. Evangelism is to be a lifestyle so we try to talk to the shop assistant, or the person who sits next to us on the train. We can find wonderful opportunities right where we are. It may appear to be 'hit and miss', but I don't know how else to reach the vast majority of people who don't have Christian friends close enough to invite them to a Christianity Explored. The Lord can direct us to the people of his choosing, as he did Philip to the Ethiopian.

Rico: Yes, we just have to put our drop in the ocean and believe that these people will stand before God and pay for their sin. They are increasingly comfortable, and it is the knowledge of the judgement to come that is going to really change them.

Roger: I am disturbed that as evangelicals we don't seem to have the confidence in the gospel that we should. God said to Jeremiah: 'Go and speak all the words that I tell you to deliver'. I wonder if we are being a little selective? Do we fear to explain the cross, and speak about heaven and hell?

Rico: We have lost the fear of the Lord and in every area of our culture we are seeing the result of that. I was very struck by the four 'Ds' in your book, And Some Evangelists, that we have disregard of God, then disobedience to God, then denial of God and then lastly a defiance of God. I think we are in stage four.

Roger: A great example of this is the media. We are constantly working against the subtle undermining of biblical values, and as Christians we still don't have free access to the media.

Rico: This is why I found And Some Evangelists so helpful, because it is candid about how hard it is to do the work of an evangelist and how undermined evangelists can feel both inside and outside the church. You are very realistic about the joys of the evangelist, but also how hard it is.

Re-converting Britain

Roger: We are often battling against the view of the evangelist as a second rate calling, instead of it being seen as a unique gift. Ephesians 4 clearly teaches there is this gift and that it is going to be in the church, but it doesn't seem very common.

Rico: There is a real need for evangelists in this country. Most nights I kneel by my bed and pray for the re-conversion of Britain. That has always been my heart's desire.

Roger: Mine would be very similar. England is extremely hard and dark at the moment. 'The tide is out' for Britain and my prayer is, that the tide would come in and that there might be a real work of God to turn the hearts of Britain back to him, but we do have to be faithful.

Rico: We do, and I find the temptation is not to do as much preaching here. Invitations abroad are appealing, but we have to be faithful here, and serve the noble pastors who are battling away for the gospel.

Roger: There are 60 million people in Britain but very, very few evangelists. It is almost as if it is the first rung up the ladder, instead of being seen to be a unique gift, and so evangelists are redirected into Bible teaching and pastoral work.

Rico: Often the evangelist begins to plough a very lonely furrow in their 20s as they feel this call but other people are saying they must do other things. But if they stick at it, and are true to themselves, and are longing to teach the gospel and be faithful, God can work mightily. He can do that, because the gospel is the power of God.

This conversation was recorded by Emma Carswell of Paternoster Press.

Christianity Explored by Rico Tice will be published in April 2001 by Paternoster Publishing.

And Some Evangelists by Roger Carswell is published by Christian Focus at £9.99.

When Rico met Roger

British evangelists Rico Tice and Roger Carswell talk about outreach to the lost and their new books

When Rico met Roger

Effectiveness?

The authentic gospel

Rico: So how do we reach them?

Re-converting Britain

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