Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast. My name is Kosti Hinn, and I have the pleasure of being your host. For the Gospel is all about providing sound doctrine for everyday people, and on today's episode, I'm interviewing my friend, my brother, a contributor here at For the Gospel, and the pastor of evangelism at Central Church in Collierville, Tennessee, Greg Sukert,

thank you for being on. Welcome to the For the Gospel Podcast. May we love you. Kosti, thanks for having me, I love you, brother.

Grateful for your ministry, and I want first, if you will, tell people a little bit about yourself, your family, your incredible wife, and a little bit about your background and some of the ministry that you're involved with.

Yeah, thanks for asking. So I am first and foremost a slave of the Lord Jesus Christ. I'm kind of on just cloud nine right now, as I am often every day,

because I was saved nine years ago at a church in Anaheim, California, and I was lost. I was actually forced to go to that church by a girl I was dating.

She said, come to this church, or I'll break up with you, and I said, okay, and she ended up breaking up with me anyway, and I got saved. I heard the Gospel, and what's crazy is now nine years later, I am at a church where

the former youth pastor of that church in Anaheim, California is now the lead teaching pastor, Matt, Shackleford, and I was brought on to serve alongside him as the pastor of evangelism.

I get the pleasure of sharing the Gospel and equipping the saints to do the same. The Lord has been very gracious to me.

I've also had the privilege of serving alongside a ministry called Anchored North, where we create media that showcases humanity's greatest need redemption through Jesus Christ.

God has shown his grace on me in marriage. I've got an incredible wife, Brianna, and she just loves the Lord, loves the Gospel. In fact, just recently we were doing ministry alongside each other doing campus evangelism and outreach.

And I just looked at her and said, Brianna, tell all these students here, what is the Gospel? Just what is the message that we're going to take this campus over with?

And she just dropped gospel bombs. I just look, God, thank you. Thank you. I'm so thankful to be a pastor of evangelism, to have a wife who loves the Gospel, and to serve alongside Anchored North, and getting the Gospel out to as many people as possible through media.

That is one of my favorite things about you. I love you as a person. We love your wife, and we're grateful for you guys. You ooze Gospel passion. I have not yet spent any time with you in which you don't infect everyone around you. That's what I said even recently when I was, I got the pleasure of getting to come preach at your church over there.

Man, even in your introduction of the sermon content and the video we did and some of the training that went on, you are, I've never heard anyone preach an introduction and preach the Gospel and exalt Christ like you. So keep it up. You fire me up, man. You push me and are such an encouragement to so many.

Thanks, brother. I'm excited that I get to serve alongside you too and for the Gospel. I mean, what, what do we do it? Like this is, this is what life is about. Amen. Amen. Local church and extending the Gospel through outreach. And I'm pumped. We get to use media. We're doing this through a podcast right now and have some more videos coming from you about a topic that I know is near and dear to people's hearts. They need wisdom on this. I don't know anybody better to discuss the topic than you. And so.

Folks, I've asked Greg to talk through tips for holiday evangelism. And before we even talk about tips and how to be a light and what to do and all of that.

First Greg, would you be willing to kind of dial in past orally? What are some of the ways that you see the holidays increasing, not an excitement for evangelism and people saying, yeah, let me go and share the Gospel with everyone. But rather, even for Christians, an increase in anxiety, pressure, stress, the pace of life, hopelessness, and also relational conflict during the holiday season.

Yeah, the holiday season is always just a mournful season, I think, in people's hearts. And if I could summarize the holiday season in one word, I would say discontentment. I mean, I really think that's what the holiday season invokes and people is just mass discontentment this season is all about what we don't have. Right. We don't have the things we want. So we make Christmas lists. We don't have the relationships we want.

Sometimes we're many are dealing with loss and just feeling bitter for the things that they've lost. We don't have the job promotions that we expected to have by the end of the year. We don't have the Christmas bonus that we were hoping to have. And so I just see this season being a season of discontentment, everyone is thinking about the gifts they don't have, but they're not really thinking about giving the greatest gift of all time. And that's the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is what we're here to talk about today.

I hear a lot of that as well from people there, there's pain, there's loss. I know the holiday season can be a time of depression for some or even morning as they maybe this is the first Christmas you're listening to this and you're without your loved one or this is your first Christmas without family or friends that you've looked to for many years for encouragement.

Greg, we are supposed to be the light of the world, the city on a hill, the salt of the earth. We're supposed to be on mission. And how would you encourage a Christian going through a difficult season who says, you know, I'm not really an evangelism mode here, Greg, no offense to you or cost to you or anyone. I'm in survival mode. How would you encourage and bring that person along regardless of what they're going through.

Yeah, I would just lovingly encourage that really if survival mode includes not being centered on the worship of Christ and the proclamation of Christ, are you really in survival mode?

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