Be the Hands and Feet: A Conversation with Jeff Medders

Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the place where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership. You can always submit questions that we answer on this show to resoundmedia.cc/questions. If you find this resource helpful, do us a favor, rate and review the podcast so more

people can encounter the life-changing truth of God's Word. Also, if you know someone who could benefit from today's episode or that has questions like the ones that we're answering on the episode, please share this episode with them. My name is John. I'm here today with Mitch.

Yeah, and I have the privilege of introducing Jeff Meadors. Jeff is the Director of Theology and Content for the SEND Network. He's a preacher, podcast, and author of multiple books, including Humble Calvinism and The Soul Winning Church. Jeff, it's great to have you on the podcast. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the listeners about yourself?

Oh my goodness. Well, you know, I would say I'm not an incredibly interesting person. I am an avid endorsement, which suits Houston well. It's usually too hot most of the time to do anything. But today is actually a beautiful day. So maybe I'll go outside and get the mail or something like that.

But I love to play Mario Kart with my kids and Mario Party. And so I love to work the clock at my son's basketball games at his school. So on any given night, you may find me tracking the points for the visitors and the home teams. That's awesome. Yeah, we love basketball, so.

Well, you wouldn't do so bad here where we're at then. It's 11 degrees outside here in Michigan, and so being an indoorsman's a good sport to be.

Yeah, yeah, there we go. I probably fit in perfect.

Yeah, totally.

Well, hey, we're excited to talk today about the soul winning church, and about some evangelism, and things like that in the church. Before we get too far into it, I wanna hear about your co-author a little bit, Jeff.

What led you guys to write this book? I actually, this morning, I listened to a podcast that you and he did, because I'll be honest, I saw his credentials on the book, and I saw Seminary President, and I thought, well, this guy is probably a really boring guy, right? I mean, no offense to our seminary professor friends,

but they're usually not the most exciting people. But, man, he was a fiery guy. He was talking about sharing the gospel and the hood and stuff like that. I mean, how do you guys know each other and what led you to write the book? Yeah, I'd say it goes back, oh my goodness, I mean, maybe five, ten years, way back down at Acts 29. He was pastoring a church in Acts 29 up in Camden, New Jersey. I was pastoring a church

in the Houston area. And we just kind of met at events, started talking, hanging out, becoming friends. And then when we both started working at X29, we got really close, just working together on a bunch of different projects, going through, you know, speaking at different events together for A29. So we've kind of been in that church planning world together for a while and really just kind of hit it off. I mean, I kind of told him he kind of, you know, Doug's a little bit older than me, not a lot older, but we call him our spiritual uncle, our kids call him Uncle Doug.

And so, you know, great, just a great brother for, you know, getting advice and talking about sports and talking about food and just, you know, we became good friends. And the book came about through us on the phone one day, kind of just griping about different things that we are seeing church planters were doing and were not doing, things we wanted to grow in our own teaching and grow in our developing in, like, what do we need to be doing?

And we just, you know, cause we're also with Baptists and like, well, I think they gotta be doing this. And then we started alliterating these things and then that's how kind of really how the book came about. And so, so Doug, yeah, he is, he is not your typical president of anything

that you could think of. He's, he's very loud. He's very funny. He's very charismatic. He's just a great guy. I think he is the king of illustrations.

Hearing him preach, he will come up with some of the zaniest and most profound analogies. So if you're interested in learning more about them, you should go to Grimke Seminary and you can see more about Doug and what they're doing over there in Richmond, Virginia.

That's awesome. Yeah, from the little bit that I heard, man, a guy who has huge passion for preaching the gospel anywhere and everywhere. So that's awesome.

Yeah, and I'll say it's often said about him is that you don't just meet him, you experience him.

I can see that.

He's very, very unique. That's awesome. Well, I already used the naughty word here on the podcast a couple of times, that word evangelism. So hopefully our audience didn't already tune out and say I'm afraid of the guilt I'm gonna feel

or I'm afraid of the things I'm gonna hear. Jeff, you wanna tell us about why, so why are people so afraid of that word? Why do churches struggle so much to cultivate a culture of evangelism or as you guys rename it, soul winning? I love that. Yeah. Yeah. Why do churches struggle so much for that?

