Michael Harvey

Michael Harvey was a director of Aon the largest insurance brokerage in the world before starting his own consultancy. He has helped numerous business and individuals unlock growth and unleash potential. In 2004 Back to Church Sunday was birthed and he started to work with churches throughout the UK and eventually throughout the English speaking world. He has spoken to thousands of church leaders “Unlocking the Growth” Seminars and has to date seen thousands of Christians mobilized to invite, resulting in hundreds of thousands of accepted invitations. Michael Harvey is married to Eike and they have three children Ben, Kirsty and Lydia. He is author of Unlocking the Growth.

You’ve travelled all over the world, often to speak for little more than 15 minutes. Why are you so passionate about this?

An invitation to look at Christianity changed the course of my life. I never lived with my mother and never knew my father (until I was 40) and yet I found a mentor called Frank at the church to which I was invited.  Frank invited me to take a closer look at Jesus and eventually I made a commitment.  This led over the next four decades to a process of being transformed. I want others to be offered the same opportunity to accept or reject Christianity, which I believe is medication for the soul.  Frederick Buechner said our true calling is the place where our deep gladness meets the world’s deep need, and this is why I would gladly speak for fifteen minutes.

You speak a lot about inviting people to church; why church – it’s surely about Jesus, not church. 

Church has got a pretty bad image in the eyes of many Christians never mind those outside of the Church. I know Church is not perfect, but when we have an act of worship I was taught that God would dwell amongst the praises of the people. In fact God would be present. So if God is present as we worship in church why wouldn’t we invite our friends? Jesus does not say where two or three are together doing it perfectly well in my name, then I am with you. So I would say it is all about Jesus, unless we don’t think Jesus is present when we are at worship. That of course does not mean that we shouldn’t also invite people to discover Jesus in other ways – we absolutely do!

You write, “Mission gives us the opportunity to see our broken-heartedness brought into the clear light of day”. Please expand on that.

There are a number of stories in the Bible that highlight God calling people into mission, where their own issues come to the surface. Gideon says, “I am the least of the least”; Moses says, “Who am I”; Simon Peter says, “We have left everything to follow you!” Jesus came to heal broken-heartedness and it is my experience even today that when God is calling the church, the emotional wounds that have never been healed surface. I think we should become as interested in what is happening to the person going on mission as the person being reached. Mission is about formation and healing our broken hearts as well as witness.

Why do you think we are reluctant to invite people? 

The possibility of rejection has grown steadily over the past half-century. There was a time two or three generations ago when good people went to church, then there was a generational change when good people sent their children to church, but they didn’t go anymore. Now neither good people or their children go in the numbers they once did and we have got confused. I think it is easier to invite people when most people would accept your invitation. It is less easy to invite when you might get rejected. Things have changed and we need to have our minds transformed to face the reality of ambivalence, and hostility as well as acceptance of the Christian faith.

We define success in terms of the conversion rate we see but you disagree with that. What is the problem with that way of thinking? 

We need some ratio theology. God invited Moses to invite Pharaoh to let the people go free ten times. God through Moses clearly was not very successful. The sower goes out to sow the seed, some of the seed falls on the path! Oh dear we need a new initiative, it just hasn’t worked! The success of the Sower was he kept on sowing. In addition we would have to severely redact the Acts of the Apostles if we only wanted to include the success. It doesn’t say well done good and successful servant, it says well done good and faithful servant.

You’ve been given a S1m grant to do a science and faith resource. That’s a serious amount of money. Tell us more about it. 

Following up a General Synod debate in 2010 which overwhelming agreed that science and faith were compatible, I was asked to come up with a way of demonstrating its compatibility. The response was starting a Pre-University Young Scientist Day. God and the Big Bang is a school event where we take scientists of faith and we put them with pre-university scientists for a day. The $1 million grant is allowing us access to some of the world’s top research scientists of faith, train up a new generation of science faith speakers and research the projects effectiveness.

