#S4 EP5: Generation Z and the Future of Evangelism: A Dialogue with Shaila Visser.
By Dave Mckeown and Nathan Benger
In part one, Shaila, who is the National Director of Alpha Canada, Global Senior Vice President for Alpha International, and a celebrated Christian leader, shares insights from her faith journey, leadership experiences, and her work with Alpha. She discusses the importance of personal rhythm and agility in leadership, the role of leaders in God's kingdom, and her passion for nurturing young leaders.
A must-listen for anyone interested in faith-based leadership and the Church's future.
We hope you enjoy
SHOW NOTES
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Dave & Nathan (00:01.179)
Well, welcome to the Church Explained podcast, a conversation to grow our leadership and build our church. I'm Dave. And I'm Nathan. And today we are joined again. Again. By Shayla Visser. She was on one of our earlier podcast episodes. If you've not listened to that, then check back on that. You don't need to listen to it to listen to this one, but it's a great listen again. But if you've never...
I heard of or know of Shayla. Let me just explain a little bit about what she does. She's the National Director of Alpha Canada, Global Senior Vice President for Alpha International and Executive Producer of the Alpha Youth Film Series 2013 and the Alpha Film Series 2016. She also currently holds positions on the board of the Damascus Road Foundation and the Board of Regent College, an international graduate school in Vancouver.
Before her work with Alpha, Shayla served on staff with Power to Change in Canada. She has been studying evangelism and evangelistic responses in nonprofits and the church. She has a heart for people coming to know Jesus and helping the local church flourish. A gifted communicator and known for her ability to bring people together, Shayla is recognized as one of the top 100 most influential Christian women in Canada. Shayla lives in Vancouver with her husband Ryan.
K9 unit police officer and two four-legged family members. Taylan and Benny, is that right?
Shaila Visser (01:34.126)
Talon. Talon and Benny, we love our dogs. Yeah. Thanks for having us back on. It's so great to be back on with you guys. Dave and Nathan, I appreciate what you're doing for the church and I just love your heart for leadership and mission.
Dave & Nathan (01:35.147)
Time out. Should have checked. Yeah. Awesome.
Dave & Nathan (01:52.747)
Well, it is a pleasure to have you back on. And we just want to let our audience know that you have got up very early at your end. We need a little bit of sympathy for you, really, because it is 6 a.m. at Vancouver and we're 2 p.m. here. So we're all right. We're at the other end now. We're sort of going towards the end of the day. But it is so wonderful to have you here with us. And I wonder if you could just share a little bit more, Sheila, just about your family, your journey to...
Shaila Visser (02:04.008)
It is.
Dave & Nathan (02:22.111)
faith and ministry, maybe just for our listeners who haven't heard that before. Just a wee bit more. I know we've done the bio, which is fantastic. Nathan, you read that very well, actually. Well done. Good reading. But, come on, let's share a little bit more about your faith journey and maybe just a little bit more about your family if you're okay with that.
Shaila Visser (02:42.162)
Yeah, absolutely. My family are an immigrant family to Canada. My mom and dad came from India. They realized that with the marriage they had that they would probably need to raise their kids in a different country. And the reason is my mom is British, had gone with the VSO to work at a school in India, met my father there, got married and realized they were in a country and she was from a country that perhaps an interracial marriage would not.
be so easily accepted and so they decided Canada was a good place to come. So I was born here in our country and I love it. It's a wonderful place but I have a great affinity for the UK and for India. I grew up in an Anglican church my mom had actually left the church in her 20s as had my dad. I'm seventh generation Christian on the Indian side and they had both left the church in their 20s.
And when my mom got pregnant with me, she decided to go back to church. She went to her parish church in the community and she realized that what she wanted was for her life was Jesus. And it was a charismatic Anglican church and so she just took off in her faith. The grounding that was there from her childhood just was fanned into flame in that environment. And since then, walking with the Lord, my dad became a Christian when I was 17. I would say became a Christian.
probably not the right language, but his faith came alive. It had been quite dormant for quite a lot of decades. So that's kind of my immigrant Anglican family story. And so I grew up in a wonderful rural church. So for those of you in rural churches, I salute you because we need rural churches to be very fruitful, loving, hospitable places for young people to find themselves at. And that's what I did.
Christchurch Colchester in Harrow, Ontario. You wouldn't find it on a map. It's a tiny little place. But what it was a vibrant community, small community of people who genuinely loved each other and genuinely loved Jesus. My youth group was five people and some odds and sods kids who came once in a while, but it was really my siblings and I and a couple other friends. And that was the size of our youth group. But you know what? All of us are still walking with Jesus.
Dave & Nathan (04:37.62)
Wow.
No.
