Irresistible Outreach: Stephen Viars

So, I'm guessing you know the answer to this question, but one of the things that irritates me about you. What? This is how we're starting?

No, I have no idea. Hopefully this doesn't create a conflict. Although our listeners might enjoy a good David and conflict. Welcome to Family Life Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I'm Shelby Abbott and your hosts are Dave and Ann Wilson.

You can find us at familylifetoday.com. This is Family Life Today. It drives me crazy.

It's actually a beautiful thing, but it drives me crazy how you see strangers in a store, on a sidewalk, in a park. It doesn't matter where we are and you have to go help. You stop.

It may be $10 or $20. It may be buying groceries. It may be getting our car will drive you across this drunk woman.

You've done it all. And there's times I'm like, are you going to do this again? Can't we just care about only us? Isn't that what we're supposed to do?

Care just about us to be selfish? No, I mean, I'm kidding. But there are times, right? I've been like, no, seriously, we don't have time for some stranger we don't know.

And yet you're loving her like Jesus would. That's nice. That's a compliment.

Well, the reason I bring it up is I think we've got your clone in the studio. We've got Dr. Steve Byers back with us, pastor in Lafayette, Indiana. But Steve, I mean, reading your book, loving your community and hearing the story of your church. I don't think this is just a church mission.

I think this is out of the heart of Steve Byers. Well, out of the heart of Steve, but a whole lot of other wonderful pastoral staff members, deacons, godly women. It's a church movement. It is a church that really wants to love our community. We do a lot of strategic ministry planning at our church. And one of the things that we often say is often the best ministry idea resides in the heart of the shyest person in the room. So how can we create an environment where that person can share his or her dream? Because they're not gonna unless you create an environment.

Absolutely not. But I hope no one would think that the things that we're doing in our community, it's because of Steve. It's because of a church family. And what I love about it is sometimes they weren't given public giftings. And so you might not have even known them or you might not have seen much of what they did.

But then when they brought this idea, all of a sudden we're doing it. Sometimes they're leading it or they're having a significant place of influence. It's a beautiful thing. And so I love what you just said about Anne. And by God's grace and God's grace alone, we have a number of women and men who are just like that. It runs the gamut.

So a variety of ages, a variety of ethnicities, a variety of economic conditions. So it's really a beautiful thing when you're trying to do that as a church family. Just link arms together and look for ways to love and meet needs. One of the things I've seen working with women, and we have a ministry in Michigan that's just with women, is that our past, all of us, including me, including Dave, we have wounds from our past. Which for me, I think it took decades to get my eyes off of the pain. Like I was just suffering in some of the pain that I'd been through. I have this dream for women and men, but for me it's women of like, let's let Jesus heal those wounds.

Let's go back and get rid of those. And it takes time to heal, but a good counselor can do that. And then as a result of that, now your eyes are outward of saying, God, how do you want to use me? What are the gifts and the dreams that you've put into my life that no one else in the entire world can have or do? Except for me. And we call it the activation plan. Like God's given you, and we have different seasons, but I have that passion.

Like, as you said, there could be the shyest person in the room, but there's something inside of them. They might have the best plan. So for you, this area of counseling has always been a passion for you. It has. Talk about that a little bit of your church. This is a big thing, and you've equipped lay leaders even to help people. It started 45 years ago at faith. Our church is 59 years old now.

This started 45 years ago, so it was before my time. It was by my predecessor, a very, very godly man. I'm so glad that I had the privilege of following such a great pastor. His name was Bill Goode. Pastor Goode had a dear friend who was a medical doctor named Bob Smith.

So here's what happened. Bill Goode started to see a disconnect between what he was preaching from the Word of God on Sunday morning but the way people were living the rest of the week. And so he said, you know, we come together, we have our Bibles and all that for Sunday morning, but there doesn't seem to be a measurable difference in the marriages of people in our church compared to those who don't know the Lord.

There doesn't seem to be a measurable difference in the way they're raising their children or handling things like anger or worry or fear. So why is there a disconnect between what I'm preaching on Sunday morning and the way people are living throughout the rest of the week? That would be every church in the world.

