1 877-431-4276Carrie Headington | Evangelism in the Anglican Communion
Today, Daniel King talks to Carrie Headington, an Episcopal evangelist serving the Anglican community in Dallas, Texas. They discuss Carrie’s work equipping churches and everyday believers for evangelism, with a focus on raising up female evangelists. She shares lessons she learned from the late evangelist Michael Green, including the importance of having an “audience of one” in Jesus, persevering through spiritual warfare, and seeing how the Holy Spirit can revive even the most dormant churches when they engage in mission. We highlight the need for more bold, Spirit-filled evangelists, both men and women, to share the good news of Jesus in the world today.
Learn more about Carrie Headington: https://www.goodnewsinitiative.com/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Carrie Headington. So thank you so much for joining me.
Carrie Headington (00:11):
Thank you, Daniel. You have always inspired me as an evangelist, and we met way back, went through Luis Palau and just watching you and seeing the work of God working through you. It’s such an inspiration to me and it’s great to be with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:32):
So we are here at the Lausanne Congress in South Korea and it was such a delight to run into you and to see you here. I thought let’s take the opportunity to have a conversation. And so you might hear some Korean talking in the background, some singing, but this is so wonderful
Carrie Headington (00:52):
To be, I just ate Korean barbecue.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:54):
Yeah. So you are serving the Lord in Dallas, Texas, and you are with the Episcopal Church and you’re serving the Anglican community as an evangelist. Tell me about that. What is God doing?
Carrie Headington (01:10):
People always say to me, wait, you’re an Episcopal evangelist. And I say, yes, absolutely.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:18):
Thank God for you praise. We need some good Episcopal evangelists.
Carrie Headington (01:21):
We’re an evangelical diocese and we have 65 churches under our bishop. So the way the Anglican communion is formed, the Anglican communion globally is actually the third largest Christian body in the world.
(01:39):
Wow. You have Roman Catholics, Orthodox and the Anglican communion right now, particularly in the global south. The Lord is moving so powerfully and we’re seeing so much fruit, a lot of people coming to the Lord. My context is Dallas, so we have 65 churches in the North Texas region, and my work as an evangelist is one, proclaiming the gospel, two is equipping the churches. The second part of being an evangelist that you and I know from Ephesians four equipping everyday believers and casting that missional vision to say, did you know you’re a missionary? Did you know you’re an ambassador for Christ? Sometimes that’s hard in our context because our ministers wear collars and it’s professionalized. But we say no ministry is for all believers, but the Anglican communion is in part every country in the world. And there were many, many evangelistic movements that came out of starting with Great Britain and truly, literally around the world. Yes, there’s some colonialism part of that, but a lot of it were Christian believers, missionaries who felt a call to go and share the love of Jesus. And so we’ve seen just a rapid spread in our communion and it makes it so rich because one body, we have a prayer book, a book of common prayer that we pray from each country in province often has their own prayer, but they’re similar prayers. And so we worship together, we praise the Lord together and we’re in common mission together.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:46):
Well, I love the Anglican communion in Africa. We often work with Anglicans and their churches are growing by leaps and bounds, and the Holy Spirit is working in such a great way in so much of the body of Christ through the Anglican community. So tell me a little bit about the churches that you work with. What does it look like? How do you activate believers to be involved in evangelism?
Carrie Headington (04:14):
Yes. Well, the first thing we do is to cast that missional vision to say, think of it this way, the great mythologist Leslie Newgen said, and he was a missionary bishop in India, and then he went back to England. He wrote and he said, think of the universal church like the kingdom of God, the embassy for the kingdom of God on earth, the universal church, and every local church is a local kingdom outpost. And he said, who are the ambassadors? The ambassadors are everyday believers. And as we’ve been hearing here at Anne, 99% of believers ambassadors for Jesus Christ are in the workplace or in the homes. They’re not the professional pastors, they are the ambassadors. And so we cast that vision and then we say, okay, you’re an ambassador for Jesus Christ. This is your calling, whether you’re in a workplace environment, whether you’re in the home, wherever God has placed you an unemployment line, whether you’re retired, wherever you are in your stage of life, stay at home mother, you are an ambassador for Jesus Christ.
