“Jesse” Leon Rodgers is building City Elders, an organization that is dedicated to protecting life, defending liberty, exalting Christ, and helping families to flourish. Their goal is to guard the gates of the city by developing leaders from the three primary spheres of God ordained authority; the Church, Civil Government and Business. How is praying for those in authority connected to evangelism? We answer that question and more in today’s podcast.

Questions for “Jesse” Leon Rodgers: 

What are the “Gates of the City”?

Who is guarding the Gates of the City?

What are the City Elders? City Elders embodies the Biblical Model of City Governance. The crisis in our government has sounded an alarm. The Kingdom is calling Spiritual Elders from the three primary spheres of God ordained authority; the Church, Civil Government and Business, to govern at the gates of the city.

What does City Elders endeavor to do?

1. Establish righteousness in government; spiritual, civil, and economic systems.

2. Draft civil laws which reflect Biblical values and Judeo-Christian ethics.

3. Protect those vulnerable, innocent, disenfranchised.

4. Promote the principles and protocols of God’s Kingdom.

5. Glorify God through the Lordship of His Son, Jesus Christ.

What are the three primary spheres of God ordained authority? They are the Church, Civil Government and Business. All three of these institutions were designed for the express purpose of protecting and providing for the family.

1. Shepherds: These are God’s servants ordained to feed, lead, protect and nurture the people of God.

2. Servants: These are God’s civil servants, called, anointed and appointed to administer justice, judgment, equity and protection.

3. Stewards: These are God’s kingdom entrepreneurs to create wealth and employment opportunities.

What values do you think Christians need to defend?

During the presidency of Donald Trump, some people accused Christians of compromising their values by voting for a man who has been divorced several times and who has been known to speak crassly. Do you think that Christians are hypocrites for claiming to be “values voters” and then to vote for someone who does not reflect their Christian values?

Joe Biden often emphasizes that he is a “devout Catholic” yet he is for abortion, homosexual marriage, and for transgenderism. What response should Christians have to his presidency?

Atheists have complained about “Christian Nationalism” and they say it is important to keep the church out of the government, what would you say in response to their accusations?

This is an Evangelism Podcast, so our focus is evangelism. What role do you think these gatekeepers in the church, business, and civic realms have in protecting our right to evangelize and to practice our religious beliefs? We need to pray for those in authority that all men might be saved. Key Scripture: 1 Timothy 2:1-4 Therefore I exhort first of all that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings and all who are in authority, that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and reverence. For this is good and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.

Key Quotes: Wherever there is a municipality, there is a principality.

The Lion of Judea should wind up with the lion’s share of the souls.

Website: https://cityelders.com/

This is The Evangelism Podcast Hosted by Daniel King The Evangelism Coach

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:01):
Jesse Leon Rogers is building city elders in organization that is dedicated to protecting life defending Liberty exalting Christ and helping families to flourish. Their goal is to guard the Gates of the city by developing leaders from the three primary spheres of God, ordained authority, the church, civil government, and business. How is praying for those in authority connected to evangelism? We answer that question and more in today’s podcast…

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:30):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King we’re 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 Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:05):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. We have a special guest. Jesse Rogers is leading city elders and the goal of city elders is to embody the biblical model of city governance. And so brother, Jesse, thank you so much for being with me today, Daniel. My pleasure. Good to be with you. So tell me a little bit about city elders and what city elders is called to do.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (01:37):
Well, city elders is really a restoration of a biblical form of city governance in the old Testament the ancient cities of Israel, those that had walled cities, they were guarded by and protected by elders in the gate. So they had Watchman on the wall. There would be kind of a picture of the prophetic. And then they had elders in the gate and, and they were the first line of defense of the city against intruders or attackers. And so it was, it was a way of protecting the city.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:09):
And so your organization is, is called city elders. And on your website, you say that the crisis and our government has sounded in alarm. The kingdom is calling spiritual elders from the church, the business in civic, arenas of life, to Gover an ad, the Gates of the city. Talk to me about the importance of these three different areas. The church arena, the business arena, and then civic leaders.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (02:40):
Well, there’s, there’s a divine design and a God, God designed culture. He designed government and these are components and actually expressions of his person. God’s a governor, the government rests upon his shoulders. And so God has a, he’s designed a way of protecting, protecting the family, protecting the city. And also it means a protection of the kingdom of God. So those are the three expressions of a divine design. The family is protected by a husband, wife, a covenant blood covenant covering. And so the Bible says in Malakai, God hates divorce because he’s looking for godly seed. And so that godly seed, he is primarily protected and provided by this covenantal covering well, there’s also a divinely designed covenantal covering for the city. And that’s the LOC of the church. The church was designed by God to be a protection. And so we have the civic of the church component and then the civil government, civil government is also ordained of God.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (03:49):
Civil government is a part of the kingdom of God. It’s, it’s a divine design. So a lot of people shy back from civil governments and the last of the devil, you know, that’s dirty, that’s politics, but God’s designed is that we pray for and get godly people into government because if a godly person is like in the old Testament, when a godly King arose, the whole nation could transform. So if you had the King fearing God, and you had the ministry or the priesthood Aaron’s family, if they were fearing God and walking, you have the elements of potential reformation revival could break out. If it was an ungodly King, the nation would quickly turn away from God. So the laws and the spiritual influence of the civil government arena plays a large part and the spiritual atmosphere of, of the nation or the city.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:45):
Talk to me about these, these two arms of God, the church arm, and then the government arm, how are they supposed to work together and interact?

Jesse Leon Rodgers (04:56):
That’s a great question. And, and when you think about the nature of God and him being in government, he is the government, the government rests upon Christ’s shoulders. And so the civil government, I call it the right hand of God. It’s like in the right hand of God, you have a sword and civil government. Paul said to the Roman church, they are the ministers of the Lord ministers of righteousness. They bear the sword, not in vain, there for justice and judgment and equity and public civility. The purpose of civil government is to keep the peace and to keep justice. The kingdom of God is righteousness, peace and joy and joy. Yes, yes. Amen. And so, so if there’s injustice, if there’s ungodly leadership in civil government, Solomon told us the people will groan when the righteous rule, the people rejoice, there’s joy, but when the wicked rule, there’s groaning, there’s moaning because of the injustice and the inequities.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (06:01):
And so God, the right hand is the civil government. And God’s left hand is the church, the, the spirits. We don’t typically think of church in government, but it’s spiritual government. The ekklesia the word that Jesus used it, that was a governmental gathering when the church came or when the sin of the citizens of a Greek city state came out in public and they gathered as a result of the call to gathering. That was the ekklesia. And when they came together, they governed, they could declare war conscript soldiers they could make public policy. The ekklesia was the governing component of a Greek city state. And so Jesus said, I’m going to build my accuracy. It’s going to be a spiritual government. And when they gather they can govern when they gather there’s a, there’s a deposit of God’s governmental authority in the spiritual dimension that allows them to rule. So that’s the two components the right hand and the left hand of God in government.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:04):
So let’s connect these important principles of city elders to evangelism. This is the evangelism podcast. We love talking about evangelism and reaching people for Jesus. And these are actually connected. You you’d be surprised. And so there, there’s a passage that you mentioned a little bit ago in first Timothy one. Could, could you read that passage and show how these connect?

Jesse Leon Rodgers (07:34):
Certainly I was kind of, I was astounded that Paul would tell Timothy, I exhort, therefore, first of all, of utmost importance, supplications prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks, be made for all men, for Kings, for those that are in authority so that we can live a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty. This is good and acceptable in the sight of God, our savior, who will have all men to be saved, to come to the knowledge of the truth. So in that passage, Paul is saying, it’s, it’s critical. It, matter of fact, he said, this is top priority. This is number UNO here, pray for everybody, but especially Kings. And those that are in governmental authority, because God would have all men to be safe. The spiritual climate that is, is largely determined by two elements, civil government, and the church society is, is largely made of there other elements, but largely those two components, the laws, the justice system, the police system how you keep peace. And the other element of course is the church. So you’re, you’re right, Daniel and, and, and I had not made it in those terms. When you spoke earlier, there is a direct connection between the state of the civil government and the effectiveness of evangelism one affects the other.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:03):
Yeah. And we’ve seen this in a lot of the different countries that we’ve gone to. If there is peace in the nation, if there is righteousness and justice in the nation, then it is possible to preach the gospel. And it is possible for revival to happen for people to start being saved. But if the government is, has a lot of corruption, if there are issues with religious freedom where the government cuts off religious freedom, then it becomes very difficult to preach the gospel and for people to be saved. And so if we’re going to go out and minister to people first, we need to pray for our leaders, those who are in the government, those who are in authority, so that we can have peace in the society. And so that we can lift up Christian values what are, what are some of the values that you feel that are important for city elders to defend?

Jesse Leon Rodgers (10:03):
Well, we feel the primary target of, of the adversary is the family. We see this in the, in the wicked influence of those that are attempting to and confound those that have gotten empower in, in the United States government, the, what are they targeting? The family, the identity of children, the sexual orientation, Satan wants to bind people. And one of the easiest ways to target and snare a soul is to confuse and bind them in their sexuality. And so the, the civil government has targeted the family. We know that socialism and the atheism, they, they target children even from first grade and even preschool, they wanna confuse their, their origins, you know, make them think, Hey, I’m the product of an evolutionary process. If they can’t get them at their origins, then they get them in their identity, you know, confuse it, make them think there’s a potential of 52 different sexual modes, you know, that you can be in or you can transition from one to the other and back and forth rather than as God’s design male and female gender.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (11:14):
And so civil government holds such powerful keys legislatively. This is something that the Lord just recently brought to my attention. The reason Paul told Timothy pray, first of all, for these government officials is because civil government holds the key to a law. They can make your life a living. Haiti’s just by making laws, they can tax you into oblivion. They also hold the power of the key of opening and closing spiritual doors. A godly leader can sign one law and stop money’s flowing for aborting children, or he can turn that around and flow all kinds of money and influence and power. So the reason civil government is so critical is, is because they hold the key to legislation. They hold the power of the pin. They open and close spiritual doors, demonic influence when, when an ungodly leader rises to power, they can open up the entire nation to demonic influence, or they can close that door simply by the positions they take legislatively. So yeah, the civil government has a direct bearing. So back to your original question, we want to protect the family. We want to protect life. We want to protect marriage. And it, isn’t an interesting that that ungodly civil government attacks all three of those life marriage, sexual identity and orientation. And so it’s, it’s the adversary can work powerfully either through godly government or ungodly covenant.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:55):
And then I would say also it’s important to protect Liberty. Yes, because without Liberty, we can’t practice our religion without Liberty. We don’t have the ability to, to speak freely. And in our nation, this is, this is an issue right now, especially first amendment issues, where, where there are certain things that are being forbidden to be said, yes, and you can’t say them. And people talk about the first amendment and they say that only applies to the government. But what we’re seeing is on social media, liberal companies that control social media companies are shutting down the voices of Christians and shutting down the voices of people that would uphold righteousness in our nation. I read a article just yesterday about how focus on the family, which is a great organization, was just removed their rights to post on Twitter. Because something they said about transgender that was involved in the government, and this is a serious issue. And if we don’t stand up as a nation and say, we refuse to allow our rights to be taken away from us, then we will lose.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (14:15):
Yes, yes. The the critical component of the gospel is your voice. It is preaching the gospel. And so if the, if the voice and the vote are altered and people are stifled and, and we have canceled culture trying to take the voice of the church awake, closed the church down, isn’t that amazing in America the, the liquor stores open the marijuana stores open, but the church we cannot we cannot allow it to be open. And, and what’s amazing is, and this is how critical spiritual component is in terms of Liberty. Even if you could go to church in California, they said, you cannot sing. You know, you can go to church, but you cannot sing. I mean, this is like Exodus 13 being played out all over again. They said, we’re going to worship. And Pharaoh says, no, you’re not going to worship.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (15:11):
You’re not going to worship in Egypt. You know? And so there’s this battle going on because worship releases the power of the spirit worship creates the spiritual atmosphere needed for evangelism Liberty in voice, Liberty, protecting your Liberty. Protecting our liberties is also protecting the gospel because civil Liberty and religious Liberty are the two, two parallel tracks that freedom run on. If you lose religious Liberty, your civil liberties are soon behind. If you lose civil liberties, your religious liberties are shouldn’t behind. So we’ve got to protect religious Liberty and civil Liberty because there are two pair they’re the right hand and left hand of God,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:55):
Both needed. Yeah. Freedom of speech is so vital right now, especially for the evangelist. The evangelist is one who speaks and, and calls people to Jesus. And the problem is if they can remove the freedom of speech from somebody powerful, like Donald Trump, by taking away his Twitter feed, then they can remove you. They can remove me. They can remove anyone for any reason that they want. And so I think one of the key issues we have to stand up for is freedom of speech in our nation that not just freedom on the sidewalk, but freedom in what has become the public square of our nation, the social media companies, because that’s where our nation goes to fellowship. That’s where we go to debate ideas to talk, to encourage one another. And especially during these times of COVID people, aren’t meeting together face to face as much as they did previously. And so the place for them to interact is on social media. And so we have to stand up for the right of people to be able to say what they want to say and for the Christian, right. To be able to say, this is right, this is wrong. This action is on biblical. This is what we,

Jesse Leon Rodgers (17:17):
Yes, yes. Amen. Yeah. The law of the Lord civil law, God, God intends for there to be peace. And the civil arena, civil government is such a critical component of evangelism. As you know, I know we’ve traveled to many nations in the nations where there’s not religious freedom. There are spiritual and the civil government component plays such a critical role in that. We were talking about earlier, before we came on the program that when Satan tempted Jesus he didn’t offer him the soles of the earth. He offered him the kingdoms, the domains of authority, the spheres of authority. He showed him the kingdoms of the earth in a moment’s time and said, I’ll give you all of these. If you’ll just bow down and worship me. Now, we know that Jesus was coming for souls. He came to seek and to save that, which was lost.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (18:15):
He came for the harvest. That’s the reason he came is to redeem. So why is Satan offering him these spheres of authority? These Basileus is the Greek word, the kingdoms of the earth. And the reason is whoever controls, the kingdoms gets the souls. If you control civil government, you have the, the, the ability to manipulate and to influence and to legislate. And so civil government is isn’t is a fundamental element in releasing the harvest. And that’s what this ministry of, of Daniel King is all about releasing the harvest of the earth, putting the sickle into the souls of the earth. And so we’ve got to engage in civil government to maintain the freedom, to preach the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:03):
I’ll ask you two controversial questions. One is about Donald Trump and one is about Joe Biden. Okay. So during the presidency of Donald Trump, some people accused Christians of compromising their values by voting for a man who had been divorced several times, and who has been known to speak crassly on occasion. Do you think that Christians are hypocrites for claiming to be values voters and then to vote for someone who doesn’t reflect Christian values? What would you say

Jesse Leon Rodgers (19:37):
Optimally? Every Christian would want someone to vote for and to be in office who expressed that not just the values of Christians, but the spirit of nature the testimony, the the lifestyle. And so Donald Trump is an enigma. His past life, you know, the way he lived w large and loose was such a contrast to where he would govern. It shocked everyone, everyone, even the conservative Ted Cruz governor from Arkansas

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:19):
Huckaby, Huckaby,

Jesse Leon Rodgers (20:19):
Governor Huckabee, they are all shocked at how conservatively Donald Trump is governing. So in terms of a president, I want a president who stands from my values, even if he personally doesn’t demonstrate those in his personal life. Now there for us as Christians, that’s a contrast, and there’s a discrepancy there because what we S the truth we stand on, it should be the truth we live, but Donald Trump has governed more conservatively than anyone ever imagined. He’s been the most bold president for life and defending life than any president in our history, even, even stronger than Reagan president Trump’s first act as the new setting president was to sign an executive order to cut off the funding for abortion around the world. He cut that money off. Incidentally. The first thing that Joe Biden did was re-enact and release that money for abortions. Americans are not only going to be paying for abortions here in our nation. Americans are paying for abortions around the world because of our tax man,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:28):
Which is a tragedy. It is okay. Here’s the second controversial question. Joe Biden often emphasizes that he is a devout Catholic yet just in this first little week of his presidency. We’ve seen that he’s for abortion. He’s for homosexual marriage. He’s for transgenderism, that, that people who are born men can turn into women and vice versa. So what response should Christians have to his presidency?