Yeah, I think it is one of those areas that is difficult. It's much easier to read your Bible. It's much easier to attend Sunday worship and attend a small group or any of any other elements of the Christian life. Those seem to be not as challenging as taking the gospel to a hostile culture, to a hostile environment. And so I think there is kind of that fear that comes with it of I don't want to have to confront idolatry. I don't have to confront lies. I don't have to confront other aspects that are all bundled up in telling someone that Jesus

is the way, the truth, and life, and that no one can get to the Father but by them. So I think there is kind of that fear of some of the retaliation that comes with evangelism. And then secondly, I think there's also the fear of inadequacy and incompetency, that maybe I don't know the right thing to say, or I don't know how to frame the argument, and I'm nervous. And so there's also, so it's kind of the externals and the internals of evangelism.

And then I think there's a third one, the kind of ecclesial dimension, as I think often is people are not really trained on and discipled in how to share the gospel and how to evangelize. It is something that we do in the Christian life. And when we teach people how to read the Bible, we teach people how to talk about Jesus and to teach them in a way that's encouraging, that's uplifting. And I love the way that my friend and Ph.D. mentor, Donald Whitney, he says about all the spiritual disciplines of the Christian life, and he includes evangelism as one of

them.

He says that whatever we do and how we teach and frame and disciple and train, that if If it's not easy, and at least in one sense, he said, I don't think we're doing it right. Because Jesus said, my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. So there's still a yoke, there's still a burden,

there's still these factors, but with Christ, they're easy, they're light. And so if we make them too complicated, I don't think it's the way of Christ. So part of what we wanted to do in the book is to uncomplicate evangelism that I think anybody that reads a soul winning church, I don't think you're

going to be blown away about like, we found some magic bullets, we found some hidden verses in the Bible. And none of that's, this is all stuff you know, this is all stuff you've seen, this is probably all stuff you've heard. But we wanted to condense it, simplify it and put it into one aspect of being a soul winning church. So we changed the word, brought back an old word that you'll find in Charles Spurgeon and others throughout church history that highlights two aspects that you guys have mentioned.

One is the soul part. It's like we're talking with people who have actual souls that will spend eternity in heaven or in hell. That will either be enjoying the presence of Christ or will be under the wrath of God for eternity. And so this is not just, oh, let's make sure we check our discipline box that we evangelize this week. No, it's way more than that. There are people's souls here that we're

discussing and souls that we're talking to. So we care about their eternity. And the second part, soul winning, is we, well, I want to win you to Christ. I do want to see you get born again. I don't just want to tell you the truth and move on. I want you to be born again by the power of the Spirit. I want you to be convinced of these things in the scriptures. And we know that only happens by the Spirit. And so we want Jesus to bring people in and we want people to come to know him.

And it's got to be a whole culture. It can't just be, okay, we'll make an evangelism team. And it can't just be the pastors of the church. It needs to be the entire church. As Spurgeon says, every Christian is a missionary or he is an imposter.

Yeah, yeah. So if somebody were to raise the objection to that and say, well, I don't have, you know, I mean, you mentioned the spiritual discipline of evangelism, if I don't have the gift of evangelism, what would you say real quickly to somebody who says,

I don't have the gift of evangelism, so this isn't for me?

Yeah, I would say, man, I'm so thrilled that you are that dialed in to already knowing your spiritual gifts. How did you, yeah, how did you come about that and what are your other ones? So let's flourish in those.

How did you discern those? How did you determine those? So praise God for that. And then secondly, I would say, it's also a command. So there are some that have the gift of preaching and teaching,

and they are preachers and teachers, and they do that. But Christians are also commanded to admonish one another, sing to one another in Psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, and let the word of Christ dwell richly in their hearts so they could exhort and encourage and help one another with God's word. So every Christian is called to handle the word of God in a way that's edifying. So yeah, you may not have the gift of evangelism,

but Paul does tell Timothy, do the work of an evangelist, right? So if we take that verse and say, well, maybe Timothy views himself as, I don't have the gift of evangelism. Well, he still tells Timothy, do the work of an evangelist, do the work of one. And there's all kinds of other verses like in the chapter in the book on personal evangelism. We use a text that typically isn't thought about for personal evangelism to show you are called to proclaim the excellencies of him who has called you out of darkness

into his marvelous light. And so what would it look like for you to talk about the amazingness of Jesus to people? You're called to do that.

