G'day Dave here.

I know it's been a few weeks since our last

episode.

The good news is that very soon we're going to

kick off with a brand new series.

We're going to be looking at the first half of

John's gospel and exploring.

The life of Jesus.

While you're waiting for that, I thought I'd put up something a little bit different

here.

This one is more for the grown ups, but kids

can listen too, if they'd like to.

I was recently interviewed on the Affective

ministry podcast.

The effective ministry podcast is an excellent

podcast aimed at helping people think about ministering to youth and children.

It's a ministry of Youth Works, the Youth and Children ministry wing of the Sydney Anglican

Church, and they cover a whole variety of things.

I've really benefited from some of their other episodes that they've published.

They're always interviewing thoughtful people who are trying to help young people know

Jesus.

If you're involved with that in any way, as a

parent, grandparent, Sunday school teacher, youth group leader, pastor, chaplain, I'd

encourage you to think about the effective ministry podcast.

You should be able to find it on whatever app you're listening on at the moment.

I hope you enjoy this.

Welcome back to the effective ministry podcast, the podcast that helps you

have an effective youth and children's ministry in your local church.

My name is Tim Bielhartz.

I'm a children's ministry advisor for

youthworks in Sydney, and I'm back from holidays.

Apologies for the lack of episodes over the last two weeks.

I had hoped that I would get something edited and uploaded for while I was away, but that

did not quite eventuate as I had hoped.

Hopefully you were able to fill your eardrums

with enough other content.

I know that I'm never short of podcast

episodes in my feed to listen to while I'm driving or running or walking the dog.

And speaking of other podcasts, today I'm joined on the podcast by Dave Whittingham, who

is the host of two excellent podcasts, stories of a faithful God and stories of a faithful

God for kids.

Dave reached out to me at our email address,

effectiveministrypodcastworks.net dot, and he expressed his appreciation for this podcast

and said that what he's been working on in his own podcasts is to have some content with the

vision to help parents and children engage with the Bible.

I've given both of these feeds a good listen and was greatly encouraged by the work that

Dave is doing.

So I caught up Dave and we had a chat about

the podcast and how families might use them as an extra resource during the week to help

young people grow in their knowledge, love and obedience to King Jesus.

Now, how does this help you have an effective youth and children's ministry in your local

church? Well, we know that as ministry leaders, we

only have a short time with our young people each week.

But the amount of time that they have with their families and the amount of time that

they spend on digital media far outweighs the time that we have with them.

So being able to resource children and families with extra ways to dig deep into gods

word is an important way that we can fulfil our ministry to children and teenagers.

So enjoy this episode with Dave Whittingham and stick around at the end of the episode for

a sneak peek at one of the episodes of his podcasts.

Stories of a faithful God for kids.

I'm here with Dave Whittingham.

Thanks for coming on the podcast, Dave.

Oh, thank you for having me.

It's exciting.

Absolute pleasure.

Do you want to give us a short intro to

yourself? How did you become a Christian?

How did you get into ministry?

Yeah, didn't grow up in a christian family.

First heard the gospel in SRE, so shout out to all the SRE teachers and God kept putting

people in my way.

So sre Christian campsite youth works.

But they were camp Howard camps back then.

Started going to church, but it all came

together for me in hearing a Bible story, funnily enough, but someone told the story of

Simon Peter as he rejected Jesus.

They spoke in the first person as though they

were Simon Peter.

And here was a guy who knew all this stuff

about Jesus and should have responded appropriately, but wasn't doing that.

And I thought, I know all that stuff and I'm not responding appropriately.

And so I had to do business with Jesus and actually treat him as he really is.

Yeah.

So that was about year eight and been great

since then.

Got into ministry.

I studied primary teaching after school, and I really enjoyed hanging out with kids, teaching

kids that sort of thing, but became convicted that if I could use those teaching skills to

teach people about Jesus, then I should do that.

And so people encouraged me in that direction, and that's the direction I went.

Fantastic.

We're here to talk particularly about your

podcast series.

There's the two versions of here, stories of a

faithful goddess and stories of a faithful God for kids.

Can you tell us, what are these podcasts? What are they seeking to achieve?

Yes.

So both podcasts are retelling Bible narrative, retelling Bible stories, I tell the

same stories in both, but in slightly a different way.