Jesse Leon Rodgers (22:01):
Well, as you know, this is the most chaotic time. One of the most chaotic times in American history probably equal to, you know, the atmosphere before the civil war. There is such a, there is such a polarization in our nation right now. And Joe Biden obviously does not carry the values of the Catholic church. He cares the names. Matter of fact, the New York times said that Joe Biden is the most religious president in history. Well being religious and being a Christian are two as we know, are two different things. And so the majority of the executive orders, which is such a Joe Biden, is trying to govern by Fiat by executive order. It’s almost like attempting to be a King. The most of executive orders in the first two weeks of any presidency, previous to Biden has been five.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (22:56):
Joe Biden’s signed 32 executive orders his first week. And so he’s trying to govern by bypassing the both houses of Congress and trying to govern by, by legislative Fiat, attempting to legislate from the executive branch of the government. And so he’s out of control and, and the old, the anchor that we have right now that will preserve the nation is the fact that we have five conservatives on the court. That’s the only anchor we have because they have basically both houses of Congress, the executive branch. And so they’re going to try to pass every kind of wicked legislation that they could possibly get through. HB. One is ungodly HB five targets, the church and religious freedom will put people in jail for preaching against homosexuality, the way the Scandinavian countries have gone. And Canada has gone and has virtually made it a hate crime to even speak out against homosexuality over the next couple of years, we’re going to find out that this administration, the Biden administration is, is not only targeting churches, but targeting pastors specifically to try to close their mouth and keep them from speaking the truth.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:11):
So this is a time I think we really need to pray for the president, for the members of Congress, for the Senate, for the judicial system. We need prayers right now, because even if they come in with the intention of doing something that’s on biblical, I pray that God would turn their hearts towards God and that they would stand up for righteousness. Even if that wasn’t their first intention you and I have a mutual fan, a friend, Jason Rapport, who is a Senator in Arkansas and a great man of God, and also believes strongly in the importance of, of, of Christians being involved in government. And he’s been attacked a lot by atheists. They’ve sued him for various reasons, and they’ve really been attacking him. And so I’ve been watching what the atheists have been saying about him. And so atheists they’re complaining about Christian nationalism, Christian nationalists, and that’s their term for people like you and me who would think that Christians should have a voice in government. And they say it’s important to keep the church out of government to keep a separation between church and state. And so what response would you have to atheists who would say that you have no place to say anything about government?

Jesse Leon Rodgers (25:39):
Well, the institutional church itself organizationally does, does not have the biblical or constitutional right to enforce its dictates upon civil government, but the, the atheist don’t just want the church out of government. They want God out of government. They want to keep anyone that’s in government from exercising, their rights speaking, their their mind or speaking biblical principle as you and I both know this nation was founded not only on godly principles, many of the founding documents the original documents, even before the constitution or the declaration of independence, the governments that were being established in the colonies were primarily influenced by the pastors. It was the preaching of the pastors. And so our declaration of independence acknowledges God, five times that we have been created. Not that we evolved that, that these rights are civil liberties come from God, not from man.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (26:48):
And so the, the radical atheists, they want to excise God completely out of government. They want to completely sterile government. As a matter of fact, when they call they call it progressive or secular progressives, the word secular means without religion or without God. And so they want a godless government and everyone knows or should know when you take God out of government and government becomes God, you’re looking at tyranny. You’re looking at persecution. So what part of city elders role is to see to it that God does not get excised out of government to put God back into government. And so the, the, the government that does not acknowledge God attempts to become God. And so Jason our, our brother in Arkansas who started the national association of Christian legislators leaders. Yes. that what an incredible organization. And we need to see that organization going across the nation, as well as city elders.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:55):
Let’s, let’s, let’s talk about city elders from a practical viewpoint. Give me your vision for what city elders could become. I know you’ve been meeting with key leaders here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and now you’ve been setting up city elders and various counties across Oklahoma and it’s been growing. So, so tell me what that looks like in, in, in the years to come, what you see elder city elders becoming

Jesse Leon Rodgers (28:25):
What we want the city elders is a component of a civil government leaders, the church or church leaders and business leaders, the three, three components of eldership in a city. And what we do is we go in and try to identify who are some of the key gatekeepers who acknowledged God, who loved the Lord, who do try to govern their life by biblical principles, identify those key people. What we talk about a core for if, if in a County seat, we can identify four leaders who are anointed, who are experienced men that have walked with God for some time and have tenure. If we can identify some key leaders in that County seat, bring them together, have them begin to pray together and then identify people in the civil government component. Is there a civil government leader, a mayor a justice, a an attorney maybe even the someone on the city council who loves God and then bring them together at the table to, to become the spiritual governing council of the city. Not just the church, not just the but there, there is. And you made reference to this while ago, in terms of civil government, there is a spiritual component to civil government.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:51):
Yeah. I heard you say that wherever there’s a municipality, there is a principality. What does that mean?

Jesse Leon Rodgers (29:56):
Well, wherever you’re going to find spirit, a civil government, there’s going to be spiritual influences behind it, trying to control it. So civil government is either going to be controlled by spiritual leaders who acknowledged God will, which will be backed up by the angelic and the spiritual kingdom of light, or they will be civil government will be controlled by the godless. And if their country, if civil governments controlled by the godless, you’re going to have demonic influence. You’re going to have a and liberties taken and freedoms excised. And so, yes, we’re wherever there’s a municipality, there’s going to be a principle. There’s going to be spiritual influences behind that person trying to bring the people into.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:44):
So if someone wants to get involved with city elders and start a group like this in, in their municipality or their County seat, where could they find more information about you? What’s your website

Jesse Leon Rodgers (30:59):
City elders.com. And they can also contact us directly@cityeldersatgmail.com. And so that’s how they can touch base with us.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:10):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on the evangelism podcast. Thank you, Daniel.

Jesse Leon Rodgers (31:15):
And God bless your efforts around the world.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:18):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And what we found is that as we go to different nations of the world, it takes us an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach with the gospel. And so some countries are more expensive. Some countries are a little bit less expensive, but on average, we’ve invested about $1 for every person we’re able to lead to Jesus. So today I’m asking you to go to my website, King ministries.com and give $1, $2, $5, become a monthly partner, help us to lead people to Jesus. Imagine you can start a party in heaven with just $1. Also go to Apple iTunes, leave us a review for the evangelism podcast with Daniel King. So lots of people can find this evangelism podcast. God bless you

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:13):
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.

Rob Welch has developed an innovative method of discipling new believers called T4T also known as Training for Trainers. Today he shares about how he got started in evangelism and about how he follows up on the people who get saved at his festivals.

In 2001, when Rob Welch surrendered to God’s call on his life, he left the business world, sold his home and enrolled in a master’s program at Wheaton College. On completion of his studies, he received his Master’s Degree in Missions and in 2004 was ordained as an evangelist. For the next three years, Rob served as Evangelist-in-Residence at the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. In 2006 Rob followed God’s leading and established For His Glory. Since its inception the Lord led For His Glory to share the Gospel with over 4 million people with 840,087 committing their lives to the Lord Jesus and 259,421 believers trained to make disciples who make disciples.

What is T4T? Training for Trainers (T4T) disciple-making model. You can find more about it here: https://forhisglorymin.org/training-for-trainers-t4t

Why Disciple Making Matters:

1. This is very important to God. One of the last instructions Jesus gave His disciples was to “go and make disciples of all nations”. This clearly means that the Lord expects us to be disciple makers.
2. Disciple making is very effective. The early followers of Jesus focused on making disciples and evangelized the entire known world in a lifetime!
3. When disciples train others it leads to multiplication. When disciples are trained on “how” to train others to make disciples, their impact on God’s kingdom multiplies.

Website: https://forhisglorymin.org/ 

Daniel King is often called The Evangelism Coach because of all the evangelists he talks to on The Evangelism Podcast.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Rob Welsh has developed an innovative method for discipling new believers called T for T also known as training for trainers today. He shares about how he got started in evangelism and about how he follows up on the people who get saved.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:16):
His festivals. Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. 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 Daniel King. Welcome to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:54):
Evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I am super excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a special guest. Rob Welsh is a full-time evangelist back in 2001. He surrendered his, his life to God’s call. He left the business world. He sold his home and he immediately enrolled in a master’s program at Wheaton college. And then he did his master’s degree in missions and was launched out into full-time evangelism. And so, Rob, thank you so much for joining me today.

Rob Welch (01:30):
Great to be here with you, Daniel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:31):
So tell Me a little bit about your history. That sounds pretty intense. You left the business world, sold your home and launched out into ministry. What was that?

Rob Welch (01:41):
Well, it was kind of like a wrestling match and the Lord pin me I had four main idols of why I felt I couldn’t do God’s will. And one by one, he stripped me of them. And in essence, he asked me, is this your daughter? Am I? And one by one, I had to lay down my idols. And finally he brought me to surrender and that was in October of 2001 and never looked back.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:09):
And so after you did your master’s degree in missions, you served as an evangelist in residence at the Billy Graham center at Wheaton college. So, so what was that like? What are some of the things you learned from Wheaton college and learn from being around the Billy Graham center, which of course has got that beautiful library and museum up there, which I’ve gone through several times. Just looking at the history of Billy Graham. It’s always inspiring. Always makes me want to be an evangelist every time I’m there.

Rob Welch (02:39):
Yeah. Glad you are. It was it was interesting because as a fellow of Angelist, you know, we, we were made, I think for the field and it, it was hard for me to it was great and it was really challenging at the same time. And I knew God had me there for a season for, for what he’d call me too. And, and for my, my future wife who, I didn’t know who that would be immediately, but God, God brought my wife to me while I was serving there. And, and so so it was really good and I’ve met some amazing people, learned a lot. And at the same time, I, I just struggled being in an academic environment. Mckenna was trying to keep my head down and I’m not gonna do much trouble. But, but it was a great place, I think for me to have a platform and to be exposed to some wonderful ministries, got to go to Billy Graham’s last crusade in New York city in 2005, that was really special and went to a couple of Franklin Graham’s festivals. And I worked with students in evangelism there, encouraging them in evangelism and mentoring and going out and doing it. So it was a good experience. And then God led me to start for his glory. So, so it was the right transition, I think, from the, from the business world and being in school to eventually leading the ministry, God had called me to, so it worked out well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:06):
So you launched for his glory back in 2006. And since then you’ve been traveling to a bunch of different nations doing large evangelistic crusades. Has it been mostly in Africa? What are some of the countries that you’ve been to?

Rob Welch (04:23):
Well, I ministered in India seven times, but it’s been a while since I’ve been there with the current conditions there it’s, it’s not as open to get in as it was. When I started 2006 or 2012, I went there a total of seven times, five times in the South and twice in the North. And I’ve also been to Sri Lanka and New Mexico then the Haiti right after the earthquake been to Columbia, South America, a couple of times in Argentina and ministered a lot in Africa. And really, I would say since 2008, almost all of our ministry really has been there. And that’s really where our focus is. We have a regional team there and right now that’s really, everything is poured into Africa. Eastern central Africa is where we’re administering.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:15):
And tell me about some of what you’ve been seeing God do there in Africa.

Rob Welch (05:21):
Well, really, and I know you see this to Daniel, but it’s so much like the book of acts. I know you see this a lot at, at, at your crusades, our festivals, we really see God move. It’s like Peter getting up at Pentecost, preaching the gospel. And we, we usually see most of the people responding. So often, especially in Congo, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, they’re just so hungry and ripe and ready. So we’re seeing an overwhelming response to the gospel, a great spiritual hunger. And we’re also seeing God working. Miraculously are lots of people that are set free from demon possession. We saw a lot of that, our last mission, a couple months back in Tanzania so many people delivered and, and many, many people healed. So it’s really the, the book of acts and we get to be a part of it and see God doing more and more. So it’s exciting stuff.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:19):
Now I saw that recently you were in the city of Goma Congo, which really caught my attention because Goma is the place where I met my lovely wife, Jessica. I was wanting to learn how to do crusade evangelism. And so there was a, a Canadian evangelists, Peter younger, and who I wanted to learn from. So I called him his office up in Canada and said, can I come in and meet you? And he said, I’d love to meet you, but don’t come to Canada. Come meet me in Goma Congo. So I got on the plane, flew all the way to Rwanda and then went through the Hills of Rwanda all the way there. And my wife was the one who was assigned to take care of the VIP guests. And so she met me right there on the border between Rwanda and in Goma and picked me up. And at that time, Goma was a very difficult city. There’s a volcano there that had recently erupted. The entire city was covered in black. Is it still that way?

Rob Welch (07:25):
There’s the, the, the lava is still there. Yeah. And it, you know, that doesn’t go away, you know, so it’s it’s there and it’s still a rough city and that hasn’t changed either.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:38):
I remember when we would take a shower, the lava dust would just pour off of our bodies and you’d have to shower for several minutes before the water stopped being black, going down the drain.

Rob Welch (07:51):
No, we didn’t have that. You know, at least that it’s settled. When, when were you there? What year?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:56):
Well, we’ve been married 13 years. And so it was two years before that it was about 2006, something like that.

Rob Welch (08:06):
Yeah. So we were just there in 2019. So, so you have a lot of dust had settled, but the lava’s still there. So it’s okay.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:17):
Tell, tell me about the results your, your newsletter said that you had 75,369 people receive Christ during your, your five days there. That’s amazing.

Rob Welch (08:28):
You know, it’s interesting Daniel, there was a not a good thing, but there was the Ebola scare going on. And, and, and we had a couple of cases of Ebola right before we came. So there was a real challenge just getting in the country. And there was a lot of fear, like what’s going on now with COVID for so many people, there was so much fear. We struggled fact crossing the border, the rewind days, a border officer said he wasn’t going to let us back through. And I was like, that’s fine. Just let us get, get across the border because we did the same route you did going up through Wanda. And he said, he wasn’t gonna let us back through. And I thought, well, we’ll reroute getting home and we’ll get our team home and like her team in Africa. And so they just, we got to get across the border if you’re not gonna let us, and we’ll go through consortia, we’re gonna find a way I didn’t say that, but I’m thinking we’re getting there one way or the other, we got to get the gospel to the folks there.

Rob Welch (09:29):
So there was this huge fear. And in fact there was so much hand-washing and, and the taking your temperature and all that, you know, it’s not all that different than what’s going on now. But there was fear in the city. And so many people kept from coming to the festival because of fear of Ebola. And yet as, so the crowd was probably a third of what we were expecting. I’m just being very open here, but yet almost everybody that came responded. So you had really committed believers that came Daniel and, and they, they were all in for Jesus. You, you know, the time you minister, you know, those folks, but they’re in life or death, they’re following Jesus. So they were there and their counseling, they did an amazing job and all that, the people that were lost and hurting and broken that wanted God came.

Rob Welch (10:22):
And these are not the church folks. I can assure you that when almost all of them responded, we had a militia leader come to Christ and his friend had just come to Christ a few weeks before. And it was starting to do a T for T group, which maybe we’ll get to talk about in a bit, but he was started to a discipleship group and his friend who had been in the militia with him he invited him to come. And, and so, so Thomas came and I ended up preaching on Zachias and you know, the story, well, we’re Zed Kia says timing, the Sycamore fig tree to see Jesus as he’s going through Jericho. Nobody’s laughing, man. So I started climbing the speaker tower, you know, you know, the speaker towers and yeah. And me being Mr. Mr. Nimble I’m a little big guys.

Rob Welch (11:09):
I can see that on the screen, but I’m not a small man. So I go up on a speaker tower a little bit and to illustrate Zachias you know, climbing this tree to see Jesus. And, and when I’m preaching from the tower Thomas was converted because he thought that’s me, I’m Zacchaeus. You know, cause he he’s hurting people. He’s robbing him all sorts of bad stuff. And he’s thinking I’m Zach is I’m that man, I need Jesus. And he didn’t wait for a call or anything. He just surrendered right there. And and after that he told the mayor that he had just come to Christ and mayor of course knew who this man was. And the mayor Daniel had dealt with. And think of the environment we, we deal with here in other places, the mayor had the governor and like kind of his, his his cabinet go with him to pressure the mayor to stop the festival.

