The Dr. Jeff Show Ep. 86 – Brett Kunkle

Episode 86: Summary & Transcript

Disclaimer: Please note that this is an automatically generated transcript. Although the transcription is largely accurate, it may be incomplete or inaccurate in some cases due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Dr. Jeff interviews Brett Kunkel, the founder of a Christian ministry called Maven. Kunkel explains Maven’s “immersive experiences,” which are trips designed to take young adults’ classroom knowledge of Christianity into real-world conversations. He details how these trips, which involved engaging with groups like Mormons in Utah or atheists in Berkeley, help students build confidence, articulate their faith, and overcome the fear of evangelism.

This discussion highlights the effectiveness of using questions to start conversations, the importance of seeing people as individuals rather than opponents, and the profound joy that comes from actively living for the gospel.

Episode Transcript

Dr. Jeff Myers (00:02):
Hey everyone. Welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. This show’s available on Apple, Google, Spotify, Edifi, Liftable, or wherever you get your podcast. Would you do me a personal favor? If you have watched the show and you like it, would you go to the place where you get the podcast and review it? If you give it a positive review that helps other people find out about the show, you know how this works, but as a personal favor to me, I would appreciate you taking time to do that. Why is it so important? Because this is the show where I interview major thought leaders to demonstrate that our worldview changes everything.

Today’s guest runs a program called Maven, and he’s going to talk about why it’s called Maven. It’s an interesting Christian ministry. I don’t know of anything else like it, where he helps young adults have an immersive experience of talking to people who aren’t believers and engaging them in conversation on purpose. And he’s going to show how this creates a sense of confidence, a sense of maturity, a sense of joy, and there are all kinds of practical takeaways on how this applies to our lives. Please welcome Brett Kunkel to the show. Brett Kunkel, welcome to the Dr. Jeff Show podcast.

Brett Kunkle (01:16):
It is always good to be here with you, with Summit. Love what you guys are doing.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:21):
Yeah, well, thank you for being such a key part of it. You speak to just about every Summit Ministries conference we have.

Brett Kunkle (01:26):
I try because this is, I mean, you have students who come here and they care about this stuff. They care about worldview, they care about engaging the world for Christ, and they’re hungry. And so who wouldn’t want to come speak to a bunch of hungry Christian Young people who want to change the world?

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:42):
Isn’t it amazing? They sit there, they take notes, they ask questions, and they ask hard questions.

Brett Kunkle (01:48):
And then in their free time, they come sit in your Q and A on the porch. And so it’s just this very engaged group.

Dr. Jeff Myers (01:55):
Yeah. Well, and I was talking with him last night just about how this is not just an audience. You all are not an audience. You are a cohort of young leaders who are being handed a baton to have a significant impact in the culture. Yeah, that’s right. Well, you invest so much in young people. You do a lot of events, you speak at a lot of events of young people, churches. So we’re talking, thousands and thousands and thousands of people every year that you get to speak to.

But one thing that I love about what you do that I really would like to focus on in the show, that I think our audience, those who are watching and listening, will be really interested in. You prepare students to be missionaries to a culture onto a college campus. And you actually take them there for a week and have them talk to people, start conversations, figure out how to defend their faith in the arena.

Brett Kunkle (02:58):
At Maven, we call them immersive experiences.

Dr. Jeff Myers (03:02):
So Maven is the name of your organization. So people are going to want to look that up, find out more about these, call them immersive experiences.

Brett Kunkle (03:10):
And they can get a lot of information at our website, maventruth.com. And get a little picture, look at some of the itineraries, what we do. But really the whole idea behind it is, let’s get the classroom training, let’s get the book knowledge, let’s get all of that, which is important stuff. Let’s get it out of a classroom and let’s start getting it into real life. And what it does is it gives young people an opportunity to take these things that they’re learning, that they think they might know, but maybe they don’t. And it gives them an opportunity to articulate it.

And I think that’s often a missing piece for young people, is that, so we do the book stuff. We have a training program, they watch videos. There’s a bunch of things that they’ve got to do to get prepared for these trips. And then we take them out. And we have three trips in particular. One focuses on their biblical knowledge, one focuses on apologetics, and then one focuses on worldview.

And so for the biblical trip, what we do is give him good training in theology doctrine. Who is God? What does he make a case for? A biblical case for the Trinity, salvation by grace through faith. And then we take him to Utah, we take him to the heart of Mormonism where we have found that we can get them in conversations pretty easily with Mormon folks.

(04:37):
And it’s in those conversations when they’re having conversations about the gospel, about God, about religion, that really all of this training comes to life. And number one, here’s one of the values of it. Number one, there’s nothing that will motivate a young person like getting beat up by a Mormon.

