Roger Ross is the author of “Kinda Christian: From Curious to Serious about Jesus”. He also leads a coaching and mentoring group for ministers called The Humility Group. You’ll be inspired as you listen to his story today on the Evangelism Podcast.
Learn more about Roger Ross: https://www.thehumilitygroup.org/
Key Moments:
- Roger Ross is the author of the book “Kind of Christian: From Curious to Serious about Jesus Christ” and leads a coaching and mentoring group for ministers called The Humility Group. [0:00]
- Ross explains that his book is aimed at people who have some connection to the church but lack a deep, personal relationship with Jesus. He has observed growing spiritual curiosity, especially among younger generations. [1:33] [2:36]
- To help these spiritually curious individuals, Ross recommends the church provide “honest, safe conversations about spiritual things” and give them opportunities to explore their deeper desires and questions. [3:12]
- Ross outlines six key marks of a “deeply devoted disciple”: glory, grace, group, growth, giftedness, and generosity. These involve both inward experiences and outward expressions. [6:12] [7:56]
- In his own journey, Ross came to know Jesus as a teenager and later felt called into ministry, with a passion for helping others grow as devoted disciples. [8:30]
- To make disciples who make disciples, Ross emphasizes the importance of relational, face-to-face discipleship rather than solely relying on apps or other impersonal methods. [11:27] [13:38]
- Through his Humility Group, Ross coaches pastors and faith leaders to cultivate humility, mutual support, and innovative approaches to ministry. [18:03]
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Roger Ross is the author of “Kinda Christian: From Curious to Serious about Jesus”. He also leads a coaching and mentoring group for ministers called The Humility Group. You’ll be inspired as you listen to his story today on the Evangelism podcast.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:36):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:58):
Daniel King. Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today we have a very special guest with us, Roger Ross, who wrote a book called “Kinda Christian: From Curious to Serious about Jesus.” Brother Roger, thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast today.
Roger Ross (01:23):
Thanks for having me, Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:24):
Hey, I love the title of your book. Tell me a little bit about what it means.
Roger Ross (01:33):
Yeah, I’ve had a lot of people ask me about that actually. I’ve discovered there are a lot of folks in our world that are really good people that have perhaps some kind of connection with the church, but they just don’t have a connection with Jesus in our culture and western culture. Certainly in the United States, you can be a good Christian and go to church 1.2 times a month. You can be considered faithful and really not be showing up much or participating much. You’re kind of Christian. There’s also lots of folks that have some kind of background. Maybe their family was Christian, but it never really clicked for them. They’ve never had a life altering relationship with Jesus. So this is a book for those people, primarily people that are looking for something more. They’re curious spiritually and they don’t know exactly where to turn.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:28):
Do you see a growth in the number of people who are curious about Jesus right now?
Roger Ross (02:36):
I do actually, especially in Gen Z. Gen Z is changing the ballgame in Western culture. Certainly in the United States. They are coming on strong in ways that no one could have predicted even a couple of years ago. And there is a tremendous amount of spiritual curiosity in the younger generations especially.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:56):
How do you think the church should interact with those who are spiritually curious? Maybe their parents or grandparents were Christian, but they don’t have much of a relationship with God, but they’re interested in learning more.
Roger Ross (03:12):
Yeah, I found that folks that are in that situation really love to have honest, safe conversations about spiritual things. They’ve got all kinds of questions about spiritual stuff. They just don’t know where to turn. They feel a little sheepish about talking to their friends about it because their friends aren’t necessarily Christian or spiritual, at least they don’t think. And so they’ve got these questions that they just swallow and wrestle with in the dark of the night and really don’t know how to express them or find some kind of path to work their spirituality out. And if someone will just say, Hey, tell me about what’s really going on inside, what are your deeper desires? I know you want to be a success. I know you want to make a lot of money. I know you have big plans for your life, but what do you want really underneath that? And pretty much everybody’s the same. They want to be loved for who they are. They want to know that they matter. They want to know that they have a purpose in this world. And those are spiritual issues. And if people will give them an opportunity to talk about those things, you could really go to town.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:24):
Now in your book you mention six marks that define a deeply devoted disciple. What are some of those things that show that someone is deeply devoted? And how do these different pathways encourage spiritual growth?