Rob Welch (12:14):
And the mayor said, no, I gave a promise to the men of God and I’m not going to take the blessings of God away from the city. So he stood up against the governor and all of his staff who are trying to bully him into pulling the plug on the festival. So when Thomas comes to Christ, he tells the mayor and the mayor says, we got to get your story out and tell everybody. So here’s this man who’d been harassing the people and leading an opposition grew up in there over 130 militia groups, just outside of Goma. You know, the, you know, the environment, Daniel, a lot of folks listening don’t, but it’s a rough place. And so this guy then started going around with the mayor to tell what Jesus had done in his life. So that’s the power of the gospel. And he’s one of the 75,000 plus that came to Christ. And now they’ve got like 30,000 people that have been trained to multiply it, discipleship groups in there to the attempt generation. We just got a report today. We get monthly reports on results. So, so God’s launched a movement in that city. It’s bringing transformation. It’s really awesome.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:16):
That’s so wonderful to hear. So you mentioned T4T, which stands for training for trainers, and this is a major component of your ministry and how you follow up on the people who get saved at, at the festivals. So tell me, how does T 4 T work, how do you train trainers?

Rob Welch (13:38):
What really Daniel, it’s going back to the new Testament model. So it’s not actually something new. It’s how the apostles did it and how you see it happening in the book of acts. You look at acts chapter two, you know what well, I’m sure you’ve probably preached on a lot is have I, you got Pentecost. And then you got the, the early church. They devoted themselves to the apostles, teaching the fellowship, the breaking of bread and prayer. You see that new Testament model. This is just getting back to that. And what it does is it’s small group, how’s church, cell group, whatever you want to call it, but it’s small group discipleship multiplication. And it’s just getting back to what we see going on in the new Testament. And second Timothy, two, two, where Paul says to Timothy, what you’ve heard from me in the presence of many witnesses and trust a faithful man who in turn will be able to teach others.

Rob Welch (14:30):
So what we’re doing is we’re equipping every believer to be a multiplying disciple maker and do it in small groups. And people enter into these groups and they’re discipled, but then they, many of them immediately start reaching others, seeing them come to Christ and then discipling them. So let’s say you lead me and let’s say eight or 10 people. So think eight to 12, or at most 15 people or six to 15 people, you led me and a bunch of others to Christ because you’re an evangelist. You start training us. And so I’m in your group. I stay in your group, but I go out immediately evangelize and I reach another eight, 12 people. I started discipling them while you’re discipling me. And then the people that I’m discipling, then they go out and evangelize the disciple others. And once you get to the fourth generation of these groups, a movement’s been launched and that can reach millions of people. And the vision God’s given us is to see a billion souls reached eternally with the gospel and that’s through these disciple-making movements. So T for T or training for trainers is really just going back to the new Testament model we see at work in the book of acts and it’s empowering every believer to be a multiplier, say, God can use you, tell your story, tell what Jesus has done. Invite people to receive Christ and then disciple them as you’re being discipled. So it’s rapid disciple multiplication and small groups. So that’s going on,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:57):
Tell me how it works logistically, because when you go in for the crusade, you’re, you’re just there for a week for a short period of time. Are you doing intensive discipleship training that week and then leaving trainers that are starting those groups out?

Rob Welch (16:15):
No, we’re looking at the way we do it. Daniel, our, our model really is probably seven or eight trips. And I’d encourage you at other evangelists. I think this is a way we need to multiply our ministry. So we’re doing two or three often three training trips beforehand, where you literally end up training thousands of people to multiply and they start doing it. And if you can get to the third generation and by that, I mean, the first groups are first-generation once they start a second generation, when’s the second generation starts third. But if you can get a couple generations down, all of these discipleship groups going at the same time, you pretty much have the net ready for the harvest. And you immediately want to plug in the new believers that come to Christ at the festival, into these groups, because then they’ll start growing and multiplying.

Rob Welch (17:05):
So this is months before the festival that you have two or three, usually three trips. And they select the leaders who will be leading the movement. So they select the leadership team because this has to keep going after the festival. And most of the work is after the festival. The festival is just a launching pad for the movement. The engine is the T for T and those that are the parents that will lead it are the church leaders and those who lead in T for T they’re, the ones that shepherd the movement. And then you have a couple of followup trips after the festival to just ensure, you know, that it’s really been effectively launched. We have monthly tracking reports. So it’s, it’s really about a two year process if we’re doing it right. And, and we have to have a regional team to do it.

Rob Welch (17:55):
That’s why we’re just ministering in Eastern central Africa right now, because for our model to work effectively, there’s a lot of advanced work. There’s a lot of follow-up and there’s a lot of communication. So it’s a little different model than just focused on the events and the training around it. It’s, it’s kind of more of a holistic and more of a longer term approach. But the final point I make is you don’t want to go too long because this is empowering the believers there to lead it. And you don’t want to in any way, create dependence. So there’s wisdom and passing the Baton because it has to be theirs. They have to own it. They have to lead it. They have to know how to do it. And we just are in a support role after the festival to encourage them as it continues. So I hope that made sense, but that’s what it’s about.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:43):
So you are actually forming these groups long before the festival even happens before you, and you have a team. How many people do you have on your team there in Africa who are helping to organize everything?

Rob Welch (18:59):
Well, we have four plus we have a coordinator in the city we’re ministering in. So they’re coordinators working in different cities that we’ve previously administered in that are continuing the work. But we have four on our regional team that I would call full time with us that are working with us in that. And we, we need to add some more and we’re looking to add a second team this year because right now we can do two missions at most three missions a year with the way we’re doing it. We want to double that as soon as possible, because you know, like, you know, we want to reach everybody, our goal, every so we’re with you there, you know, we’ve got a world of rage, so we’re totally with you there, brother. And I appreciate your ministry, but yeah, so we’ve got a multiply and we’re looking to get our second team, hopefully going this year so we can see our impact expand.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:52):
Awesome. You’re you’re, you’re obviously concerned about more than just making converts. You are working to make disciples. Why do you feel that disciple-making is such an important part of the evangelism process?

Rob Welch (20:07):
Well, if we’re doing it right, I think it needs to be central because Daniel has gifted as you are. And I know you’re anointed when you preach. And I know you see, God work a lot of miracles when you pray. I see God working powerfully too. You know, there’s only so much we can do those of us that are called like you or me as proclamation of Angeles. I think we need to seek to activate every believer. And you see that, you know, the scriptures well in Ephesians four, that the office of the evangelist along with a possible prophet pastor and teacher is to equip the saints for the work of ministry. And as evangelists, I don’t think we’re doing our job. If we’re not equipping believers to multiply and make disciples. Now, I’ll be honest. I love preaching. I am not ashamed of that.

Rob Welch (20:57):
I love preaching in front of large crowds, the bigger, the better, the more people that come to Christ, the better I get really excited like you do. I jump up and down. They all think I’m African. My skin color kind of says something else, but in my heart, I think I’m African, but, but you know, I’m there for eight days, nine days, and they’ve got a mission that goes on for the rest of their lives. And if we’re not giving them that, then I think we’re, we’re not fulfilling our calling in the way we’re supposed to. So, so God put that on my heart. In 2004 and 2012, I finally saw the vehicle. And three years later, the 2015, we actually started executing it. So it took like 11 years from, Hey, we need to be watching movements to, okay. Here’s how and then, and doing it. But God’s been gracious in it. We’re staying at it’s really exciting.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:53):
We have a lot of different evangelists and missionaries that are listening to this podcast. What advice would you give to other evangelists, especially young evangelists who are just getting started.

Rob Welch (22:10):
I think you could give this to Dan. You know, we gotta stay the course and you know, it’s a marathon, I’m a talk to you and anybody else listening. That’s great, but you know how hard it is. And you know, the, the trials we go through and for anybody listening, brothers and sisters, this isn’t an easy call, but God who causes is faithful. So realize it’s really dependent on him and you’ve got to keep believing him. You know, I, I love this scripture in due season will reap. If we don’t give up, don’t become weary of doing good produce season. You’ll reap. If you don’t give up the call of an evangelist, we’ve got to persevere through trials, expecting them not to come is very naive. I have all these, I should know, better being close to 20 years in. You probably know better. Cause I think you’re smarter than I am, but I always hope that this mission will be easier than last. Do you ever have that Daniel or are you smarter than I am? Are you, are you not going to be honest and say, I hope, or it looks like things are going better here and I’m always hopeful. Maybe this mission will be easier and it like pretty much never is. Yeah. I know like persevere

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:24):
Sierra Leone this month with my friend Jones and we have to get four COVID tests too, before we get there. And two, before we come back, I mean, it’s doubled in difficulty.

Rob Welch (23:39):
Yeah. We had to do that going out and I got COVID last fall in my family too. So but yeah, it was it’s hard for our team the COVID stuff, but, but it just seems like when you think, Oh, this time it’s going to be easier. I think of the flesh. You want it easier? The Lord never said a BZ, but he promised to be with us. So I would say stay the course persevere and fix your eyes on Jesus. And remember that he’s faithful. It’s really not dependent on you. Your role is being faithful to him. He’ll work it out. I let me, let me end with this because I know our time’s about I had a vision where I was with the Lord. One time, this is going back and that’s not normal for me. Some people regularly have stuff, but I’m with the Lord in the car and I didn’t see him, but I’m with him.

Rob Welch (24:27):
He’s in the driver’s seat, I’m in the passenger seat. And I just told my partner at the time that God gave us the vision so we could do it. So here what I said, God gave us the vision so we could do it. So now here I am. After 20 days of fasting and praying, I just broken the fast and I have this vision of the Lord early in the morning, I’m with him in a car. And I see this little thing. I don’t see it clearly. It’s under the steering wheel, this, this little square. And the Lord speaks to me. He says, I show you the map so you can see where I’m taking you. Not so you can grab the wheel and try to drive there. See, I thought God was giving us the vision so we could do it. And he graciously said, no, it’s all me.

Rob Welch (25:15):
It’s all me here at Pasadena. I ain’t doing it. It’s kind of I’m with you. I’m doing it. I will accomplish my work. Cause I had this idea of me grabbing from the passenger’s seat, you know, grabbing, you know, 10 and two on the wheel from where I’m supposed to be sitting, just enjoying the view. I think we get caught up and I need to be reminded of that. He will do it. He is faithful. He’s never failed me. He never will. He doesn’t fail his people. We go through trials, but God’s faithful. He’s going to do it. We need to believe that. And just rest in him, abide in him. It’s his spirit working through us. It’s his gospel is bringing salvation and it’s just our job to believe him and be faithful and stay in the car. That’s as, I guess my last word for everybody, because it’s not an easy journey, but when the Lord’s driving, you know, he’s going to get there and you just gotta trust him. Okay.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:18):
So let Jesus drive the car. Well, if someone that’s listening wants to support your ministry or find out more information about the training for trainers discipleship program that you’ve put together, what’s your website. How could they get in touch with you?

Rob Welch (26:37):
Yeah, thank you. Cause I I’d love to get the materials we’re doing with T for T especially certainly welcome to support too. But boy, where these seeds multiply our website is for his glory, men.org. That’s F O R H I S G L O R Y M I n.org. So for his glory, men.org, and there’s a tab that’ll help on the equipping side. So we’ve got a lot of great material on T for T and anybody that wants to know more about T for T and how you can implement it in your ministry. I would love to talk to you personally, my partner, Mark Laveck, who is providing really our content on that would love to talk with you. So any way we can help you, we want to reach out to us and we’d love to encourage you and help you any way we can to see the kingdom multiply. Thanks for letting me be on today. Daniel, it’s good to see you. And I really appreciate your ministry and your faithfulness and your wife, Jessica, his faithfulness and the gospel and your kids who go with you sometimes. That’s that’s really exciting. Well, thank you

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:46):
So much for being on the evangelism podcast. God bless. Hi, I’m Daniel King. Thank you so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I love going around the world, telling people about Jesus, but I can’t do it without people like you. See, every time we go to preach the gospel, we buy a plane ticket. We have to do advertising. We have to pay money to rent a sound system. And we’ve found that takes an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach for Jesus. And so I’m asking people to go to my website, King ministries.com and give at least $1 a month, just $1 a month. That’s less than the cost of a cup of coffee for $1 a month. You can start a party in heaven every single month. And while you’re at it, go to Apple iTunes and leave the evangelism podcast. A positive review. Your five star review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find this podcast. Thanks for listening. God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (28:52):
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.

Why is it important for you to have a strategic plan for your ministry? What is a strategic plan? What elements are in a good strategic plan? Today I interview Dave Jones from the Luis Palau Association. He is an expert in strategic planning…

David has served with the Luis Palau Association for 42 years in numerous leadership roles including the Global Network of Evangelists (GNE). David coaches GNE members in evangelism, strategic planning, organizational development, board governance, finance, media relations, and opportunities for ministry collaboration. David is a member of the Christian Leadership Alliance (CLA), Evangelical Press Association (EPA), National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), and the Society of Professional Journalists. He has served on the CLA faculty as well as the NRB’s Television Commission. David has served on the boards of over a dozen international Christian ministries and currently serves on the boards of Need Him Global and SAT 7. He frequently consults with nonprofit organizations. Since 1997 David has served as Executive Director of the Palau Foundation for World Evangelism. He and his wife Gayle are members of Village Church where David has served as an elder. David & Gayle make their home in Beaverton, Oregon. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Questions for Dave Jones: 

1. You’ve helped quite a number of ministries with their strategic planning.  What is strategic planning?
2. What happens when we do not plan?
3. How does strategic planning relate to fundraising?
4. What is SWOT planning and why is it important?

Join the Global Network of Evangelists: https://www.evangelist.global 

Evangelism Coaching will help you be a better Evangelist

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Why is it important for you to have a strategic plan for your ministry? What is a strategic plan? What elements are in a good strategic plan today? I interviewed Dave Jones from the Luis Palau association. He’s an expert in strategic planning, and he’s going to answer all your

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:23):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be 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 Daniel King. Welcome to the evangelist

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:59):
As a podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And I’m also excited about coaching other evangelists and helping evangelists to become everything that God has called them to be. And one of the important parts of building a ministry is strategic planning, thinking strategically about your mission, about your goals, about your focus, about your core values, all the elements that go into strategic planning. And today we have an expert in strategic planning with us, Mr. David Jones. Thank you so much for being with me today.

Dave Jones (01:38):
Well, Daniel, it’s good to be with you, my friend, so appreciate you and appreciate these podcasts. So thank you for the privilege of being with you today. Thank you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:47):
So Dave Jones is with the global network of evangelists. It’s a ministry of Luis Palau association. Louis plow of course, is a great evangelist. Originally from Argentina now lives in Portland. He’s done evangelism all over the world and they really have a heart for helping other evangelists. And they’ve had an organization now for quite a few years called the NGA, the next generation Alliance, raising up the next generation of evangelists. And now they’re transitioning the next generation Alliance into the global network of evangelists. And the goal is to, to build a network of networks, people all over the world who are interested in evangelism. And I’m very honored to be a part of the, the council for the global network of evangelists and, and Mr. Dave, you’ve really helped in developing that vision. Thank you for being here.

Dave Jones (02:45):
Well, thank you again, Daniel. Yeah. Good to be with you. And it’s really important topic. Strategic planning. It’s an area where a lot of evangelists and Christ centered organizations do welcome. Some, some help. They rec they, they recognize the importance of it and they want to do a good job.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:03):
So you’ve helped quite a number of ministries with their strategic planning. Let’s start at the beginning. What is strategic planning?

Dave Jones (03:13):
Well, you know, it’s, it’s a disciplined process where we’re an organization determines why it exists, where it’s going and how it’s going to get there. It’s, it’s a written statement. I think that’s one of the things a lot of ministries failed to do. They fail to recognize that a street change plan needs to be, needs to be in writing and it needs to be a living document that helps drive decision-making it’s, it’s, it’s simply a, just a written statement about, you know, why the ministry exists and where it’s going and, and how, how you’re going to get there. It’s I mean, it’s a roadmap prior, prior to these things, they all were, you get asked for directions somewhere, and someone actually talks to you and tells you how to get from point a to B, you know, in the old days they had these crazy, you know, printed maps, your younger viewers will know what I’m talking about.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:18):
You’re, you’re really starting to date yourself. I just ask Siri where I’m supposed to go. So, so what are some of the, the fruit of not planning if people don’t have a strategic plan, what does that do to their organization?