(05:34):
And then we use the model of Jesus. What I love Daniel, and you know this, that Jesus gave us a template. He said, wait, pray the Holy Spirit will come upon you. That’s crucial. This is God’s mission, not ours, God’s mission. We do it all in the power of the Holy Spirit. But he said, okay. His first commission to us was to think about intentionally, think about our mission field. So he said, go to Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We have in our congregations, we have everyone think about who’s in your Jerusalem and intentionally to think about who’s around you, who are your friends, your family, your neighbors. Then we think about the Judea, what’s happening in your city, your workplace, your acquaintance, the places where you frequent, and then we go to Samaria, who’s on the margins? If Jesus walked into your community, who would he care for first and then ends of the earth and the ends of the earth can be what I love about the Anglican communion.
(06:45):
It could be connecting with another diocese around the world or God. And you know this living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, God is bringing the nations to one another. So right there in Dallas, Texas, we have one of the highest number of refugees per capita in the world. New immigrants and new refugees get invited into an American home once every 15 years. So we say, make a friend with a refugee or a new immigrant, invite them into your home for a meal or invite them, church host a meal and invite the community around you. So have everyone intentionally look at who God has placed around them. Then the next thing we do, we look at the model of Jesus and we say, we teach three things, prayer, care and share. Pray for the people who God is placed in your mission field. Pray for them. Then you ask God, how can I best share care for them and show the love of Jesus? We’ve talked a lot here about display and declare the glory of God. So we need to show it and we need to tell it words. And then so we do prayer care for people and then share. And we teach people how to share their personal story, how to get in touch with what have you found in your relationship with Jesus Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:19):
One of the things that is very close to your heart is raising up female evangelists. And we need more women that are bold about proclaiming the gospel. When you go to different nations around the world, women often are half or more of the church. Usually the ones in the church that are doing most of the work tend to be the women, but yet some churches have told women to be quiet. But you say, we don’t have to be quiet. We can do something for God.
Carrie Headington (08:55):
Yes. Well, the first evangelists were women. The first evangelists at the empty tomb were women. And they ran and shared the good news.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:06):
And I think that’s so significant because Jesus showed that he trusted them with the message he did.
Carrie Headington (09:15):
He trusted them with the message. And this was in a culture where women’s testimony was not heard in the court of law where women didn’t have any property or women were asked to really not leave the home. There was a Jewish prayer at that time that said, thank you, God, I was not born a woman. It’s in that context that Jesus first revealed himself the risen Jesus Christ to women. And then he says to them, go and tell the others. And so the great commission was first given to women. Go and tell the others. We also see the woman at the well. And of course she encounters the risen Lord goes to the village, she said, come meet the man who told me everything I ever did. The whole village came to know Jesus. So clearly he wants to use us. And I always say, so women, we need to be living in the great commission.
(10:20):
It doesn’t say, go all you men and make disciples. It says, go all of you, all of you. And so half the population are women. And often women can speak to other women’s hearts in a very deep and vulnerable way. And I’m really all for women’s proclamation events. And it can be small or it can be large, but where women are speaking to women because we know the needs of women, women, our vulnerabilities, our brokenness, some of the unique pains that women experience. And to give women space in those contexts to hear the healing, healing word of God and that Jesus has come for them. I’ll never forget being in Paris and we were speaking to women in an area trap in Paris, and these were mothers of radicalized Muslims and their sons and husbands have been radicalized for isis. And it was such an intimate group.