Yeah. One of the ironies I always feel as a pastor is, on the one hand, I totally understand how people feel inadequate to share the gospel. I get that. I get the feelings of fear, of rejection, of, well, what if they bring up an objection that I don't know the answer to?

I understand that. But at the same time, I sort of feel this, there's an irony in that. I'm like, well, I'm a pastor and you think that I should go and do this because I'd be equipped for it. But the irony is that nobody will listen to me because I'm a pastor. You know, they're like, of course you're going to say that, you know, you're a pastor.

Right. You're, you know, as a Christian out in the workplace, you're out in your neighborhood or whatever, your testimony is actually much more, usually much more effective than mine because you're out there living life right alongside of them and they're like, oh, well you believe in this Jesus guy and you care

and you're passionate about it enough to share it with me. So it's kind of ironic sometimes that, yeah, I might have studied harder and have some more apologetic answers, but actually I think you're probably more effective out there because you're right there next to them.

They feel like you're their peer and they're ready to hear from you. Yeah, can I jump on something that you said earlier? You're talking about like the gift of evangelism and you equated it to singing. Do you think that's a fair comparison to say even like, you know, there are some people who are probably clearly more gifted than others in singing and yet we're all called to sing, you know, to worship together when we join together. Do you feel like that's a good comparison?

Yeah, yeah, I think that is a fair, I do meet people that, man, they are gifted, called evangelists. Yeah. And they have kind of that spiritual makeup to where they seem to have their antenna up more. They seem to be able to make connections winsomely and lovingly and to unbelievers faster.

And it's just like a reflex. They just, they go there. Now that could also just be from years of training and praying and growing into Christ likeness. But I do think there is a similarity. We could also use the analogy of pastoring.

Yeah, pastors are called uniquely to care for the whole church of God, who they're passing, shepherd the flock of God that is among you, to care for those that are among you. Well, and so we go from that to the wide, the wide application.

Well, then you also have Christians who are also called to care for one another, love one another, bear one another's burdens, weep together, rejoice together. So there's also that dynamic of Hebrews 10 to care for one another, exhort one another every day,

as long as it's called today, and not neglecting to meet together as is the habit of some. And so there's both of these elements. There's kind of the large application and then I think the day to day application. So I think for people who are like, well, I don't really feel called to it. Yeah, you may not have that. I'm going to go be an evangelist. I'm going to be baptizing and sharing the gospel with hundreds of people every year and all that.

You may not. But people, you have the small application of other texts, other verses, other ways to obey Christ. Then I think also there's the more natural, you know, we talk about what we're excited about.

Yeah.

Awesome. In the book, I actually love the way you describe personal evangelism, one of the six principles. Can you, just for our listeners, what did you title that chapter? Tell us a quick snippet of it, because I remember it just being so simple and organic, the way you framed it. Yeah, you may have to help me.

It's been so long since I wrote it. I don't remember. I don't remember what it says. So, okay, I think it's, so that's six Ps for the whole book. And the first one is praying for conversions. The second one is the posture of a soul winning church. The third key is the preparing for new converts. That's through good works and kind of rolling out that red carpet doing good works, setting up gospel conversations. And then for personal evangelism, we defined it as just telling people how awesome Jesus is.

That's the part that I remember. I couldn't remember exactly the chapter title, but that's the part I remember. Just telling people how awesome Jesus is. That was the concept that I walked away with. That's a beautiful, simple principle for how to go about it. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, it's, it's, we can, we can really like muddy the waters of evangelism by feeling like, okay, I need to talk about this and you talk about this.