Revd Prof David Wilkinson

David Wilkinson, FRAS (born 16 May 1963) is a British minister, theologian, astrophysicist and academic. He is the current Principal of St John’s College, Durham, and a professor in the Department of Theology and Religion at Durham University. He is the author of several books on the relationship between science and religion, and a regular contributor to Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4. He has a PhD in astrophysics and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

You are a scientist and a theologian. Does it feel as though there is conflict between these two worlds when it comes to the subject of prayer?

I’m never felt that there was conflict between science and theology in my own thinking and experience of prayer. But the two ask interesting and sometimes difficult questions of each other – for a lot of people it is the predictable world of a universe which is a bit like a clock which rules out the possibility that God might answer prayer by doing things. But the scientific understanding of today is far more open and subtle than that.

As evangelicals do we have an over-simplified (or perhaps over-complicated) view of prayer? Are there myths that need debunking?

We have a lot of views of prayer that have been shaped by practice and tradition rather than the Bible.  The danger is that in these views you get a corrupted and overly simplistic view of who God is – and a distorted view of God as a divine watchmaker, or a slot machine for faith, or an indulgent parent does not energise or sustain prayer in the long term.

The great thing about the Bible is that it questions overly simplistic views of God and says that the focus of prayer and faith is not the praying believer but God.

What do you think a healthy church prayer culture look like?

A healthy church is honest about answers to prayers and honest about times when prayer is unanswered. It is a place where people can ask the difficult theological questions without shame or embarrassment. And finally, it will be full of people who actually pray rather than just write books or talk about it!

How does this relate to what you think the Bible says about prayer?

There is great honesty in unanswered prayer – from the laments of the Psalmist to Paul asking three times that his thorn in the flesh be taken away.  This gives us permission to be honest and ask questions about prayer.  Most of all we see in the life of Jesus and the apostles post-resurrection the way that prayer infuses their life, their teaching, their evangelism and their writing.

How has out-of-date science – the science many of us were taught in school – impacted our view of prayer?

Rarely does science apologise for misleading the general public – but it had to apologise for giving the impression that Newton’s clockwork world explained everything. People took from that that once you understood the laws of physics you could predict everything about the future. We now know that in theories of quantum systems and chaotic systems (such as the weather) predicting the future absolutely is impossible – the world is more subtle, unpredictable and indeed open than we ever thought before.

I am reticent about saying that God answers prayer through quantum theory – but I do think the discoveries of 20th century physics allow us to have a much more fruitful discussion of science and theology in the context of prayer.

Andy Kind

Andy Kind is a comedian, author and writer-for-hire. He started doing Stand-up on 23rd January 2005. By the September of that year, Andy had gone full-time as a comedian and has made a living from it ever since. He won Anything for Laffs in 2005 and in mid 2013 hurdled over the 1000-gig barrier. Described by The Scotsman as ‘Terrific’, Andy’s stand-up style can best be described as ‘the joyful rant of a post-30 chaos vacuum’, and he has been featured on BBC1, ITV, Channel 4 and supported Tim Vine.

Andy, what’s your new book about?

It’s a comedy novel about a man who wants to be great at his job, but isn’t, and how he deals with that dawning reality. Tom Hillingthwaite has left his cushy lifestyle to become an urban evangelist. He wants to be the best Christian missionary out there, but he’s arguably the worst. His hopes and dreams and expectations of himself don’t match the reality of life – that he’s hapless and hopeless and utterly ridiculous.

The story isn’t about good things happening to Christians or God intervening in a frivolous, cheap way to wrap everything up in a neat little bow. There’s no Deus ex Machina – I’ve been very careful to avoid that. Some of the Christians in the story are horrible; most of the people who are non-Christian are really nice.  The heart of the story is universal and could typically be about anyone.  Ultimately, Tom’s main struggle is that he just wants to be the best at what he does, whereas in reality he’s actually the worst at what he does.

It’s a comedy novel, so it’s primarily a funny story – hopefully with heart and soul.

Why did you write Tom Hillingthwaite?

Initially, I wrote Stand Up and Deliver to branch out from stand-up, and then realised that I was actually capable of writing! The Gig Delusion followed naturally as a sequel. I was still finding my feet at that time – I knew about comedy but not lots about writing and it was the obvious starting point for an idea because you have to write about what you know.