But keep going, yeah. Bob Smith, as a medical doctor, said, I'm seeing the same thing in my medical practice where, regrettably, sometimes I will have to share a bad medical diagnosis with someone and there doesn't seem to be a significant difference in the way a person who says they're a follower of Christ receives that news compared to someone who doesn't know the Lord. So again, they were in church on Sunday, but it sure didn't seem to affect the way they handled this medical news.

So there's a disconnect. That's when the biblical counseling movement was just getting started. And so they received training in biblical counseling and then they started a counseling center literally in the basement of the church. It was on folding tables, folding chairs.

They did not have $50 worth of investment in the whole thing. And what they did, they just said to people in the church, now listen, if you're struggling with something in your marriage, your family, your personal life, we're going to have some people here on Monday afternoon and evening and we'll be more than happy just to sit down and hear your story and then together we'll find the appropriate truth from the Word of God that can provide direction for you. Also, we're printing up a little brochure, and if you have neighbors, friends, coworkers who are struggling in some way and they're just looking for someone to talk to, just let them know that there are people trained and ready at the church. Very quickly, those appointments on Mondays filled up and they immediately then began training people. Other men and women in the congregation would actually start sitting in the live counseling sessions. They would learn how to counsel.

They would actually go through eventually a certification process. Now, 45 years later, we have a couple of different community counseling centers. We have 32 men and women, so a number of our pastoral staff members, several medical doctors, some godly women and men from our church who are just working in secular professions or are retired, but 32 of them get together on Mondays and they counsel each three, four, five hours on Mondays. And so that means we're doing anywhere between 60 and 80 hours of counseling services to people in our community, free of charge, week after week after week. Lafayette's not that big of a town. In our entire county, we have about 200,000 people, so we're not a big metropolis, but even with a church providing that many hours, we still can't stay ahead of the waiting list.

And have you seen a difference? Because as I say, when women, they're set free. We don't set them free. Jesus sets them free. And have you seen that, like, where people are being healed?

Yeah. The first book I wrote is called Putting Your Past in Its Place, because I really do believe that God's Word can help us address trauma and abuse and hurts of the past. But the beauty of it is, it's not as an end in itself. Because after that happens, it's like 2 Corinthians 1, God comforts me so that I can in turn show comfort to other people. And there's no doubt some of our best counselors are people who have gone through significant difficulties themselves, and the Lord has healed them. The Lord has helped them get to a better place. And it's also, since our church has been doing it for 45 years, quite a few of our church members are former counselors. So our first contact with them was through the doors of the counseling center. We generally receive a couple of hundred new members every year, and I'm glad for that. But at the end of the year as a pastor, I just want to ask myself, what's working?

What is God blessing? And year after year after year, one of the number one answers to that question, what was our first contact with that person, was through the doors of the counseling center. It's a great way to proclaim the gospel, because many of our counselors don't know the Lord. I don't believe that, although the Holy Spirit can do whatever He wants, but at the end of one hour, it's highly unlikely that you're going to be able to make such a clear presentation of the gospel, that they're ready to make a decision, because it's the problem of a stranger talking to a stranger about a stranger.

They don't know you, you don't know them, and they don't know anything about Jesus. It's amazing how many people in our town, they have never had a Bible open. I mean, I have to tell people all the time, listen, this is the Bible, it has two parts. The Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament has 39 books, the New Testament has 27.

That's new information for many people. I often have to show people in counseling those big numbers, that's called a chapter. The little number, that's a verse. And I love that, by the way. I love, love, love talking to people who have no prior knowledge of the Bible at all, because it's all so new to them, they're just drinking it in. But even at the end of that first hour, if they're not ready to make a decision, I'll tell you what they are ready to do. They're ready to come back. So many people don't have friends, and you just sat down and listened to their story in a non-judgmental fashion, for no other reason than because you loved them.

So they're ready to come back. They're also ready to do any homework you want to give them throughout the week. That's why I'm so glad for all the great resources that are out there, so we can assign pamphlets and books and podcasts and radios, whatever it might be that would help build on what we just talked about that week in preparation for our next session together. I mean, if every church was doing this, people would be getting healed, and there wouldn't be a disconnect between what they hear on Sunday and how they live on Monday. I'm just thinking of the listener who might be wondering, like, well, this doesn't really relate to me, I'm not ahead of a church, I can't make a difference in my church, but you can make a difference in your neighborhood. When people are lonely and they just want to share what's going on in their lives, there's nothing better than a cup of coffee and sitting at somebody's kitchen table.