Now, not physically beat up, but they will run into Mormons who seem to know the Bible better than they do. And the Mormon will say, oh, well, what about this passage? And oh, you think that God’s a Trinitarian being? Well, how do you make sense of this in Matthew 26? If Jesus is God and here in the garden of Gethsemane, he’s praying to God, isn’t Jesus praying to himself?

And then students are stunned. They’ve never heard that objection before or whatever, and that motivates them. And we’ve had students who will come back from some of these encounters and they get beat up a little bit, but they get beat up in a situation where we’re there to help them.

(05:41):
And it ends up being motivating because they realize, oh, tomorrow I’m going to go back out and I’m going to talk to more people and I’m going to have to have an answer for this, and I’m going to have to think through this. And it’s been revealed that I don’t know this thought as well as I thought I did. And so then they’re motivated to go study. And it’s no longer me just saying, here, here’s a theology book. You need to read this. Or Here’s your Bible. You need to read this. It’s them saying, give me that theology book. Give me the scripture, show me this. And there’s this internal motivation because they realize, okay, I’ve got to know this stuff.

Dr. Jeff Myers (06:17):
There’s so many things that are valuable about that on so many levels, but I want to unpack a couple of them. One of the things I just love is it reminds me of bootcamp. I visited the Marine Bootcamp for the Eastern United States and the Marines in training there, they actually call it their knowledge. You work on your knowledge. You have to know certain things, but everything that intellectually you have to put into practice while you’re there.

So that’s a great way to, it’s not just head knowledge. It’s not just, here’s the theory about how to shoot a gun. Would you like to know how to not die when you’re on the battlefield and actually defeat the enemy? You want to know how to do that. So they have to actually go out and try it and practice it.

Brett Kunkle (07:10):
And there’s these different aspects to the knowledge of Christianity. Some of our, we could talk about the propositional knowledge that we have. There are propositional truths that we affirm that we need to know, whether it’s the doctrine of the Trinity or whatever it might be. And that’s important.

A lot of our knowledge is propositional, but there’s also what you might call know how or knowledge by acquaintance, knowledge by doing experiential aspect of knowledge that comes where if I may have particular propositional knowledge about let’s say a building like the Eiffel Tower, and I could read certain things, I could quote to you certain bits and pieces, but that’s different than actually going there, seeing it, being able to describe it, having contact with it.

And that’s what this trip does, is it brings those things together. And it’s not just, okay, I have these propositions about the gospel, but now I’m engaged, conversing about it, sharing about it, defending it, answering objections to it, and it helps young people to gain a deeper knowledge of and an experience of those truths. And there’s nothing like it brings all of that knowledge together with the experience and it challenges them.

So that felt need of, hey, I need to get motivated. I need to know this stuff. But then also they get to see how an encounter like this actually goes, is it, well, I have these arguments and I have these beliefs, and I just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I’m knocking these people down and they’re my opponents. And no, it’s a human engagement.

Dr. Jeff Myers (09:02):
It’s a conversation.

Brett Kunkle (09:04):
Yeah, it’s a conversation with another image bearer. And this person has all kinds of background. They have experiences, they have beliefs, they have shaped them. And so oftentimes the gospel conversations start by asking questions. In fact, that’s the primary tool that we use to equip students is, hey, start with questions. Find out where this person is at. Don’t assume where they’re at. Even if the Mormon on the street says, yeah, I’m LDS, don’t assume you know what that means. I mean, there’s a lot of Christians who would say, yeah, I’m a Christian, I’m a Christian, but then would hold completely different views.

So treat the individual as an individual and get to know them and then go from there. And so it gives you experience on how to ask questions, how to ask good questions, how to ask follow-up questions, how to ask clarification questions, how to challenge gently with a question. Alright, you believe that, well, where did you get that from? Or where in scripture do you see that? And so there’s all kinds of skill that they gain in these immersive experiences.

Dr. Jeff Myers (10:15):
Yeah, I think it sounds fascinating. I bet the conversation times at night, the q and a times are really meaningful because they’ve been in situations now they’ve actually talked to people. This isn’t just, oh, I know all about that. I watched five YouTube videos. Oh, well, I’m talking to real people about this.

Brett Kunkle (10:35):
Yeah, it’s interesting. There’s all kinds of things that happen in the debriefs. Anytime we’ll do an encounter, so let’s say in Utah, we try to give the students different experiences. We will go to downtown Salt Lake and talk to the missionaries in Temple Square. We’ll go to BYU and talk to BYU students. We’ll actually go door to door around BYU and talk to students there.

And so there’s a number of different experiences and we always try to debrief all of those experiences to process that and talk about the things that we learned. And I mean, the lessons that come from this are just amazing. Number one, you get students who the Lord breaks their heart for people.