I can talk about this cultural issue, talk about that. Well, that, that may happen, but at bare minimum, I mean, at foundation, begin with, here's how Jesus is amazing. And you could talk about his love, talk about his mercy. So we base all this on 1 Peter 2, 9. You've been called out of darkness into his marvelous light to proclaim the

excellencies of him who's called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. That's the text. And so to begin with, proclaim his excellencies. Yeah. Like how excellent is Jesus? How amazing is Christ? Talk about proclaim those things. And definitely we should be talking about the cross, what he did for us, dying for

our sins and our place being our substitute, that he would take our shame and our condemnation and our guilt and our, our full on wretchedness, and that he would die for us to redeem us, to take those things away from us and exchange with us his righteousness, his perfection, his holiness, his right standing before the Father. And now He's risen from the dead, His cerebral cortex turned back on Easter morning and blood's pumping through His veins again like a busy subway tunnel.

And He's alive in the heavenly places. Like that Jesus is a great friend, that He is our Lord, our King, that He raises a man from the dead. He puts a man's ear back on that's been cut off. He heals a woman who's had medical issue for many, many, many years. And he does all of this not looking for a boomerang payback, but because he is a God of grace and mercy.

Yeah.

I think Jesus is just so amazing that if we could proclaim his excellencies, have a personal, we know Jesus, we use the phrase, our personal Lord and Savior, which is great, but also have him be your like, your personal subject, like he's got to be personal to you too. He's a real life, real life, living, breathing person that has a personality has all the things that just like you and us, you and I, like all of us, we've got personalities, we've got likes and dislikes, and there are things that are intriguing about us and interesting.

And Jesus is the same way. And I think the more we could talk about the amazingness of Christ, like the analogy I use in the book is Jenny's ice cream. Do you guys have Jenny's ice cream up there? Have you had it up in Michigan? Okay, well, they got it at Whole Foods, I think they got it at Kroger,

maybe Target. It's a boutique, fancy schmancy ice cream. It's very good. And what I like about it is, when you eat Ben and Jerry's or eat some other kind of specialty ice cream, there's good bites and there's other bites where you're kind of like, where's the stuff? There's no fudge swirl, there's no potato crumble, there's no crackling pretzels in here. What are we doing? But in Jenny's, guys, I mean, in Jenny's ice cream, every bite is omnipresent.

That's awesome.

It's, the flavors are all there. It's amazing. And so we went to the shop in Houston with some friends, and as we were eating it, I was just blown away by how good this is. And we, you know, the next day I'm telling people, you got to go get this stuff. You got to, I mean, I'm talking, I talk about it in a book. I'm

talking about it in a podcast. Why? Well, because I enjoyed it. You know, like what didn't happen was the manager at Jenny's and city center of Houston didn't have to tell me as I was leaving, Hey, want to let you know, it seems like you enjoyed it, but here's a pamphlet for how to talk about our ice cream compared to all the other ice creams of the world and how to how to talk to people who are going to object to Jenny's ice cream. Like none of that had to happen. Right. Because enjoyment is the accelerant in evangelism. Yeah. That's that's huge for us to see that enjoyment is the accelerant in evangelism, that the more we're enjoying Christ,

enjoying His grace, enjoying the Word, enjoying the Father, enjoying the Holy Spirit, then evangelism becomes a natural overflow out of enjoyment.

Right.

And when people do, you know, so you share your enjoyment in Jesus, and when people do raise some of the tough objections or tough questions, I think it's okay to just say, well, you know what, I don't know a great answer to that right now, but I'd be happy to come back to you

with an answer, you know? Yeah. So just leading off with, yeah, your joy in Jesus, and if they raise tough questions, just be honest and just say, you know, I don't know a great answer to that,

but here's maybe what I think, or let me talk to my pastor or read a book or something and get back to you. I think that's a great way to go.

Yeah, absolutely, because clearly they don't know. So for you to say you don't know is like, well, I guess we're on the same footing here.

Right, right.

You're not like, oh man, I should have known. They don't know. You're right on the same bus with them. The difference is that we know who's driving, that Jesus is in control. So yeah, don't worry about that.

So Jeff, thinking about, so beyond the individual, to hold churches and having a culture of evangelism in churches, can you paint a picture for us? What does it look like in a church to have a culture of soul winning of evangelism? I think it begins with, it does begin with the pastors for sure,

begins there. It can't stay there. That's kind of the key, is that if you just have the pastors evangelizing, the pastors are the one leading people to Christ, they're doing all the baptisms, all the testimonies are connected to them. I mean, praise the Lord, but we want the whole church to be doing those exact same things. So I think the pastors are kind of like the pace car for evangelism, for setting that tone,

setting that culture. And so I think you lead by example, you lead by telling stories, you lead by training, and all that stuff is great. But you also wanna see some ownership of it throughout the church too.