The stories of a faithful God is very much a deep dive.

So they're longer episodes, anywhere from half an hour, but more likely up towards an hour, a

lot more detail.

But in saying that it's not meant to be like a

dry commentary, I'm trying to retell a story with all the drama and action and vibrancy

that God does in telling the story.

And so trying to use that and capture that and

help us hear those stories in a fresh way.

The kids one I'm doing in just shorter, bite

sized chunks, but again, trying to get the detail and grapple with the detail so that we

can hear that in a new, exciting way.

I think there's a danger, particularly for

kids, as we teach kids, that we start telling stories in the same way and they hear it the

same way over and over again.

And it's a, it's quite a condensed way.

And so when they get towards the end of primary school, they start to think, I've

heard all these stories before, you know, and I can leave the Bible behind with me in

primary school as I head off, because I know it all and I want to help them and help us

hear that.

Actually, no, God has so much to say and it's

really exciting and wonderful.

What was inspired you to go in this direction, to use your ministry gifts,

your skills, your primary teaching, youre a theological study and put it towards this

effort? Where did that come from?

Yeah, I was thinking about that, and there were so many things that have sort of

come together for it.

One, I love stories.

I love reading stories, whether they be fiction or history particularly.

I was sitting in a car with a couple of christian guys and they said, oh, you know,

one of them said, what are you reading at the moment?

And one guy was reading about prayer and how to be a better prayer and how to make that

part of his life.

Another guy was reading about how to, how to

be a better christian husband and how to bring the Bible to bear on that.

Then they said, dave, what are you reading? And I said, oh, I'm reading a book called a

thousand years of annoying the French.

And it was a history book about the history of

between England and France, because I just love stories.

So that was one thing at Moore College when I was going through there, I realized that all

these stories that I love reading, all the skill of good storytelling, God actually does.

He is an awesome storyteller and he's even shaped history to tell those stories really,

really well.

I mean, just think about the tension of when.

When God tells a story about Jesus and Lazarus, and Jesus hears that his really good

friend is sick, and so obviously, you know what he's going to do?

He's going to go down and visit him.

But instead, Jesus stays.

He sits still for two days, and you think, what's going to happen?

That's God telling the story and shaping history to tell the story really well.

There were things about myself personally that, you know, as I preached, people said,

you know, you're easy to understand and listen to.

And people from non english speaking backgrounds as well, sometimes they struggle a

bit more with us white Aussie blokes.

But for whatever reason, they found that

helpful.

I think I had a growing awareness.

You know, as evangelicals, we're very bookish people.

We think a lot.

We think deeply about things, but at the same

time, we also.

We do a lot of hand wringing and think there

are certain sections of society that we're not very good at reaching.

And we try and wonder, why is that? As I sort of thought about those sort of

things, discovered some things, like, 44% of Australians are functionally illiterate.

That means they can't read the instructions on the Panadol packet.

They can't read the street signs they're going to.

That's 44%.

And then a whole bunch of other people will

never pick up a book, even though they can.

And we often want to put a book in people's

hands, and there's good things about that.

I mean, we're people of the book, we're people

of the Bible.

But for so many people in our society, they're

just not up for that.

And I was starting to discover podcasting and

how good podcasting is.

I was listening to a lot of history podcasts

and thinking, oh, we've got stories to tell.

So that was.

That was exciting.

And my last job, last ministry job has been as

a chaplain and a chaplain in a school.

And as I was doing that, I was putting

together free resources for kids to listen to at home.

So I set up a playlist of songs on Spotify.

And I had all these non christian parents

coming up to me and saying, hey, we're listening to all these songs in the car.

And we find it a bit weird because, you know, we've never heard any of that stuff.

But I thought, so people want to hear that sort of stuff.

They're listening to stuff in their car.

They're looking for content.

Let's do it with bible stories.

But I didn't have the time to do it while I

was, you know, school is just really busy.

Yeah.

So I didn't have the time.

But then when that position came to an end, I

was like, oh, I can do this now.

I can put the time into making some quality

podcasts and got really excited about doing that.

You've started to touch on this, but what is the particular value of the

podcasting format, particularly when you're trying to reach families or children as well

as the adults?

Yeah, look, you can listen to podcasts anywhere, anytime.

