Nomad, Christian community, mission and the future of the church.

Hello and welcome back to Nomad podcast. That was Steve Hollinghurst having a little chuckle on the podcast earlier.

Steve is the researcher in evangelism to post-Christian culture for the church army. And if you want to hear him chuckling a little bit more and sharing some valuable insights into evangelism, then stick with us for the next half hour or so.

I've got Steve Hollinghurst on the line today to have a chat with us on the podcast.

So Steve, welcome to the show.

Hello there.

We were actually going to have a chat with Steve a bit earlier in the year,

but unfortunately he was struggling with a bit of man flu.

So Steve, I trust you're over that now.

Yes, doing okay.

Steve, I was wondering if you could begin by just telling us a little bit about who you are and the ministries that you're involved in.

Yeah, no problem at all. I currently work for an Anglican evangelism agency called the Church Army, and I work in their research unit, which is called the Sheffield Center, though I actually live

nowhere near Sheffield, but there we go. And my job title is researcher and evangelism to post-Christian

culture, which is a bit of a showstopper.

I tend to describe that as helping the church communicate with people who don't have church

backgrounds. Steve, I wanted to spend a bit of time today talking to you about your latest book,

Mission-shaped evangelism. I was wondering if you could begin by explaining to us why you call

the book Mission-shaped Evangelism.

What distinction are you drawing between mission and evangelism,

and why have you brought those two words together in this way?

That's a very good question, actually, because in one sense,

there's a bit of a trend in the UK to call everything mission-shaped,

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