Facing the Canon with Gavin Calver

welcome to my youtube channel my guest on facing the canon is gavin calver ceo of the evangelical [Music] alliance [Music] gavin calvert welcome to facing the cannon thank you for having me it's great to have you i know your parents and ministered with your parents over many many years um your grandparents were in ministry and your parents let's start there tell us a bit about your parents and grand grandparents okay it's a crazy family i'm from so my dad started spring harvest yeah he was the head of the evangelical alliance my grandad was the head of the evangelical alliance and started tear fund so i need a really good idea if you can help me i need a good idea quick that's amazing i now work for the evangelical alliance leading it and the biggest challenge in that actually was this isn't predictable i didn't end up here by osmosis you know god's got a funny sense of humor okay so you're growing up in this christian home and you get banned from going to church now am i right you get banned for six months yeah right go on you tell us that story okay i'm one of four kids the other three are geniuses i didn't get the brains i got the looks the other three are much more conformist behaved better everything else and then there was me the one who liked to kick against the system and so at the age of 14 myself and my best friend were banned from sunday school for six months i remember telling my mum you can't even make me go now which at the time was a relief to me but i couldn't go i wasn't allowed to go yes but it is kind of sad as well because it was four and a half years till i came back to jesus yeah how did your parents react when you were banned from going to church um i think it's fair to say that my mum at first took the sunday school teacher's side which was with hindsight a mistake because you heard the words that you don't want to hear but in reality they journeyed with me they did did something i didn't know about until later they asked 10 people pray every day that our son had come back to jesus yes and if i'd known at the time i'd have been furious sure but when i came back to faith four and a half years later i found out and i got to do something we don't do this anymore it's old school i wrote 10 letters stuck them in the post thanking these people for praying for me amazing and you get the letters back smudges and everything else because they've cried as they've realized that the prayers they've prayed for years have been answered absolutely and you know in some ways you want to do one thing evangelistically start your prayer list that's the first thing yeah pray for people to meet jesus i know be intentional because when we pray coincidences happen completely now your parents um emigrated to america for ministry and um you were 17 but decided not to go and then your 18th birthday you had a few drinks tell us about that and then tell us what happened the day after yeah it was a bit a bunker season i'm 17 years old and at that point jesus is an auntie figure someone i know exists but i don't really like hanging out with so you kind of he's part of my life but not massively my parents say they're emigrating to run the american tear fund the equivalent yes i tell him if a loving god wants to split the family he can stuff himself didn't quite put it like that they emigrated for six to nine months i messed about as i don't need to glorify that i'll talk about it but six to nine months i wish i couldn't do yes then my 18th birthday party i attempted something very foolish an amount of alcohol you could drink and i basically was had poisoning my best friend who i was banned from sunday school with who to this day has not been in a church building except for my wedding he woke up on the hour every hour to check i was okay cleared some vomit from my mouth at times it was quite scary the next morning i woke up and i thought hang on this is all a bit serious and i went and sat on a park bench in mayo park in forest hill south london no one was there there was no mood music nothing like that there was no gospel appeal and i just cried out to the lord and i said i've tried everything else none of this works it's you you're the meaning behind the universe and on this park bench i surrendered my life to jesus there and then and then i prayed something really dangerous i said lord i would go wherever whenever and whatever for you yes and that's led me to doing loads of jobs i never wanted to do and a journey of an adventure that's different but for me i'm all or nothing and it was that point i realized i was all in for jesus and my life has been completely different ever since ever since that time so on a park bench the day after your 18th birthday and you have this encounter with jesus so you go off to um bible college um it's was it called london london bible college in those days and now it's called london school of theology that's where you met your wife yep yep uh got married you you found that um you couldn't have children tell us that story yeah that was hard yeah because we uh we went to youth for christ we were working at youth for christ and we did a lot with young people yeah and i'll be honest until i until we started trying to have kids my biggest weakness was an unawareness of any weaknesses yeah just you know you just need to administer a brokenness i hadn't experienced that yet and we were trying for kids for a few years and i felt really sorry for my wife because she clearly had a fertility issue and we went through the tests and she was fine and it was me and i remember sitting in the doctor's surgery as the doctor says i'm really sorry but you'll almost certainly never have children yeah um but do keep trying but you'll almost certainly never have children that same week a 14 year old girl in our youth group told us she was pregnant yeah and you're like what do i do with this and we didn't know what to do with that but the month after i was told that and got pregnant it's incredible savior he can move the mountain so he can also impregnate women from sterile men if you know absolutely and so our daughter emily came along which was amazing and we were like this is wonderful there was an outside chance of my condition of having a girl impossible to have