What happens, maybe could you give us a warning of when churches don't have a culture of evangelism or they don't have the heart for it, what's the danger in missing this?

I think one of the dangers is there's multiple for sure. And so in no particular order, I think one of them is a danger is that if the church continues to grow and there's not this culture of evangelism, seeking the lost, new converts. What's really happening then in this growth is just transfer growth from other churches. Now, maybe Christians are moving in to the city,

moving into that part of town, and like, oh, we're coming from Alabama, and we just moved to North Carolina. Like, okay, great, yeah, man, find a healthy, you know, gospel-centered church that's gonna serve you, and all that, and you can grow, and all that.

But part of it is you want to be a church that's also on mission. And so if a church is just growing by transfer growth, like, I just don't think that's healthy. What should be happening is the mission mode, that when a church has mission and it stays in there, it wants to see people come to know Christ, it's fulfilling the Great Commission, walking in the Great Commission to make disciples, that's not just growing disciples, it's making them, seeing people get born again

and then teaching them how to walk with Jesus. But so a church that's not in mission mode and just stays in maintenance mode, what will eventually happen is that church will then slowly ebb into museum mode. It's filled with memories of the past.

Yeah. Remember those years, remember that, and there's no new stories, no new testimonies, no new converts. So they're really missing out, I think, on the full picture of what it means to be the local church. So those would be some of my fears and concerns.

And I think it also kind of stunts our own, not just church-wide growth, but also our own individual spiritual formation. That to become like Christ, to be more like Christ, is to also be on mission for Christ. The Son of Man came to seek and save the lost. And so we're going to be like Christ, we're going to tell them about the Son of Man who came to seek and save the lost. So we go out and seek and point people to Christ. So we want to be a part of saving them too, as the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 9, he says,

I become all things to all people that I might by all means save some. So that he feels this dimension of, well, I want to be a part of saving people. He says that I might save some. Well, we know that Paul is not the one saving them. That's the same guy that wrote Romans 8 and Romans 9 and Ephesians 1. Yeah.

So it's like this, there is no duality between the high view of God's sovereignty and high urgency and soul winning. So I think if we're missing out on that we're stunting our own spiritual growth, our own formation. Yeah. And we need to be encouraged. So if a pastor or an elder, Sunday school teacher, church leader listening, if they're trying to evaluate how are they doing and how's their church doing, what kind of, how could they go about evaluating their own

their own church in relation to this? Yeah I would say there is a survey in the back of the book. I think it's in the conclusion, maybe, that's got the six chapters and then a grid laid out from like one to ten, where you could kind of just, there's no perfect way to score this, just kind of your own, like, yeah, I think we're here. Like, how often are we praying for conversions? How often do I? When's the last time I prayed for somebody to get saved? When's the last time I prayed for my own boldness and evangelism? Do we have any elements and environments on our Sunday morning or

in our week for praying for new converts? Is it an agenda item on every staff or every pastor's, every elder meeting? Is that on there? And just kind of looking at what's the culture? Would people look at your church and think, man, that is a church that prays, that prays for the lost. So it kind of begin there. And then you think about what's our posture? Are we known for this? Are we known for that? How do we prepare for conversions? Are we doing good work? So we engage in our community? Or is it with gospel intention as well? Or is it just, yeah, we do a couple things, we send some money, and that's it.

Then, I mean, personal evangelism, that's the easiest one to really grade on your own is like, do I do this?

Yeah.

Do we see it reflected in the baptisms of our church?

Well, that's something I think it's so easy to be like, well, somebody in my church is doing this. You know, this personal evangelism thing. Well, I'm not doing it, but somebody in my church is doing it. This is happening.

Yeah, that's great. You gotta ask the question yourself, am I doing this? Am I actually practicing what we're preaching here.