(11:39):
I mean, there were about 50 women and we just shared about Jesus. And one woman after another said, would Jesus heal me or would Jesus meet with me? And I think the fact that it was women with women, we created that safe space and women felt safe to open up. And we saw Jesus do amazing, amazing work that day in women’s hearts and women committing their lives to Jesus. So we need women. We need women to be ambassadors, and we need women to say yes to the great commission and we need to equip and encourage women. And that doesn’t mean we don’t respect the structures and women are in all different kinds of different church structures, but whatever structure we’re in, we still have the opportunity to share Jesus. And so we’ve got to do it. And I think my heart is to mobilize. Well, a lot of times women think, well, I’m not a professional pastor, so they think that they’re not evangelists. Women make some of the most extraordinary evangelists and often have an opportunity to meet people in all kinds of different contexts. I mean, I think the average person reaches, meets three new people in a given day. Women are constantly, we’re out, we’re often getting the food, and we’re in the marketplace and we’re caring for children, and we’re meeting with other mothers. That’s an incredible mission field.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:24):
Yeah, I’m thinking about my mother. She was a missionary along with my father in Mexico for 20 years, and then they went to Afghanistan, and three years ago she passed away very suddenly, but we found out that she had cancer. And then for just a couple of months she had left. Lots of friends came to visit her, but I remember just a few days before she went to heaven, she was calling some of the Afghan students that she had been working with in Afghanistan via Zoom. And she was sharing her personal testimony with them because my grandparents worked in Afghanistan and my mother got saved in Afghanistan. She was born there. She got saved there. So she was calling them and giving the testimony of how she got saved at the age of seven in Afghanistan to them and saying, you need to call on Jesus too. So in her last days, she was evangelizing and it was so beautiful.
Carrie Headington (14:27):
Praise the Lord. That’s how we all want to be. And I’ve met people here who were ministering in Afghanistan to women. So carry on. Your mom’s good work
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:40):
There. And my wife is a great evangelist, and she was on the mission field for many years before we met. And so she’s great at preaching, she’s great at leading worship. And my daughter also, she’s 12 years old, she tells me, daddy, I want to be a missionary and is talking about where she wants to go and what her calling is. And so it’s so beautiful.
Carrie Headington (15:05):
And oftentimes, someone was asking me earlier, where do you think women are held back? And I said, often it’s ourselves that we don’t feel worthy. And Daniel, I venture to say that that’s the perfect posture because none of us are worthy and we just open our hands and say, God, I am willing, here I am, use me. But that humble posture, we don’t come with wise and persuasive words. We come in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so that kind of posture just makes so much room for the Holy Spirit to move and work through us. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:48):
Amen.
Carrie Headington (15:49):
It’s really inspiring.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:51):
I’ve got another question for you. You studied under Michael Green. He was from Great Britain and he wrote a great book on evangelism in the early church. And so you studied under him. Yes. If you’re listening, I really encourage you get the book on evangelism in the early church. There’s some really great material. He’s passed away now. But what did you learn from Dr. Michael Green?
Carrie Headington (16:17):
Yes, I’d love to share how we met. He and I were taught my first day in seminary, and he was across from me. I didn’t know who he was, that he was a giant of the faith. And he said, you’re an evangelist. And I said, I laugh. I said, I’m an Episcopalian. He died laughing. He said, my dear, you need to read your Anglican history books. There are many, many, many Anglican evangelists. So we met, but a few days later, he had a heart attack and his wife came up to me and said, my husband would like to talk to you.
(16:57):
He’s in the hospital. We’re not sure if he’s going to make it out. So I’m American student here in England. I go to this hospital and there he is. And he prayed for me and he said, my dear, what are you going to do with your life? I said, I don’t know. He said, whatever you do, share the gospel. And he said, when I was on the cold slab of the theater in the surgical room, he said, I’m more convinced than ever that Jesus Christ is Lord. And then so as I was leaving a deeply moving moment, as I left, a nurse said to me, could I talk to you for a minute? I said, sure. She said, is he a preacher or something? And I said, why do you ask? She said, at night, we can’t keep him in bed. And she said, he goes room to room.