(11:17):
So they begin. It’s funny, you bring that person who you might think is like the opponent, right? Or they’re the evangelistic target or whatever. You come in with these kinds of preconceived ideas and you bring that person close and you humanize them. And it’s interesting that the Lord will break young people’s hearts. We’ve had young people who will tear up, they’ll cry, they’ll weep over these lost Mormon people because now they see them as God’s precious creatures made in his image, but who are lost, who are in need of a savior, who are in need of God’s rescue. And so they develop a heart for evangelism.

(12:07):
They develop a heart for sharing the gospel. So you get that aspect of it. Then you get, I already talked about the motivational aspect. They’re motivated to study and prepare more to get more effective. They learn what they don’t know. You can sit in a classroom, you can learn stuff and think you got it.

But then when you’re put in a situation and you have to articulate it, it helps you to see, oh, okay, I don’t know that as well as I thought I did. I don’t know this piece of theology, I don’t know that apologetic argument as well as I thought I did. So it helps you to see, okay, how could I be a better communicator on this? What could I communicate more effectively?

And then it gives students an opportunity to express their questions and their doubts. Yeah, I got this question and it’s something I’ve been wrestling with and I know how to answer it. And so then we get to walk young people through that kind of stuff. And it’s proactive in that sense because we’re not sitting around waiting for young people to experience a challenge and then share their doubts, but we’re purposely exposing them to challenges.

(13:15):
And some people think this is a little bit dangerous, isn’t it? We do these apologetic trips and we’ll go to a place like Berkeley, California, or some people like to call it berserk. I mean, it’s a nutty place. We’ll bring out atheists to talk to the students. We’ll go to the Unitarian church. We’ve been to the Hari Krishna Temple. We’ll go onto campus and talk to these skeptical students. And so we are purposely exposing them to unbelief.

And so some parents will have concerns about this, and I get it, you want to be careful not to overwhelm the students. And our philosophy is truth first. So there’s always training. Then error, truth first, then error. But at the same time too, I know that if my kid is, if they’re going to live normally in this world, if they’re going to be in, but not of, they’re going to get exposed to these ideas.

(14:11):
And I would rather, I think it’s a better strategy to have them exposed to these ideas when they’re with us first than when we send them off 2000 miles away to a university or they go into the workplace. Let’s walk with them in this experience because they’re going to face the questions and the doubts and the skepticism. So let’s do it with them. And then they can ask those questions.

Honestly, they see that we’re not afraid as well. I think that’s another huge benefit is they see that we’re not scared to go deep in those questions. We’re not scared of the objections, we’re not scared of the challenges to Christianity. And there’s kind of a that comes with this.

Dr. Jeff Myers (14:52):
Yeah. Yeah. I bet it sort of manifests as maturity when they come back, they feel a sense of confidence, calmness. You don’t have to freak out. You don’t have to be silent. One of the other things I love about this, you and I were talking about this just briefly before the show, is that most people, out of nervousness about what might happen, just stay silent.

The polls that we’ve done through Summit Ministries, now, I didn’t want to become a polling company, but I did want to understand the cultural moment. And I found a polling company that would let me add questions onto their monthly poll. And it’s a respected national firm, and we’re talking to people all across the spectrum, literal cross section of the United States of America, not just believers. And the number one, two things we found that relate to this, number one, five to 8% of the people in this country are just jerks. They’re just real jerks.

Brett Kunkle (15:51):
It’s only 5 to 8%.

Dr. Jeff Myers (15:52):
It’s 5 to 8%. I know, but they’re so loud and they’re so mean, and they’re always on social media that it makes it seem like they are the majority, that they’re controlling everything. Well, it turns out it’s only 5 to 8% of the people. And this has been in poll after poll after poll. We also found that about two thirds of the people in America have basic respect for biblical values, common sense, and you wouldn’t call them conservatives necessarily, but definitely traditional values I guess would be a term that, often, people use.

They don’t want radical stuff happening. They want America to be a good country. They love it, they want it to do well. They might disagree on this policy or that, but they’re basically common sense. The problem is when we poll half of those people, when we ask them, say, well, that’s what I believe, but I don’t say anything so as not to offend anyone, and I was just with our staff of Summit Ministries, we do ongoing training with our own team because we want to be sure that we’re always up to date on what it is that we do, why we do it, all of those kinds of things. And I said, Barn Harford said that silence in the face of evil is itself evil.

(17:12):
But the implication of that is much deeper than most people are willing to consider. That if you are silent in the face of opposition, you are being evil. It’s not like, oh, silence is just politeness. And maybe occasionally I’ll watch a couple of Ben Shapiro videos and get all wound up and then go talk to somebody. No, if you’re silent in the face of evil, then that silence is being evil. I don’t want to confront that in myself. I don’t want that to be the case.

Brett Kunkle (17:46):
Yeah, well, we think that you can kind of be neutral. There’s this neutral safe spot where if I don’t say anything and I don’t offend people, then I’m okay. And I think this whole thing confronts that idea. And I think for the believer, for the Christian, it also confronts the idea that, look, we have the truth, and in fact, we have the greatest news the world has ever known that God has inaugurated his kingdom. He’s inaugurated this divine rescue plan to rescue humanity, restore us, and we have this good news, and that’s not something that is an option to be silent about.

