News | Interview: DE DVD launch

Rico Tice interviewed Barry Cooper, presenter of the Discipleship Explored DVD, prior to the screening of this new resource. The event was held at All Souls Church in London on 16 October 2008.

RT: We managed to pay him [Barry] for doing Philippians, but I can tell you when we did Christianity Explored eight years ago, he didn’t get paid, so he lived off air in order to get the Gospel out there. It’s lovely to have the momentum now so that we can put this together and it was nice to be able to pay you, Barry. I was always embarrassed by the fact that you worked full time and we didn’t give you anything so thank you very much for that Gospel work you did for us before, and your sacrifice. Anyway, Barry, just chatting about the last year and what you’ve been doing, why the book of Philippians? Just tell us a little bit about why that book…

BC: The beginning of, let’s see, 2007, I went to some seminars by Dick Lucas talking about Philippians, and something he said absolutely lodged in my brain … he said that Philippians is a letter whose time has not yet come. But it’s come, and it’s coming very quickly. And I was very struck by that. There’s something about the culture, and I think, if we’re Christians here, we get a sense of this, that the culture is moving quite rapidly towards a place where we will face much more persecution than we’ve been used to, much more suffering, and of course, that’s exactly the situation that Paul is writing into in Philippians. And, you know, it’s the New Testament letter of joy, but strikingly, it’s joy through suffering, and so there’s a sense in which Philippians is a letter whose time has come and hopefully, you know, that will prove to be the case.

RT: It’s interesting, I was meeting up with a guy the other day. His father has just renounced a faith he had for a long time … and I said why was that. And he said he was not taught the Bible properly, and particularly he wasn’t taught about the tough stuff so he had people who promised him things in the Christian life that really should have been promised, I think, to some degree, for the next life, and that, I think, that had ultimately to some degree destabilised this man as he had come across that.

Anyway, Barry, if we could just pick up that theme of Philippians . . . they run ten to twelve minutes, these are quite short, these little episodes we’re running, why is that? Just give us a feel for that.

BC: We tried to keep it very, very short because we had a feel for the way people tend to use Christianity Explored and Discipleship Explored. It’s used, as Paul [Chelson] was saying, in mum’s groups, lunchtimes, lots of different scenarios, so we wanted to make it as easy as possible for people using the DVD in those situations. But more than that, and crucially, we want to get people into the Bible and as quickly as possible, because that’s where we convince, that’s where the power is. It’s not in the resources in themselves, it’s in the Bible, it’s in God’s Word, and so what we’re aiming to do with ten to twelve minute DVDs is, I do my thing and I get off, as quickly as possible. But then hopefully people have the Word and just become enthralled by it.

RT: And I hope, again, you get the idea with Christianity Explored, on that, everybody, and that is that there are two things going on. One, we’re trying to train young Christians and teach them the faith, but secondly, members of the church family - we hope to be alongside them with the leaders training - will actually be going through the book of Philippians and learning to teach the Bible. So two things are always going on at the same time. That sense of, the Bible’s open for people. Well, they’ve done Mark’s Gospel, this is the second book that they do, but also for leaders, they’re learning to teach the faith, so that we’ve got people who don’t just do church work but are doing the work of the church, which is making disciples. Which is a huge aim.

Barry, just in terms of the filming … we’re delighted with what you did, your drama background came through. We thank God for His sovereignty, that was there. When we filmed Christianity Explored, one of the takes was thirty two times we had to do it, they didn’t use it. And I said, why weren’t they filming more quickly? And someone said to me, well, you know, Rico, there were thirty two takes on one occasion … any memories from that, Barry?

BC: I think … the thing that sticks with me, the very first day of filming … we were filming at Highgate Cemetery and our chaperone for the day was the gravedigger. He was a wonderful guy, but exactly what you would expect a gravedigger to be. A sort of Dickensian figure, quite lugubrious, and we had this chap, and just as I was leaving, he was at the gate. I thought, I’ve got to ask him something embarrassing, but I said to him, look, you know, you’ve done this job for every day for however many years now, yet what is it like to be faced with mortality day in and day out . . .Do you know what happens to men and women when they go in the ground? You’ve seen it. As far as you’re concerned, is there an afterlife or is there no afterlife? And without missing a beat, he said, no afterlife. No afterlife at all. He said, I’ve seen what happens, it’s just meat, it’s just meat.

And that really set the tone for me for the whole of the rest of the project because I thought, you know, if this is worth doing, it’s got to be about communicating the fact that we are more than just machines made of meat. We’re more than just material. That we are made by a Creator who gave us every breath that we draw, and so we’re accountable to Him for the way that we use the lives that He’s given us. And so really that just kind of became the focus as I was going through Discipleship Explored, to communicate that.

RT: Wonderful. Well let me ask you one more question. Just one more question, Barry. You’re - at the moment you’re studying - tell us where you’re studying and what you’re doing and what the vision is behind that.

BC: I’m at a place called Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, which is in Deerfield, Illinois, about twenty five miles northwest of Chicago. So I’m being taught by men like Don Carson, who many of you will know, and I’m doing an MA in Christian Studies. And the idea is just that, hopefully, in two years I’ll be slightly less ignorant than I am now.

RT: And give us a best thought from that, Barry. So you’ve done your first semester. I know you took an exam yesterday then got on the plane and came here, but just in terms of something theological you’ve learned – I didn’t prepare you for that but anyway – just for us, something that’s stayed with you?

BC: Well, start revising before the night before, that’s a big theological lesson. I think it’s just that you see Jesus throughout scripture. That’s the glory of it. I mean, I’ve got Dr Carson and Dr Beitzel on the Old Testament, and the joy of that is you just see Jesus walking off the pages of Leviticus. . . and that’s just a tremendous joy. And you see how everything hangs together. You know, the Bible doesn’t really make sense unless you’ve got Christ at the centre. And so that’s just been the joy for me. And just the fact that, you know - obviously I went through a secular university - it’s wonderful to begin your classes with prayer, you know I just don’t think I’ll ever get over the novelty of that, it’s just such a joy.

RT: It would have done me good, actually … great, Barry. The Lord Jesus Christ is mentioned fifty times in Philippians, so we’ll have [the DVD] performed now with that in mind.

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