Dave & Nathan (05:04.299)
Amazing.
Shaila Visser (05:04.914)
as all of us still are faithful to God. And so I've just had this wonderful life of seeing the church at its best, really and truly. And then I decided when I went to university that being a Christian wasn't cool or a good thing. And I want to stretch myself into new experiences and new people. And so I put Jesus on the back burner. But in my last year university, I, excuse me.
In my last year of university, I recommitted my life to Jesus. I just was kind of sick of sitting on the fence. The fence is a very uncomfortable place to be. And I knew I had to be all in or not in at all. And I couldn't do the not in at all. So I jumped all in and really just said to Jesus, OK, I put my life in yours and I will follow you all the days of my life. That is the briefest version of my background.
Dave & Nathan (05:39.56)
Mm. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave & Nathan (05:59.339)
Amazing. Yeah. Well, we're good at getting the brief stuff out of people. Well done, well done. And tell us, what do you do for fun?
Shaila Visser (06:11.262)
Oh, well, for fun, I love actually going to beaches. I love reading. I love playing tennis, but I haven't played a lot recently. My husband and I love to travel. And so whether that's Mexico and the beach in the winter, you know, Vancouver's like the UK known for its rain in the winter. And so whether we do that or we go somewhere interesting, we went to Machu Picchu in May, that was awesome.
So we do love to travel and we love our dogs, we love our life, we love to be hospitable, we love having people in our home.
Dave & Nathan (06:42.763)
Very good. No, so good. Well, with your work, obviously you're doing a lot of work with leaders globally. I wonder if you'd just tap into some of the things that you're noticing, maybe the greatest challenges and also opportunities that you're seeing at the moment globally.
Shaila Visser (07:04.646)
Yeah, through our work with Alpha, we have a global emerging leaders cohort that I've been privileged to work with. And then of course, I work with leaders in Canada that are that are pastors or charitable leaders. And in that I see two sort of key concerns that church leaders are facing. One is rhythm. And the second is agility.
Rhythm being what is my personal rhythm? What is the rhythm of leadership that allows me to be a healthy and flourishing leader? What is the rhythm that allows me time to consider all of the issues coming at me? What does that look like? And I think people are finding it really difficult to find the right rhythm. And then agility is the second one. Like, how do I continue to adapt the realities of what it means to lead a church or be in the charitable sector, faith based charitable sector?
Dave & Nathan (07:53.587)
Yeah. Ooh.
Shaila Visser (07:58.808)
do I remain agile in that? And that's not an easy thing because not every personality is naturally agile, naturally likes change. So if you're a person that I don't like change, it's not my thing. This last few years have been just real torture for you. And so the combination of rhythm, what are my spiritual rhythms, my work rhythms, my family rhythms, and what is that pacing like in that, and then this ability to be agile. If you have
figured out your rhythm and you're not naturally agile? Boy this has been a rough few years. The opportunity then is for leaders to really see that in the midst of all this change, God is doing something new. God is doing something wonderful. Do we have the ability to see it, hear it, and join it? I'm a big fan of Dr. Henry Blackaby's Experiencing God. You may remember it from years and years ago.
Dave & Nathan (08:43.08)
Yeah.
Dave & Nathan (08:50.187)
Mmm.
Shaila Visser (08:58.708)
you could pull off the shelf and still do. It perhaps has some approaches that might have been for a certain day and age, but.
the underlying biblical principles are great. How do you join God and what he's doing? There's a pastor in California named Terry Walling. He now consults other pastors. And he said early on the pandemic, the season is about voice recognition. And I think it's still true today. The opportunity is voice recognition. Can you hear what the spirit is doing today? Join him in what he's doing rather than doing the sort of heave ho, energy sapping,
Dave & Nathan (09:11.755)
Mm-hmm.
Dave & Nathan (09:29.829)
Yeah.
Shaila Visser (09:37.504)
work that is based on your best attempt at doing what God's called you to do versus Spirit-empowered, Spirit-led work of the Kingdom.
Dave & Nathan (09:50.059)
Great. Yeah, so good. Some stuff to think about there, I think, for leaders. Have you noticed anything, you talked about, you know, being agile. Have you noticed anything around the sense of resilience with leaders? Have you picked that up at all? And what would you say?
Shaila Visser (10:05.306)
Yeah, absolutely. I think the reason that I avoid the word resiliency is because I think it exhausts.
Dave & Nathan (10:09.995)
Mmm.
Shaila Visser (10:12.398)
pastors to hear the word resiliency. They're just like, I know, I have to be more resilient. And that's why I've tried to pick a different approach to say, we always have to be resilient, absolutely. But I thought agility was an approach that allowed people to hear it in a different way to say, okay, how do I stay agile? But agility is also in my spiritual life.