You don’t get to be neutral on that. There’s an obligation side of that where God commands us to go and make disciples, but it’s even deeper than an obligation. It’s actually a privilege and it fills you with joy. I think that’s one of the aspects of these immersive experiences that we see. That kind of took me by surprise a little bit when we first started doing them, because you focus so much on helping kids overcome their fear and go talk to people. And what they end up discovering is that, okay, this is not as hard as I thought it was.

(19:00):
Especially when I have training, especially when I have some knowledge of these things and I know how to ask good questions and I know how to engage. I treat people with dignity and respect and can be gracious. Well, generally speaking, you have really good conversations. And so students realize, oh, this isn’t as hard as I thought it was. And they realize, gosh, a lot of people are more receptive to this than I thought they would be.

So their preconceived notions like, well, people aren’t going to want to talk to me, they’re going to reject me, they’re going to walk away. Well, that’s not actually the case. You end up talking. We will literally, Jeff, we’ll have groups go onto a college campus and they’re armed with what we call conversational surveys, which is just a tool to get into a conversation.

The goal is to eventually get off that and just talk normally, and this happens all the time, and students will get into conversations with perfect strangers and they’ll talk for 45 minutes and hour and hour and a half. We’ve had groups come back from two and a half hour conversations with someone they just met and they were talking about life’s most important issues, God, the afterlife, moral issues, justice, whatever it might be.

(20:13):
And then they get lit up. And by the end of this trip I realize, okay, yeah, that’s not as hard as I thought it was, and now I’ve had some experience doing it. And they end up living out the primary purpose of the New Testament church. What’s the primary purpose of the Testament church? Go and make disciples. But most of what we find is that most Christian kids who come through our immersive experience program have never shared the gospel with anyone.

Dr. Jeff Myers (20:43):
Wow.

Brett Kunkle (20:45):
So what ends up happening is there’s this joy that they start to experience that is a fruit of living your life for the cause of the gospel. This is, I think, what Paul is talking about in the book of Philippians. He is right into the Philippian church and in that first chapter, he talks about the gospel like seven times.

He mentions the gospel, and what you see is that Paul has this tight partnership with the Philippian church in the cause of the gospel, and then through those other chapters, you see, he either uses the words joy or rejoice like 16 times in the four short chapters. And some people will think, well, that’s the book of joy. This is how you get joy. And it’s not that simplistic. It’s actually joy turns out to be this byproduct.

(21:33):
Of a life lived in service of the cause of the gospel. And so that’s what we see. We see it all the time. By the end of these trips, we’ll end with maybe a closing worship time and sharing time and students they share about their excitement for the gospel, how God has broken their heart for lost people, how they want to go home now and share this, and we’ll close with worship, just kind of bringing it back to glorifying God.

And I mean, some of the most electric times of worship I’ve ever experienced are with students who have lived for five or six days regularly sharing the gospel, living for the cause of the gospel, sharing the truth, getting beat up a little bit. But it’s exciting. It adds some drama to the Christian life, and then they get to experience some, I dunno if success is the right word, but they have these rich, deep conversations. They see people respond, they see the Holy Spirit working. They see it’s not as difficult as they thought it was.

Dr. Jeff Myers (22:39):
Yeah. They kind of come out of their show. I think there’s a sense of, oh, I can actually be a person. I can actually have conversations about anything with anybody, and it gives them confidence. I know some people are listening to this on the audio, probably more people than are watching, but there are some people who are watching, and I can see the joy on your face as we talk about this because you’re describing as you reflect back on the experiences that students have, that this is an incredible breakthrough. If you can do something regularly and on purpose that helps you overcome fear, it does produce joy.

Brett Kunkle (23:19):
Absolutely.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:20):
But you’ve got to put yourself in that situation.

Brett Kunkle (23:22):
That’s right. That’s right.

Dr. Jeff Myers (23:23):
So alright, a couple of things. One thing I know, a lot of people say that, we are in Colorado right now, which is where the libertarian party was started. So the motto of people in Colorado is you do you, right?

(23:40):
Because I think a lot of people sort of embrace that, not just because they feel like it’s a free country, but it sort of gets them off the hook. If you do you, then I don’t have to ever talk to you about anything important because you, but you don’t want to interrupt people in the middle of their grocery shopping with conversation.

Here, I want to do a survey. I know you’re trying to get cereal and get home and feed your family, but you’ve got to talk to me. Where is that line in conversation? Do you usually know in everyday life, I’m talking about the immersive experiences, but in everyday life, do you know just because it just sort of happens or in your willing, or actually if you’re on an airplane, do you intentionally try to start conversations with other people? What does it look like?