And it doesn't have to be about Jesus the first time. It's just talking to them and knowing their story. Listening is a big part of it, just being willing to listen.

I'm not going to judge you. I just want to hear your story and genuinely be interested in what has happened in that person's life and genuinely care. It's so interesting, Dave, as you were talking in the beginning about the people that I talk to, I see this chiropractor probably nine times a year. And the last time I went to her, it's common that she'll be working on me and I'll be asking her a few questions, and she'll say, like, this happens every time. And I'll ask her a question about her life and then she'll start crying and then I'll just put my hand on her wrist and I'll pray for her and I'll ask her, can I just pray for you? And the last time I did that, she was crying and she said, I don't understand. Like, what is your secret?

I said, oh, I have no secrets. There's only one thing that I do in the morning. And every day my prayer is, Jesus, give me your eyes and give me your ears. That's it. I said, that's it. And I said, and he answers the prayer.

Absolutely. I see people in a way, I have compassion or give somebody grace or I hear their story and I know I can't necessarily change your life. I could help you in some ways, but I know that there's a God that loves you so much.

And I said, so if that's the secret, it's that. It's just that prayer to a God that hears us and answers those prayers. And there is training available for a listener who would say, well, I would like to have that kind of ministry, but I'm not sure what to say or what to do. And I'm not saying we're the only ones. There's plenty of places doing training, but we have a training conference that we do in February and folks can find out more information on it by going to faithlafayette.org if they would like to. But we have about 2,000 people that come.

And February in Indiana is an interesting time. But from most of the states of the United States and quite a few foreign countries, and there are people who are wanting training in how to do biblical counseling so that they can go back to their churches and their communities and make a difference. And it's delightful the way the Lord has given us a promise-filled book. It's all we need for life and godliness. And so it's not overly complicated.

The situations are very complicated. But simply by listening to what has been going on and then connecting a person to Christ and the appropriate truth from His word. His word's living. It's powerful. It's sharper than any two-edged sword. It can transform us, not just behaviorally. It can transform us at the level of the heart. You know, you mentioned yesterday Jesus' Sermon on Mount Matthew 5.

You are the light of the world. In our vertical marriage book, we try to make this point that if God meets you in your marriage or saves your marriage, it isn't just to save your marriage. He now wants to use your marriage to impact others. And so I had never realized this until I think it was in Seminary. I studied in Matthew 5 in the part, the next phrase where he says, a city set on a hill cannot be hidden. In the Greek, it literally is a city strategically placed on a hill cannot be hidden. So you're a pastor.

I'm a preacher. Right away, you're probably connected to dots, but I try to connect to dots for people that are like, well, what's the big deal about strategically placed? I'm like, what he's saying to disciples is they understood that cities weren't just randomly thrown up on hills.

They had city planners. They strategically placed them where people in the darkness needed. And so what I think Jesus is saying to you and I and his disciples then is your life's not random. I'm strategically placing you as my light in dark areas around people to make a difference.

And your marriage can be me. It can be the lights, all those counselors, all those people. I mean, it's like, I hope listeners are listening to this going, everything he's saying about a church is true for a family. You know, getting people in our church building, getting people in our home or getting our home into their backyard, you know, barbecue, whatever.

I'll tell you a quick story. I coached high school football and I was pastor and I was Detroit Lions chaplain. I don't know how I added this to my schedule, but I wanted to be on the field with my boys as they went through high school. So I was coaching at this school and I got a buddy of mine who's in my men's group to say, dude, I'm a Christian in this coaching room and it's wild.

These guys don't go to church and I need another brother in there. So he's special teams coach, Rob and I. So long story short, and it's a long one, but the gist of it is we have this great season. Every Friday night after the game, the coaching staff goes to the bar. Rob and I go home to our families. And Ann's dad comes up to watch our son play, his grandson. And when I get home, her dad, who is my high school coach, says, hey, so what are you doing home after the game?

You guys are having this great season. Don't you guys go? I go, well, the coaches go to the bar and he literally goes this. Here's a not going to church guy. He looks at me and he goes, aren't you like trying to reach those guys?

Remember this? And I go, well, yeah. And he goes, so why aren't you at the bar with him? I'm like, well, you know, I don't think this place for a pastor, you know, they're there drinking. He goes, well, I think you're trying to reach them.