One of the main problems with treating yourself as the main character though is that people have to either know you or buy into you. It’s not like when Martin Smith released his biography – everyone in Christendom knows who he is! I don’t necessarily have the profile for my autobiographical books to be that engaging to those that haven’t heard of me, so I wrote Tom Hillingthwaite to branch out and explore what I think is a much more universal subject. I’m now at a point where I think I can write funnily and cogently about subjects outside of comedy, and of course the experience of being a Christian in a hostile arena is one I relate to. And Tom Hillingthwaite was born.

What are your hopes for the book?

To reclaim Christian comedy from the idea of vicars telling crap jokes. Or rather, to make comedy such a quality, relevant aspect of the Christian world that when people hear the phrase ‘Christian comedy’, they don’t think about cheesiness and blandness.  I would love for comedy writing in the Christian world to become a genre. Adrian Plass has been brilliant –he is fantastic, I love him and he is an amazing guy – but we’ve had nothing more. We have no culture of it. With Tom, I believe I have written something that is as funny as most secular models – I’ve been a pro comedian for 10 years on the comedy circuit, so I should be able to by now. These days, there are a lot of Christians who are professional comics or comedy writers, and so it’s time to make some waves.

Why so many references to Batman in the book?

You have to get to the end to realise what that is about. But basically, Tom wants to be a sort of spiritual superhero – he wants to save the world one soul at the time.

Who has influenced you?

I am a big fan of the Evelyn Waugh, David Nobbs and P.G. Wodehouse. You have to be influenced by the legends in your fields, otherwise you’re not taking it seriously enough. What’s interesting, as I’ve mentioned, is that there is no real culture of comedy writing within the Christian world, so there are very few shoulders to stand on. I’m talking about top-level comedy writing, not just people trying to be humorous.

But I suppose I hope to do what I’ve tried to do with stand-up. When I started in comedy a decade ago I didn’t do any church gigs for two years – I needed to cut my teeth on the comedy circuit and become a good comedian first. Comedy needs to be funny before it earns the right to be anything else. Along with the likes of Paul Kerensa, Tony Vino and others, we’ve slowly raised the profile of comedy performance within the Christian world. Ten years ago there was no comedy at Christian festivals, but there is now. When I did New Wine 2014 there were 100 people at the gig on the first night. By the last night it was 430 – 100 people over capacity.

I want to do the same thing in the written genre – to raise the profile and the expectancy levels.  A key issue is where the jokes come from. Christian comedy in its unhealthy sense is simply jokes about Christianity that only Christians would understand. That’s not my remit either in print or on-stage. In Tom Hillingthwaite, the jokes don’t come out of the fact that Tom is a Christian. They come out of the fact that he is a human being – fallen and failing. The fact that he is a Christian is incidental.

What have you been up to since you published Stand Up and Deliver?

Since publishing Stand Up and Deliver I have been really busy! That book was, I suppose, a ranking up for my career.  Most people who recognise me do so from the cover of the book. It’s become quite familiar and, certainly within the world of comedy, it’s been really well received. Professionally, I feel I’ve developed as an on-stage comedian as a result of writing it and I’ve realised what I am capable of, and all that I still want to achieve within comedy.

Writing the book also helped me realise how little effort I had put into writing my stand-up. Since then, I think I’ve started working a lot harder on my routines.

The main difference since SUAD is that I’ve lost the fear that comedy will be taken away from me – I don’t think I’ll have to get a normal job now! Instead, my fear has been replaced with resolve and discipline. It’s one thing feeling ‘called’ into something, but God isn’t going to do the work for you. Having a published book is an affirmation of what you are doing, which in turn inspires confidence. I want to remain confident about my work and write to the highest of my ability.

Since Stand Up and Deliver I’ve also done some international gigs and I’ve sort of become, in some people’s eyes, the face of Christian comedy, whatever that means. I remember one magazine describing me as the ‘golden boy of the evangelical outreach world’. That’s not quite how I would think of it, but certainly I’ve been intentional about raising a banner for comedy within the UK Christian scene. To reclaim and redefine comedy from ideas of naffness. Read Tom Hillingthwaite, and tell me if I’ve succeeded!