People are doing it in their cars, people are doing it as their kids are going to sleep,

people are doing it as they're walking to work or driving to school.

So it's wonderful in that sense.

You need to be able to sit down to read a

book, but for a podcast, you can do it while you're doing something else.

So, yeah, as you said, you've got these two different streams.

So there's the stream for adults, which goes in depth.

There's a bit longer stream for kids, which bite sized chunks more accessible for children

in terms of language and storytelling.

Did you have an in mind which one was going to

come first and the other one spun off that, or was it intentional to build them both

together? Where did that thinking come from?

Yeah, I think originally I was thinking about the kids one because of that role as the

chaplain.

I was thinking, here is a tool that I can use.

But then I thought, well, if I'm going to do all the work and the research for getting a

passage ready, I may as well do some double dipping and do it for adults as well.

But also, I think there are different sort of adults.

So there are adults who are going to sit down, they're going to listen to a podcast that's

going to tell them, here are five points you need to know about the Trinity.

Here are ten points on your doctrine of scripture.

And that's going to really be helpful for some people.

But so much of the Bible is narrative, and God teaches through narrative.

And I think often, particularly as evangelicals, we might miss out on the some of

that.

And so to be able to sit in the story, even as

an adult and enjoy hearing the way that God brought that information to us, I think we can

really enjoy that.

Like, you know, you take a topic like the

Trinity.

How does God start teaching about the trinity

in the New Testament? Well, he gives us four gospels and he says,

just watch Jesus over three years and see, look, here he is praying to the father, he's

praying to God, and yet he's calming the storm, which is something only God can do.

Oh, and now he wants to ask his father to send the spirit.

And so I guess you see it within the framework of the narrative, and you get to enjoy the

good story as that develops and grows.

Had lots of reasons for doing it for adults as

well.

As I've listened to a number of episodes, the children's version was very easy

to listen to, action packed.

You got a great storytelling voice.

It comes across really clearly.

I was listening to the adults one.

I was thinking, oh, I really like this as well.

Again, easy to listen to.

It's very narrative.

But the question in my mind was, I wonder what the process is like for you as you prepare to

a storytelling podcast on Exodus or Elijah or Jonah, as opposed to doing a sermon.

So, you know, you've got ministry experience.

You've preached in churches, you've done

regular adult ministry, quote unquote, as well as children's ministry.

What's that process like for you as you've developed the scripting for one man, 45

minutes, 50 minutes narrative podcast instead of a sermon?

So, in terms of preparation and presenting, preparation is exactly the same as

for, you know, if I'm leading a Bible study or preaching or anything like that, you know, I

need to understand the passage and do my own work there.

But in terms of presenting and bringing this out, there are a couple of things.

Some things are harder than, say, if I'm preaching, some things are more fun.

Um, so the harder thing is that I actually don't know the people I'm speaking to.

Um, it's been listened to in 24 different countries, and, you know, is someone over in

America, are they dying of cancer? Uh, is their marriage falling apart?

I don't know.

Um, so, you know, when your.

When your pastor is preaching to you, they are actually bringing the word of God to you

specifically.

And that comes out in their preparation and

in, uh, in how they're presenting it.

So I do miss that, and I miss seeing people

face to face and chatting to people afterwards.

But on the flip side, there's some really good things.

So I get to sit a lot more in the passage, have a lot more time, have that deeper dive in

the passage.

So, for example, there's a passage in exodus

that I recently preached on in a local church, and that was probably a 25 minutes sermon.

I.

And about a third of that was explicitly me talking about some of the pastoral

implications of that passage.

So two thirds of that 25 minutes sitting in

the passage, whereas when I did podcast on that the podcast went for an hour, and maybe

five to 10% of that was specifically drawing out some pastoral implications.

The whole thing is pastoral, but most of it was spent sitting in the passage, enjoying

God, enjoying the, I guess, the narrative structure and flow of that, and having God

tell us the story in that way.

And so those really different experiences in

terms of the presentation, you've done theological.

Study, you've done primary school education study.

I'm just thinking pedagogically.

I remember hearing years ago someone making

the quip, you know, God could have just given us the list of doctrines as a bullet points,

but he didn't.

He gave us narrative.

From your sort of educational and pedagogical perspective, what's going on there?

Like, what is it about narrative that actually teaches us about God and his character?