a boy about 18 months later my dad's over my parents live in the states as we said before but they're british so i went out to get the national dish of the country i went out to get a curry and i come back to curry and my wife ann's crying and my dad looks like he's seen a ghost and anne says i'm pregnant again yes and i said forgive me i said who's the dad yeah obviously it was another miracle yes we went for the scan you only go for the scan and just to help any guys watching this who haven't had kids yet even though you can't see it and it looks like a sultana it's like mushroom thing yes pretend it's cute so i'm pretending it's cute we're watching this scan and the midwife says reverend and mrs calvar i'm really sorry the reason there's no sound is your child's not got a heartbeat it's died in the womb and in this moment i'm like i don't know what to do lord i can deal with miracles i can deal with you but this feels like you're teasing me and my daughter emily was about 18 months came and hugged me on the leg and it's the clearest i've heard god speak to me in my life i felt i heard him say do not be ungrateful for that which you don't have but be grateful for that which you do yeah and be faithful to me as i'm faithful to you now by this point and i'm sorry this is quite a long story but by this point um you're like okay fine crack on two years later i get pregnant again i've accepted i'm healed because let's be honest every time anyone says fertility issues come to the front i was there at the front getting prayed for and she's pregnant again and at 18 weeks we find out we've got a real problem because the baby's really sick yeah we also find out it's a boy which i was physically impossible for me to have a boy baby's really sick there's antibodies in your blood some are really rare and i've got really rare ones playing off with each other babies really anemics got a five percent chance of survival and that we're told there's two donors on the bloodlist with the right blood in the whole of the uk the next day they can do a blood transfusion in the womb so at 18 weeks babe's about this big and lies there they put a needle through her stomach into her womb into the baby's stomach take out half the blood put the other half in the risk at this point is heart attack yes now they say as well that what then happens and sleeps are off for four hours then we scan if the baby's moving we fight another day if it's not it's over because there's no cure it's just intervention i sat by anne's bed and i felt compelled to pray a prayer i prayed this out loud lord jesus if this baby lives you're good and if this baby dies you're still good yes somehow i get up tomorrow and say that you're good yeah baby was moving we fight another day and had 38 scans he went in for blood tests every other day we had nine of these transfusions in the womb each time i prayed that same prayer at 30 weeks they said this to us they said better out than in normally at 30 weeks of panicking yeah they said better out they didn't yes so they delivered our baby tiny little baby he had to go straight off to incubator for quite a while but they said they'd hold him up to show us so they held him up to show us at this moment our tiny little baby wheeze in the face of the person delivering him it's a comedy moment we all needed he then went into an incubator we called him daniel because he survived his own lions den yeah a few months later he came home with us he's now totally fine in fact he plays in goal for a semi professional team hairfield united near here amazing and and he's doing really well he's 10 year old lad but but the thing for me is this before that whole season i didn't minister out of brokenness yeah when i realized i was broken leaned into jesus pushed into jesus became more like him and less like my own self it's changed everything yeah absolutely what would you say gavin um to couples that are tuned in now and they really would love to have children and for some reason it's not happening what advice would you give them yeah i i would say to anyone who's struggling in australia it is hard you have month after month you know you can't get away from it it feels like it's in your face all the time i would say the greatest thing anna and i tried to do was learn to be satisfied with each other that sounds awful doesn't it but i didn't marry her because she could make babies yeah and marathi loved her and that together we could be more in jesus so i would say firstly that to to learn to accept what you have in front of you yes and then beyond that what i would say is extend your table so one of the things we do because we always thought we'd have a massive family by the time daniel had been born we got they sorted me out fairly quickly but but we're always extending our table to say yes i might not be biologically your parent but there's room for you here and as i look out as a youth worker and as an adult and if i look out in the nation i think fatherlessness in particular is the problem of our day yes and there are many people for you to father absolutely it's also it's okay to be upset about it yeah it's okay we're philosophical about the child we lost but we're upset about it too sure and that's okay so i'd say learn to be satisfied with one another keep going and where possible don't look sideways because if you start saying life isn't fair you're right you're right life's not fair yeah don't look sideways look upwards look upwards so helpful gavin obviously you've done various ministry things with youth for christ and and other areas uh you're now the ceo of the evangelical alliance tell us a little bit about what is the evangelical alliance yeah well we're the oldest and largest unity organization seeking to represent two million evangelicals in this country basically people who believe the bible's the inspired word of god stop changing it to fit your culture change your culture with the truth in it yes the death and resurrection of jesus most important thing in human history the need for conversion you don't come to faith by osmosis you get on your knees and you meet your savior and then finally the need to be active making the world like the kingdom that's that's who we are we have two top level aims unite the church in