Dave Jones (04:34):
Yeah, I mean, without, without a plan, obviously there’s, there’s a lack of focus evangelist. I like to seize every opportunity without a written plan to run those opportunities. Through some framework, a planning framework, you just, you’ve got a huge lack of focus and direction. I believe it also limits it will place limitations on growth because it makes fundraising difficult when you don’t have a specific plan with quantifiable defined goals and results. It makes fundraising difficult. It creates disorganization too, especially, you know, for the, for the board and the board needs to be engaged in strategic planning, but creates a lot of disorganization because no, one’s too sure where, where the company or the ministry is heading. There’s it also, I mean, without a plan, it’s difficult to make decisions because you’ve got no real framework to make those decisions.

Dave Jones (05:42):
And I mean, I mentioned fundraising with, without, you know, some specific quantifiable goals and without a written plan, it, it hurts it places, limitations on what you’re talking to your about, which, which obviously hurts, hurts, hurts fundraising. I think the other thing too, without constantly working on your strategic plan organizations don’t know when it’s time to reinvent themselves or change maybe the methodology of, of doing things. I mean, the mission doesn’t change methods or methods do change. We certainly have seen that last in recent months as the world pandemic forced a lot of ministries to shift gears and do a lot more with digital evangelism so that, you know, planning a decision like that requires a shift in, in in direction and methodology. And that’s part of, you know, strategic planning know when it’s time to sort of reinvent yourself, but what are some of the benefits of doing strategic planning?

Dave Jones (07:00):
Well, it definitely, it provides focus. And I think it’s easy for, you know, a lot of Christian leaders. They have that entrepreneurial spirit, they’re visionary, they dream big dreams. They want to seize every opportunity and without a plan, you’ve got it just, it’s just difficult to make, make decisions. You’re kind of all over the, all over the map, as they say. I think it also, it definitely helps teamwork both with your, if you have a paid staff, your volunteers, your board, prayer partners, a plan where everybody’s on the same page and knows where you’re going is huge. I mean, imagine like a F well, this magical football game where the quarterback calls a play and, you know, the Senator says, Oh, I don’t like that play. I don’t want to snap it on three. I think I’ll snap it on to where the rider wide receivers is.

Dave Jones (07:54):
I don’t like that pass round. I think I’ll do something different. You know, you got to get everybody on the same, same page and the same, the same play. So I’ve been a written plan. Does give you some context and framework for making decisions, problem solving. I think it also makes it easier to create job descriptions for your board for your volunteers, for your staff. The, the, the orchestra, as they say, the orchestra now has one conductor and everybody is playing off the same song sheet, which is the written strategic plan. It definitely improves fundraising. No question about it. Cause you’re, you’re asking, making specific asks for specific goals and it just, it really facilitates of fundraising. I think the other thing a written plan done, right? It forces you to concentrate on your strengths as an organization, as an evangelist, as a ministry and, and, and reduce the, the weaknesses which is, which is also really important. And then I, I think it also forces you to address those really critical questions, like in light of the times and light of where we’re are right now, where do we want to be in 12 months, 24 months. And how are we going to get there?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:16):
So as you sit down to build a strategic plan for your ministry, there, there comes a hierarchy of planning. So at the top of the pyramid, you would have beliefs and then under that you would have values. Then you would have the mission of the organization. Then you would have some vision and objectives. Then you would set specific goals that you’re trying to accomplish, and then you would have policies and procedures and then specific activities and action plans for bringing it all to happen. So kind of talk us through that, that hierarchy and why each one of those are important. Like, like why is it important to first know the beliefs of your organization,

Dave Jones (10:02):
Lisa, those absolutes those almost like parcels CRE those they’re theological in nature. They’re, they’re in cement. They’re, non-negotiable, you’ve got to agree on what I mean for most organizations that they would call that their statement of faith. And it’s really important to document what are your beliefs? And like I said, once adopted, they should, you might review them from time to time, but with most organizations, the, the statement of faith it’s in cement and, you know, 10, 15, 20, 30, and the case of the organization I worked for 50 years later, we still have the same statement of faith. So, but it’s important that your constituents and prayer partners, I mean, it’s important that to know what, what your beliefs are, values are important to what,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:01):
Well, let’s, let’s talk about beliefs for a second, like in my organization, we’re evangelistic in nature. And so the core foundation of our belief is that Jesus is Lord, and that every person has sinned and needs to cry out to Jesus in order to receive salvation for their sins. And we have been given a task, a mandate to go and to tell people about the salvation that comes through Jesus Christ. So that is our, our core belief. And we evaluate everything that we do based on that, that belief. And, you know, that’s a basic Christian belief, but, but we have adapted that for our organization. Okay. And so then out of that comes values, talk about values next.

Dave Jones (11:50):
Yeah. And values. Most organizations might have six or seven values. I mean, values might be things like excellence, prayer, innovation, integrity. I mean, there’s a lot, there’s probably a hundred different things that could be values, but what are the, what are those five or six really, really key key values. That again are pretty much in some that innovation may be one, a collaboration may be one, but they help again define who you are, that the, the culture of the organization, these, that these are, these are values that are just like non-negotiable it’s really important to have a conversation with the leadership of the the ministry, the board, what, what are our five or six really key values? For a lot of, a lot of ministries, you’ll see things like integrity, accountability excellence. And it’s important that they’re just not a name only

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:00):
It’s easy to say you value, integrity, but you gotta live it.

Dave Jones (13:04):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and the interesting thing is I know of a handful of big companies that had some that failed. They had horrific failures a couple of routes even around a business now. And I, I, I asked myself if they had really adhered to it, they’d really followed their core values. Would they still be in business today? I think for a couple and they probably probably would be. So, yeah, you don’t, you wonder if it was just a PR ploy or yeah. You don’t want to just agree on some values and then stick them in the file cabinet. They really need to be part of the culture. Right.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:45):
And then comes mission. What is the mission or the purpose of the organization?

Dave Jones (13:50):
Yeah, the mission is, you know, you gotta answer the question why you exist. I mean, the simplest way to do a mission statement is just to say, this organization, this ministry exists to, and you need to succinctly and specifically answer that question. I, I, I do find I mean, most today, especially because strategic plan, I mean, when I got into ministry there, wasn’t a lot of conversations about strategic planning. There wasn’t a lot written about it. That was, I got in ministry 42 years ago. I mean the last decade, especially last 15 years, lot of great, great material books, booklets seminars webinars. There’s a been a lot out there on strategic planning. You talked about the, you know, the pyramid, Daniel, the pyramid of, of planning and you’re, I would suspect your audience, people viewing this. They probably have done a pretty good job at the top half of the pyramid.

Dave Jones (14:52):
They can clearly tell you their beliefs, their core values. They can tell you what the mission statement is, why they exist. It’s when you start getting, moving down the pyramid, if things get a little more the planning process towards fall falling apart you guys, you’ve got to come up with, you know, some of those big, those big objectives that you’re pursuing and determine, you know, what, what, what are the outcomes, if you’re successful in accomplishing these objectives? You know, what outcomes, what changes are you bringing about in society? And then you’ve got to, you’ve got to drill down and get to some, those, those goals. I mean, you’ve got to come up with, you know, the common word is the, you know, smart goals and you know, specific, measurable, attainable, relevant time bound, you know, that the caustics smart. You’ve I think a lot of evangelists, they, they’re pretty good at, cause they’re visionary. They’re pretty good at the top part of that pyramid. But when it starts coming up with those smart goals, it gets a little starts getting a little challenging. They they get a little bored with it. And then, you know, then coming up with some action plans to accomplish those goals, then the process really starts with

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:18):
Vangelis. Always said, we’re going to reach the whole world, but you know, w we’re going to like, okay, now how do we bring that down to something specific we’re going to do this week to reach somebody for Jesus.

Dave Jones (16:29):
Yeah, exactly. You know yeah, I mean, taking that vision and evangelists are very visionary, very passionate about winning people to Jesus. But you’ve got to take the time to come up with those very specific goals. And the great thing about that too, Daniel, it enhances your prayer life. It really does. And it gives you a specific story to talk to your donors. I mean, it really helps fundraising. I mean, you know, someone who says, Hey, I’m going to Ethiopia this year, we’re going to do three missions. We’re going to train 5,000 believers in friendship evangelism. We’re trusting God for 50,000 decisions for Christ. We, we plan on, you know, dating 20 water Wells in areas where they got no clean water. I mean, when you start putting specific numbers, specific action plans, specific goals in place, one out of say, it enhances your prayer life.

Dave Jones (17:36):
But to now, you’re now you can, when you’re talking to a donor, you’re giving them a, this is why I need your financial support and help and prayers. Will you help us accomplish these specific goals? So I mean, strategic planning and fundraising do go hand in hand. I mean you know, after that, there’s, there’s, there needs to be at once the action plans are in place, obviously you’ve just, you’ve got to, I mean, day to day, you got to track this thing that you modify it. It’s gotta be when you come up, once you come up with your plan, it’s gotta be a living dynamic document. Now that’s something you do just for the sake of having done the exercise and then you stick it in a file cabinet and you don’t reference it again until 12 months later, we’re at an annual board meeting someone on the board says, Oh, what’s our strategic plan again.

Dave Jones (18:27):
Oh yeah, let me have, let me have someone go to the file cabinet and grab it. One of the questions I get asked a lot to Daniel now, now that there’s, so there’s a wealth of great material on strategic planning available. You know, people realize a little what planning models, the best. And my answer to that, the model is that that’s the best is the one you’re going to, that you’ll use. I mean, it’s the model that makes sense to you that you’re not going to just stick it, you know, the document of file cabinet, but it’s going to be a living dynamic document. So there are a lot of great models out there. Find one that makes sense. And and then implement it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:07):
The models that I really like was from a book called master planning by Bob Beale. I went through this a few years ago and it was really an excellent source of how to do strategic planning. Peter Drucker also has some excellent stuff on managing a nonprofit organization. Basically anything that Peter Drucker wrote is probably good to go through. And like you said, there’s a lot of other resources that are out there.

Dave Jones (19:34):
Yeah. And again, I would hope all of your podcast, viewers and followers, especially if they’re a leader of an organization would slow down, hit the pause button. And if they, if they haven’t done any reading or studying or looking into strategic planning that they would do so fine, find a, find a model or find a book, then just find something makes sense to you. I think one of the mistakes too, I’ve seen, I know I, I can think of organizations that they’ll bring in a, a consultant oftentimes pretty pretty hefty expense. And they’ll impose a model on the organization that just isn’t welcomed it. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to, to the leader and and they go to all the trouble to try to put a plan together based on a model that’s just not a good fit. So models are just models.

Dave Jones (20:38):
They’re just tools. So actually I, I was in a workshop, a few, it’s funny. I teach this stuff I love going to workshops about because you always learn something new. I was in a workshop a few years ago and the the teacher, he had a, he, he said, here’s how you can do a one-page strategic plan. And I thought, wow. And it was brilliant. I mean, it was just absolutely brilliant. I’ve used it with you know, some of the evangelists I work with cause it, it was simple, but it wasn’t simplistic. And I mean, what I liked about it is there on one page at Eden, you know, tape above your laptop or you know, by your desk, there’s the plan. And it just, you know, it enhances your prayer life and, and and it gives you again, like I said, it gives you some specifics to share with, you know, with your prayer partners.

Dave Jones (21:37):
I, I love it. I, I mean, I get a lot of prayer letters, missionary letters. I, I love it when I get a letter from a missionary that spells out some of their quantifiable goals. I know I, I’m a numbers guy and Hey, there’s another wrong numbers. There’s a book in the Bible called numbers. You know, there’s, you see a lot in the Bible belt, quantifiable results. So there’s nothing, nothing wrong about quantifiable results, but I love it when I get a prayer letter and the evangelists or the missionary, you know, are sharing some real specifics, specific, measurable goals that they’d like you to pray about. Maybe consider funding as a book, as opposed to a, I, this you’ll laugh at this. This is a true story. Years ago, I got a missionary letter, right. And I laugh every time I think about it.

Dave Jones (22:27):
It was, it was the saddest thing I ever read in my life. I mean, it just, the whole thing was negative. The children were sick. The dog had worms. They couldn’t afford a veterinary. And I’m thinking what, I’m sorry, your dog has worms, but you’re a missionary. I mean, you did you share Christ this month with anyone? Did you plant any churches into disciple staple? Anyone? Did you do any trainings? You know, so I think one of the real great benefits of Evan, a written plan, it it does facilitate fundraising and enhances your prayer life. No question about it. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:08):
Helps you to keep going. Even when the dog has worms,

Dave Jones (23:14):
[Inaudible]

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:14):
The tools that could be used in strategic planning is doing a SWOT analysis, which looks at strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Could you tell us a little bit about what a SWOT analysis is and why it is important to do one for you?

Dave Jones (23:32):
I’m a huge fan of SWAT analysis. So like you said, the acronym or the caustic, SWAT SWT strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. So the strengths and weaknesses, an internal examination, you’re, you’re looking at the, your document of the strengths of your ministry and how you’re going to make sure they continue to be strengths and how you’re going to maximize those strengths. And then on the other side, you’re looking at what are the weaknesses, what are those areas that we really need to shore up that we need to make an improvement on? What are those weaknesses that are basically hurting our ability to accomplish our strategic plan? What I’ve worked with organizations on the SWAT analysis. I definitely spend time. Okay. Once there’s agreement, these are the weaknesses. Okay. What’s our plan. How are we going to, if I come back a year from now, how are we going to make sure this weakness isn’t on this list anymore?

Dave Jones (24:32):
What are we going to do to eliminate it? And whatever the situation problem is, what, you know, turn it into a strength rather than a weakness. So that’s the internal analysis, the ex the other side of it opportunities and threats. Yeah. What are, what are the opportunities out there available to the ministry that you need to really seriously look at and seize and take take advantage of the threats. I mean, oftentimes the threats, there’s not a lot you can do about it, but acknowledging that they’re there. I think one of the threats right now for evangelists is universalism. There’s just seems to be a growing this growing view, especially in, in America that because God is a good God which he is that in the end, everyone’s going to go to heaven. So why do we need evangelists? Why didn’t we need to preach the gospel? I mean, you know, in the end, it’s all gonna work out well, that’s, that’s a, that’s a serious failure.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:34):
It’s a stake in the heart of every evangelist. Why are you needed?

Dave Jones (25:38):
Yes. And I’ve had, I mean, I’ve had sincere, especially young people say that to me, my response usually is, do you really believe that? And they say, absolutely, yes, I do. And I said, well, if you really believe that, then God’s not a good God. And then they look at me kind of in shock. And I said, well, why would a good loving father have his son crucified on a cross? If it wasn’t necessary to me that that’s, that’s horrific. That’s terrible. That’s not, what’s good about that. So I mean, people make these people make these statements well being insincere, but you know, sincerely wrong. But I mean, you know, other threats that are out there, the economy could be a threat. There’s all kinds of threats. Sometimes you can minimize that threat. You can deal with it. I mean, you know, sometimes you can’t, but you need to be aware that these threats are out there cause they could have a negative impact on your ability to accomplish the mission.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:37):
Well, what other advice would you have for someone who wants to put together a strategic plan? How long should they sit down and think through it? Is this something that needs to be done yearly or is it something you do every few years?

Dave Jones (26:52):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think I do like the idea of putting a two year plan together, but you need to, it needs to be a living dynamic document that you’re constantly tweaking looking at reviewing because I mean, conditions, change things happen. Listen, I mean, when, when COVID hit, I guarantee a lot of strategic plans were, were messed up. I mean, suddenly, especially for evangelist, she couldn’t do live events. You couldn’t travel to certain countries. I mean, you know, just, you know, a lot of strategic plans at that point just went out the window and people had to start all over. I think the, one of the positives of that is churches, missionaries, ministries, evangelists. They really stepped up in the area of digital evangelism, I think had it not been from COVID, we it’d probably be another five years from now, before the church is at where it is today.