Brett Kunkle (24:30):
I think it’s both. And I think there’s just the natural rhythms of life. You end up getting in just conversation with people. And I think it’s in those times also being intentional like, hey, this conversation has turned. I’m talking to someone, whatever, in the airport or in a grocery store or my mechanic or whatever, and I’m just relating to him as a normal human being, treating with dignity and respect and looking for an opportunity to talk about serious things because people don’t get in those conversations very often.

And sometimes those conversations are just a few minutes and you don’t talk about anything deep and there’s not really an opportunity there. Sometimes you are intentional and you realize, okay, we’ve gotten maybe on a plane, we’re talking about our career, what we’re doing, and then you’re looking for an opportunity to kind of throw out an invitation.

(25:35):
So it’s a both/and, and it’s like an art. It’s not a science, it’s an art. There’s not these three steps. I can say here, every conversation here it is. People aren’t robots. People are unique individuals and sometimes people are open, sometimes people are not. But I think, here’s the thing, the more you do this, the better you can get at it.

(26:03):
It’s not the kind of thing, you either have the gift or you don’t. And this is where the immersive experiences are helpful because you get some experience and you realize, okay, here’s some questions that I asked and I asked it to multiple people and it seemed to really, people really opened up when I asked them that question.

Or just learning, hey, when I take an interest in someone and I’m asking them questions about what they think about this or what they think about that, and I take a real interest in them, then the guard comes down and there’s this goodwill that can be even built in just a few minutes and then they’re open to maybe getting into a deeper issue like that. Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (26:44):
Well, you get a few conversation free tickets just by being a good person who’s fun to talk to. When people ask me what I do and I tell them, I work for Summit Ministries and I work with kids, they give you a few more tickets because you’re working with, you’re helping the kids, so that’s good for you. But I just wonder if you don’t work for a ministry, if you don’t have a natural conversation opener like that, how it goes.

Brett Kunkle (27:11):
Yeah, this is where practice is important. This is why back in the old days, the old days, some of the old school methods of going door to door as Christians or going out to a public place where people are at, sometimes we kind of look down on those old methods, but those were intentional opportunities to get some experience and you’d get in some good conversations, but so that you would learn some of those skills so it would fit more naturally in just day-to-day life.

We talk about relational evangelism and it’s best often and most ideal in the context of relationship, and that could be a general truth, but if you’re not ever doing it anywhere, you’re often not going to do it in that context either. So there’s some intentional training that needs to happen.

Dr. Jeff Myers (27:59):
What about things like your class or you’re at work? There’s a lot of people who are listening to this or are watching this right now, they’ve come to some ministries program, but now they’re in the workplace and they’re like, it’s different here. If you’re in a college class and the professor wants to have a discussion, then you have a little more freedom.

But in the workplace, everybody’s afraid to say what they think because they’re all concerned about keeping their jobs and advancing in their careers. Nobody wants to be that guy who nobody wants to talk to, who doesn’t get invited to anything, doesn’t get opportunities. It seems like a very stifling environment. Is it even possible in a situation like that to talk about big topics, life big ideas?

Brett Kunkle (28:56):
It can be, and each work environment is different, but if you’re in one of those stifling kind of situations where you’re scared or there’s a lot of nervousness around it, I think really that’s where questions are really helpful and you’re inviting other people to share. You’re giving them permission to talk about these things. And what we’ve found is that people do want to talk about these things. They want to talk about significant issues because for most of their life, they’re talking about very shallow, meaningless activities, what was on TV or watching the latest series on Netflix or just things that don’t have a whole lot of eternal impact.

And when they start talking about things like God or ethical issues, social issues, eternity, the soul, salvation, whatever it might be, man, what we’ve found is there’s a real hunger there. Part of it, I think, is in those situations, you want to try to give them an invitation of permission to talk about that stuff, and questions do that. And if you can couple that with sitting back and listening, well, looking in the eye, nodding your head, you don’t have to or you don’t have to agree with everything they’re saying but you, you’re saying, yeah, I hear you.

(30:18):
And not jumping right into your defense or, well, let me show you why you’re wrong, kind of thing. But you sit back, you listen, you ask more questions, you get more of their view, okay, clarify this. You said this. Now why do you think that? And then afterwards, it could be something as simple as, man, thanks for sharing. You gave me a lot to think about. I’m going to ponder, I’m going to chew on some of that. And those kinds of conversations can happen when there’s a real invitation.

Dr. Jeff Myers (30:48):
We’ve had a lot of, well, not a lot now, we’ve had a handful of episodes that focus on asking questions. And as you know, that’s a big theme at Summit that we want students to lead, ask, don’t tell, just be that person who invites the conversation. What are some of your favorite questions that you ask in different situations to sort of get people thinking about big life topics that have eternal value?