Why didn't God just give us an encyclopedia with dot points that he told us everything

that we needed to know? What's going on with narrative?

Yeah, that's a good question.

I didn't know you were gonna ask me that one.

Look, when I married my wife, there's a roundabout way to get there.

When I married my wife, I'd known her for, I don't know, three years, maybe three, four

years.

And she knew certain things about me, and we

made promises to each other, and that was good.

But now, after 24 years of marriage, the things that she knows about me are so much

more and so much deeper and richer, more embarrassing in lots of ways, but she knows me

really, really well.

If we just got the dot points, you can, you

know, anyone can say stuff about them, about themselves, and it might be true, it might not

be true, but when you have that lived experience, when you see it happening day to

day and year to year, you actually see, is that true?

Is that trustworthy? So if God.

So stories of a faithful God, if God says, hey, I'm really faithful, and that's all you

had to go on, how would you know if that's true?

But actually, God's given us a story from creation to now to the end of creation, where

he shows time and time again that he's faithful.

You know, he could say that he's loving, but how do you know if that's, know if that's

true? Well, look at the cross.

Look at the story of the cross and what happens there, and the.

The detail of what Jesus, through demonstrating that love.

So you could, you could take that of any characteristic, and they all come out through

that narrative, which is then backed up by all the other stuff in the bible where God just

states it, but in the narrative you see it in action and you know that, you know, God can't

hide at that point, and he's telling us the truth.

We'll continue with the rest of the podcast soon, but before we do, I'm here

with my colleague Al James, who is also the director of House conference, which is coming

up really soon on the 27th to the 29 August.

Al, for those of us who do not yet know,

remind us what House conference is.

Yeah, House conference is essentially this.

It's a theology to practice conference for kids and youth ministry, where we think hard

about a theological topic and then we, we work hard to move towards the practice of youth in

kids ministry.

We often think about the practical issues of children's in youth

ministry, but why is it important that we start with theology?

Well, that's exactly as you say.

We do think about the practical issues of kids

in youth ministry, and it's really tempting, or something we often do is we think about the

pragmatics, the things, the tasks that we're going to do in kids in youth ministry, and

then kind of reflect later on the theology and kind of retrofit our theology.

But at Youth west, we really think that it's important that we start with theological

principles, and then we move from those principles to the practice of youth and

children's ministry.

We want to make sure we get the horse before

the cart, not the cart before the horse.

Every year we pick a different theological theme to wrestle with.

What is the theme of this year's conference?

Yeah, this year we're looking at the doctrine of sin, and the subtitle we've got is

the uncomfortable truth, because it could be such a hard thing to talk about.

Our society doesn't like talking about sin at all, and yet we know it's such an essential

and actually a freeing doctrine when we get it right.

So we want to look at a really, I guess, a robust and a holistic understanding of the

doctrine of sin.

And so Michael Jensen and Tom Habib are going

to take us through various aspects of that.

Michael's going to be looking at the language

of sin.

I'm looking at a theology of recovering the

language of sin.

And then Tom Habib is going to take us through

a theology of sin in the Book of John.

So it's a lot to wrestle with.

We're going to have fun on that topic this

year.

Al, for you, what is one of the highlights

when it comes to thinking about house?

The absolute highlight for me is that we get to wrestle with all of the content

that we're being given all the way through.

And we do that with our colleagues.

We talk on tables about all of the stuff that we're looking at, but then we take all of that

wrestling and then we intentionally with our colleagues, land that theology in the practice

of youth and children's ministry in really specific ways.

Well, I'm convinced.

How can I get tickets to house?

Well, registration is open until August 11, so you can go to youthworks.net

house and register there.

Excellent. Well, I'm looking forward to seeing you there, Al, and seeing

our listeners as well.

Thank you very much.

Thanks, Tim.

You talked there about the different characteristics of God, and this is

going to be my next question.

You've called your series stories of a

faithful goddess.

You could have said stories of a loving God,

stories of a compassionate God, stories of a just God.

There's lots of different characteristics which are all true of God's character.

What is it particularly about? Faithfulness.

Why pick that one as your title?

Yeah, yeah.

There were lots of good options and tossed a

lot around.

In the end, I figured, yeah, we're saved by

faith alone, and we continue as Christians through faith alone, through trusting Goddess.

And we trust God because he's trustworthy.