Dave Jones (27:46):
And there were in terms of digital evangelism. But yeah, it needs to be a dynamic living document. It needs to be I think, I mean, worst case scenario, it needs to be updated at least annually. But I, I think there’s good reason, you know, three, four times a year, look, look that thing out. It, frankly, you need to be looking at it almost like weekly because you need to track progress against it. Evaluate how are we doing? Especially on those quantifiable goals, you gotta be measuring what, what you do. You just don’t sit down 12 months from now and say, Oh, let’s let’s measure how we’re doing on these things. So yeah, it needs to be a V a real active, active dot document that helps drive your decisions. Awesome. And it enhances your prayer life. That’s the fun thing about it now, you’re, you’re going to the Lord now with some really specific dreams. I mean, you know, you just any, and I think it enhances the prayer life of your donors and your, your prayer partners. Now they’re joining you in praying about some very specific things that you want to accomplish as an evangelist, you know, as opposed to, Oh, pray for us. We, our goal is to win the loss. Oh, okay. Could you be a little more specific? I mean, I get it, you’re an evangelist, you know, which

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:19):
We’re going to this country and we’re doing a two year program to plant 20 churches in this region and we need this amount of money to be able to get it started. Yeah. All of those things really help with the fundraising aspect.

Dave Jones (29:35):
And frankly, I mean, I don’t know if any foundation or major donor that would write a check to an evangelists or a ministry without having seen their strategic plan and they’re made it, there may be someone out there, but I mean, especially, I mean, foundations for sure. I mean, they, they want to know that there’s strategic plan in place. They’ll probably want to see your audit. They’re going to want to make sure there’s some, you know, financial controls. They’re going to know something about your board of directors, the leadership, these are good questions. They’re questions that keep us accountable, right? Yeah. Accountability is a good thing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:20):
That’s wonderful. Well, Mr. Dave, thank you so much for joining me today. I appreciate you. And if you want more help with developing a strategic plan, go find the global network of evangelists website, and you can get more information on how to be an effective strategic planning as an evangelist there.

Dave Jones (30:42):
Yeah. Thanks. Yeah. Dan, we’ve got resources on a lot of these topics, we, as a, as an Alliance of evangelist we pull our members. What do you know, where do the critical concerns you have in, in ministry? And based on the answers we get, we try to create resources to help the evangelists, especially evangelists you know, get some help in those areas. And we’ve been doing, I’ve been doing this forever, the list, the list doesn’t change very much year to year. I mean, w what are the concerns? Number one, fundraising fundraising. And we’ll a hundred years from now, there’ll be number one. And every survey we’ve ever done, number one was money fundraising. But then, you know, what’s number two, three, four, five, six, and seven. It varies year to year, but typically it’s board development, strategic planning, organizational development marketing in beginning invitations.

Dave Jones (31:45):
I mean, there’s, there’s a, there’s a, you know, I, well, number one’s fundraising items two to 10, they might change an order year to year, but they’re pretty much the same, you know, same 10 issues pretty much every year that keep evangelist awake at night. But there’s help available and for your Daniel I’m thank you for mentioning a global network of evangelists for, especially the advantages, but anyone who’s viewing the podcast has got a passion or a heart for missions and evangelism. Love to have you connect with us. Joining joined the global network of evangelists. It’s free. Joining is free. We do a lot of collaboration serving together, sharing best practices. We’re, we’re a pretty, pretty close knit relational group of men and women. We’re a family. So anyone who wants to join the family of evangelists as welcomed, I know you’ve got an ally, you’ve got a fantastic Alliance of evangelists you’re working with as well soul-winners Alliance. So I’m giving you a plug, Daniel, anyone out there who isn’t part of the soul winters Alliance they need to, they need to join your Alliance brother.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:02):
Thank you. Well, I think that there’s a variety of different, great organizations out there, and we should try to be friends with everyone and, and draw circles of inclusion and, and be with others who have a passion for leading people to Jesus.

Dave Jones (33:17):
Well said, well said, yeah, I’m, I’m, I, I can tell by the color of my hair, I’ve been around a few years and I’m excited by the amount of collaboration I’m seeing, taking place among ministries. When I, when I got in ministry 42 years ago there was tremendous respect and admiration for different ministries. I mean, I th I do think we spoke well of each other, but we kind of all did our own thing. There wasn’t. I mean, there was some collaboration, but there just, there was a lot of collaboration when I started. And so I’m, I’m just, I’m very excited in recent years to see the amazing amount of collaboration taking place among ministries. It’s, I mean, I, I wholeheartedly believe you can reach more people more effectively when we, when we work together,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:07):
That’s true together. Everyone achieves more T E a M together. Everyone achieves more so well, thank you, Mr. Dave, for being on the evangelism podcast. Yeah. Thanks brother. Hi, I’m Daniel King. Thank you so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I love going around the world telling people about Jesus, but I can’t do it without people like you. See, every time we go to preach the gospel, we buy a plane ticket. We have to do advertising. We have to pay money to rent a sound system, and we found it takes an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach for Jesus. And so I’m asking people to go to my website, King ministries.com and give at least $1 a month, just $1 a month. That’s less than the cost of a cup of coffee for $1 a month. You can start a party in heaven every single month. And while you’re at it, go to Apple iTunes and leave the evangelism podcast. A positive review. Your five star review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find this podcast. Thanks for listening. God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (35:20):
If you want to know more about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.com.

When you are starting a new ministry, one of the most important decisions you can make is “Who do you appoint to be on your board?” Today, I interview Dave Jones who has served with Luis Palau for 42 years. He is an expert in board governance and today he explains how your ministry organization can have a healthy board.

David Jones has served with the Luis Palau Association for 42 years in numerous leadership roles including the Global Network of Evangelists (GNE). David coaches GNE members in evangelism, strategic planning, organizational development, board governance, finance, media relations, and opportunities for ministry collaboration. David is a member of the Christian Leadership Alliance (CLA), Evangelical Press Association (EPA), National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), and the Society of Professional Journalists. He has served on the CLA faculty as well as the NRB’s Television Commission. David has served on the boards of over a dozen international Christian ministries and currently serves on the boards of Need Him Global and SAT 7. He frequently consults with nonprofit organizations. Since 1997 David has served as Executive Director of the Palau Foundation for World Evangelism. He and his wife Gayle are members of Village Church where David has served as an elder. David & Gayle make their home in Beaverton, Oregon. They have two daughters and four grandchildren.

Questions for David Jones: 

1. You’ve done a lot of coaching with non-profit boards especially the boards of evangelists. What has surprised you?
2. So what is the role of the board in a Christ-centered ministry?
3. What are some of the major responsibilities of the board?
4. Evangelists, pastors  and leaders listening to this podcast, what should they look for in a board member?
5. How many people should be on a board?

The people you put on your board should brings value in one of three areas:

1. Influence
2. Resources
3. Expertise

Book Mentioned:

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
When you’re starting a new ministry, one of the most important decisions you can make is who do you appoint to be on your board today? I interviewed Dave Jones who has served with Luis Palau for 42 years. He’s an expert in board governance, and today he explains how your organization can have a healthy board.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:24):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. 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.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:55):
And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King. Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest. David Jones is with the global network of evangelists. It’s a ministry of Luis Palau and Dave Jones has actually served with the Louis Palau association for 42 years. And so what a tremendous legacy of faithfulness he has. Dave, thank you so much for joining me today.

Dave Jones (01:32):
Yeah, it’s good to be with you Daniel. So appreciate you and your ministry and the a soul winners Alliance that you lead. Love you guys. Thanks for having me. It’s an honor.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:43):
Thank you, Mr. Dave, I’ve been coaching evangelists in how to set up their ministries. A lot of of young evangelists are coming to me and say, Daniel, I really want to be in ministry. Do you think I should start a five Oh one C3 non-profit organization? And they’re just going through all the steps that are required in order to have a ministry in good standing with the government and doing things the right way. And one of the questions that frequently comes up is about who they should put on the board and how they should put their board together as they’re starting a ministry. And so you happen to be an expert in board development. And so I wanted to ask you some questions about putting together a board for a ministry.

Dave Jones (02:38):
Well, thanks, Dale. Yeah, I’ve I remember golly is probably 20 years ago. I was invited to the Billy Graham center at the Cove and they invited me to lecture on two topics building a high-performance board and strategic planning. And what me in my lecture on building a board is, and this was a room full of pastors, Christian leaders, evangelists, very sharp, very gifted people. They were writing frantically just about everything I said. And I realized I had a hit on a topic that at that time there hadn’t been a lot of teaching on now. It’s a lot different now, but I’ve also in my years of ministry have discovered regretfully. There is in our circle, there is some dysfunction on boards, both in churches and ministries and a big reason for it is the, the board has never paused and asked the question, why are we here?

Dave Jones (03:47):
What’s our role? Where are we going? And, and that really surprised me because most of the boards I have coached or worked with comprised, they’re comprised of very gifted individuals serious Christ followers business people who, who in their own business, they would, they would never hire someone without having some sort of conversation about, Hey, this is why this company exists. This is the mission of this company. This is where we’re going. This is your role. This is your responsibility. This is how you fit into the strategic direction of this company. They, they just, they wouldn’t hire someone without that conversation yet, yet, yet they would join the board of a nonprofit or a church or a Christ centered organization without their ever be in a conversation about why are we here? What, what’s our responsibility?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:42):
Yeah. I’ve seen organizations that have had very unhealthy boards sometimes, especially in charismatic circles. It seems like a lot of boards are just there for the purpose of saying yes to the founder where you only have maybe three people or five people that are very close friends of the founder and whatever the founder says, they say, yes, go for it. And, and I think the reason sometimes they do that is because they’re scared of someone taking over the board or taking the organization in a direction that, that they don’t feel that they’re supposed to go. But if you have a healthy board full of people that believe in the mission of the organization and that are qualified and can bring some influence and some resources to the board, you actually can accomplish a lot more with a board that is healthy. Then you can with a board that is just simply there to say yes to the founder.

Dave Jones (05:44):
Yeah, absolutely. You’re absolutely correct. Daniel, a healthy board that understands its role can really transform a ministry, an organization. It could take it to a, another level, conversely, a weak board or a rubber stamp board. It can be disastrous. Usually it leads to dysfunction and it, it definitely hinders growth. I, again, I don’t think boards set out with the, with the, with the goal of being disruptive. It’s just, again, it’s usually because they don’t understand, they haven’t asked the question, why are we here? What’s our role. And they don’t quite, they don’t get it, that they have a, a really important role in setting policy and strategic direction for the ministry. They have a, obviously a fiduciary, they have certain legal responsibilities, but one of their biggest responsibilities is just to provide oversight for the ministry, not to be a rubber stamp group of individuals, but to provide some serious oversight for the ministry and to make sure they’re working with the leader, the evangelist, the pastor in establishing strategic direction, where they’ve, they’ve actually set out and they’ve determined what the mission of the organization is.

Dave Jones (07:12):
And, and then they’ve, they’ve put together a strategic plan with the evangelists or the founder of the pastor to accomplish, accomplish the mission. I think one of the mistakes some boards make is they don’t understand that they have that governance oversight role. And they start meddling in my new little non-issue daily details. A friend of mine called it a boards to get down into the weeds of ministry rather than stay at that higher.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:45):
Yeah. So talk to me about the difference between governing and managing. So yeah,

Dave Jones (07:52):
Well, there’s a, there’s a big difference. I mean, governing is a higher view. It’s, you’re, you’re providing that. Like I said, that that oversight, you’re making you’re, you’re you’re setting policy you’re building some parameters and offenses to protect the the ministry. You, you recognize there’s you know, some risk assessment there’s you got to give that, that leadership, the oversight, you’re an ambassador for the ministry. You know an example I’m a practical example would be, you know, a board works with the ministry to approve a budget, but the board doesn’t manage the day-to-day details of the budget. That’s a management responsibility boards don’t get down in, you know, the GL numbers and, and asking questions. Well, why did we spend this much on printing? And the board sets the Turmans the, the budget, and then the, the leader and his team has staff, volunteers, whatever, they, they manage that budget.

Dave Jones (09:04):
Obviously the board would get monthly or quarterly financial reports because they have a fiduciary responsibility, but they, but they don’t get down into the nuts and bolts and details of daily administrating that I mean, you’ve got boards are not administrators, they’re not managers. They have that very, very important role of determining mission direction and providing oversight. So there is a huge difference. I think part of the problem in ministry is oftentimes, especially with small organizations, maybe where there’s a founder and maybe only one paid part-time person, or it might be a budget of 200,000 or less. These are very small ministries. Sometimes board members are also volunteers and that gets real messy because when did they have their board governance hat on? And when do they have their, you know, volunteer sort of non-paid staff on it’s it, it can create some confusion.

Dave Jones (10:10):
And I think that is a hurdle that smaller ministries have to jump over and have to deal with when they have board members who were also volunteers and are showing up at the office and getting into the nuts and bolts of the operation. Personally, I think if at all possible should avoid that, let a board member be a board member, let a board member provide the necessary oversight and and leadership, the embeds, and be an ambassador for the organization helped shape the the mission and direction, but not get involved in the nitty-gritty tiny little details of the day-to-day operation. That’s, that’s a management job.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:55):
Let’s talk a little bit about the responsibilities of the board. What are some of the major responsibilities that board members should, should undertake to fulfill?

Dave Jones (11:08):
Yeah, well, well, first and foremost they have a responsibility to in, in case of an evangelist to bless encourage support the evangelists they have, they have in the nonprofit world, the board has a huge responsibility to select the leader. Now, in the case of an evangelist it’s a little different than other nonprofit organizations. So first and foremost, they have a an important role in selecting, encouraging, reviewing a blessing cake, take caring for the leader in his family. And then second boards really need to make sure there’s an effective planning process in place. I mean, boards need to provide strategic direction, so they need to be involved in some sort of strategic planning where they’re helping sh determine the mission where they’re determining values. So they’ve they’ve a role to make sure there’s some sort of written plan for the organization.

Dave Jones (12:17):
Of course they have a boards have a fiduciary responsibility, they have to provide some sort of financial oversight. So they do need to stay abreast of the finances and how the ministry is doing financially, as well as help bring about those resources that are necessary to grow the organization to accomplish the plan. I always tell leaders, avoid board members that have an allergy to fundraising or funny views about money because providing financial oversight and money is a big, is a big part of running a ministry. Boards also have a responsibility to be an ambassador for the ministry. And that means they have to be keep abreast of what’s going on in the ministry. They have to be able to speak and tell them gently about the direction of the ministry. And then obviously boards participate in, you know, decision-making, there are certain decisions that do require board advice and input.

Dave Jones (13:21):
I think one of the things that boards don’t do a very good job of is self-assessment. One of the boards I serve on my, my job description is an annual self-assessment where we pull the board, we survey them board we, we, we evaluated how we’re doing as a board. We actually grade ourselves on 10 really important areas of our responsibility. So self-assessment is a real important role of a board and most boards I’m amazed how few boards do a serious self-assessment. And then of course, in a Christ centered organization, the board has to provide some, you know, some spiritual leadership and oversight. Prayer should be a big part of the board. I mean, I would hope any person serving on a board of a Christ centered organization is a prayer warrior for that board. And boards also need to maintain some standard, a standard of excellence.

Dave Jones (14:24):
I mean, excellence should be the core value of every Christ centered organization. Boards have a also responsibility to keep records, minutes of meetings or certain practical thing board that boards have to do. And then of course boards have to recruit and if, especially if the board terms, it’s their responsibility to recruit new members, we’re a good fit. And then depending on the size of the organization and whether or not they’re part of the evangelical council for financial accountability, or maybe some other group there are standards especially financial standards that a board has to make sure is met. So those are some of the practical things boards should do. And again, I’m just, I’m kind of surprised that there are boards that just never have that conversation about why are we here? And what’s our role.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:26):
So if someone is about ready to start a ministry, or they recognize that they need to find better board members for the ministry that they currently have, what should people look for in a board member?