Yeah. And I don't want it to be, I don't know, I think the Lord wants it to be definitely not to be like a condemnation, guilt inducing kind of thing, because we we all have areas in our Christian life where like, yeah, I'm not where I want to be. So, of course, it's not it should not be totally surprising that we look at areas of our Christian life and of our church life and go, yeah, we got some growth to do. Yeah, of course we do.

So take the next step. So last question I want to ask you, Jeff, is tie the string for us from what we're talking about now, soul winning to church planting, which is something that you spend a lot of time for yourself doing. And it's something that we're passionate as well. We have the privilege of being part of a church that's getting to plant churches

right now and praise God for that. But tie the string for us from this everyday evangelism going on in the church to church planting. Church planting, biblical church planting. What we are trying to do at Syn Network here with the Southern Baptist Convention and the North American Mission Board, biblical church planting is not just service starting. And that is often a lot of what happens in North America is guys think I'm going to get my Squarespace site.

I'm going to get my donut wall. I'm going to get our sweet graphics and check-in system. We're going to launch this service and boom, boom, boom. That no, that that is just not biblical. It's not the way it operates. That may have worked in the United States for a while, but that's

beginning to work less and less. And thanks be to God for that. Because we need biblical church planting that doesn't just want to be involved in the sheep trade market, swapping sheep to the newer, cooler church that serves, you know, that has a barista on Sunday mornings. What we want to see is the church that is involved in the miracle market of people being

raised from the dead. And that happens through evangelism. And so soul winning is really the first ministry. Evangelism really is the first step in church planting. Amen. Awesome. Well, Jeff, thanks so much for the conversation. We appreciate it a ton. Everybody who's listening, thank you so much. You can find Jeff. Where can you find Jeff online? You can find me, let's see, probably first would be jametters.com. You can find me there and other

books and all that other good stuff. Then you can find a link to my Substack newsletter. You can go there, but it's also spiritualtheology.net. If you enjoy Charles Spurgeon, you may enjoy that. I do a Spurgeon Saturday. Share a great Spurgeon quote. Every Saturday, yeah.

Yeah, so you can go find that. You can also find me on Twitter, at Mr. Meaders, and you can find Instagram, threads, at Jeff Meaders. All that good stuff's there. And then the New Churches podcast.

So if you're into church planning and you're interested, definitely go check out the New Churches podcast. We just wrapped up a season going through the book of Titus and applying it to church planners. And you can find articles and everything that I edit and write at newchurches.com.

Perfect.

Can I ask one more question? Is there any, are there any other projects that you're working on right now that you can share with us that we can look forward to?

Yeah, yeah, I'd be happy to. Thanks, thanks brother. I have a new book coming out in January called The Risen King. It's 40 devotions for Easter with Charles Spurgeon. Oh, awesome. So I took a bunch of different excerpts and things from old Chuck and compiled them, put

them together to make it feel like a brand new book from him on a devotional for Easter. I'm doing some study notes right now in a new, I don't even know, hopefully I can share this, in a new ESV study Bible for kids. Very cool. That's coming out in a few years. Yeah, so I'm thankful to be doing Song of Songs.

And I know. I may have first and second Thessalonians.

What an easy assignment.

Song of Songs for kids. Yeah.

Yes. Yeah. I think they asked me because I'm doing my PhD work. I'm almost about to, getting close to graduating, PhD work in Charles Spurgeon in the Song of Solomon. That's what my dissertation is on. So definitely a Christ-centered, Christ-focused interpretation of those. Then I have another book, another Spurgeon book, The Newborn King.

That'll come out in 2026. So very like The Risen King. This will be 25 devotions for Advent that'll come out. And then I'm working on an ebook through new churches called Theology for Church Planters and my dissertation and two projects that I'd be a co-editor on that I'm not ready to share yet. But hopefully.

Lots of writing going on. Yeah, yeah, too much, too much. Hopefully in the next year, maybe in late 2025, I can share more. Very cool, awesome.

Well, thanks again, Jeff,

and thanks to everybody who's listening. You can always follow resound media at resound media

CC or Instagram YouTube or tick-tock. Have a great week everybody CC or Instagram YouTube or tick-tock. Have a great week everybody

Bye!