Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
First Person is produced in cooperation with the Far East Broadcasting Company, who rejoice in the stories of changed lives through the power of Jesus Christ. Learn more at febc.org. You're not going to just bang on that door with your theology and your doctrines, as important as they are. I believe you have to find a way into the back door of those people's hearts, because that front door is locked and bolted.
Our guest now in first person is Clint Green, a Native American with an interesting story to tell of coming to faith in Christ. I'm Wayne Shepherd inviting you to listen now as we hear Clint's testimony.
If you're new to First Person, we meet people from all walks of life who have dedicated their life to serving Jesus Christ. These weekly interviews can be heard online at FirstPersonInterview.com. So if you miss a program or have to leave us early, just go to FirstPersonInterview.com and click the red listen button for a list of past programs. Or use our free smartphone app to listen and even download programs to take with you into your day. Look for the app First Person Interview in your app store.
As always, a special word of thanks to the Far East Broadcasting Company for support in providing these programs. Learn more at febc.org.
As I mentioned, Clint Green is a Native American who is the leader of the organization Native American Indigenous Ministry. His own journey to faith in God is one worth listening to, and Clint joined me on the phone to talk about it. I'm a full-blooded Native American. I'm of what's called the Iroquois people. That's the Six Nations of the Iroquois Confederacy of New York State and Ontario, Canada. My parents were born and raised on a reserve in Canada called Grand River of the Six Nations, and
and that's where I was born. And my father moved to Niagara Falls, New York when I was a young boy, about four years old to, to work. And, uh, he was a blue collar worker his entire life. He worked at a factory there in Niagara Falls. My mother was a stay at home mom and, uh, my older sister died. So I was the only child. And, uh,
As a result of that, you know, my world was outside of the family, basically. But we did go back up there to Grand River, to the family up there. It's about 50 miles from Niagara Falls, and we would go occasionally. It's been summers up there, and so I had kept that connection with my ancestry. And I'm a registered member up there of the nation.
But I grew up in Niagara Falls, New York. Well, in the neighborhood I grew up in, organized sports didn't begin for us until we went to junior high school. In elementary school, I had a good friend who was a tennis player. So I got involved with that, with him. So when I went to junior high, I decided to pursue football and tennis.
And so I tried out for both of those teams and made them. And on that football team was an eighth grader. He was a Tuscarora Indian. His name was Earl. And we connected. It
And he basically became the big brother I never had. I mean, I admired him. I wanted to emulate him. And he was a star football player. In fact, he was an all-star in every sport he played. He was one of those gifted athletes. Whatever sport he played, he was an all-star. And, you know, he had a pretty...
I guess you'd call it a conventional lifestyle. He was a party guy, you know, he liked to have a good time. But what he really enjoyed doing was fighting. Oh. Yeah.
He loved fighting. But anyway, so I just emulated him, and he was a tough guy. Long story short, one night he beat up a guy. He'd just pick a fight with somebody, go down to a bar and pick a fight with somebody. And the next week he came back with three of his friends, and they went looking for him.
And they found him, and Earl knew he was overmatched here, so he took off in his car, and they chased him. And Earl ran off the road, hit a tree, and his sister called me that night and said, Earl's been in an accident. He's in intensive care at Mount St. Mary's Hospital. So I'm in the 11th grade. He's a senior.
and I'd get my clothes on and go down to the hospital and see the family, and they'd let me in to see them. And, you know, there's my idol. There's my, you know, there's the man I'm trying to model my life after. He's laying around that.
And I bet on life support, unconscious. And, man, I just never seen anything like that before and how to handle it. So I went home, and I didn't sleep very much that night. And his sister called me in the morning and said, Earl passed away this morning. He had signed a letter of intent to go to Syracuse University on a full football scholarship.
That was his plan after graduation. That was gone. So I collected myself and moved on, got through high school, and decided to go on to college. I went to go to college, and a good friend of mine who was a tennis player also, he had accepted an offer to come to the University of Memphis, which was Memphis State University back then. And I said, well, you know, I want to go to college, and it sounds like a pretty good one. I want to tag along with you, and, you know, I'll try it as a walk-on.
And long story short, he made the team and I didn't. But I like Memphis. You know, I like the climate. I like the city. Much different than it is today. I like the city. And the coach really, you know, I got along well. He really tried to help me.