Dave Jones (15:43):
Yeah, that’s a very good question. I mean, another thing that has surprised me in my many years of ministry is that boards, some boards are not more intentional about who they bring on the board, especially smaller ministries. I think sometimes they’re, they’re more keen on just meat assuring themselves that they’ve met sort of the IRS or some legal requirement. You know, you have to have in a nonprofit, the nonprofit world, you have to have at least three board members. And I think sometimes the founder or the evangelists, the, the missionary ministry leader, they kind of find three friends and say, Hey, will you be, be on my board? And then they sell them a false bill of goods that we only were. We don’t meet that often. It doesn’t take any of your time and there’s nothing for you to do, but I just need that.

Dave Jones (16:37):
I just need to find three people to be on my board. Well, that’s a, that’s a recipe for disaster. That’s, that’s a pretty impotent board. They’re not going to help you grow your organization. So, so yeah, there’s several things I would look for in a board. Especially if it’s a Christ centered organization and evangelists, there are some scriptural qualifications, obviously in the new Testament, there are some qualifications and I think those need to be abided by they’re there in the new Testament for good reason. I, I also like to look for people that just really love the Lord with all their heart, mind, soul and strength, another biblical principle godly people like that. Obviously you’re going to want to look for people that agree with your mission, where you’re going. They agree with your values that, that are love with what you do.

Dave Jones (17:34):
I mean, those are the kind of people you want on your board. People who have proven to you that, wow, this person really loves what we do. I, I look for people of faith, big faith. I, people that, I mean, when you’re an evangelist or any meetings, ministry leader, it’s, it’s, it’s a, you’re a faith based ministry. So you want people with, I would say with faith I would look for prayer warriors, people who passionate about prayer people who have a positive world view you, you want, you definitely want positive people. Not that there’s enough negativity around the, for people who, you know, are encourages, who are positive, who, who believe passionately in you. And one of the things I look for which oftentimes gets overlooked, I I’m a huge believer in chemistry and fit. I mean sometimes boards and leaders, they, they look for a candidate who makes, if he has deep pockets or has a reputation for being successful, but they’ve never asked is, is this person a really a good fit for our organization and for the, the other board members?

Dave Jones (18:57):
It can be really disruptive to a high profile warming board when you bring in a board member where the chemistry and the fit is, is horrific. I remember serving on a board quite a number of years ago, and I was accepted. I was a young man at the time, and I was excited to go on this board because when I looked at the resumes of the other ones, people on the board, I thought, wow, this is an all-star board. I could learn a lot by just sitting at the feet of these these gentlemen while the chemistry and fit was terrible. I was really surprised. There was a lot of egos and deliberations at times were ugly. And I mean, I did not flying service on that board to be the enjoyable experience. I thought that it was going to be, so, yeah, fit is really important.

Dave Jones (19:47):
Look for people, I have a wide network of contacts. You want results oriented people. I, and this is hard to do, but you can, with some interviews and questions you need, you need the board members who can differentiate between issues. And non-issues, I I’ve, I’ve coached some boards and I’ve quickly figured out that the, the particular board, it has a tendency to get down what I call the weeds of ministry. And they start to break things that really are not should abort. I shouldn’t discuss it’s a lot of times it’s staff work or just what I would call it’s a non-issue why are we having an argument or debate over this? It’s just not enough important issue. You want a team players, certainly you want people that don’t have a conflict of interest. You want people with you know, you want on the board, a variety of different experiences boards have responsibility confidentiality as well.

Dave Jones (20:49):
You want people to understand the importance of confidentiality. And then a big one. I mentioned this a little earlier. You, you definitely want board members that don’t have what I call an allergy to fundraising. I don’t, I don’t think a lot of board members realize, Hey, one of the most important roles they have is to make sure the ministry has the financial resources. It needs to accomplish the mission. And you can’t be a, you can’t be an effective ambassador for a ministry that you, you personally don’t support. So I mean, I think every board member should be a donor to the, to the organization on whose board they serve. And, and you want to try to figure out, make sure the person doesn’t have odd notions about money just is really peculiar, really strange views of money. Cause they can be disruptive in a board meeting as well.

Dave Jones (21:47):
And finally, this is one, I don’t think I’ve, I don’t think I’ve seen this up here. I do a lot of reading. I’d go to webinars. One that I feel is really important, but I don’t. I think I’m one of the few peoples ever brought this up. I think it’s important that a board candidate that the person’s spouse is just as equally excited about them serving on the board as they are. I think a disgruntled spouse or a spouse is not real, too excited about their husband or wife joining a board that can be disruptive. It can be, you know, if Thursday night when the individual’s heading off to the board meeting, if the spouse is saying, where are you going? Why are you going there? Why, why are you on this board? You’re gone. You’re away too much. Why you didn’t talk to me about, yeah, I think it’s important.

Dave Jones (22:38):
He can have some buy-in and some enthusiasm from your spouse before you accept an invitation to serve on a board. So, so those, those are the, some of the things I would look for. One that I’m really big on though, is the chemistry and fit. I think that’s so important if you’ve ever for, for your audience and for the leaders, missionaries evangelists, watching this blog. If, if they’ve ever served on a board where the chemistry and fit was bad, they, that I know for a fact, they couldn’t wait for their turn to be upset. They weren’t at all interested in a second term.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:18):
Yeah. Recently someone was asking me who they should put on their board. And I told him that there’s three characteristics that you should look for. Someone should either have influence and help to widen the influence of the organization, or someone should bring resources to the board. So maybe a businessman or, or someone who can bring a significant amount of resources and has friends with resources or someone could bring expertise the board. So having expertise in a particular area. So like on my board, I have people who have influence. So there are pastors that help introduce me to, to other pastors and, and put their, their spiritual endorsement on our ministry. I also have had businessmen on my board who, who helped to support the ministry. And then in the area of expertise right now, we’ve got a a wonderful board member. Who’s a CPA who helps to answer all my, my questions about money and, and in handling money properly. And so if you can find people with influence resources and expertise and, and everything else that you said, I say a Hardy, amen. They need to believe in the mission of the organization. And they need to really love the, the other people on the board and, and come with a Christ-like attitude to have service. So once you have a good board put together, what are, what are some of the questions that the board should be asking to help the organization?

Dave Jones (24:45):
Well, yeah, that’s, that’s good. They definitely I mean the, the whole area of strategy and direction you know, where we’re going as a, as an organization that that’s, that’s I mean, that’s just, that’s, that’s huge and boards, you know, basically I excellent board man a good board member, someone who brings a value to the organization. And part of that, that value is looking at like, what are the, I mean, what are the trends that are impacting this ministry and as a board, how, how are we going to address, address these? Are we missing some policies? I mean, boards are policy setting groups board should ask the, the, the leader, Hey, what are the opportunities out there? I I’m big on SWOT analysis, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. I mean, board should, from time to time do a SWAT analysis, especially asking the question, what, what are the opportunities out there?

Dave Jones (25:52):
And, and how are we going to seize them? Another important question is is in the area of risk assessment. I mean, you would think this isn’t a problem, but there, there are ministries out there that have been defrauded and it’s because they just didn’t have good controls in place. So a board has a responsibility in that area as well. One of the questions boards, I think they don’t like to ask cause involves fundraising, but the boards really need to be engaged in, in development and fundraising and, and ask the question, Hey, how, how are we as a board helping to raise and bring about the financial resources that this ministry needs to accomplish its its plans, and to move and move forward. Another, another important question is the board, once the mission is determined from time to time needs to make sure the organization is mission focused.

Dave Jones (27:01):
There’s a great book on the market right now called mission drift. And there are, there are churches and ministries are Christ centered organizations that are wrestling with mission drift. And usually it’s it’s because they’ve, they’ve compromised their mission sometimes for the sake of getting a certain grant from someplace, or they’ve allowed some donor to have undue influence on the direction. And so that they fall into the trap of mission drift just to, so they can secure a, a grant. Instead of just saying to the individual, you know what you’re asking us to do just doesn’t fit the mission. It’s not what we’re about. We’d love to have you as a prayer partner supporter, but if your gift has those kinds of strings attached to it, we just respectfully decline the gift. That’s hard to do. It’s hard to do, but boards have a responsibility to protect the integrity and the mission of the organization.

Dave Jones (28:06):
You know, again, this whole self evaluation ward should ask, Hey, is service on this board satisfying? Is it rewarding? If not, why? Boards, yeah, the boards, there are a lot of questions, but I think the a big question is for the board to ask is how do we define success? And what are our how do we measure what we’re doing to ensure that goals are being met and where we’re being successful? So, yeah, I think measures of achievement or something boards should ask, but again, you don’t want the board to get down in the nuts and bolts and day-to-day details and the grind of, of, of ministry that staff work that’s worked for the volunteers and the staff. That’s not board work.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:05):
Do you have any thoughts on how many people should be on a board relative to the size of the organization?

Dave Jones (29:12):
Yeah, I mean, yeah. Boards can be too big. I, typical guys say a board’s too big when healthy deliberation is almost impossible because there’s just too many people boards can be too small when you you just don’t have enough people to fill committees or get the board and work done. So but I think usually boards are too small when they just, the board work just can’t get accomplished. You don’t have, I mean, on boards, there should be some sort of development fundraising committee. There should be some sort of audit and finance committee there. I mean, there’s certain committees a board should have. So as a subdivide, the work of a board and a board is too small, if you just don’t have enough people to staff those committees. So I don’t think there’s, well, I, I do think a board can be too big.

Dave Jones (30:10):
I, I know of a, an organization who at one time had like a hundred board members. Well, that’s crazy. I mean, they just, they were, I think they just wanted all these people’s names or something. Obviously those people were not engaged or highly involved. And that’s, I mean, that could, that could be a real governance issue. I think in the, in the case of this organization, they put together some sort of executive committee, which they were the real board. I wouldn’t even consider the other people board members because they, they were doing board work, but yeah, boards, while legally you got to have at least three somewhere between three and a hundred, you got to keep it. I wouldn’t go as high as I would say between three and maybe 20 or 15, depending on the size of your organization.

Dave Jones (31:05):
But, and that’s a good question. I mean, yeah, boards can be too small and they can be too big. I interesting story. Daniel, I remember years ago, I was a guys a lot quite a while ago, but I was in a workshop a leadership workshop and the presenter asked the question of the audience and the audiences. These are leaders. I mean, these were serious Christian leaders. The question was, would you have a board if it wasn’t required by law? How many of you would not have a board if it wasn’t required by law? And I was shocked Daniel, most of the hands, just, I mean, I couldn’t believe that most of the people in the room raised their hand and said they would not have a board. Well, that, I mean, I clearly says to me that it wasn’t a hyper there, the board of these individuals wasn’t, wasn’t a high-performing board.

Dave Jones (32:06):
It they didn’t understand the role that the board was probably dysfunctional and creating problems for the leader. Here’s another interesting story. This was, I don’t know, four or five years ago, the president of a seminary, a large seminary in the United States. He wanted to meet with me. I couldn’t figure out why, what a seminary president. I want to meet with me. I was, but I thought, okay, fine. I’ll meet with you. Well, and he we met and I said, I’m glad to meet you, but why, why did you want to meet me? He said, this is the word he used Daniel. He said are within our denomination. And he used the word epidemic. We have an epidemic problem. I thought, wow, you know what, w what do I know about seminaries and epidemic problems and denomination, but he said, we have an epidemic problem.

Dave Jones (33:06):
And here’s the problem you described. You said too many of our pastors are quitting. The ministry are leaving the ministry after only three or four years in ministry. And the reason is dysfunctional boards boards that are just giving them fits to the point. They don’t want to be in ministry anymore. And that saddened me because one, I don’t think men and women join a board with the idea they’re going to give the pastor the advantages or leader fits, or they’re going to my goal. I’m joining this board so I can make this guy’s life. So terribly. He wants to quit ministry. I think it’s, again, it’s just because they don’t understand their role and responsibilities because they’d never had a conversation for, I was, I was doing board training. Oh, probably two years ago for a church. And afterwards, one of the board members, an elder came up to me. He said, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I had no idea why I was on this board and what I was responsible for. Absolutely no idea. Well, that’s, that’s a real weakness. I think in our circles in that there’s no orientation for board members. I mean, no one should join a board with, without some sort of orientation where they’re told, Hey, this is the mission of this organization. This is where we’re going, and this is how you’re going to help us get there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:35):
Well, thank you so much for helping boards to be healthy boards. Mr. David Jones is with a global network of evangelists, and you can reach out to them for more information on how to have an effective board. Mr. Dave, thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Dave Jones (34:56):
Daniel is a blessing. I love you, brother. Love what you do. Love your soul winners Alliance. Keep up the good work. Persist my friend.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:04):
Thank you, God bless you. Hi, I’m Daniel King. Thank you so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I love going around the world telling people about Jesus, but I can’t do it without people like you. See, every time we go to preach the gospel, we buy a plane ticket. We have to do advertising. We have to pay money to rent a sound system. And we found that takes an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach for Jesus. And so I’m asking people to go to my website, King ministries.com and give at least $1 a month, just $1 a month. That’s less than the cost of a cup of coffee for $1 a month. You can start a party in heaven every single month. And while you’re at it, go to Apple iTunes and leave the evangelism podcast. A positive review. Your five-star review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find this podcast. Thanks for listening. God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (36:08):
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.

Is Mass Evangelism Effective? Recently I finished earning my Doctorate of Ministry Degree at Oral Roberts University and the focus of my research was mass evangelism. I looked at historical, theological, and academic research into mass evangelism and my research project involved collecting information about an evangelism crusade that we did in Caicó, Brazil. So what did the research show about the effectiveness of doing mass evangelism?

Purchase Daniel King’s Doctoral Research on Mass Evangelism:

The Story is in the Numbers

I recently finished my Doctorate of Ministry degree at Oral Roberts University. I used this Brazil crusade as my research project and I did a survey of a random cross section of people at the crusade. The project was designed to give a snapshot picture of an evangelistic crusade. The goal was to discover who came to the crusade, why they came, and what impact the crusade had on the city.

Here are some of the stats from the crusade. Caicó, Brazil has a population of 66,246 people. The nine evangelical churches in the city have 1,357 believers which equals about 2% of the population.

How Many People Were Saved? 82.6% of the crowd repeated the prayer of salvation with me. 641 people filled out decision cards. This represents a 43% increase in the number of Christians in the city.

Did Miracles Really Occur? 48.7% of the crowd reported that they arrived with pain in their bodies. 78.5% of those who came with pain in their bodies felt better after the healing prayer. Of the 182 people on Saturday night who answered “yes” to the question of whether they arrived with pain in the their bodies and said that they felt better, 176 (96.7%) “strongly agreed” or “agreed” that they had received a miracle.

Was the Crusade Worthwhile? 100% of the pastors agreed that the crusade was worth the time, money, and preparation.

How Many People Did We Impact? Our team ministered to a total of about 7,792 people at the crusade. Our three-day soul winning conference was used to train local believers in how to pray for the sick, cast out demons, and lead people to Jesus. By the third night of the soul winning conference, 485 believers were in attendance. The church where the meeting was held was completely full and we filled the street in front of the church with chairs for the overflow crowd. 792 young people attended the youth concert. 504 children were in attendance at the children’s festival.

Who Came to the Crusade? 39% of the crowd was male and 61% was female. The average age was 38.

How Did People Hear About the Crusade? Of the people who responded to my survey, 163 heard about the meeting from a friend. 79 were invited by a family member. 123 saw a poster. 132 received a flyer. 84 saw an advertisement on Facebook. 41 learned about the meeting on Instagram. 63 responded to a message on WhatsApp. 127 heard about the meeting on the radio. 39.74% of those personally invited to the crusade came which shows how important it is to have local church involvement in the crusade.

Why did People Come to the Crusade? 460 people responded to the question “Why did you come to this meeting?” 107 said, “My friend invited me.” 77 said they were curious about what was happening. 44 wanted to hear the music. 116 said they needed a miracle. 106 said they wanted to see miracles. 61 came because their pastor told them they should come. 112 came because they are curious about God. 6 did not know why they came and the rest gave some other reason why they came. These “other” answers include: Jesus called me, to seek the presence of God, because I am an evangelical, because I wanted to, because my wife invited me, I came to seek God, because I had a need, and because someone asked me.