Andy Kind

Brian Draper

Brian, what exactly is it that you do and what does a typical day look like?

[Laughs] There’s no such thing as a typical day and I think that when I get to the point that there is I will hand my notice into myself!

I’m an author, a broadcaster, a speaker. I lead retreats and I work one-on-one with people. What I love to do is help people make soulful, meaningful connections with everyday life.  I love to create space for people; space for them to step into either literally or metaphorically. In our busy culture people have very little space and they don’t give themselves permission to enter it so what I do is provide the opportunity for them to stop, reflect and make more meaningful connections with their life.

You regularly do BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day where you talk about engaging in the world from a spiritual perspective. Sum up your own spiritual journey.

I was brought up as a Christian and always loved what was at the heart of the Christian faith but the culture of the church said nothing to me about my life. Most of my friends left when they got to 18. I was clinging on by my fingernails with one or two other creative people.

It was a really exciting time 20 years ago: The world was changing – the Berlin wall was falling, we were sending our first emails, the internet was suddenly available, and people were questioning ‘what is truth’. It was an opportunity for me and a group of people to dream about what church could look like so we went on a bit of a journey through the alternative worship movement, which felt a bit like punk rock – punching a hole in the wall for other people to stick their heads through to see what might happen on the other side.

Six or seven years ago I discovered the contemplatives and contemplative spirituality. This made so much sense of my own faith and my own life. I realised that in this culture we need their message; we need to be able to stop, pause and be still. The one thing I would say about all the neo-monastic, contemplative stuff is that while it’s crucial that we learn to stop, we don’t want to be sitting around in the desert for the next 20 years. I’m passionate about pausing in order to act well and decisively from out of that stillness; it’s about bringing being and doing back together again.

In terms of my own spiritual journey there’s a wonderful song by Martin Joseph called on my way and in that he says, I’m running and stumbling and on my way. That open and honest spirituality sums it up. I’m sometimes running, I’m often stumbling and I hope that I’m loving…

Your own spiritual heritage has come from the Christian tradition but you work with people of all faiths and none at all. What do we all share in common and how do we connect around that?

One of the things we all share in common is that most of us are tired, busy and stressed! Most of us yearn for more:  There must be more than working all the hours God sends, buying loads of stuff, or spending endless hours on social media. We don’t necessarily know where to look for it, that’s all.

We are yearning for that deeper sense of communion, connection, and meaning. In a very troubled world, most of us sense that we are part of the problem but that we want to become part of the solution. A shared spirituality can help us to become part of that.

You talk about spiritual intelligence – what exactly is that?

We have our rational intelligence – our IQ – all of us have sat our tests in school and we can relate to that. We have our emotional intelligence: a great leader or manager can differentiate themselves in the way that they understand themselves and those around them – what makes people tick – it can really give them an edge in life.

Spiritual intelligence goes beyond IQ and even EQ. You are born with IQ and you can’t do much with it, with EQ you learn to work with how you are, but spiritual intelligence – the centre of where we gain our meaning and our purpose and all the stuff that matters most to us – we can attend to. It can help us on a transformative journey; it can help us to better become the people we were created to be. It is the art of reflecting deeply on who we are in order to express that through what we do.

In your book, Spiritual Intelligence you write about four journeys that take us deeper into our spiritual intelligence – tell me what it means to live life in what you describe as ‘flow’.

[Laughs] This mysterious place where we’d all like to get to! Most of us have glimpsed it and most of us struggle to inhabit it for much of the time!

I think that many of us in today’s culture are caught between two poles of existence: passivity and driven-ness. Flow is a way of being that transcends those polar opposites and sets a new agenda. As a Christian I would understand it as participating in God’s creation, in what he is doing and what he is blessing and also in the universe and the way that it has been set up to roll in terms of its seasons, cycles and rhythms.

So many of us strive to leave our mark on the world and we miss the point – it’s not about leaving our mark, it’s about working with what is here; it requires a counter-intuitive way of being which often involves slowing down in order to get to where you want to go faster or relinquishing your grip on all that you think is yours in order to receive riches beyond compare.