admission to the lost secondly provide a clear and effective voice into every layer of society amazing so during this season we're in yes loads of unprecedented access to the corridors of power great doesn't mean we get listened to but we're there that's that's the first step we often get to have a voice we're there second bit we've got the greatest evangelistic opportunity in our lifetime come on church crack on how do we put everything in one place to help church how do we cheer that on evangelical too often is defined as a negative term it's a positive term yes it's from evangel good news we are the good news people yeah and so we are the people that are desperate to see society turned inside out upside down and back to front for jesus my privilege is to lead the umbrella body that represents and pulls that together as and gavin what an umbrella body it is uh you know so often the church is presented very negatively uh that it's declining but you know your this umbrella ministry that represents two million um vibrant christians which is hugely encouraging so i are you encouraged i'm encouraged but want more so i'm encouraged by church growth i'm encouraged by reverse mission you know for years we sent missionaries all over the world yeah they're all now coming here which is fabulous some of the most exciting churches that you and i would know and sometimes have the privilege to minister from all kinds of parts of the world i'm encouraged as well that where the gospel is preached and the bible is lived by churches are growing you know and i'm encouraged too that younger generations are engaging in the same way where i want to see more is i truly believe in my lifetime there's going to be a major move for god in the uk yes i really believe we're going to see revival i do and and if we don't i'll die believe it's coming tomorrow but i believe we might see it absolutely and i don't know what you think about this but i think we're living in a most bitter sweet moment yes bitter it's awful what's going on with kovid people dying people struggling awful but we're living with something called mortality salience in the uk at the moment yes people are aware of their brokenness it's like a war zone normally you'd only ask the questions you're asking at the moment in a war zone people are asking why am i dying where do i go what happens the nation is open to the gospel you just got to see your par your garden fences your pulpit your street is your parish and we all need to crack on with showing people next door what's different when you have jesus in your face covered doesn't mean kovid's not hard but what's different with jesus yeah totally what now when it back to being a christian who is rooted in scripture uh you know the sea out there gavin it's kind of feels overwhelming at times and there is this battle with liberalism um how are you endeavoring to encourage the churches that are associated with the evangelical alliance to remain faithful to scripture yeah i think i think we have to acknowledge the landscape we're in yeah so a load of christians you talked to my parents before when my dad was leading ea there was loads of stuff that you could accept is given the landscape wasn't easy i never want to say that because everyone thinks they're generations no no no just different yes but we're living in a time now where where biblical inerrancy is is considered something normal to people yeah to other people it's the opposite the the sacred stuff that people used to hold to isn't necessarily held to in the middle of that we have to stand strong on the rock of ages so we're saying to people follow scripture before you follow culture yes but we're also saying acknowledge there is a secular tsunami yeah there is there's a secular tsunami coming but i don't think in the united kingdom there's been a more important time in recent memory where we have to live in the light of eternity we know the end of the story i love the early church look at them they knew the end of the story we know the end of the story however many bad things happen and many wars rumors of wars persecution however many good things happen cures for incurable diseases revivals how many have many world cups england win however much good or bad there is the end's the same jesus wins and i'm not sure enough christians are living in the confidence of the end of the story yeah so we depend on the word we believe in the end of the story then we stand strong in this moment absolutely and you know i would rather stand with god and be judged by the world and stand with the world and be judged by god um but sadly so many people who were faithful in their faith um they basically um change their theology to fit in with their morality um so what encouragement would you say to us as christians about remaining faithful yeah i think we need to choose to not listen with our eyes and think with our feelings yeah i think we've got too much of this going on so if you have a feelings based theology it's going to be completely different to the word of god there are moments where i shouldn't say this is the head of the ea where the word of god can feel like a stone in your shoe it goes against everything you're being taught everywhere else that doesn't mean it's wrong yeah and i think what we need to do is it's like you were saying we need to choose that even if we feel on the wrong side of history we're on the right side of eternity yes and into that space we have to choose who are we living for absolutely do i do i want the world to love me yes but do i care more that jesus is proud of what i'm doing yes yes so if i have to be stephen stoned by the world stood to by jesus i'll be stephen would i rather be someone else yes but if i must be stephen and i think into this culture we've too often accepted the wrong idea of what it means to be kind yeah when i took on leading ea i felt the lord say to me very clearly for the next decade ea needs to be braver than it's ever been i think there's some stuff we need to go for when you take some bullets for the church we need to go out on a limb we need to be ludicrously brave but we also in tandem with that we need to be kinder than we've ever been those two things are not exclusive no now the world makes them exclusive because