That's where I'd be. And I mean, I'm thinking. And so I literally I pick up the phone. I call Rob. I go, dude, I'm picking you up in five minutes. We're going to RJ's. He goes, what?

I'll be there in five minutes. I pick up Rob. We walk in this bar, Steve. And the whole coaching staff, 15 guys, they have keggers. They're sitting in this bar and they turn to the door as we walk in and they give us a standing ovation. Is that right? And they see the two Christian boys coming in and the whole bar is like, who are these two guys?

Right? I sit down beside one of our coaches and it wasn't. And they're all trying to get me to drink, by the way. Oh, sure.

It was like high school. We're going to get the pastor driving by. Just give me a Diet Coke. And so I'm sitting there and Jack, one of my coaches, turns to me, 15 minutes in, and you'll appreciate this because this is the world you live in. He goes, yeah, I got a question. I go, yeah, what's that? He goes, never heard you cuss. Not one time. We cuss every other sentence.

Why don't you cuss? And I said, well, I have at times, Jack. I'm not going to act like it's never happened. But I said, I really want to honor God with my mouth and the mouth is an overflow of my heart. I'm quoting Luke 6. But I said, I'm real careful about that. And he goes, well, I think that's very respectable.

I respect that about you. Long story short, six weeks later, Jack gives his life to Christ. Isn't that something? His wife gives life to Christ. We baptize them later.

Jack is having this amazing impact now at another school as a coach. And it started because a Christian went to a bar. Now, I'm not saying go to a bar and drink.

Please don't send me emails. But I'm saying, as I'm sitting there, I'm like, I'm strategically placed right now to be the light in a dark area. And if I shine, God could possibly use it. I mean, I tell that story because I'm like, you're doing that every single day. Steve, even our last episode, we ended with your church and you guys building a skate park. So you've got all the skater dudes sitting in the front row. Another thing you've done is – Wait, wait, he's building another skate park.

Aren't you building one right now? Well, yeah, but I wanted to get into the fitness centers. There's a fitness center in each building that they have.

Yeah, keep going. Tell us everything. I wanted to hear the fitness – because you shared the story of working out with a guy. Yeah, the reason we have fitness centers in each one of our community centers is because our neighbors asked for it. So we would have never done it unless the neighbor – and that's one of the things I love about our community centers is when our neighbors come in and they're bringing their friends and they kind of act like it's their building.

And I want them to feel like that. I want them to feel like this is our, the neighborhood's community center. It's not unusual for one of these neighbors to bring their friends along and to point at one of the rooms and say, that was my idea. And it's true.

It's true. And one of the biggest compliments we would receive from our neighbors is you listened to us. That's what we want because in many cases, they know more about what are the needs in the neighborhood around our church than I would. And so you have to humble yourself. You have to admit there's a lot of things I don't know. So I need sometimes my unsaved neighbors to educate me or to educate our church about what are the greatest needs because works are only good if they meet a need. Let your light so shine among men that they may see your good works.

Well, they're only good if they legitimately meet a need and if we don't know the need, then we better humble ourselves to ask. And so anyway, with the physician centers, I was in the locker room one day with some of my buddies. We worked out and there's a guy standing in front of the mirror shaving that I had never seen before. He had his towel on, but there was a wound going down the side of his leg.

And I don't know anything about HIPAA laws. I want to know how the guy got hurt. And so I said in front of my friends, I said to this guy I didn't even know, I said, hey, did you get in a motorcycle accident? Because I figured the way that wound was going down his leg, I figured he had dropped his bike. I figured there had to be a great story, right? So he turns around and he looks at me and he says, no. He said, my girlfriend ran me over with the car. And so now all my friends are looking at me because they know I'm the big counselor, right?

And so surely I'm going to have some. I had nothing. I could not think of one.

I couldn't even think of a dumb thing to say. I mean, I had nothing. And so the guy that I didn't know who had been in the accident, he sensed the awkwardness of the moment. So he filled it in by saying, and you know what the really bad thing was? Now I'm totally lost. It's like you just told me what the really bad.

And so now my friends are just glued on me and I had nothing. And so here's what the guy said. He said, it's not the first time she's done it. Now here's my point.