Two words characterise flow: ‘synchronicity’; that sense of being more deeply connected with nature, each other, God, and what is going on around us and ‘serendipity’. When I find that I am connected nice serendipitous things tend to happen. I think of it as lining up with the way the universe is working and the way that God is working within it. When you are lined up with that, things happen that you couldn’t have planned for or made happen yourself. This happens to me when I’m in ‘flow’.

Much of your work draws upon ancient spiritual disciplines; can you tell me what your own rhythm of life looks like?

I have three reasonably young children so on one level it looks like a constantly interrupted, crazy, normal family life. I’m passionate about how we make deeper connections from within that craziness – I’m certainly not some sort of spiritual guru!

Nevertheless, there are things that help me, such as getting in touch with the seasons: anything that I can do that will reconnect me to where we are in the year. That is the big picture and I like to get in touch with those rhythms.

On a daily basis there are simple things I try to practice such as short periods of silence before I start my day; you might call that meditation or centring prayer. Running: I find this to be the most important part of my day creatively; it is a time when I reconnect with myself and for me it is a spiritual discipline. Also simple things like trying to be fully present with the kids during that period after tea and through to bedtime; trying to be present with them while they are growing up, just doing little things like reading a story while making sure my phone is off. These things are spiritual.

Stop, relax, breathe, smile and… explain!

I use that at the beginning of my new book, What Matters Most? I’m keen to help people build small, sustainable habits that break the pattern of ‘busy-ness as usual’.

Stopping: we find this so hard. Just stopping can be a profound experience. We like to think we can multi-task. We can’t. Relaxing: we carry so much tension and stress with us. We can often feel it in our bodies – in our jaws, or our shoulders, for example. If you can relax yourself it helps you to become more present. Breathing: If you are a runner or singer, you will know the importance of breathing. We tend to race breathlessly from task to task and person to person without stopping and we take too many shallow breathes. We were designed to breathe more slowly, to take fewer breathes, more deeply. We gain more physical energy and emotional benefit from that. Smiling: I often lead retreats and people arrive looking very po-faced and very serious! In pursing what matters most we are going after what is simple, good and lasting. We’re looking for treasure and this is a delightful, joy-filled pursuit. A smile is contagious!

What or who is it that we are connecting with?

We are connecting with four things. God: In my book, I challenge us to be open to who God is. We sometimes close this down with our various assumptions and preconceptions. We’re also seeking to connect with each other; with creation and with our true selves.

We don’t want to be self-obsessed and yet God has given us soul and it is unique and beautiful and distinctive and unless we connect with who God has created us to be we cannot bring the full potential of that to bear on the world around us.

Ultimately, I am lead to the Source: What is your source of energy, wisdom, courage, values, faith, life and ultimately of love. Where do you go to drink deeply from that source so that it overflows through you and out to the world around you? There is a mystery to who and what we are connecting with and we should enjoy and embrace that.

Who or what do you imagine God to be?

That’s a really good question. I’m trying to stop imagining who God is because I can really limit who I believe him to be as a result of my own limited imagination. I find centring prayer helpful. It is the simple practice of sitting quietly and releasing the thoughts that are in your head to return to a position of complete openness to God. This has allowed me to release and let go of my assumptions and preconceptions of who God is. We bump into God in the ordinariness of everyday life: receiving an undeserved smile from a child; gazing at the Milky Way on a dark night, sipping a cold beer on a summer’s day with nothing else to do. If we can’t see God in these things then we’re missing a fundamental part of who he is. I’m trying to live my life with eyes wide open so the treasure makes itself known. I’m beginning to realise that the treasure is not ‘over there’ but that we’ve been standing on it all along.

Is this how we discover What Matters Most?  Is this the meaning of life?

I don’t think there is one definitive, right answer to that. I think it lies in how we ask the question and the response we make to going in search of what matters most. Instead of just living automatically, let’s ask ourselves the question. We pour so much of our energy, time, money and self into stuff that may not matter in the end. Can we pause to think, ‘What matters to me?’ and ‘How can I pursue a life that looks like what matters to me really does matter to me?’ So, I guess as we live creatively, courageously, tenaciously and lovingly the answer will look different for us all .

Brian Draper’s new book What Matters Most? is available from all good bookshops