How did people come to the crusade? 182 respondents came by car (38.6%). 42 came by public transportation (8.9%). 52 came by church bus (11%). 129 came by motorcycle (27.4%). 4 came by bicycle (0.8%). 59 walked (12.5%). 3 came by other means of transportation (0.6%).

Were the crusade attendees people who regularly go to church? 457 people responded to the question, “How often do you attend your church?” 23 said they never attend (5%). 57 said they attend 1-2 times per year (12.5%). 18 said they attend 6-12 times per year (3.9%). 44 said they attend 1-2 times each month (9.6%). 78 said they attend every Sunday (17.1%). 237 said they attend 2 or more times each week (51.9%).

Are those who got saved willing to go to a church for follow up? 80 people “strongly agreed” they would be willing to visit a church (37.2%). 111 “agreed” they would visit a church (51.6%). 14 were not sure if they would visit (6.5%). 9 “disagreed” that they would visit a church (4.2%). 1 “strongly disagreed” that he would be willing to visit a church (0.5%).

I’m sorry if I overwhelmed you with numbers in this episode but the truth is that numbers are important. God even named a whole book in the Bible, “Numbers.” The reality is that every number represents a story. Every statistic stands for a person. At the crusade in Caicó, Brazil many people were touched by God, saved, and healed. You played an important part in making that happen! Thank you for your prayers and your giving.

For Help in Evangelism, please Call the Evangelism Coach Daniel King or listen to The Evangelism Podcast.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Is mass evangelism effective. Recently I finished earning my doctorate of ministry degree at oral Roberts university. In the focus of my research was mass evangelism. I looked at historical theological and academic research into massive evangelism. And my research project involves collecting information about an evangelistic crusade that we did in Keiko Brazil. So what did the research show about the effectiveness of doing mass evangelism?

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:31):
Well, Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be 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 Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:07):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast on Daniel King. And I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And today I have a special guest Rubens Cunha who has been a very close friend for many years. He’s from the nation of Brazil. Rubins thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me. I’m excited to be here. So a few years ago, I decided to get my doctorate of ministry at or Roberts university. And the program is two years of classes. And then one year of doing an applied research project. And since I’m called to be an evangelist, I decided to do my research project on mass evangelism, especially dealing with the question is mass evangelism effective. And so for a year, and even more than a year, I went through the history of mass evangelism, looking at how God has used mass evangelism throughout church history, looking at the theology of mass evangelism, looking at the scholarship involved in mass evangelism with both the critics and the people who are in favor of mass evangelism. And then I had to do a research project concerning mass evangelism, and I was looking all over the world for the right place to go the right city to go do my research. And you invited me to come to Brazil. And I did my research project at one of your crusades. We, we work together at that crusade in Kayako, Brazil, and we had a tremendous time of ministry there. Yes, it was wonderful. I am very glad you decided to come to Brazil.

Rubens Cunha (03:00):
We were able to impact a city for eternity. And now we have this amazing doctoral work that you wrote just showing we scientific evidence, the effectiveness of mass evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:18):
So the purpose of this project was to survey a random cross section of people at the crusade and ask them questions about why they came to the crusade, how involved they were in the church before they came, what response they had to, the message, whether any of the people received a miracle. And kind of the idea was to give a snapshot picture of an evangelist at crusade. And the goal was to discover who came to the crusade, why they came and what impact the crusade had on the city. And so I came back with surveys, filled out. We had boxes full of surveys, just all the people that we interviewed. And I want to go through some of these numbers and feel free to jump in if you have any insight on any of these numbers. So we went to the city of Keiko Brazil. Could you tell people where is Keiko? Brazil

Rubens Cunha (04:19):
[Inaudible] is in the Brazilian state of [inaudible] a city debt faced tremendous social and spiritual challenges with a high rate of suicide at the time, in terms of percentage of population, it was one of the highest in the countries, a place where churches faced tremendous challenge to grow because of, of persecution and opposition that takes place in that CDN. I need you to say something here as well. Our audience, I believe they need to understand that this campaign faced tremendous challenges, unusual challenges. The first of them being a trucker’s strike, we had in Brazil at the time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:07):
So all the truckers in the whole country went on strike and our sound system, our sound stage was coming from another state and it got stopped on the road. It wasn’t able to make it for the first night of the crusade, which was a big

Rubens Cunha (05:22):
Problem. Yes, we had to improvise and find local stage and local sound equipment to, to continue the campaign. And because of that, trucker’s strike, the city was running out of fuel. The supermarket shelves were becoming empty. You can imagine if all the transportation system in the nation stops, it it’s chaotic and that’s, that’s what the city was facing. So we had tremendous challenges in that area because of this truckers strike preventing even food to reach the city, but that resulted in something else. That also became a challenge for us because of the truckers strike. A lot of people were out of work. They didn’t have a lot to do. And there was a religious holiday in the city. And in that holiday, the Catholic Bishop gathered a large crowd. People were seating their homes. They didn’t have a lot to do before our campaign.

Rubens Cunha (06:25):
And in that event that the Catholic church organized the Bishop specifically told the people not to go to the crusade and he incited the people to oppose and persecute us. And I’m telling you, I’ve been to many Muslim nations, I’ve received death threats. I received all kinds of threats. I have never received as many threats in my life. As in that Kayako campaign, I never received as much hate mail in my life as in that campaign. But despite those challenges we have here, avid dance that the gospel works and evangelists campaigns work to bring growth to the church, to bring salvation to the loss, to build up the body of Christ and to transform entire CDs with the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:20):
Amen. Well, I’m so grateful for all the work that you and your team put into making this crusade happen. I remember you told me Daniel, I hope that we have a very big crusade, so you can have, you know, lots of big numbers for your research. And you’ve done many crusades in Brazil. Many of them have been far more successful numerically than this one particular crusade where I did my research. But I think that even though there was opposition, and even though we did not have the total results that sometimes we wish for that still this research is extremely valuable and in some ways is even more valuable because it was collected at a crusade where there were so many issues. All right. So let’s go through some of the statistics. First of all, let me paint a picture of the city of Keiko. According to their website, they have a population of 66,246 people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:25):
So it’s not a huge city. There there’s much bigger cities in Brazil, but it’s not a small village either. You’ve got 66,000 people and we surveyed the nine evangelical churches in the city. And we found out that if you added up the total membership of the nine churches, there’s only nine evangelical churches. At that time, they had 1,357 believers in total. So the evangelical believers were only about 2% of the population of the city. So one of the first questions that really concerned me in my research was how many people were saved. So when I give an altar call, I try not to exclude everyone. I try to include everyone in praying the prayer of salvation, because even if someone has, at some point as a child, they said a prayer, or maybe they were baptized. They may not be serving the Lord. And so I try to go for a hundred percent participation in the salvation prayer.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:33):
And in our survey, we found that 82.6% of the crowd repeated the prayer of salvation with me. And they said, yes, I want my sins to be forgiven. And then we sent out ushers into the crowd to talk to the people who gave their lives to Jesus. And over the course of the three day event, 641 people filled out decision cards. So 641, a that’s just a drop in the bucket compared to the millions that we’ve seen between your ministry and my ministry we’ve seen come to Jesus. But for that city 641 represents a 43% increase in the number of Christians in the city, in a three-day period. Isn’t it.

Rubens Cunha (10:25):
That’s amazing. That’s amazing. And I completely agree with your earlier statement that yes, we have had other crusades that have bigger numbers, but I believe God allowed this research to take place in this CD to show everyone without a shadow of a doubt that evangelistic crusades work and have a great impact. If even despite, even in the midst of all the turmoil we had, we still had success. Imagine what happens if everything was ruining Smith.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:01):
Another question that I asked was, did miracles really occur? Now, this is a very difficult question to deal with scientifically. But you can get a sense of what happened by serving the people. And so 48.7% of the crowd reported that they arrived with pain in their bodies. So 48.7% came and said they had pain somewhere in their body when they, they, and they came looking for a miracle. And now here is the amazing statistic of those 48.7% that came with pain in their body. 78.5% of them said that they felt better after the healing prayer.

Rubens Cunha (11:50):
This is amazing. And it shows us how we, despite the Medico advances of our generation, there are still many people out there in need of miracle healing. And when we promote a mass crusade in which there is prayer for miracles, people will come in search of healing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:10):
And so of the hundred and 82 people on the Saturday night who answered yes to the question of whether they arrived with pain in their body and said that they felt better. So this is the people who said they had pain. And then they said that they felt better. 176 of them, or 96.7% strongly agreed or agreed that they had received a miracle. And so of the people that this, this is actually an amazing statistic. You have close to 50% of the crowd that comes with pain of those 50%, 78.5% of them said that they felt better. And of those 90, almost 97% of them said that, yes, I received a miracle from Jesus. Wow. And this is amazing. I mean, in a, in a crusade, sometimes people say, you know why aren’t all healed and I’ve never seen everyone get healed. I’m still praying for that crusade to happen. Where every single sick person who comes gets healed, but by any measure to have almost 80% of the people say that they feel better after the healing, prayer is a phenomenal success in the arena of healing.

Rubens Cunha (13:25):
Absolutely. And let us not forget that behind those numbers are real people. People who are hurting people who are suffering people in pain, and they had the experience with the power of God that will shape their lives. And, Oh, a T.L. Osborn used to say that a miracle we will preach in generations. And those people who received a miracle in that campaign, they will be telling their neighbors, they’ll be telling their family members, their coworkers, their colleagues at school, they’ll be telling their children and grandchildren that one day, somebody prayed for them in the name of Jesus. And they received a miracle from God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:05):
Another question was how many total people did we impact? So our team ministered to a total of 7,792 people at the crusade over the three day, we also did a soul winning conference that was used to train local believers in how to pray for the sick cast out demons and how to lead people to Jesus. And so a total of 485 believers came to the training conference to be trained. The, I remember the church that we were at was completely packed out. There was a balcony. The balcony was completely full and those sessions were so powerful. And then 792 young people attended the youth conference and 504 children came to the festival. And so we had a strategy for reaching every single level of society from the young people, to the children, to the adults, and then training the believers. What are some of the things that you share with the believers in those training sessions?

Rubens Cunha (15:07):
One of them is about Soul Winning. We encourage them to go out and reach people beyond the four walls of their church. We challenged them to get out there in their workplace, in their place where, where people are in their homes, in the Plaza, in the offices and share the gospel with them. We equip them to do that. We also teach them how to pray for healing. We strongly believe that the ministry of healing is not just for some specially anointed people, but for the entire body of Christ. So one of the sessions is teaching on how to pray for healing. And at the end of it, we have the believers praying for one another and miracles happen. And a lot of people get excited. So you have usually people weeping because they received a miracle from God and people weeping because they prayed for somebody and they experienced a miracle through their lives.

Rubens Cunha (16:04):
We also teach about the ministry of deliverance. A lot of people are still under oppression of the devil. We see that a lot in, in nations where people are still involved with witchcraft religions, which is very common in Brazil. So this is a major part of the ministry work we do. And hundreds every night are set free from demonic oppression in those campaigns. But we also teach about the power of the Holy spirit, equipping the believer to preach the gospel, to win souls. And after death, we pray for people. We pray for the baptism and the Holy spirit. We pray that God will give people spiritual gifts. And that’s usually an evening of great revival.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:51):
So who came to the crusade? 39% of the crowd was male. 61% was female. The average age was 38. Actually that’s a little bit skewed because I wasn’t allowed to survey the people under 18. So for people 18 above the average age was 38. I think if you included the young people, the average age would have gone down quite a bit because there’s always lots of young people. How did people hear about the crusade of the people who responded to my survey? 163 heard about the meeting from a friend 79 were invited by a family member 123 of them saw a poster and came because of a poster on the wall or on a light post 132 came because they received a flyer 84 saw an advertisement on Facebook. 41 heard about the meeting on Instagram 63 responded to a message on what’s app 127 of them heard about the meeting on the radio.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:57):
And then 39.7, 4% of those personally invited to the crusade came, which shows how important it is to have local church involvement in the crusade. So you’ve got a variety of different advertising avenues. Here. You have invitations from friends, you’ve got posters, flyers, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, you’ve got the radio advertisements and all of them proved to be somewhat effective. You can’t point to any one that was most effective, except for someone receiving a personal invitation. And so sometimes people ask like, why do, why do crusades cost so much money? Well, the reason is because in order to get people to come, you have to do a variety of, of advertising methods. And the goal is to saturate the entire community so that with the advertising so that people will know about it and come to the crusade.

Rubens Cunha (19:02):
Absolutely. The goal of advertising is that every single person in town, we have an opportunity to come and hear the gospel at the crusade. And it’s amazing to me how your research provided evidence that local church involvement is very important. It’s essential for the success of the campaign. As your research indicated, when believers is step out of their comfort zone, when believers step out of their, just routine of going to church on Sunday to actually go out and invite the lost to an evangelistic event, we have a tremendous harvest of souls. So that’s it’s very important for our evangelist friends out there listening to this podcast, make sure my friend, when you were doing a campaign, make sure you equip the local church to go out and work with you to reach souls. Why

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:03):
People come to the crusades? So 107 people said, my friend invited me 77, said that they were just curious about what was happening. 44 wanted to hear the music 116 people said they came because they needed a miracle, which is very interesting because there there’s several different paradigms of doing mass evangelism, which I studied in my, my research for my doctoral project. So you have the Billy Graham method, which Billy Graham used very effectively here in the United States and other countries for many years, where he gets lots of church involvement. He does a big choir made up of believers from the local churches and all the churches invite people to come and here the, the evangelist and, and so that was Billy Graham’s method. He had great organization and he really adapted that from Billy Sunday, who was in the early 19 hundreds and DL moody, who was in the late 18 hundreds, both very strong at organizing the churches and organizing the crews, the crusade meetings that they had.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:19):
Then you have another paradigm, which is the, the Luis Palau paradigm. He was trained up under Billy Graham’s ministry, but then he had an insight about changing it from a crusade into a festival. And so he started using popular music artists to attract people. He used bikes, doing tricks and face painting bouncy houses to attract the kids and really turns his evangelistic events into festivals that the whole family can come to and attract people with entertainment, which that has worked very well here in the United States, but often in Africa and also in Latin America. One thing that really attracts people to come to crusades is miracles. And people in Africa will walk miles

Rubens Cunha (22:23):
And miles, sometimes days

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:25):
To come and receive a miracle. And so I would call that the T.L. Osborn method of mass evangelism, because T.L. Osborn great evangelists from here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, he pioneered using mass healing prayer in order to attract people to the crusade and relying upon God’s power to heal the sick. And we proved in this crusade, that miracles was one of the big reasons that people came. So 44 people came because they wanted to hear the music, but 116 came because they said that they needed a miracle, another hundred and six said that they came not because they needed a miracle, but because they wanted to see a miracle. Wow. And so miracles was the most popular reason why people came. And so we have that documented proof that miracles draw people to come hear about Jesus.

Rubens Cunha (23:25):
That’s, that’s truly impressive. Then you, I believe that there could be many different methods of evangelism and they may be effective in different ways. You know, as long as the message remains, the same methods may change in average generation for different groups in different society. The method that works best in the United States might be different. As you said, of the maths methods we use in developing countries. However, I favor miracle because that’s the method of Jesus. And the early church used when we read the gospels, when we read the book of acts Jesus and the disciples, they preach to the masses and they ministered healing and deliverance to the crowds. And this method is still valid today. And whenever and wherever in the world, we proclaim the name of Jesus with signs and wonders. The crowds will come and the masses will come to Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:27):
Amen. Well, another 61 people came because their pastor told them they should come. And then 112 people came because they were curious about God. So just being curious about God, I think that’s another real reason why people would come to a crusade and then six people. So they didn’t know why they came. They just showed up. And then what’s interesting. We also asked how did people come to the crusade? So 38% came by car 8% came by public transportation. 11% came by church bus. 27% came by motorcycle. Four people came by bicycle and 12 and a half percent walked to get there. So you have all these different ways that people have of, of getting to the crusade. And we also asked how far they came from, you know and we found that at least in this town people came from fairly close, within five kilometers. Most of the people came. I think if we did the survey at a crusade in Africa, we might get a 50 kilometer radius of people that would come.