Dave & Nathan (10:14.259)
Yeah, probably.
Dave & Nathan (10:20.913)
like that.
Dave & Nathan (10:35.143)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Shaila Visser (10:35.99)
Different seasons require different things from me as a leader. And so agility just allows me to communicate to other leaders that this is a life choice. It's sometimes a personality and sometimes it's forced on you. And in this case with COVID it was forced on us and we had to learn to adapt really well. And so resiliency. Yes, every leader needs to be resilient. You grow in it over time.
Dave & Nathan (10:38.859)
Mmm.
Dave & Nathan (10:51.963)
Yeah, yeah.
Dave & Nathan (11:02.835)
Yeah, that's it.
Shaila Visser (11:02.922)
But I think the ability to be agile means you walk with the spirit.
Dave & Nathan (11:08.127)
Yeah, I can see that and probably a much more less pressuring approach, I guess, to think of it that way, isn't it? That there's some agility there.
Shaila Visser (11:16.075)
Yeah.
And I think this season has really helped us also to understand that there perhaps were idols or misunderstandings or misinformed approaches to our ministry that the Lord wanted to tear down.
And one of the most common that I hear, and this would be particularly in evangelical circles, we work with the whole churches, you know, but I would say in evangelical churches, you'll hear people say, well, I'm building the kingdom. You know, we're part of expanding the kingdom, you know, that's what we're doing right now. And I think if we were to go back to what Jesus said and what we hear in the New Testament, that's not our role.
And I think we have to kind of take pressure off of ourselves as leaders to say, OK, you're not responsible for building the kingdom. That's what the king does. You're not responsible for expanding the kingdom. That's what the king does. Instead, we are to pray. We are to seek. We are to live in the kingdom. Like there's lots of activities we do in the kingdom. But the king builds it.
Dave & Nathan (12:04.671)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like.
Dave & Nathan (12:09.271)
Mmm.
Dave & Nathan (12:21.811)
Yeah.
Shaila Visser (12:24.414)
And I think that allows us as leaders, when you think about being agile, you have to have it under a good theology of what is our role and what is the Lord's role. And I think in some cases, at least in the West, we love an enterprising church model, and in that we can end up in the wrong place.
Dave & Nathan (12:31.135)
No, no.
Shaila Visser (12:45.886)
If we get too far down that, we want to be about voice recognition. We want to understand our role and the king's role in the kingdom. So we do his work. That's where agility and adaptability and resiliency sits is within that. And if we're not within that, then I think we get into trouble.
Dave & Nathan (13:00.217)
Yeah, yeah.
Dave & Nathan (13:04.691)
Yeah, I think you're right and some great advice there for leaders. Let's pick up if we can on your role within Alpha a couple of years since we've chatted to you, I think probably about two years ago. You were sharing with us then some of the things you were doing, some of the new innovations that you had to sort of work towards, some of the online stuff. What are you most excited in your role with Alpha at the minute? What's the thing that really grips you at this point in time?
Shaila Visser (13:15.639)
Yeah.
Shaila Visser (13:33.99)
Well, in May, Nicky Gumbel at our leadership conference rolled out the vision for 2033, which is 100 million participants on Alpha. And in 30 years, we've had 30 million. And in the next decade, our vision from the Lord is 70 million more guests around the world. And so it's just very, very exciting for us to think about what does it mean to serve the church to
to really see more people come to know Jesus. And I don't know what it's like for you guys in the UK. I do know what it's like in Canada and the US is that young people are more spiritually open than we've ever seen before. The spiritual interest is really high. They're not looking to the church in Christianity, but they're looking for spiritual places to have good conversations. So I think we're particularly interested. Next year, we'll launch the next Alpha U series. Gen Alpha is right on our heels.
For us in Canada, Gen Alpha starts high school, and that means they're sort of, you know, in that 14 year old, 13, 14 year old age group, they're going into high school. And so it's a whole new age group for the church to reach. And so we've designed our next Alpha Youth Series under Dan Blythe's leadership to really impact that age group. So I'm particularly keen on what does it mean to reach this next.
generation around the world and that's Gen Alpha. And I think we're positioning ourselves to be a resource to the church to help them do that.
Dave & Nathan (15:04.094)
And just to follow up on that then, what about your own leadership journey? What are you most excited about?
Shaila Visser (15:12.046)
I think it's leadership development truthfully. It's I'm at a certain stage of my experience and learnings and failings and to be able to help young leaders. I am so excited about Gen Z. Their interest in growing and developing as young leaders, their hunger for the things of God. I'm like.