kindness means that you love everything about me no it doesn't god loves you just the way you are but too much for you to stay the way you are i want you to be like jesus yeah so we need to be brave and make a stand on some stuff but we need to be really kind it's a bit like um yes the guy that got banned from church with me yeah he's an employment law barrister he's completely against everything i do as an atheist he came to my commissioning to this role at the end of it he said do you know what i disagree with everything you stand for everything you're giving your life to and all you're throwing yourself at but you know what gav well done mate i'm proud of you you know a brave and kind christian yes can have relationships with people with polarized views absolutely instead of a relationship but i am not stopping to be brave because he doesn't agree with me yeah but i won't stop being kind because it's difficult i'm gonna keep being kind totally i couldn't agree with you more you and your wife gavin have written this book unleashed the axe church today i i love the title unleashed gone how how did you end up with the word unleashed yeah it was um it was very clear to us that as a church we need to go back to some of the basics the early days you know and and the spirit-fueled early church did stuff that we would just think was barmy yeah so the idea of being unleashed is not so much to say whether you are you might not feel leashed now but do you feel liberated into all you can be in jesus what does it look like to be the acts church what does wordsworks and wonders look like yeah you and i will have had debates for people what's more important social action or evangelism yes you've never had a debate what's more important words or wonders i know it doesn't happen we've dropped them we need to get those back you think in acts five when you know the apostles are preaching in the square they get put in prison the sanhedrin are working out where they are they're back out in the square because the angel let them out to preach again living is sort of outside of social orthodoxy or philip leaving samaria you and i wouldn't leave samaria well i wouldn't sumera is exciting it's like the best conference ever on acid everything's happening it's unbelievable it leaves it to go to a desert middle of a desert meet one year look but that eunuch's first person take the gospel to africa you know we we don't see what god sees yeah and i think the returning to the early church with an acceptance that actually we need to share life church is not an hour and a quarter on a sunday morning running away at the end it's sharing life we need to spill out into the streets more we need to use words works and wonders we need to be more afraid in a right way of the lord than we are of the world we're in definitely and we need to realize you get one shot in life don't miss it yeah yeah and the acts of the apostles because they acted i mean they took the great commission seriously didn't they and i mean it's all there i mean what would you say are are the key principles having really dug deep into the book what would you say are the key principles from the book of acts that we should adhere to today yeah i think that i think the words works and wonders i've mentioned so holistic outreach let's stop debating what's more important right why would you paint someone's fence if you weren't going to tell them about jesus yeah equally if you told someone about jesus why wouldn't you paint an offense yes and then if someone if you're trying to lead someone to jesus and they've got a broken arm why aren't you praying for it so you know that sense is that the togetherness yeah you know the body yeah the fact that you know the fact that they also found different roles for different people yeah we too often think we've all got to do this or this and that no no no you go together i think also the boldness you know when peter preach preaches for the sanhedrin that would have taken to a bottle wouldn't it i go i get to go to some places but i'd like that kind of boldness he was fearless wasn't he yeah it's called complete completely yeah but there was this empowerment of the holy spirit that they had and and there was a purity wasn't there i mean take the story of ananias and sphere you know there was a purity in the church that wouldn't put up with this yeah do you think we've lost that purity um i think we've had too much time on our hands if i'm honest if you would push me in the western church we have issues they don't have in the non-western church we have too much time to talk about too many things yes in in other parts of the world or in the early church they're urgent for the gospel so if we've lost our urgency we spend all our time debating things they're important but there may be fourth or fifth in the importance instead of actually saying there's a world to reach there's do we believe that there is going to be a heaven and a hell if we do we better crack on do we believe that there's a nation to change and to change now and also the togetherness i'm so challenged because because off the back of this my wife and i are planting the church and trying to live some of this and you know what the challenge is really the real sharing of possessions so what happens if um there's some other people in our church who've got two cars say and we've chosen we can only have one car because we can only afford one car their car breaks down they can't fix it but we've got some money in our bank how does that work what does that do what does it mean when it actually says you know about sharing your food and sharing your table and showing your home does that does everything i have belong to jesus or does it belong to me yes because in the united kingdom we've been taught to collect stuff yeah so i'm building up a nice pension so we can retire nicely you get a nice home so everything's fine the early church didn't like that yeah so someone in need reach out make a difference i think as well massive thing for the early church everyone plays yes i think we might have lost some of that everyone gets to play everyone gets to be involved everyone gets to yeah there's no spectators everyone's a participator and there's no buildings yeah no i'm not against buildings