(17:54):
And she goes, I think he’s preaching to people. And she said, we politely. And we say, well, you must get back in your bed, Mr. Green. She said, he’s, he is cooked up to machines. She goes, he gets in bed, but five minutes later he’s up. I went home that night, got on my knees and wept, and I said, Lord, I want to have that passion for the lost when I’m in my eighties. He got well, and the minute he was back at college, I knocked on his door and I said, I want to learn from you
(18:34):
And what I learned from him. So our first outreach together was back at that hospital and there were about 80 people there, people who had come to know the Lord, doctors, nurses, and patients through his time in the hospital. So what did I learn from him? I asked him one time, what is it that keeps you going? He said, I have an audience of one. He said, I have an audience of one. Jesus is my audience, and he has called me to share his good news with every single person I meet. So I learned that from him. Audience of one. The second thing was perseverance. Every time he was going to do an outreach, an evangelistic campaign to a time Daniel, he got sick. He had lung problems, so he was always down. So he would go and get in the hospital, get his infusion, and then inevitably get back up to preach. It never kept him down. He said, expect spiritual warfare. And he said, just say in the name of Jesus, back off old Nick. That’s what he always said, back off old Nick. But he said, just love the Lord. He said, when you’re in love with the Lord, you can’t help but spill the beans.
(20:01):
So he said, stay in love with the Lord. Stay in his words. Stay in prayer. Stay in a posture of worship. Have an audience of one persevere run the race. And I’ll say this on his last thing he taught me, we would go to these village churches in England. They would be dying. We’d get in the car and he’d say, what do you think? When I say dying? I mean like four people and a woman bringing her dog in. He’d say, what do you think? And I’d say, oh, Dr. Green, I think they’re going to shut down this church. And he’s like, you just watch. He said, when a church, when the local church puts its pinky toe in the water of mission, the Holy Spirit moves. Wow,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:54):
Daniel.
Carrie Headington (20:55):
I saw it over and over and over again. And what did we do? We prayed. We prayed for renewal. We prayed for a move of the spirit. We equip the believers saying, did you know you’re an ambassador for Christ? Here’s how you share your story. How’s God wired you? What do you love to do? Well, let’s do it for Jesus. Let’s invite your non-Christian friends. Give a little testimony and invite him to the message. Invite him to hear the message at the outreach or invite him to church over. And again, it was like I was seeing a baby being born, little parish church in every village after village after village come alive. And so thus people always go, oh, you’re in this kind of mainline church. It’s dead. It’s dead. And I said, it’s not dead. The minute it puts its pinky toe in the water and mission and the power of the Holy Spirit, it comes to life. Amen. I love
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:58):
Watching
Carrie Headington (21:59):
Things come to
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:00):
Life. And our God is the God of resurrection. So even if it is dead, he can raise it back up.
Carrie Headington (22:04):
Yes. Yes. And some of our churches are asleep. And what we do as evangelists is to say, wake up. Wake up, get connected in the power of the Holy Spirit and live into God’s mission and churches come alive.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:22):
Wow. That’s amazing. Well, if someone would like to find out more about your ministry or maybe invite you to come speak at their church or their conference, what’s a website or a good way that they can connect with you?
Carrie Headington (22:36):
It’s good news initiative.com.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:40):
Good news initiative.com.
Carrie Headington (22:42):
Good news initiative.com.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:45):
Awesome. Well, Ms. Carrie, I’m so delighted to spend some time with you. Love what you’re doing, and let’s just pray together that God would raise up a multitude of evangelists, both men and women around the world. Would you pray?
Carrie Headington (23:01):
Yes. I will pray. And I praise God, different denominations working together too. Amen. This is a picture of what God longs for. Amen. Amen. Lord, we love you. We praise you. We worship you this day, and we ask, Lord, that you would raise up evangelists for such a time as this raise, raise them up. And Lord, thank you for allowing us that we have the privilege to participate in your work, your work in the world of drawing all people to yourself and spreading your good news and your love throughout the earth. So we pray, Lord, that even now as I’m speaking, that someone hears your call, go and make disciples, go and take the good news to the ends of the earth. Lord, you have called every single person to witness to your good news. Fill us, give us your heart and your spirit for every single person around us. In Jesus’ name,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:15):
Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Carrie Headington (24:20):
Thank you, Daniel. And thank you for the work you do. And keep going, brother.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:24):
Yes, ma’am.