I love this generation. How can I serve them?
to be great leaders. I had a leader call me yesterday and said, hey, I really wanna learn from you as I take on this new leadership responsibility. And I'm hoping I can be as good as you. I said, no, let's reframe that. You can be better than me because I'm gonna teach you everything I can so that you go way further and have far greater impact. It's not about trying to be a leader like me. It's being the leader God's called you to be. And I'm gonna help you get there. And so I love that. I look at our staff. I get so excited about it.
our staff, I get excited about young leaders that I meet through different organizations and different churches. And I really do think about what can we do to serve them. So I started something off the side of my desk a couple years ago, the women church leader accelerator, that has been hugely fruitful. 19 women who were in executive roles or church planters, coming in for a two year cohort to be developed as leaders. That's the kind of thing I want
Shaila Visser (16:41.04)
my connections, my opportunities, and giving it to them to help them run further and farther that the Lord would want them to do for his kingdom. And I'm excited about that. I really get passionate about young people.
Dave & Nathan (16:52.915)
Yeah, yeah. Well, you can see it in your face and in your enthusiasm there. It's good to be excited about stuff. And I'm just trying to think of the amount then for Alpha. That's a lot of people to reach. 70 million, was it? Yeah.
Shaila Visser (17:09.51)
70 million more participants. Yeah, it's a lot of people to reach. But when you look around the world, I mean, what else what alpha is able to do to serve churches in Asia and Latin America and Africa and the Middle East, like it's just incredibly good work. And the contextualization of alpha, right, whether it's with the Chinese alpha film series that was launched, that's 100% in Mandarin, or, you know, the types of work my colleagues are doing in those areas.
Dave & Nathan (17:17.523)
Mmm, amazing.
Dave & Nathan (17:29.977)
Yeah, yeah.
Dave & Nathan (17:36.82)
means.
Shaila Visser (17:37.394)
We just need to fuel it because it is I say to people all the time, it's a good time to be alive. It's a great time to be working, you know, alongside of the spirit and what he's doing in the world.
Dave & Nathan (17:43.655)
Yeah, yeah, I like it. Yeah.
Dave & Nathan (17:52.735)
So good. I love obviously your excitement around young leaders. I wonder if we could just dive into that a little bit in terms of like are you seeing a difference between young leaders and what we'll call more seasoned leaders when it comes to that idea of evangelism? You know are they more eager, less eager to reach people with the message of Jesus? What are you seeing as you chat with those younger leaders?
Shaila Visser (18:20.766)
Well, interestingly, we actually did some research in 2021 on evangelism and young leaders and you know, people that have different roles within churches. We had 2700 pastors fill it out in Canada. So it's quite a robust study. And here's what it told us 46% and 48% of children's and youth pastors think evangelism is wrong.
I'll say that again, 46 and 48% of youth and children's pastors think it's wrong. So when you have that as a base, the younger people that are being discipled under them don't have the same passion for evangelism. And so we're seeing this critical shift happen in the church in Canada. So the issue is the seasoned leaders, as you call them, Nathan, I love that. I'm a seasoned leader. The seasoned leaders are.
Dave & Nathan (18:48.048)
Yeah
Shaila Visser (19:13.29)
passionate about evangelism in most cases, not all but most, but they're tired as well. They've led through the pandemic, they're coming out on the other side, there's so much work to do, the world is changing, culture is changing. How do you stay on top of that? How do you help your congregation in the midst of that and prioritize evangelism, which is spiritually harder?
Often to take more time and energy sometimes takes more money in terms of training and equipping a running alpha or whatever it might be. How do you keep that white hot in your church amidst all the other things so I actually think. Increasingly we have young people that are being discipled by others that don't prioritize evangelism and so that's a concern now with the with some of the.
resilient disciples that I'm meeting.
they are passionate, they are just on fire for God. So it's not true of everyone. I would just say it's a smaller number of them. And so we're doing everything we can to encourage them and fan it into flame. And we've got some ideas too in Canada about what we're gonna do to help young people recognize this wonderful opportunity to reach their friends. Because the Barna research we did said that Gen Z, if they were talking about an emotion that they feel
Dave & Nathan (20:09.62)
No.
Dave & Nathan (20:25.077)
Yeah.
Shaila Visser (20:34.962)
And Gen Z said something different from any other generation. They said, we feel calm. Calm. Not afraid. Calm. Why? Because they believe in being their authentic selves with their friends. And if they're Christians, they feel calm about it. So sharing their faith comes much more naturally. So we have that reality, but a reality that the children's and youth pastors aren't as passionate. So how do we help?
Dave & Nathan (20:42.868)
Mmm. Yeah.
Dave & Nathan (20:48.27)
Mm.
Shaila Visser (21:01.594)
young people see that evangelism and helping their friends meet Jesus is so essential and is a part of their own faith development and is actuall