He got me some opportunities to do some private lessons, some country clubs, and working with some clinics. So he really helped me, and that got me through the first years of college there, the initial time. You were not a Christian at that time? Oh, no, no. And I'll tell you why.
Growing up, you know, I go back to the reserve there, and many of my relatives were in the very traditional Native ways and Native beliefs. People may not understand, but the only common ground between Christianity and traditional Native belief is a belief in the supernatural. There's no other common ground. There's no heaven or hell. We all have our own creation stories. We have our own life-after-death beliefs, and none of it is biblical.
None of it is biblical. But there is a belief in the supernatural. There's no question about that. So I looked at their lives, you know, my relatives that were into Christian beliefs, and my friend, the people I knew in Niagara Falls that went to church, went to synagogue, went to whatever they went to, mass or whatever they did. I looked at them and said, you know, these people do all this religious stuff, but the rest of the time they're no different than me.
There's no better, no worse. What good is it? What value is it? I don't need that.
And my mother, my dad was, I guess, what you call a good man. He provided for his family. He didn't drink, smoke, gamble, came home, worked every day, came home. My mother had been raised in a Christian home. Her father, my grandfather, was an Anglican minister up there on Grand River. She grew up in a Christian home, but she was diagnosed with rheumatic fever as a teenager.
And she struggled with that her entire life. So because of that, we never went to church. I didn't have any church exposure at all. Never had a Bible. I mean, she was a praying woman, but she never forced Christianity on me. She never...
had a long conversation with me and my dad was a classy good man and so we were a fine family. We were just like everybody else and that's what I thought. So, with that in mind, you know, I come to Memphis and, uh,
It's amazing how the lifestyle you're living in one place you can find in another place very quickly. So I quickly got into that lifestyle of the drinking and the gambling and the fighting and the partying and all that. That had been doing. I got that, joined a fraternity in Memphis and got right back where I left off in Niagara Falls. Well, I went home one summer and
And so there was a young man I was working with there, and he was from Ohio State. And he was different than the other guys working there. I didn't pay much attention to it. But one day he said to me, he said, can I eat lunch with you today? We're getting ready to go back. We're getting the end of the summer. And I said, sure. So he sat down. He said, Clint, can I ask you something? I said, sure. He said, do you think man is basically good or basically bad?
Well, I thought about it. Nobody ever asked me that before. I thought about everybody. I knew my family, my friends, teachers, people in the neighborhood.
And myself. And I said, well, you know, I know none of us are perfect. We all make mistakes from time to time. But basically, overall, we're good people. And he showed me through the scripture how that's not God's view of us, of mankind. All have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There are none righteous, no, not one. Well, that rocked my world. Because looking back, I was a classic humanist.
Matthew chapter 7 talks about that broad road and a narrow gate. And I was on that broad road. I was on that broad road that led to destruction. But I didn't realize it.
No one had ever challenged me with my thinking until then. So he didn't press me for a decision. He shared four spiritual laws with me, and he gave that to me. He gave me a copy of Good News for a Modern Man. I never had a Bible. I didn't know what that was. He gave that to me, and he went back to Ohio State, and I came back to Memphis and never heard from him after that. Couldn't tell you what his name was. But he planted the seed. He planted the seed.
that challenged my thinking because I had a plan for my life. As far as I could tell, it was working pretty well.
There were bumps in the road, but overall my plan was on track for what I wanted to accomplish in my life. And God brought a young lady into my life. We would go to church from time to time, but I thought about what that young man had told me. And the Holy Spirit began to work in my life. He showed that young man the question that asked me that would challenge where I was, the sin in my life.
He knew exactly what I needed to hear, and only God can do that.
Only God can do that. So I took that and I looked at this four spiritual laws track one Friday night in the fraternity house I was living in. And I read through it. And I saw what God's plan was. The Holy Spirit spoke to me that night. Now, I don't know how you feel about things, but I believe God speaks to us. Understood. God definitely does talk to us. And that night, all alone in that fraternity house, everybody else had gone out to different things.