And so if someone is not a Christian, I want

them to know that this God, you're not meant to take this sort of leap into the dark.

You can trust him because he really is trustworthy.

He's faithful.

If you're continuing as a Christian, don't

forget that he's faithful in whatever moment of your life there is.

You know, if you're dying of cancer, God is faithful.

If you're appointing a minister in church and God's told you that the key characteristic to

look for in that minister is godliness, do you trust him or do you want to look for

everything that the world looks for? There are all sort of sorts of pastoral

situations.

Sin comes out of our lack of trust of God.

So Adam and Eve had the choice, you know, is God telling us the truth when he says we'll

die if we eat that fruit? Or is he lying?

Do we trust him or not? And they said, he's lying, he's not

trustworthy.

And so they sinned.

And that was devastating.

On the flip side, when David's going through

horrible times, he reflects back on what God's done in the past, and he says, you know what?

God has been faithful.

I read about the stories of Abraham, Isaac and

Jacob.

I see what he's done and I know he was

trustworthy then and so I can trust him now.

And so that characteristic, you could pick up

on any characteristic, but that seems at the heart of the christian life.

You know, John, in his gospel, he talks about why he wrote his gospel and he says, so that

you may believe that Jesus is the Christ.

You know, it's like trusting.

And there's a great thing there in the Greek of, you know, some texts make it sound like so

that you can start believing and some, you know, is it so that you continue to believe?

But actually in the context of John's gospel, both are completely true, aren't they?

And that's what we need to keep having.

And so let's keep reflecting on God and saying

I can trust him in all these situations.

But of course, as we do that, we keep bouncing

into all the other characteristics of God because none of them stand alone.

We see his power, we see his love, we see his justice, we see his mercy.

That's great.

One of our principles at youth works is to

have churches partner with parents.

And that's a really key thing that we're

trying to do with this particular episode, is to honor you and the ministry you're doing.

And it's one of the ways that most of us who are listening are in parish children's and

youth ministers, and we can be equipping parents and partnering with them and helping

them walk alongside their kids and continue to just offer them in the home.

We know the home is so important in terms of faith formation.

Yeah, I've got four kids and I think I was listening to one of your previous podcasts

where a couple of parents talked about how they had no formula for parenting.

And I think that's right.

But if you want to help your kids, be

Christian, one of the key things to do is to love Jesus yourself and keep working out how

to live for Jesus yourself.

And so don't think, oh yeah, I've got to tell

my kids the Bible stories.

Think first, how am I reflecting on God and

getting to know God better? So I want to encourage parents to listen to

those longer podcasts, keep coming back to that enjoyment of God, but then listen with

your kids and listen to those kids ones and help them to enjoy it.

I mean, I've been talking to parents about ways that they're using it and all sorts of

different ways.

So don't stop reading the Bible.

I want to say that really firmly.

Don't stop having your sort of Bible time with

your kids next to you and snuggling in and reading the Bible for yourselves, but use the

podcast at any other time.

So there's some.

There's one family where they listen to it as the kids are getting ready for school.

And that used to be a really hectic time, but now they're calm and they listen to that.

There are some families where the kids can't go to sleep unless they've listened to an

episode.

And the kids, the parents are getting really

sick of the jokes, hearing the jokes over and over again.

But that's okay.

The kids love them.

I know one dad who's listening with his daughters, and it's just a new, fresh way,

just a different way to get more bible into your life.

Now the family are doing it over dessert.

We want to get more bible into our lives.

This is a way to do it.

But also I want to encourage people to use it

for evangelism.

So a lot of people won't step into a church or

they won't go to a course or pick up a bible or that sort of thing.

Talk to your kids about how we could use this for evangelism.

If they go to a christian school, if they go to a or anglican school, whatever it is, get

them talking to the chaplain saying, hey, we're listening to this.

Can we promote it? And you might find kids that are from

completely non christian homes don't listen to anything else like this.

Just start to listen to it because they really like it.

And talk to your kids about how they can become advocates for tools that will help

their friends hear the gospel.

Absolutely.

Dave, thank you so much for jumping on the

podcast.

We're going to have a listen now to a bit of a

snapshot of one of those stories of a faithful God for kids so people can get a good glimpse

of what it's like, and they can recommend that in good conscience to their families and the

people in their churches.

