First Person with Wayne Shepherd

First Person: Jerry Wiles

Jerry Wiles says the Gospel came to us on its way to someone else and we need to be faithful in telling others the Good News. Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company: FEBC National Processing Center Far East Broadcasting Company P.O. Box 6020 Albert Lea, MN 56007 Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

Duration:: 23m
Broadcast on:: 03 Feb 2011
Audio Format:: other

Jerry Wiles says the Gospel came to us on its way to someone else and we need to be faithful in telling others the Good News.

Send your support for FIRST PERSON to the Far East Broadcasting Company:
FEBC National Processing Center
Far East Broadcasting Company
P.O. Box 6020
Albert Lea, MN 56007

Please mention FIRST PERSON when you give. Thank you!

I often emphasize the fact that, you know, we're instruments of his work, and it's Christ living in us that makes it all work, it's not our personality or charm or education or intelligence. We can all be vessels of his redemptive activity. Hi everyone, and welcome to First Person, a weekly conversation with a guest whose life teaches all of us what it means to follow God's calling and experience his faithfulness. I'm Wayne Shepard, and my guest this week is Jerry Wiles, who is President Emeritus of Living Water International. Jerry is passionate about sharing the gospel with everyone he meets, and we'll talk to us today about sharing our faith through stories and questions. I hope that you find these weekly insights from various guests to be helpful as you think about God's faithfulness in your own life, and anytime you'd like to hear an interview a second time or recommend it for listening to someone else, you can come to our website firstpersoninterview.com. The Listen Now button takes you to the archive of all of our past programs. Again, we're found online at firstpersoninterview.com. Jerry Wiles has a natural and effective way of sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ with people he meets on a daily basis. We'll learn about that from Jerry today, but the day we talked happened to be the day of his own father's funeral, and I ask him first to talk about his dad. Well, he's almost 86 years old. He was 21 years older than me. He was a World War II veteran. He was wounded in World War II, and almost lost his right arm and his right leg. He was in a body cast for nine months. The doctors told him that he would never walk again. They wanted to amputate his right leg, but he wouldn't sign the papers, and so he did walk again. He was discharged with 70% disability, but he had a full ministry. He was active for most of his career as a pastor. He was Bible-cational. He did different jobs, but he pastored churches mostly in the North Arkansas, some in Missouri, for almost 60 years, and so he has had a great impact. We had the visitation yesterday evening, and just hearing that testimony is that people have been impacted by his life. It's just very encouraging. Of course, my own life has been greatly impacted by his, but he's had a great ministry and a great family, so we're rejoicing that he is with the Lord, and we'll all be together again someday. What do you admire most about your dad, Jerry? Well, I'm going to share this at the funeral today, because I was telling my dad the last week when he could communicate better, and we had this conversation. I was thinking about observing his life over these years, and the things I've seen and heard from him when I joined the Air Force. I graduated high school, joined the Air Force in 1968, and my dad, seeing me off to the Air Force, he said "Son, I want to tell you something, I want you to always remember this, whatever's going on in your life, I want you to know that all things work together for good, to those who love the Lord, and are called according to his purpose." Well, at the age of 18, I was not a biblical scholar and wasn't even biblically very literate, so years past, I would think about that verse, and I'd say, "Where is that? Where is that?" I figured out it was Romans 8, but I've thought about that experience and that conversation I had with him probably thousands of times, and I've talked about it, I've shared it, usually there's sermon illustrations over the years, and then putting in context and preaching on that passage that all things are working for good to those who love the Lord, according to his purpose, but then the next verse talks about being conformed to the image of Christ, and my dad really demonstrated the life and the teachings and the Spirit of Jesus about as much as anyone I've known in my lifetime, so that's a very memorable thing about him and his life and just seeing it worked out in over these years. Jerry, the death of a loved one always impacts us, and it's painful. Of course, we know that your dad is with the Lord and that we rejoice in that, but for a man especially loses his father, my own father died and was buried on my fiftieth birthday. Do you have any feelings about maybe stepping up now? I mean, you've been in leadership a long time, but maybe your life has changed a little bit? Well, I'm sure I don't know exactly how much it will change, but I'm sure it will, and my dad was the first born of seven children in his family, I'm the first born in our family. My son Jonathan is a first born, and he's here with us, and his little boy Elliot is two years old, his first born, and we were just reminiscing yesterday. We had a picture of my dad, me, my son, and his son four generations, and I was looking back, I remember about thirty-four years ago, we got a picture of my granddad and my dad and me and my son, so it's interesting just to think about how God passes the torch from one generation to another, so I do feel like that God somehow has a new