Episode 6 with Gavin Calver

Elim MPower

We are in conversation with Gavin Calver, CEO of the Evangelical Alliance in the UK.

The Evangelical Alliance seeks to represent evangelical Christians in the UK, to bring Christians together and help them listen to, and be heard by, the government, media and society.

Gavin's infectious energy, vision and passion for Jesus and life is inspirational.

We talk about how men can be less passive and take more of an activist role in their faith. Football fans just start a song, which is not passive at all - whereas church can sometimes be a bit polished, and men feel they have to 'receive'.

As a practical outworking of this, Gavin encourages men to take a more activist stance in pointing our kids to Jesus, for example. We need to set the pace as men.

Gavin talks about his passion for AFC Wimbledon, how he used to play with Scott Parker and Sean Wright-Philips, but injury put paid to his hopes of playing football at national level.

Gavin ran 1000 miles in 2019, and so we discuss the connection between fitness and faith. Gavin uses a lot of his time running talking to Jesus and listening to Him.

Gavin gives us three great bits of advice on picking up the fitness after the excesses of Christmas: (1) compete with yourself, not your mates; (2) be aware that any routine takes 6 weeks to build; and (3) build fitness and exercise into your daily routine as much as you can.

Gavin identifies with the disciple Peter for being such a normal guy, who blows it big time, but who also kept coming back, and being used by Jesus to be effective in the Kingdom of God. If Jesus can use Peter, he can use you!

Gavin shares about being convicted recently by God about being more brave - through a conference message, and then later by his daughter. This conviction led to his decision to step up into his current role at the Evangelical Alliance.

Christianity is an incredible adventure - and Gavin urges us that we must not let the wildness that God has put in us as men to be tamed. Aslan from the Narnia chronicles is 'not a tame lion' and as men we do not follow a 'tame Jesus'.

Gavin's heroes are Corrie Ten Boom and Robbie Earle, who played for Wimbledon in the 1990s.

This is such a great podcast to kick off the new decade - thanks Gavin!