But thanks so much for jumping on, Dave.

Really appreciate it.

Awesome.

Thank you so much for having me on.

Okay, are you ready for the showdown? Here it goes.

Elijah's called a meeting at a place called Mount Carmel.

King Ahab's there.

The 450 prophets of Baal are there, 400

prophets of Asherah are there, and all the people of Israel are there.

Elijah gets up in front of all the people and he gives them a really simple speech.

He tells them to stop flopping around between Baal and the Lord.

Work out which one is God and go with him.

This is what he says in verse 21.

He says, how long will you try to serve both Baal and the Lord.

If the Lord is the true God, follow him.

But if Baal is the true God, follow him.

It's pretty simple, isn't it? It's like if you were standing in front of two

things.

On one side, you've got chocolate ice cream.

On the other, there's a lump of wood, and it's dessert time.

And your sister's like, look, work out which one you want to eat, grab it and go.

But you really want to eat both the ice cream and the wood.

It's craziness, but that's what the people of Israel are like.

And you can tell from their response.

Elijah's put things really simply and

obviously.

And how do the people respond?

With silence.

They say nothing.

Like when you've been caught doing something really silly and you stand there looking

guilty, but you really want to keep doing the silly thing.

Elijah says, okay, okay, okay.

Let's have a competition to work this out once

and for all.

We'll even make sure that it's much easier for

Baal than for the Lord.

I mean, there's only one of me.

Baal has 450 prophets.

This should be easy for Baal.

Here's what we're gonna do.

You bring two bulls, one for each team.

The prophets of Baal can choose first, so I don't sneakily get the better one.

We'll both sacrifice the bulls, chop them up, and put them on an altar for our God.

You prophets of Baal, you pray to Baal, and I'll pray to the Lord.

And whichever God sets fire to the wood, he's the real God.

And all the people say, great, we love that idea.

Again, Elijah wants to make it as easy as possible for Baal.

So he says to the prophets of Baal, look, there are so many of you.

How about you go first, get your sacrifice ready.

Pray to Baal, but don't set the wood on fire.

No cheating.

Verse 26 says so.

They took the bull that was given to them and

prepared it.

They prayed to Baal from morning until noon.

Uh, what? They're praying from morning until the middle

of the day.

That feels like a long time.

They're obviously really into it.

They're dancing around the altar.

They're shouting out, Baal, answer us.

Baal, answer us.

Baal, answer us.

For hours and hours and hours, and the Bible

tells us.

But there was no sound.

No one answered.

How different is that to the Lord God of

Israel? Remember when Elijah prayed and asked God to

raise a dead boy to life? That's much harder than starting a small fire.

But God answered then, for the prophets of Baal, this is starting to get a little bit

embarrassing.

And Elijah wants to help that along.

To show just how silly it all is.

He starts making fun of them.

He says, hey, pray louder.

He's a God, after all.

Maybe he's too busy thinking, or he's gone on a long trip, or he's sleeping.

Maybe.

Maybe he's on the toilet.

He's saying, perhaps you've just got to bang

on the door of heaven really loudly for Baal to hear you.

He's just being silly.

But that's exactly what they try and do.

They work really hard to make Baal notice

them.

Verse 28 says this.

So the prophets prayed louder.

They cut themselves with swords and spears

until their blood flowed.

This was the way they worshipped.

Ouch.

Isn't that sad?

They think they have to hurt themselves to get Baal to pay any attention to them.

It's so different to God, who sent Jesus to die for us so we wouldn't have to suffer any

punishment.

These prophets rave on for hour after hour

after hour, yelling louder and louder, cutting themselves, dancing wildly, right up until the

sun's going down.

And then in verse 29, we readdez.

But no voice was heard.

Baal did not answer.

No one paid attention.

Now it's the Lord's turn.

The Effective Ministry podcast is a production of youth works in Sydney.

We want to see effective youth and children's ministry in every church.

One of the ways that you can help us do that is by letting people know about this podcast

in all the usual ways, like comment, share and review on your favourite social media and

podcasting platform.

If you've got comments, thoughts or questions

for this podcast, you can email us@effectiveministrypodcastoutoutouthworks.net.

and also check out youthworks.net for other ways that youthworks can help you have

effective youth and children's ministry in your church.

Sadeena.