Roger Ross (04:41):
Yeah, that’s a great question. In the last church that I was serving, we kept having people that would show up, newcomers that show up, and our mission statement was to make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. And we kept having these newcomers say, Hey, I love that whole transformation of the world thing, but what’s the disciple? And we’re like, well, everybody knows who the disciple is, right? It’s little of this. It’s little of that. We can, we know ’em when we see one. And that wasn’t very satisfying and it was embarrassing for us because we didn’t really have a good answer ourselves. We just assumed everybody knew. So I talked to the other pastors, I said, look, we got to come up with a better answer. This is embarrassing. So I said, how hard could this be? Let’s just get our heads together and let’s knock something out.
(05:31):
In three weeks, eight months later, we actually had something that we could bring to our leadership team to say, Hey, we think this is what it looks like to be a disciple. We had to just rust it out of our guts. What does it really mean? Search the scriptures. Do everything we could to figure out what would be a faithful path to actually make a disciple. And what we came up with were these six Gs Now, they were the six marks that we called a deeply devoted disciple, and they were glory, grace, group growth, giftedness and generosity. And each of those, she has both an inward experience to them as well as an outward expression. So let’s talk about glory to begin with regard to glory. When you come into some kind of encounter of an encounter of God’s presence, you’re going to enter into God’s glory and you can enter in God’s glory, whether you’re in public worship service with lots of people around, or you can do that in the one-on-one relationship when you enter into the chapel of your own heart in solitude or when you are in an ongoing relationship, an ongoing conversation with God through the day, practicing the presence of God.
(06:57):
Brother Lawrence talked about this 300 years ago and it’s been actually, that little book is probably the most often read book outside of the Bible in the last 300 years in Western society. And then there’s also a process of daily review. It’s kind of where you watch the game tape from your day before and say, okay, where was God showing up in my life over the course of this past 24 hours? Where did I feel like God was drawing close? And that was a sense of consolation for me. And where did I feel desolation? Where does it feel like God was far away or I had drawn far away from God over the course of the last 24 hours? And just reviewing your day as a way of helping you to understand the way that God is working in your life. And when you’re presently aware of God’s presence, that’s just a way to experience the glory of God. And then when we experience the glory of God, of course we can share that with others. Same is true with grace, right? When you experience grace, when you receive grace, the natural outflow is then to relay it to other people, and that’s the kind of progress that you take as you go through each of the Gs.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:12):
Let’s go back to your story. How did you become a serious follower of Jesus Christ? And then what has been your walk in helping to lead other people to being serious about their relationship with God?
Roger Ross (08:30):
Yeah. When I first came to know Jesus, when I was 14 years old and praying in the dark of the night in my bedroom, the prayer that my Sunday school teacher, Sharon Rust asked me to pray or invited us to pray as a group, and that was Jesus come into my heart. And I just prayed that over and over again until at one point Jesus did in such a powerful and transforming way that it’s hard for me to even put into words. It was kind of the classic bright light and 10,000 pounds were released from my heart, and I just felt free and full. And for the first time in my life, I knew that God was not a concept. God was not a principal or a precept. God was a person and I could have a real relationship with God. That was the beginning.
(09:21):
And then later on in college, I got into a group of other college students that really formed a deputation team where we go out and do musical worship services and give our testimonies in the process. And it was in that group and in the experience of giving testimonies and leading worship and the like, I realized this whole idea of becoming a marine biologist, which was my original dream from my life, was getting rerouted by God into a completely different direction. And I felt strongly called into the ministry. And so that’s when I started going deeper into my own level of discipleship and wanting to help other people. As a pastor, I just wanted to help other people not just find Jesus, but know how to follow him in the deepest way they could.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:17):
Yeah, I really like how your book is organized. The first section is really about becoming a deeply devoted disciple. Then your second section is about how to become a disciple who makes other disciples. So let’s talk about that second part. How do you become a disciple who then creates other disciples?