I was by myself. I went back to my bedroom, and I got that track out. And the Holy Spirit said to me, Clint, I invested a lot in Earl, and he squandered it. I've invested a lot in you, and you're going to squander it too. And I thought, wow. That night, for the first time in my life, I was afraid. Not of anything or anybody. I was afraid of myself because I knew those words that the Holy Spirit spoke to me were true.
It was just a matter of time before this lifestyle was going to end in that destruction, just as it did for Earl.
And I said, "Well, whatever I gotta do, God." I got that track out, and I read through it. And there's a prayer in there. And it said, "This is a suggested prayer. If you want to receive Christ, pray this prayer." Well, I said, "You know, it's good enough for me. I've never prayed a prayer in my life or anything. I'm 22 years old. I never even need to pray. If it's a suggested prayer, I'll pray it." Well, I prayed that prayer.
And I gave my life to Christ that Friday night. And two things didn't happen that night. I didn't let him go to heaven. He didn't make me perfect.
I've been a working process ever since. But what did happen was that turmoil and that emptiness that was in me that I was trying to fill with all this stuff of the world, all these things I was participating in, including the good stuff, education, sports, all the good stuff, and the best. All that stuff I was using to fill that void and to calm that turmoil was gone.
The Holy Spirit came into my life that night and filled that void.
That was 51 years ago. I described my life with Christ, growing in Him. Not an interstate highway, but more like a dirt road. I've gone to the ditch a few times, but He's always been there to pull me out. He's always been there to pull me out and put me back on that road again. We'll continue hearing the story of Native American Clint Green coming up on this edition of First Person.
Hi, I'm Ed Cannon. And as you know, situations around the world are changing quickly. Stay current with FEBC's ministry and get a deeper understanding of people who need to find hope. Hear how you can feel the pulse of God's Spirit moving through the hearts of believers dedicated to reaching the lost. Be sure you join me for the podcast until all have heard. Discover how the gospel is making a difference around the world.
Search for Until All Have Heard on your favorite podcast platform or hear it online at febc.org. My guest is Clint Green. Clint is with Native American Indigenous Ministry.
And by the way, my thanks to Byron Tyler, host of Mid-South Viewpoint on Bot Radio for introducing me to Clint. And I knew as soon as I heard their conversation, it was something that we needed to hear on first person as well. So Clint, I'm very happy that we could make this connection together. Well, thank you for having me. I really do appreciate it. Now, when you became a believer with the Native American heritage that you have, I would imagine it wasn't that well received back home, was it?
No. In fact, to this day, it's not received, and that's a problem that Native people have. When I went back to the reserve up there to talk to my relatives about what had happened to me and how I had changed, God changed me. They knew me. They helped raise me. They knew the kind of kid I was. And the traditional ones, when I told them that story, they said, well,
Clint, you've turned your back on us. We're done with you. You've gone the white man's way. See, I was going to be the next generation to carry on the traditional ways. I was the one that was going to perpetuate our traditional beliefs. But that didn't deter you? Well, it hurt, but no, it didn't deter me. It didn't deter me. It hurt.
And what I had been going to, the young lady I mentioned to you, we started dating, started going to church, and we married in 1971. So I joined the church, and immediately I was surrounded by godly people who really loved me and cared about me, even more so than some of my family members. So very important, isn't it? Yeah. So even though I lost a part of my family, God gave me a bigger family.
It keeps giving me a bigger family. And we're talking about the bigger family right now. Yeah. When did God give you this burden, Clint, to reach into your heritage, into the Native American culture and proclaim Christ? When did that burden come upon you?
Well, immediately I wanted to tell people what had happened to me. But hey, I'm a babe in Christ, literally. I've never had a Bible. I've never read the Bible. I've never been really... Just now started going to church. Uh...
Didn't know anything about prayer, didn't know anything about evangelism, didn't know anything about Bible study. You know, I'm learning. And so God put a burden in my heart, you know. And one of the first men I witnessed to, a young guy I witnessed to, I stopped him on the street and I said, Are you saved?
And he looked at me and said, from what? He said, from what? I said, what do I do with that? So I fumbled through that. And about the only Bible verse I really knew at that time was John 10.10, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy, but I've come to make that you may have like abundantly.