season of ministry for me, and I'm sixty-four years old and some people ask me sometimes, "What do you think about retirement? Are you think about retiring? I tell people that I'm not thinking about retiring, I'm thinking about retreading." Yeah, we don't find the R word in the Bible. And I'm transitioning into a new phase now, served as president of Living Water International for a little over seven years, and just recently we have a new president and CEO, and the board has given me a title of President Emeritus, I'm still on staff, still doing what I've been doing, but fewer things, I've got to focus more on spiritual mentoring, outreach, strategy, orality, personal evangelism, and that kind of thing, so I'll be doing more writing, radio program production, and speaking, so it's just a new season and new opportunities, but I'm planning to stay in ministry as long as the Lord gives me breath and health. And to speak at your own Father's funeral today, Jerry, you've got to be thinking about what you think about a lot, and that is the legacy of passing our faith on and telling people our story of faith and witnessing for Christ. Actually, you've written a book about this called "No Greater Joy." I want to talk about that, but what's the main thing that you want to communicate about the necessity of sharing our faith and talking to others? Well, you know, I think, as I say often, and I'm not sure who I heard this, but somebody else said this, most everything I say or know, I heard from somebody else, but you know, the gospel came to us on the way to someone else, and you know, were to be vessels, were to be channels of God's activity, were to be instruments of His righteousness. So back in the early '70s, the Lord really did a significant transformation in my own life. I began to share the Lord, began to see people come to Christ, and so I've been on that journey since then. I've written four books actually on the subject, the most recent "No Greater Joy." I tell people I keep writing it and hoping I'll get it right someday, but it's mostly, you know, what the Lord's been doing in my life and about the people who've influenced me and about eternal principles, timeless insights in sharing our life in Christ, because the message never changes, you know, but the methods and the strategies can change with different cultures and different worldviews and different language groups and all that. But it's just an amazing journey, and I believe still the best is yet to be. Jaren, your role with living water, you do a lot of traveling, and you're seeing something around the world, a movement towards what is called orality. Even what orality is, it's really the old matter of just talking about our faith, right? Well, it is. And the orality movement, or some would call it an orality phenomenon, really has emerged over the past 25 or 30 years, but actually over the past five or 10 years, it's become a very significant movement changing the faith, the mission worldwide. And a new recognition that the majority of the world is and always has been primarily oral learners, oral communicators, people who can't, don't, or won't read, of course, 70% of the world's population today, according to experts, that's about four billion people would be considered oral learners. Some people use the term primary oral learners or secondary oral learners, the broader term is oral preference learners. And so there's been a new recognition that we've been using in the Western world, about 90% of our communication and ministry style and resources is based on a highly literate style. So oral cultures think differently, learn differently, and communicate differently. So this movement is around stories and questions, it's about using parables and building relationships in community, of course, our best model for that is Jesus himself. Most of the people in the times of Jesus, scholars say around 90% people, didn't have access to scriptures they could sit down and read for themselves, it was an oral culture. So as we rediscover the ancient methods of communication in oral methods, it's really having a phenomenal effect around the world, the international orality network, which is now 2-300 organizations have become a part of that. Most every major mission organization has began incorporating oral strategies, storying. So the last, the chapters 14 and 15 of No Greater Joy deal with this orality phenomena and the stories and the questions and the process and the training that we're doing in Latin America and Africa and Asia. So we're seeing some phenomenal results from shifting to this strategy instead of just giving bibles and using technology, it's getting back to first century, how did Jesus make disciples? Coming up in a moment, we'll continue this conversation with Jerry Wiles about using stories to talk about the good news of Jesus Christ. This time on First Person, I'm pleased to announce that Tony Dungy, the author of The Mentor Leader, will be my guest. Leaders come from everywhere, that's one of the things that I've really come to realize from my sports career, that some of your best leaders were not necessarily the star players, but leaders come all shapes and sizes on your team. Super Bowl winning coach and follower of Christ Tony Dungy would join us next time here on First Person to talk about The Mentor Leader. Let's continue today's program. The orality movement is all about getting back to the idea of simply using stories to communicate the gospel. Jerry Wiles thinks this is a very positive development. Well, this is given us a handle and a new emphasis and in fact, my personal involvement with this movement was actually before it was a movement and actually before orality was even a very common mythological term, I was involved in back in the '80s in developing something