Brett Kunkle (31:16):
Well, I like to ask people why they believe what they believe. Because what I found is that, man, if you’ve been through a summit program, you’ve got more training than 95% of the people you’re ever going to talk to. And that’s another confidence booster. I like to ask people, so why do you believe that after hearing what they believe, why do you believe that? Where did you get that from?

Because they’ve almost never been challenged that way because we often sit back, we don’t want to offend, we don’t want to challenge. And so people have never been challenged. They’ve never been forced to reckon with their views. And that question there can put a huge stone in people’s shoes because what you can do if you’re gentle with it, you don’t have to be a jerk about it. It’s like, yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:10):
You don’t want to be the 5 to 8%.

Brett Kunkle (32:12):
Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (32:13):
I mean, you want to be friends throughout and at the end of the conversation.

Brett Kunkle (32:20):
And in your manner. I mean, you can do it in a gracious way. You can say, hey, that is an interesting thought, so why do you think that? And take a genuine interest in why they might come to this conclusion. And I’m telling you, so many people that we talk to, whether it’s on campus or whether it’s a student or whether it’s they don’t know, and we have people all the time on the immersive experiences will say, gosh, I’ve never been asked that before. I never thought about that before.

(32:53):
And you don’t have to say much more after that. And they can feel the pressure of that. You don’t have to say, see, you don’t have a good reason. No, they realize that, I don’t know. I don’t have a really good reason about that. And go, okay. And that alone can be a stone in their shoe.

And then sometimes, here’s the great part when in these conversations, I think if you do a good job listening, you’re gracious, you ask questions sometimes, then they’ll turn it back to you. It’s like they will then give you permission. You’ve listened well, and they’ll say, well, gosh, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that, but what do you think about that? And then it’s like, okay, that’s the best point to be at when you don’t feel like you’re having to force it on them.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:39):
You’ve been invited.

Brett Kunkle (33:40):
Yeah. They want to know what you have to think, your thoughts, on this whole whatever issue it is. Yeah. That’s when the conversation gets really fun.

Dr. Jeff Myers (33:50):
It strikes me that what you’re doing with Maven has so many great applications for people who are on their way to college, but there’s something more to it as well. It feels like, sort of like an evangelism 201. You’re not just sending people out to ask, if you were to die right now, would you go to heaven? Which can be seen as a threat. Now are you saying, I’m going to die right now, but what you’re doing is creating a conversational space where it’s okay, and it’s actually cool to think about these things and to have viewpoints and to think about how you have those viewpoints and to receive a challenge. And to offer challenge.

Brett Kunkle (34:40):
Yeah. Well, I hope what we’re doing is what I see in the New Testament, there are so many different ways. When you read through the Book of Acts, there’s a number of different ways that the disciples go around sharing the good news. Sometimes it’s a public event, it’s a public proclamation, it’s a sermon in Acts chapter two, or it’s Paul going to Mars Hill and there’s public engagement and we need to do those things. I think that’s part of our toolbox, if you will.

Sometimes it’s going to an individual and talking to an individual, and sometimes that individual conversation is cracking open the scriptures and saying, hey, look here. Sometimes it’s reasoning with them, maybe it’s giving apologetic arguments. Sometimes it’s asking questions. There’s all kinds of things that you’re doing on that individual level, and we see all kinds of different results.

Sometimes it’s loving people, it’s meeting their needs. Sometimes it’s praying with people. We’ve had those situations where someone’s upset and they’re hurt, or we ask them at the end of a conversation, hey, what can we be praying for you about? And then that’s when they really open up.

Dr. Jeff Myers (35:50):
Oh, right.

Brett Kunkle (35:51):
It’s not during the question time. It’s like when you say, hey, can I pray for you about anything? You got any needs? And then they open up. And so there’s all of these different tools I think we have that are appropriate to being human and are appropriate to interacting with other human beings made in God’s image to share the message of Christ.

And here’s the thing, it’s kind of this well-rounded approach. It’s not just one thing. It’s trying to get to know people and who they are on an individual basis, treating them as individual, dignified people, and then trying to figure out, well, what might best impact them? And you know what? And then in the whole process, trusting the Holy Spirit’s working through all this. He’s working through all the different means. There’s not just one means that he uses, but he uses all of this stuff and it’s just all these things are appropriate to what it means to be human.

Dr. Jeff Myers (36:53):
Yeah. I want to ask another question about this because if it’s really true that what we’ve discerned in our polls that 5 to 8% of people are real jerks, then that means every 10 to 15 conversations you have, you’re going to meet a meanie, somebody who’s hostile. How do you prepare for that? What do you do or what do you train your students to do if they meet somebody who’s really upset for whatever reason?

