Witness 01: Begin With Love (featuring Ger Jones)
Rule of Life
Practicing the Way
4.8 • 802 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2026
⏱️ 66 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
How can we move beyond duty and obligation, into a witness motivated by a deep love for the lost? Join John Mark Comer and Shelbi Shutt as they explore the core motivation for the practice of witness — featuring conversations with everyday people in the West, testimonials from real-life practitioners, and an interview with luminary Ger Jones.
In this episode's luminary interview, John Mark and Ger explore how the cultural landscape in the West has evolved over the past few decades and how this evolution should influence our approach to sharing the good news as followers of Jesus. Ger is the lead pastor of Vintage Church in Los Angeles, California. Since moving there from the UK with his wife, Lizzie, in 2011, Ger has spent over a decade forming a community with a wide open door for those exploring faith and the more difficult questions that come along with it. You can connect with Ger and the ministry of Vintage Church on social media at @gerjones and @vintagechurchla.
The idea of sharing our faith can elicit confusion or even aversion for some followers of Jesus. In recognition of this, we created the Reimagining Witness PDF to help you invite people into the Witness Practice with wisdom and clarity. Sign up for our emails to receive the PDF.
This podcast accompanies the Witness Practice, a four-session experience designed to help us bear witness to the good news of Jesus in our cultural moment. Learn more at practicingtheway.org/witness.
Our Practices are free, thanks to the generosity of The Circle and other givers. Learn more about The Circle at practicingtheway.org/give. Run a Practice with your community and find other resources at practicingtheway.org/resources.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You're listening to the Rule of Life podcast from practicing the way. In each season, we explore an ancient practice from the way of life podcast, which is all about the |
| 0:40.4 | practice of witness. I'm your host, Shelby Shat, and I'm joined by John Mark Comer. John Mark, |
| 0:45.6 | it's great to be back with you. It's always great to be with you, Shelby. Yeah. Well, I just feel so |
| 0:50.3 | aware of the gift you are in general, but especially the gift you are to really helping us |
| 0:55.8 | engage in our context, the ancient way of Jesus and the practices that we can participate in |
| 1:02.5 | to walk that narrow way. So just thanks for who you are and all that you've done to contribute to |
| 1:07.1 | this. It's a gift. That is very kind. And thank you for saying that. And thank you to all of you for listening. We're really happy to be in this conversation. I come at this one a bit more from my weakness than my strength. So thanks for buttering me up because now I feel a little mo to come up. All right. I love it. Well, let me give us a map of where we're headed in this season. We're going to begin this episode by just introducing the practice of witness, |
| 1:29.3 | and we're going to discuss the vital significance of beginning with love. |
| 1:34.3 | And then we're going to take some time in the upcoming episodes to unpack some key aspects of sharing the good news, |
| 1:40.3 | like sharing Jesus through our hospitality and way of life and community. And then we're going |
| 1:45.2 | to talk about how we grow the muscle of discerning where the Holy Spirit is at work in all of this. |
| 1:50.9 | And then lastly, how we can cultivate a life that shares the good news with our actions and |
| 1:57.0 | with our words. So that's where we're headed. John Mark, why don't we start by defining |
| 2:02.1 | witness? So define the term and then talk to me a little bit about why it's important for us |
| 2:08.4 | to recognize that this isn't just for some people. It really is for all of us. Yeah, we just define |
| 2:13.5 | it as intentionally opening up our lives to others in love, and love is the motivation there, |
| 2:19.9 | and testifying to the good news of Jesus through our words and our way of life in community. |
| 2:25.7 | We intentionally use the word witness rather than another more common word like evangelism, |
| 2:31.4 | or even the phrase preaching the gospel. And one of the reasons is because when we hear, |
| 2:37.9 | in particular the word evangelism, or when we think about witness, I think there are two dominant |
| 2:43.1 | mental models that come to mind, neither of which are bad, but they are off-putting for a lot of |
| 2:48.2 | personality type. So one is like a world famous, like, evangelist. |
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