we call oral discipleship. This was a strategy to evangelize and disciple non-reading people of the world and I became aware of through a book I read back in those days that I got at the US Center for World Mission called oral communication of the scriptures, African, inside the African oral art, Herbert Clem. That book really influenced me to begin to think about how we're going to take the message to the end of the earth, make disciples of all nations, a lot of the fact that there are many people in the world, many people groups who do not have a written language. So how are we going to reach those people? So I began to ask those questions and begin to brainstorm with submission leaders and ask them the question, how much does a person need to know to come to a relationship with Jesus and how much and what do they need to know and what's the best delivery system and how much and what do they need to know to become a fruitful, productive disciple or follower of Jesus. When we answer those questions, we've got something we can take to the end of the earth. What you helped me see in your book, Jerry, is the question that you ask, "Am I a witness?" The real question needs to be asked, "What kind of witness am I?" Because if we have Christ living in us, we are a witness already, just what kind, right? Well, I often tell people, we, as believers and followers of Jesus, we either represent Him or we misrepresent Him. And unfortunately, sometimes we misrepresent Him, but we are His witnesses. He didn't say, "Go, witness." He said, "You shall be my witnesses." Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, to the Edimos, parts of the earth. So we are His witnesses and we just need to discover how that's going to be expressed in our own unique personalities and how the fact that Jesus Christ living within us as we discover in Colossians 1, 27 in Galatians 2, 20, and two very foundational verses to discovering the reality of Jesus Christ living His life in us. And I often remind people that we have the same God who lived in Jesus Christ now lived in us. And so He's not looking for our ability, but our availability. It's not our scholarship as much as our relationship. So we have a level playing around when it comes to kingdom activity that God will use each and every one of us to be a witness as we relate ourselves to Him and discover how to trust and obey. It's not as complicated as we've come to think of it in the simplicity and the power of the gospel, the Word of God, in telling stories about Jesus, how the Holy Spirit touches people's hearts and changes their lives and He'll use each of us and all of us in that process. Jerry, you're so good at starting up these conversations with people and turning that to the Lord. How do they generally react to you when you do that? Well, over the years I've learned if I ask a general, non-threatening question and really try to relate to a person, get to know them just a little bit, even if it's in a brief conversation, is connecting with people, asking questions and listening to people and tell people we need to listen to people and we need to listen to the Holy Spirit. And then we began to fill in the gaps. So as we listen and as we know something about our audience, whether it's an audience of one or an audience of thousands, whether it's on an airplane or in a restaurant or in the neighborhood, whether it's family, neighbors, coworkers or friends, asking questions and listening. And then often we'll have something to say that we'll open up a conversation that we can share the gospel. But why are we so reticent to follow through on that? You might be bold enough to start the conversation, but we don't know how to, I guess, in sales terms, close the sale, do we? Well, I think there's two big challenges approaching people, engaging them in a conversation and then bringing it to a point of closure, to drawing the net, I call it, bringing person to make a decision and respond to the message. And there's some simple things and the book covers multitude of those experiences. I've learned a lot from people over the years, but I tell people I've learned more about doing it than I ever have listening to a lecture or sermon or reading a book. So help us do a better job at verbally sharing our faith. Well, when you ask a question like, have you been thinking more about the Lord lately? I've asked that question over the years to many people. And it's amazing how many people would say something like, well, you know, it's interesting that you brought that up and then they'll share something about their life. Or I might ask them if they've had a more, you know, interest in spiritual things in their life in recent times, or if they've noticed any signs of spiritual awakening, those are pretty non-threatening general questions. The way they answer that first question gives me a clue and then I can ask a more personal penetrating question like, what about you? Have you come to know Jesus in a personal way? Or I might share a testimony or something like, I might say, you know, I've noticed that increasing number of people are becoming interested in the Lord in spiritual things. Have you noticed that? Well, either say yes or no, and however they answer, I might just ask them. You know, I might say I've noticed how people are more interested in personal intimate relationship with God and they're not so interested in religious rituals and traditions, but really knowing God in a personal way. And so that comment, those questions open up many times and I can lead them through, find out how much they know about the gospel first and then fill in the gaps and then just invite them to respond to the gospel. Do we make it more complicated than it really is? I think we have and there's a fear, you know, we have preconceived