Brett Kunkle (37:23):
Yeah. Well, there’s a couple of things that we talk to students about beforehand, before they ever get into those conversations. Number one is that you should have an appropriate expectation that when you start talking about spiritual things, and particularly when you start getting to Jesus and you start talking about the exclusive claims of Jesus, people are going to get mad. I mean, Peter refers to Jesus as the stone of stumbling in the rock of offense. Jesus in John 15 says, hey, if the world hates that, it hated me first.

And so there’s a healthy expectation that Christians need to develop, that the world wants to suppress the truth in its unrighteousness, and there will be people who will express that you will receive some hate. And so there’s a healthy expectation to do that. But just like the disciples that we see who experience persecution in the New Testament, what do they do? They say, we can’t stop talking about this. Even when the Jewish leaders threatened to put them in prison. Hey, we’ve got to obey God rather than men.

And when you do this long enough, you also get to see the good fruit. So you know that, okay, I will take some of this heat because I know that the Lord can work through it. And then here’s the other thing we talk to students about. There are different reasons why people will reject God.

Dr. Jeff Myers (38:48):
That’s a good point.

Brett Kunkle (38:49):
And they’re not all intellectual. So it’s not simply a matter of, well, I got all the evidence here and let me show it to you. Sometimes the reasons are emotional, they’re psychological reasons. And this is often what we find with the people when they get upset. When we talk about these things, what it typically means is that there’s something that’s going on underneath. And so if you can let go of that outer anger or the bitterness or them coming at you a little bit and being mean, if you can let go of that and not take it personally and then realize, I wonder what’s going on in this person’s heart.

(39:29):
I wonder what kind of woundedness this is often a sign that this is a wounded individual. There’s some deep hurt, there’s some pain there. And if you can get to that, that often is a great opportunity to talk with them. And so sometimes what we tell students, look, if someone’s getting upset, don’t match their anger. Don’t match the heated, actually step back and try to be more gentle and see if they don’t soften up. And you can even ask questions. We tell students, hey, ask them, hey, you seem upset about this. Why are you upset? And see if you can’t uncover what’s on that crusty outer surface.

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:11):
You talk about the talk.

Brett Kunkle (40:13):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (40:13):
You’re actually conversing about the conversation itself.

Brett Kunkle (40:16):
And think of it, kind of, peeling an onion. You’re trying to get to what’s really going on. I mean, here’s a great example. We were talking to a group of atheist students at, actually, this was on a trip to Boulder. We were up in Boulder and we were at the University of Colorado Boulder, and we had set up a meeting between the atheist club and this group of students, Christian students.

And there was one girl in particular, and I remember she had this, her hair was dyed bright red and she was part of the atheist club. And from the get go, she was mad. I mean, she was mad and she was letting us know, and she was really aggressive. And there was one time in particular where she was sharing her view of Christians and she said, the thing I can’t stand about Christians is that they try to impose their views on other people.

(41:08):
And so we were trying to engage that. I said, what do you mean by impose? Well, they try to force their beliefs. And so I’m trying to deal with that. Well, Christians can’t force their beliefs. They can try to persuade. And she was adamant. She’s like, no, they try to force their beliefs and you can just see the anger. And then it came out, her personal story. She’s like, I grew up in a Seventh Day Adventist home, and when I was, my parents sent me to a change camp. A change camp is for someone who’s struggling with their sex, same sex attraction, same sex attraction, and allegedly you send them to this whatever, a five day camp and change them kind of thing.

Not a good idea, but obviously, so she was a lesbian, and I don’t know all the details. I know her side and I know that she was very hurt and wounded by what she perceived to be the rejection of her family. And of course she associated that with Christianity. But when she shared that, that gave us insight to all this anger that was bubbling up. There was this deep woundedness of her rejection and her broken relationship with her family.

(42:12):
And that informed us, hey, time to shift gears here, time to love this girl. As best we can and to see if she’s open to that. And some of the other girls in that group afterwards went up to her and just were kind to her, asked her more of her story, and you could see her softening up. And so we will talk to students about that. And of course, always, you’ll run into people who just want to steamroll you. They don’t want to listen. And that’s where we tell students, hey, you don’t have to stay in that conversation. Sometimes the ground’s way too hard there and you just need to move on, and that’s okay. You thank people for their time and move on.

Dr. Jeff Myers (42:47):
But you can’t assume that no seeds were planted in that situation. That’s right. What looks like a failure from a human perspective could actually be the question that keeps on asking in that person’s mind long after the conversation is over.

Brett Kunkle (43:01):
That’s such a good point, Jeff. And we tell the students this all the time because a lot of times students, they’ll get frustrated, well, they didn’t seem to be really responsive, or I laid out these good arguments, or I gave the gospel and they didn’t respond. And we always tell them, well, you don’t know what’s going on in their heart and mind. You don’t know what seeds were planted. You don’t know if that atheist went home tonight and they couldn’t go to bed, they couldn’t fall asleep because all they’re doing is thinking about what you said.