Roger Ross (10:42):
Yeah, that’s the part where I talk about jumping in the river. And so I use the word River as an acronym for that and really talk about how once someone has received the grace of God in their lives and have some experience of the glory of God, I’ve been in some kind of a group and they are in the process of growing and relaying that to growth with other people. Then it basically starts with the R of Relay life in the spirit. It’s just an ever flowing river. And so when we receive from the Holy Spirit, we want to pass that on. So we relay it to other people, and as we relay it to other people, from time to time, you’ll start to see other eyes start to light up. When you see the glistening eyes, you know that something’s happening spiritually in that other person, and then you invite them into some kind of up close relationship.
(11:38):
We don’t disciple people from a distance. Jesus didn’t disciple people from a distance. He gathered 12 people around him. He even had a little executive committee of Peter, James and John that were even closer for even deeper discipleship conversations that he had with them. So that’s a part of the process. You invite people into that closer relationship and then you visualize Jesus was a master at this. He visualized what it was that God was doing in that person’s life and then called it forth. When you can say something along the lines of, I can see in you, I see in you, Daniel, an evangelist that can reach the world for Jesus. And as you speak those words, you’re doing something akin to the work of a prophet. You’re seeing something spiritually in the other person and by saying that you’re calling it out. And oftentimes when you do that, the person will say, well, seriously, you see that?
(12:34):
I don’t see that in me. How do you see that in me? It’s all over you. You just need to spend some time listening to God because there’s something on your life that’s being called forth, and I want to invite you into that and help you to see it for yourself. And then of course, you encourage people. I mean, as you’re around them and they begin to take hold of the vision that God has for them, you want to encourage them to take steps into that kind of ministry, whatever it is that God has called them to. Because when we start out in ministry or in anything, we always take fumbling steps a little kind of two steps forward, three steps back. And so it takes a little while to gain our sea legs, and that’s a place for encouragement. We just stand alongside shoulder to shoulder and say, you can do this.
(13:30):
I know it didn’t go as well as you hoped it would that first time, let’s try it again. You can do this. And then lastly, you just release them. Once they do have their sea legs, then you don’t want to hold onto ’em. You want to release them to do that kind of ministry in the way that God has called them with other people and then start the process over again. They start the relaying and inviting and visualizing, et cetera. So it’s just an ongoing process. So disciples who make disciples who make disciples to the ends of the earth.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:02):
Roger, one of the things I really like that you just said is that you can’t disciple at a distance. So I have recently gone to several big Christian conferences and there’s a lot of focus on developing discipleship apps, using AI for discipleship, really doing discipleship at volume, which of course Jesus didn’t have the option to do that. He just talked to his 12 disciples. But I think pure discipleship really discipling someone can’t be done through an app or long distance. It really takes face-to-face. So give me some stories of individuals that you’ve discipled and what God has done in their lives.
Roger Ross (14:51):
Yeah, there are a number of those kinds of stories, but I completely agree with you, Daniel, like 100% it is life on life. I mean, there’s a relational component that is indispensable for discipleship. So one person that I mentioned in the book is Mike. Mike is someone who was a classic kind of Christian. He grew up in the Christian faith and really had some kind of strong connection with Jesus and then had a terrible situation take place in the church that he was a part of, and he just rejected it all. He turned his back on Christ. He turned his back on the church and ran as far as he possibly could. And Mike by hook or crook, really mostly by accident, I think, although it was one of these divine accidents, had a friend that invited them to a new church. It was a church that I was involved in starting, and he didn’t want to go.