ideas, negative stereotypes. We have this mental image many times of how people might respond if we take the initiative so we never take the initiative. But once we break the ice and kind of step out and engage people and of course we learn from example and demonstration and we learn from participation. So I've had some good mentors over the years and seen how they do it and if I can see somebody do something, I probably can figure out how to do it or at least try it. Jerry, I think we can learn from your example. When you think of a story, an episode where you've actually struck up a conversation very casually and it turned to the Lord and that person turned to the Lord. Well, there are numerous of those kind of things. I just think of one particular one that sticks in my mind. I was on a plane to the East Coast a few years ago when I asked one of those kind of questions to a lady on the plane and she said, "Well, you know, I'm going to my father's funeral." She was on a plane going to her father's funeral and she just opened up to me and real broken this began to share some really hurt and pain in her life and that she had been thinking about, you know, where she's going to spend eternity thinking about her dad and so it just opened up a wonderful conversation and we had two hours to talk about the Lord share the gospel. We had prayer together and the time we landed, I introduced her to someone in baggage claim and said, "You know, you might be interested to know that I mentioned her name. Just received the Lord Jesus in his real life and she opened up and shared about that." So those kind of encounters are out there. I think there's more lost people that are ready to respond to the gospel if they're given an appropriate witness and opportunity than there are believers that are actually actively, intentionally reaching out to share the gospel and I think we'd see an amazing thing happen if we just become more intentional, more proactive in seeking to reach people in those ways. I wonder, too, if we aren't hesitant about sharing our faith because we're afraid that if we do lead someone to Christ, then there's a responsibility in our part to follow through with that person. What do you do about that? Well, there's a chapter in the book on that. You know, you don't always have the opportunity to personally follow up with everyone you might share the gospel with. They may not, you know, if it's traveling or it's somewhere a different place, but I try to get them connected with someone who will nurture and encourage them, try to get them connected with a church or a fellowship of some sort. Those I can follow up with, I try to encourage them in different ways and personally disciple those that I'm able to, but if I can get them connected with a group of believers somewhere and get someone to connect them with a body, whether it's just a Bible study group or a church somewhere or a Sunday school class, that's important and that's the nurturing and the follow up part of the discipleship. So, you know, I believe that, and I mentioned this in the book, God has a tailor-made strategy and way of approaching people. He also has a tailor-made way of following up. You find that in Scripture, different people were followed up in different ways. So, I don't worry too much about the exact follow up plan until after I've shared with them. And my main objective is to introduce them to a living relationship with the living Christ. When they belong to Him, you know, the Lord will give direction on how that's going to work out. I've got many examples. I'll share it if we had time. But just some amazing things happen and how the Lord can bring people around and nurture and mature them. A final word of encouragement to just go do it, Jerry, what would you say to us? Well, to just go do it, a pretty good way of putting it, but I would say, you know, when you hear these stories and you read the book and I do a producer radio program, it's just a little brief, short feature sound bites, telling examples, often people have told me, you know, the story you told about that encounter with a person prompted me to try it and they did it. I said it worked. I remember telling a story about a janitorial staff person that I had shared the gospel with and I described that situation and years later I heard a man told me that I heard that story and said, "I thought I'll cry that next time I have the opportunity." So you know, it's not something that's just unique with me. I mean, it's something that God can do through anyone and I often emphasize the fact that, you know, we're instrumental to his work and it's Christ living in us that makes it our work. It's not our personality or charm or education or intelligence. We can all be vessels of his redemptive activity. As we've learned from Jerry today, we can naturally lead any conversation into an opportunity to talk about the Lord. We've placed a link with more information about Jerry's book, "No Greater Joy at Our Website, FirstPersonInterview.com." First Person is designed to listen and learn from various people as they talk about how God has prepared them and led them to serve Him. And today's interview will be archived at our website, firstpersoninterview.com, along with all previous interviews. And there's a calendar of upcoming guests online as well at firstpersoninterview.com. Next week, my guest will be coach Tony Dunge, a Super Bowl-winning coach who is also a follower of Jesus Christ. Tony has written numerous best-selling books and will talk about his latest, The Mentor Leader, secrets to building people and teams that win consistently. I hope you'll join us next time for a one-on-one conversation with Tony Dunge. Now with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepard. Join us next time for First Person. [music]