If you love your neighbors just a little bit, it's amazing how they'll open up. In fact, another day right near that same spot, I was going out of the locker room and there was a young man who was probably 24 years old. I had seen him around the fitness center.

He's kind of a young professional looking guy. He comes up to me kind of on the sly, looks around, and then he says, hey, hey, you're the pastor here, aren't you? So I said, well, yes I am. And he said, do you know anything about depression?

And I said, well, I do. I have a doctorate in counseling and I do a lot of counseling here. How can I help you? And he says, looking around to be sure no one else is listening, he says, I've never told anybody this, but I am really struggling with depression and it's getting worse.

Is there any way you'd be willing to help me? Now I don't think somebody would have come up to me at the grocery store and asked me that question. But just because we had a bit of a connection, we had found a way to meet a need.

He was there working out. He had seen me over time and finally felt comfortable enough to come up and ask me a question like that. That's what we're just trying to do. We're just trying to love our neighbors any way we can and then look for opportunities for organic conversations to flow out of doing good works. Yeah, the cool thing is that guy, if he didn't ask you that question, would have asked somebody else there that he's gotten to know in that locker room, in that gym, and that's us. That's the Family Life listener right now who's like, those conversations more times than not take places in driveways and locker rooms and backyards than they do in church sanctuaries.

They absolutely do. And that's what Family Life Equip is about. We equip you with resources to say, you're the light. We can't be in your backyard. You can't be in your neighbor's backyard having a burger. You can. So if you're listening and you're like, I wouldn't know what to say in that moment, we'll help you.

Familylife.com slash equip. We will give you the tools to say God's placed you, strategically placed you, just like he has Steve in Indiana, us in Michigan and Orlando. He's placed you. He wants to make an impact in your neighborhood. You're his light, and we can help you do it. Yeah, and I hope no one would listen to that and say, well, okay, Dave, I hear what you're saying about being strategically placed like a city on a hill, but my problem is I'm not perfect or I've got things in my past that would disqualify me from speaking for Christ today.

That's not the strategic placement. I really believe oftentimes God allows us to go through some rough things, some difficulties, maybe some ways we really messed up or maybe ways that we were sinned against in powerful fashions. But if we can find biblical truth and healing for those issues, that often qualifies us to be more strategically placed than somebody who didn't. I hope that all of us and everyone listening would say, you know what, I'm not going to let anything from my past or I'm not even going to let any imperfections from me today stop me from finding ministry opportunities.

You know, Stephen's right. I have found that the areas of my life that I've experienced deep difficulty, suffering, and hardship are the areas of greatest ministry impact. In fact, one time when I was speaking in front of a crowd of college students and mentioned the fact that I had been previously sexually abused when I was a kid, I had a number of people come up and talk to me afterward and say thank you so much for mentioning that. In fact, college women who had been sexually assaulted on campus were saying it's so difficult to talk about this and hearing someone mention it from up front made me feel the freedom to be able to talk to you about that. And in talking about it, there is the beginnings of healing.

God uses those dark places, those horrible places even in our lives that the evil one intends for evil in our lives to do great good. I loved hearing this conversation today. I'm Shelby Abbott, and you've been listening to David Ann Wilson with Stephen Viers on Family Life Today. You know, Stephen has written a book called Loving Your Community. It helps give practical tips on really assessing how you can have an impact in your community, proactively love them, gives you some real world wisdom and a gospel-centered approach to reaching your community. This book is going to be our gift to you when you partner with us financially. So you can go online to familylifetoday.com or give us a call with your donation at 800-358-6329.

Again, that number is 800, F as in family, L as in life, and then the word today. And feel free to drop us something in the mail if you'd like to. Our address is Family Life 100 Lakehart Drive, Orlando, Florida 32832. Now, if you know anyone who needs to hear conversations like the one you heard today, would you share it from wherever you get your podcasts? And while you're there, you could really help others learn about family life today by leaving us a review. Now, tomorrow, we're going to hear some more practical tips on loving and serving your neighborhood. Stephen Viers is going to be back with Dave and Ann Wilson to talk about just that. We hope you'll join us. On behalf of Dave and Ann Wilson, I'm Shelby Abbott. We'll see you back next time for another edition of Family Life Today. Family Life Today is a donor-supported production of Family Life, a crew ministry helping you pursue the relationships that matter most.