(15:48):
His wife didn’t want to go, but they were just going to placate their friend because they didn’t want to disrupt the friendship. Well, they showed up and it turns out the Holy Spirit got ahold of them in that very first worship service. And they’re like, we didn’t ever have any intention to come back to this thing, but maybe we should. And they started coming back time and time and again. And then I started to develop a relationship with Mike. We would go out to lunch, we would have conversations offline, we would do things together that were kind of fun things. And I would just ask him some interesting questions from time to time. Tell me how is it with your soul today, Mike? And he is like, what on earth are you talking about? Dude? He had no idea. But over time, we had more and more spiritual conversations until Mike came to the point of completely recommitting his life to Christ, as did his wife who had never had any kind of connection with the church previously. His mom made a recommitment to Christ, their daughter made a commitment to Christ. Mike went on to become a pastor, and it was just a phenomenal story of just simple discipleship, just life on life, friendship to friendship, some mentoring, I mean, all the kinds of things we talked about in that river approach.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:19):
As I was looking at the biography of your life, one of the things that caught my attention is your coaching group called The Humility Group, where you help other pastors and faith-based leaders. Tell me a little bit about what you do in the Humility Group and how you help ministers to be better ministers. And by the way, I love the name of the Humility Group. Sometimes being in ministry, you find people that have really big egos, but of course, Jesus was humble. He washed his disciples feet. And so really to be an effective follower of Christ, we need to cultivate humility in our lives. So tell me about that.
Roger Ross (18:03):
Yeah, I really do agree with that, Daniel. I think humility is the cardinal virtue of the Christian faith. And I’ve discovered in my own life, I’ve seen this in others as well, that we really can’t learn anything until we’re willing to say, I don’t know. I’d be humble enough to say, I need some help. I need to learn from someone else. And once you put yourself in that position, then you are ready to be filled in a completely different way. The Humility Group is really a place where I have the privilege of coaching pastors of faith-based leaders and their leadership teams to help them lead grace shaped lives that can transform the world. So I do a lot of one-on-one coaching with pastors. I also do a lot of work with the leadership teams and have actually started a new network called The Humility Network.
(19:01):
And that network, it started out with three people even we’ve been going for about a year. We just added three people. It was just like a kind of an experimental, let’s see if this thing could possibly work. Now we’re up to nearly 30 people in the last 10 months, and it’s really taking off because people are finding, especially pastors after they’d gotten through COVID and all the issues that went with that and the divisiveness in our country, and it is a new day. I mean, people talk about the old days being in 2019, and so since it’s a new day, we need to find new innovative ways to engage people in ministry. This whole new generation, we talked about a moment ago, this Generation Z that’s coming on, we can’t be doing the stuff we did in 1990 and think that’s going to be working with the Generation Z.
(19:56):
So what innovative ideas do we need to bring to the table, but also what kind of real connection can we have? I find that pastors are very lonely people and they don’t have an opportunity to connect in a way with other pastors where you can kind of let the guard down and just be real with each other and literally cheer each other on. One of the rules in the Humility Network is that if anybody wins in this network, everybody wins. We are going to be cheering each other 100% all the time. We want to see the Kingdom of Advance in every aspect of this group’s life. And then we also practice mutual accountability and say, okay, this is what you say you want to have happen in your life or in your church. Will you give us permission to ask you about that so that we can help you become the person that you believe that Christ is calling you to be? And just having that kind of support is invaluable. I mean, this is the kind of thing that I always wanted to have when I was a pastor and I thought, let’s see if we can create a network where that would just be standard fare. You just see that all the time, and so far people have responded to it really well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:21):
That’s wonderful. And I love it. I love what Deal Moody said. He said, be humble or you’ll stumble. And I think that’s true. Alright, so if someone wants to get a copy of your book, kind of Christian, how can they find it?
Roger Ross (21:39):
They can just go to Amazon or really any place that books are sold. Barnes and Noble, Christian book distributors, all those different places. And I don’t know how many physical copies are in the physical stores these days, but you can go to any of those other online retailers.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:58):
That’s awesome. Alright, so if you’re listening and you want to get a copy of kind of Christian going from Curious to Serious, I’d encourage you to go look for that by Roger Ross on Amazon. And if you want to know more about him, check out the humility group.org and you can find information about his mentoring program. Brother Roger, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I really appreciate it and it’s wonderful to talk to you. I love your spirit and your heart for reaching people for Jesus.
Roger Ross (22:35):
Thank you, Daniel. It’s been a great privilege.
Evangelism Podcast Host (22:38):
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Evangelism Podcast Host (23:36):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