And you know what? Our job is to focus on being faithful and we leave the results to God. We leave the results to God and the Holy Spirit is working. When we don’t see it, we don’t know what’s going on. And there could be lots of fruit seeds that are planted that will bear fruit two years, three years, five years from now that we’ll never know about. So we focus on being faithful.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:51):
Well, it seems like every church ought to be doing trips like this.

Brett Kunkle (43:55):
Agreed.

Dr. Jeff Myers (43:55):
Or a Christian school. You only have so much capacity, but maybe there are people who are watching and listening who think, I have some training. I’ve been to Summit Ministries. I love people I could help. Is there a place for them? I mean, what if there were 500 trips like this a year instead of 10?

Brett Kunkle (44:15):
I wish. I wish Jeff, and of all the things I’ve ever done with young people, I mean, this is one of the most powerful, most impactful things I’ve seen in terms of programming. And so we want to expand these this year. We will have done 10 through Maven. We want to get to 2030 of these trips per year. And if there are people who look, you’ve got to have some knowledge, you’ve got to have some training, but that’s not enough to lead these trips.

We also need people who, like young people who can hang out with young people like the Summit staffers here and also have some leadership skills. It can administrate, guide people through this, folks like that. A well-rounded individual is a good person. That could be a guide. And we have guides and we have volunteers. We rely heavily on volunteers to help us with some of these trips. So if people are listening to this and they go, man, this sounds great, I’d like to get involved, we would love to talk to folks like that.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:19):
Yeah. And so maventruth.com.

Brett Kunkle (45:24):
Yeah.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:24):
I’m glad you said that. Maventruth.com, M-A-V-E-N, where does that name come from?

Brett Kunkle (45:31):
Maven refers to someone who is knowledgeable or an expert in a field and then seeks to pass that on. So you might have a finance maven or a fashion maven, and we want to be mavens of Christian truth and we want our young people to become mavens.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:46):
I love it. That’s great. I love it. I should have asked that question at the very beginning.

Brett Kunkle (45:51):
That’s probably the biggest question we get. What’s Maven?

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:53):
Maven? Yeah. Brett, thanks for being on the show today.

Brett Kunkle (45:56):
Thanks for having me, Jeff.

Dr. Jeff Myers (45:58):
Thanks to my guest, Brett Kunkle, for joining on the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. Today, you’re going to want to find out more about the work that Brett and his family do at Maven. So you just go to Maven, M-A-V-E-N, maventruth.com. That’s it. You can find out about the immersive experiences he’s discussing, see what other resources he has available. Of course, Brett is also the co-author of a bestselling book with John Stonestreet from the Colson Center on Parenting in a Difficult Culture. So you’ll want to check that out as well.

Listen, the Lord in scripture tells us that we should always be prepared to give an answer for the hope that we have. And that’s why we do shows like The One with Brett, because I’m curious too. I know I need to grow in confidence and I need to recognize that if I’m silent when I need to speak up, then I’m complicit in what happens in our culture. I don’t like that kind of challenge, but that’s the way it is. So I hope that you enjoyed today’s broadcast, left you with a lot to think about and talk about. We’ll see you next week.

(47:07):
Hey, it’s Dr. Jeff from the Dr. Jeff Show podcast. I’m excited to be releasing a new book. This is the book I wrote during my cancer journey called Truth Changes Everything. It’s the book that I thought, if this is the last thing you ever get to write, this is what I want to write about. I want to write about truth.

I think at the core of all of the cultural conflicts we have today is a battle over truth. I mean a battle between the idea of capital-T truth, that truth actually exists and can be discovered. And the idea of small-t truth, that ultimate truth cannot be known. Truth is up to the individual. One side says, seek the truth. The other side says, speak your truth if you face this in your road life. The question as I wrote the book is, alright, so what do you do?

(47:53):
There’s really a battle. You can really see that truth exists, but what’s the most helpful thing? So I went back into history and I just wrote the book telling stories of amazing people who were Jesus followers, who believed that Jesus is the truth, and as a result of that belief, they changed the world even in times of great crisis when it seemed that the world is going to come to an end.

If that sounds like the kind of book you’d like to read, I’d love for you to pre-order a copy wherever you get your books. And if you will take a picture of your receipt and send it to me at jeff@summit.org. Then I’m going to send you a little signed book plate and then you can stick that inside your book. When it arrives, you’ll have a signed copy of the book. So the book is Truth Changes Everything, and my email is jeff@summit.org. Pre-order it please and then just send me the receipt and we’ll take it from there.

Listeners, I want you to know that our podcast is on Edifi, which is a truly powerful app that brings together thousands of the best Christian podcasts in one place for your listening enjoyment. You can download it at edifi.app. Be sure to share the show if you have enjoyed listening to it and leave a review if you would on the site where you download the show that helps more people know about the Dr. Jeff Show and I’ll look forward to seeing you next week.