So I gave that to him, and he walked away. And so that's where I'm starting. I'm sure there's a lot of people who may listen to this to say, I know what you're talking about, because I didn't know a thing. And so I began to evangelize. One thing I did, I wanted a platform to reach Native people. And so I was an artist of sorts, and...
when my kids were so, so I went on the power circuit, going on the power circuit as a Northern style traditional dancer and my kids were dancers and we set up our booth, we'd sell our artwork but I had crosses on my regalia and I had a Bible track on my table and Bibles there to give to people and my greatest opposition to that unfortunately was the church. Oh,
Not my church, but other churches. Because the reason that I can understand why people say that's the white man's religion, because many times when people were converted, they were told to abandon that life completely. Walk away from that life completely. They're told to extract. They extract them from that life completely.
what was my traditional life and all that, Native people. But they don't teach us how to be reinserted into that life, to be effective for the Lord. And so I wanted a place to go where Native people would be that would never darken the door of a church. They were like me. They would never go to a church, had no reason to. In fact, they were opposed to it. So I went to where they were. You know,
A buzzword right now is the word contextualization. Yes. Contextualization is a big word right now. Well, I don't believe it has to do with music or dress or necessarily ceremonies and rituals. I believe contextualization is meeting people where they are. That young man in that factory,
that summer, met me where I was. God led him to meet me where I was. I'm not going to change the powwow circuit, but I can go to where those people are that will never hear the gospel any other way. So I'm contextualizing, you know, like Paul said, I'll be all things to all people. Whatever I need to do to reach these people with the gospel, I'll do it. Take a couple of minutes and explain to us the difficulty in reaching Native Americans. It's such a
Such a hard culture to penetrate with the gospel, isn't it? Yes, it is. And the reason, I believe, is because all of society, any society that you look at, any people group, everything about that society is downstream from their theology. Their theology dictates everything.
Their government, their laws, their educational procedures. The opposition from my relatives that were traditional people, my new theology was now in conflict with their theology. It was unacceptable. I was an enemy now. One of the goals of my ministry, our mission statement is working to see Native people reaching Native people.
And so we try to help the local churches, we try to help local ministries with whatever tools we have, whatever resources we have. I mean, we work with a ministry that does Bible teaching and disciple training. We do that. We work with a ministry that does grief management for people that have lost a child. I lost a grandson when he was 14 years old through a tragic accident.
And my daughter and son-in-law, they started working with a ministry called While We're Waiting, and now they've started their own ministry called Promise for Hope. And that deals with parents who have lost a child. Those are the type of resources that are available to me.
Whenever I find a minister at church, you know, that wants help in certain areas, it could be construction projects, it can be Bible teaching, it can be women's ministry, men's ministry, couples ministry, whatever helps that congregation be stronger, what helps that pastor be stronger in reaching these people. You know, the 3% that are trying to impact the 97% who don't believe.
How can we help them? 3% of the Native American population believe in Christ, you're saying? That's current estimates. Now, you can go to places where it may be up to 7%, 8%. I've been to places where it's less than 1%. So how do you reach that? That's a huge mission field. It's a huge one. Only 7,000 people or so, or 7 million people or so scattered across the country.
It's a huge mission field, but you're not going to just bang on that door with your theology and your doctrines, as important as they are. I believe you have to find a way into the back door of those people's hearts, because that front door is locked and bolted. You've got to find a way into their hearts. And these ministries that help them, that show God's love in a practical way to them, through their local church, through their local missionaries, when they see that,
I was at a prison last night, and we had 65 inmates there, 20 gave their life to Christ. After it was over, one of the inmates came up to me, and he said, thank you for being here. He said, I have family members that never come to see me, but you're here all the time. That's contextualization.
That's meeting that man where he is. You've been listening to Clint Green of Native American Indigenous Ministries tell his own story and the desire he has to reach people in the Native culture with a powerful gospel message of hope and salvation. Clint is developing a new website, and as soon as it's available, we'll put a link to it at FirstPersonInterview.com.
These weekly first-person programs are made possible by the Far East Broadcasting Company. When it comes to reaching indigenous people groups scattered in many parts of the world, FEBC is having success in using radio and social media to deliver the gospel. Add the podcast, Until All Have Heard, to your playlist and learn more about this facet of FEBC's ministry among minority language groups. Listen at febc.org.
Now, with thanks to my friend and producer, Joe Carlson, I'm Wayne Shepherd. Join us next time for First Person.