of course but if you speak to people like alan hirsch missioners around the world yes they'll say if you look at what slows down revivals or growth of the church it's normally too much training or too much infrastructure yeah the early church didn't have much of either but it had a pentecost and you think wow what would that look like yeah yes sometimes bureaucracy um can be good but sometimes it can hinder can't it and almost suffocate and um things don't get done as quickly as they should i i'm really um my relatives are mentioned in the acts of the apostles um in acts 5 where it talks about the greek speaking widows and they're being neglected in the distribution of food and it's brought to the apostles so this is an issue regarding social responsibility and the apostles said yes this is very important but not important for us and they found seven people full of the holy spirit and then they said we will turn our attention to prayer and the ministry of the word i find that fascinating gavin that based on that one story now of course we have to look at the whole new testament but based on that story the apostolic priorities were prayer and the ministry of the word that is a challenge to church leaders today oh definitely i don't know if you found this but during this season it has been the time to form good habits yes it has i mean i'm more more ready to meet my jesus than i was six months ago yeah because the time i've spent in the presence not because not because i've had more time but i've used it differently certainly when i wasn't commuting for months yes there was actually some habits were formed that were really helpful and you realize how do you spend without spending time in the presence of god how do you even do this stuff i know and and so we've got to get back to some basics i also think we've sometimes overcomplicated it you know the message of jesus is is profoundly challenging it's the hardest call you could ever choose to follow but it's also deeply simple yes not complicated yeah we've sometimes over complicated things made things different and actually i think in this moment when people are desperate and people are looking for hope the message of hope we bring in jesus it will cost you everything but it will change everything it will it will be life in all its fullness now let's stop talking about when we die all the time it's great when you die that you go to being with jesus but now as well how do you get through tomorrow without jesus that's what i love about the the early church every day you can't get through it without jesus and i start every morning thanking god for three things because if you start with thankfulness you don't want stuff thanking god for three things and then saying lord you better help me today because i can't do this without you i can't do what's in front of me without you absolutely you tell a lovely story in here gavin about a girl um who was at this uh conference who had a tattoo on her arm can you re-tell that story yeah yeah um anna and i used to run the youth worker new wine and there was a girl who had made her own tattoo with a standing knife she'd written the word worthless in her forearm she's just tragic isn't it it's just tragic so sad and there was one night where we decided instead of you know in youth ministry the temptation is you do everything for the young people one night we were like hang on the lord's got this so we said the team are going to stand around the edges we just let them worship yes and in the middle of one of these evenings this girl just starts jumping around like like she's crazy we're like what's going on here she's jumping around we pinched him and she comes to the side with her friends and this girl who had written the word worthless with the stanley knife in her forearm it had gone because jesus looks at her and says you are worth so much and he takes it away now would i have had the faith to pray for that i like to think so but possibly not do i now have the faith to pray for that yes yes and actually in youth ministry years five or six times i've seen the scars go from people who've self-harmed because because he's a god who restores us and and i do think sometimes we so overestimate what we can do and we underestimate what he can do absolutely whereas i want to be someone who lives saying do you know what lord i haven't got a lot but i'll bring what i've got to you like the boy and an affiliate absolutely and if you want to multiply it please do if you don't i'll still bring it because i'm going to be bold but lord this is nothing without you but with you think what you could do i know and so that was in the worship in the worship it's like the presence of jesus the sacredness the healing it just took it away a couple of our friends laid a hand on the shoulder praying for it but no no team doing it none of the textbook youth world the usual god god just did his thing but this is where you know i think of when i was a boy and i saw angels sometimes or or some of the miraculous you see or when you've prayed for a leg and a leg has grown you're like this can be nothing but god yeah and i think for some of us actually we sometimes need to go out on that faith ledge that says i'll go lord but this can only happen if you do something yeah definitely and i think too often we say instead i'll stay in my comfort and i know it'll be okay yes because actually no only you can do this lord let's let's go and let's see okay let's get the adventure part back of of the early church definitely sometimes we've lost perhaps gavin a joy thank you so much for joining us on facing the canon thanks for having me wow i honestly i'm inspired he's uh an absolute tonic uh i'm still thinking about his uh surrender to christ the day after his 18th birthday and what an encouragement that when we surrender to christ we just follow the good shepherd and great to hear how the lord has and is using gavin i hope you've been inspired thank you for joining us on facing the canon please join us again [Music] you

Channel: J.John

Views: 2,680

Rating: 4.8688526 out of 5

Keywords: j.john, jjohn, philo trust, philo, Christianity, Christian, Jesus, God, Evangelical Alliance

Id: 0-56yg2ks1U

Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 21 2021