Rubens Cunha (25:43):
I think you’ve made a great point there that regarding transportation, it varies with where the crusade is taking place. Some, some areas are more urban, other cities. If they have more of a rural surrounding, then we gonna have different ways. People who get you, they campaign. One thing that is, I believe important, you emphasized always that part of our strategy, we try to help the churches, to bus people from remote areas, especially villages that have very little gospel witness, or that don’t have a church yet. And we use that as a strategy to plant churches as well. Typically we sponsor a bus to bring people from a village that doesn’t have a church. So the people in that bus, they hear the gospel, they see the miracles and as the bus takes them back to their villages somebody from a local church who being site, the buzz is starting to follow-up and inviting to a service usually the next day. And that’s how we had over 400 church birthed out of campaigns in the last 10 years.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:54):
Yeah. So in this crusade, I remember you sent me about four pictures of churches that were actually planted because of this crusade. So there were only nine evangelical churches in the city and out of the crusade were birth for brand new churches. So I mean, what a tremendous testimony.

Rubens Cunha (27:15):
Yeah, absolutely. And some of those were planted in villages that did not have a church before ever. So that’s truly pioneering work being done as well through crusade evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:29):
Another thing we wanted to find out was whether we were preaching to the choir or whether we were preaching to people that were sinners, who genuinely needed Jesus. And so that’s a little bit difficult to pin down with a question, but we decided one way to look at it was how often people attended church. Because if the choir they’re probably in church all the time, but people who are lost, they probably don’t attend church very often. And so 5% of the crowd so that they never attend church, that they never go to church at all 12 and a half percent of the crowd so that they only attend church one to two times a year. So that’s probably someone who’s going on Christmas Eve or on Easter. They, they might consider themselves Christian, but they’re definitely not living a Christian life because they’re, they’re never going to church very often.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:30):
3.9% said that they attend six to 12 times per year. So that might be once a month, 9.6% said that they attended one to two times each month. So that’s getting into someone who’s, who’s more devout. 17% said that they tend to church every Sunday. And then we did have a significant number of Christians that were there. So 51%, almost 52% said that they attend church more than two times per week. And that’s actually good because you want the local churches to be involved in the event. So you want them to come. But I think a really good ratio would be one Christian for every non-Christian or if every Christian could invite two or three of their friends, you could have a ratio of one Christian for every three non-believers what, what do you think would be a good ratio?

Rubens Cunha (29:27):
I agree with you that the more unreached people, the more unsaved we can have in a campaign the best. And again, let us remember. We faced unusual challenges in this city and this, this proportions may vary from campaign to campaign. But I think there is a very interesting point that we must realize here the fact that people that usually would not go to a church, they go to a crusade, people that usually would not be comfortable participating in a regular service for whatever reason they are. Okay. Going to an outdoor event where the gospel is being preached, where prayers offered, where there’s good music, and that’s the people we want to reach. That’s the people, Jesus died for them. God loves them. And because they, they typically wouldn’t attend a regular service. We are able to preach the gospel to them at the crusade. Then

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:26):
We asked the people who filled out decision cards, whether they would be willing to attend a church to, for follow up information. So we’re, we were talking about how do we follow up on these new believers? In what we’ve found is that 37% strongly agreed that they would be willing to go to church to find out more about Jesus. Another 50% agreed that they would visit a church and another 6%, they weren’t sure if they would visit. And then nine people said that they probably wouldn’t visit a church. They disagree. And then one person he strongly disagrees says he definitely would not be willing to go to a charity, even though he had just gotten saved, but almost 80% who filled out decision cards at the crusade said that they were willing to go to a church the next day in order to learn more about Jesus awesome news

Rubens Cunha (31:29):
Some, and don’t forget we have people there 80% of them made a decision that they would go to a church, but most likely all of them will be visited by believers in the days following the campaign, because as they made the decision for Christ, their names are given to the local churches that had teams trained to follow up with them. So I pray that even that, that one person that said would not go to church has changed his mind. So we’ve talked about

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:02):
A lot of different numbers in this episode of the evangelism podcast, but the truth is that numbers are important. God even wrote a whole book of the Bible in named it numbers. And the reality is that every number represents a story. Every statistic stands for a person at this crusade in Keiko, Brazil. Many people were touched by God. They were saved. They were healed by God and the churches saw growth after the crusade. And so overall, this crusade was a tremendous success. And so after looking at the question are mass crusades effective is mass evangelism effective? I would say based on this snapshot picture of this crusade and based on my historical research and theological research and looking academically at the question, I would say the answer is yes, mass evangelism is effective, is not the only way that people can come to Jesus, but it is an effective way to mobilize the church to be focused on evangelism.

Rubens Cunha (33:21):
Amen. What, what pressures information you were able to gather and with scientific evidence and research? Yes. I fully agree with your statement that those are numbers. They are important for us. They helped us to redirect and refine our strategies. If you’re listening to us and you’re an evangelist, I hope you listen to this podcast again, because it has so many, a wonderful, precious piece of information that can help you fine tune your ministry. And I am excited, Daniel, as you say that behind those numbers, we have people, people we are going to meet in heaven. People that made a decision for Christ in the, in, because you decided to go to [inaudible] and do your research and a crusade there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:11):
Amen. If you’re interested in helping to support mass evangelism, I encourage you go to my website, King ministries.com. You can give a donation there and brother Rubens, what is your website? If someone wants to give a donation to your ministry in Brazil,

Rubens Cunha (34:28):
Thank you. Www.Gga.Global. Now I know I’m being interviewed here, but I have to ask you a question, go for it. If someone is listening to us and they want to get a hold of this wonderful research, how can they do that?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:45):
I took my entire doctoral project and I published it on Amazon. You can find a link to it on my website, King ministries.com. You can look at all the research, all of the historical, all of the theological and the academic research behind this conclusion is mass evangelism effective. And if you’re writing a paper for a master’s degree or a doctorate on the subject of evangelism, you definitely need to go through this material, quote it, footnote it because this material is a powerful study that shows the effectiveness of mass evangelism.

Rubens Cunha (35:30):
Thank you. Thank you. This has been wonderful. Thank you so much for being with me on the evangelism podcast. I’ll thank you so much for having me here. It’s been a great pleasure.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:42):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And what we found is that as we go to different nations of the world, it takes us an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach with the gospel. And so some countries are more expensive. Some countries are a little bit less expensive, but on average, we’ve invested about $1 for every person we’re able to lead to Jesus. So today I’m asking you to go to my website, King ministries.com and give $1, $2, $5, become a monthly partner, help us to lead people to Jesus. Imagine you can start a party in heaven with just $1. Also go to Apple iTunes, leave us a review for the evangelism podcast with Daniel King. So lots of people can find this evangelism podcast. God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (36:37):
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.

Rubens Cunha is a Brazilian born missionary evangelist, author, and international speaker who has led hundreds of thousands to Christ worldwide through massive evangelistic campaigns. Many people have been saved and healed at his events. Today he talks about his strategy for reaching Brazil and the world with the Gospel.

Rubens Cunha’s Strategy: 

Engagement of local churches – An evangelistic campaign only takes place if local pastors unanimously agree to work together to reach every single person in their city.

Training through Conferences and Seminars – Before the evangelistic campaign, local Christians receive training on evangelism, healing, deliverance and follow up strategies.

Evangelistic Campaigns – Large crowds gather to hear the Gospel, receive salvation and miracles. Humanitarian projects and Bible distribution take place.

Follow up – Trained Christians follow up with those that made a decision for Christ. New churches are planted. New leaders are raised.

Website: https://www.gga.global/

For Evangelism Coaching, please call Daniel King, the Host of the Evangelism Podcast. 

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Rubens Cunha is a Brazilian born missionary evangelist author, an international speaker who has led hundreds of thousands of people to Christ worldwide through massive evangelistic campaigns. Many people have been both saved and healed at his events today. He talks about his strategy for reaching Brazil and the world with the gospel.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:24):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be 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 Daniel King. Welcome to the evangelism podcast.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:02):
I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have with me a very special guest and a dear friend of mine, Rubens Cunha. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks for

Rubens Cunha (01:14):
Having me Daniel. It’s a great honor to be here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:17):
So Rubens you have done many, many crusades, especially in Brazil. You were born in Brazil. Tell me some of what God is doing through your ministry.

Rubens Cunha (01:29):
We have had over a hundred crusades in Brazil, especially in the Northeast part of the nation. We come to see it is we work with the pastors and we have large crusades. Our vision is that every single person in town should have an opportunity to hear the gospel. And we are having a wonderful harvest of souls. Church are being planted. Churches are growing. It has been a wonderful journey.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:57):
You mentioned that a lot of your crusades are focused in the Northeast part of Brazil that would be flying into Fortaleza. Some of the other big cities up there. What, what would they be?

Rubens Cunha (02:10):
Fortaleza receive fee Salvador. Those are some of the major airport hubs.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:14):
So often when people think of Brazil, they think of Rio de Janeiro, which is way down South. But tell me, why are you focusing on this Northeast part of Brazil?

Rubens Cunha (02:26):
Brazil is a very large nation. It’s actually a larger than the continental US. And we have had revival in many parts of Brazil. If you go to some Powell or real to the South Southern and South Eastern part of the nation, you find many large churches, a tremendous move of the Holy spirit. But if you go to the Northeast part of the country, there are still a tremendous need for evangelism, for crusades, for missions. The Northeastern part of Brazil remains a vast mission field in our generation with thousands of villages, without a single Christian witness.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:10):
And you have an entire team that is helping you there in Brazil. And I’ve been down there several times with you. We’ve always had wonderful crusades. So many people saved, so many people healed. And one of the things I love about your ministry is you have your very own gospel truck. Tell me about your truck that’s for doing crusades.

Rubens Cunha (03:35):
This was a great blessing from the Lord. And as a word of encouragement to those listening, that’s a vision. The Lord gave me over 20 years ago, I was in a season of praying a of prayer seeking the Lord. And I just had this vision of a truck that I was going to use to preach the gospel around the nation. While 20 years later of the Lord made this vision come to pass. We have a truck that is a self sufficient evangelism. Unity. You could say that it has its own generator, all the lights, the sound equipment. We drive into a city. It opens up my son, my teenager son likes to call it the Optimus prime of evangelism because it, it, it opens up and we are ready to go.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:23):
The optimist prime of evangelism. That’s awesome. So it folds down and becomes a platform. You have lights, sound system, everything you need to make it

Rubens Cunha (04:34):
Say it happened right there. Exactly. It’s a mobile stage. When we park into an area, we, it folds out becoming a platform. We have hydraulic arm that carries the sound system to preach the gospel to tens of thousands of people. We have our lights, we have the generator. So it is a wonderful tool to preach the gospel. We drive it all over the Northeast part of Brazil to hold massive campaigns.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:08):
Tell me a little bit about your history and how you became a Christian and then how you got involved in doing evangelism.

Rubens Cunha (05:18):
Yes. I was born and raised in Brazil, as you mentioned. And my family was deeply involved with African Brazilian religion, which is resembles voodoo. It was type of witchcraft religion. And as I became a teenager, I was deeply involved in that world. But one day I went to a church and as I was in that church, somebody there shared the gospel with me. And as that person shared the gospel, I realized that there was a different kind of power there that I was not familiar with. And that made me very intrigued. You see, I was so deeply involved in the role of witchcraft that I used to talk to the demonic spirits though, at the time, I did not know that they were demonic spirits. You see a lot of people involved in those type of religions are deceived. I was deceived. And, and so th the NTT is the spirits, the demonic spirits that talk to me, he started to threaten me to say, I should not go to that church anymore, but I was so curious, so hungry to know God that I did went back and I went through some crazy experiences to, to be set free and to make a long story short.

Rubens Cunha (06:42):
In one day, as I was being threatened by those demonic spirits, I had the vision from the Lord and this vision, I saw Jesus and I gave my life to him. He sat me free from all that oppression I was under. And he said, I will send you to the nations to bring revival through signs and wonders. And my life was completely changed from that point. On two weeks later, I did my first crusade in my school. I gathered all the students and preach the gospel to them. You started a little Bible club at the time. And later on, I got a hold of healing, the Sikh by TL Osborn. And when I read that book, I knew that was exactly what God wanted me to do. So about a year after my conversion, I started preaching in local churches, start traveling to a different nations. And now it’s been almost 27 years. And I’ve been to over 40 nations in the world, held campaigns that had up to 50,000 people per night. And the Lord has been faithful to his word.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:57):
You are first starting out. You, you weren’t the evangelist, you were helping to organize crusades for other evangelists. What are some of the things you learned in organizing crusades and how to hold a successful event?

Rubens Cunha (08:14):
Yes, I was very blessed to be part of the team of Mike Francen organizing crusades for him in Latin America. And I learned invaluable lessons during that time. One of them is the need to work with the local church. If you are an evangelist, you need to connect with the local churc hes and make sure they will be keeping the fruit of the harvest. When we come into a city, we, we cannot do events just by ourselves. It’s possible that using marketing, or if you are a good preacher, if there is a miracle anointing in your life, you could gather the crowds by ourself, but we need to work with the body of Christ. So that the fruit

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:03):
From the crusade we remain,

Rubens Cunha (09:05):
That was a very important lesson. I also learned about how to set up a crusade, how to promote a crusade, how to find the, the right human resources to help us get the word out. Those were precious years of training that definitely shaped my life in ministry. And now that

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:27):
You are preaching as an evangelist, you see God do tremendous miracles in many of the crusades that you do. What are some of the miracles that you’ve witnessed?

Rubens Cunha (09:37):
Wow, that’s a wonderful question. I strongly believed that a signs and wonders are vital to the proclamation of the gospel. And at every campaign, God has been giving us the privilege of, of witnessing a tremendous signs and wonders our last campaign. For example, wasn’t the nation of Ethiopia. And in that crowd, there was a man who was insane for several years. The men was tied, we’d ropes in his home, and sometimes he would break out and run to the jungle and roam like a wild animal. His family had to hunt him down, bring him back and tie him again. Well, his wife brought him to the crusade and during the prayer for healing and deliverance, that man said that he felt something coming out of his mind, and he was completely healed. He came to the platform and it started to share how, how he was his mind was clear and he was so speaking so perfectly normal that I even asked the crowd, do you know this man?

Rubens Cunha (10:47):
Is there anybody here that knows him? And several hands in the crowd wind up and his wife came to the platform and she testified how she suffered for many years. And, and she said, I have not had a conversation like this with my husband for a long time and Shu, apt, and hugged him. That was one example. I could tell you many more from all their crusades. We were in Pakistan a few years ago. There was a young man, a Buffalo fell on him while he was working on a farm and broke his back. He was paralyzed, but he heard about a crusade. And just like in the gospel of Luke, his friends carried him to the campaign for several miles. They took turns carrying him on their, on their arms. And I did not know that man was there, but Jesus knew it. They put him on a mat at the back of the, the crowd. And during the time of prayer, as a prayed for miracles, I said in the name of Jesus, if you couldn’t walk, stand up and walk the power of God, touch that young man. He jumped on his feet and he started to run. He came to the platform, ran back and forth. It was just a beautiful miracle from God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:07):
So if a Buffalo falls on you, don’t worry. Jesus can even heal you from Buffalo falls.

Rubens Cunha (12:13):
Yes. And amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:15):
On your website, you explain that you have a four pronged strategy in your ministry. The first part is engagement with local churches. Then you have training through conferences and seminars. Then you have the large evangelistic campaigns, and then you have the follow-up aspect. Can you talk to me about how those four work together in order to have a successful evangelistic event?

Rubens Cunha (12:45):
Absolutely. first we work with the local pastors because we strongly believe as evangelists. We need to serve the local church. We need to help the local church grow. So when we do that, we identify the needs of the church. As far as, as growth, we identify for example villages that do not have a church yet. And we work with them to plant new churches. Then we move. Once we get that connection with the local community, we move to train the people. We, we train every single church to have followup teams so they can take care of the fruit. But also before the campaign, we have a week of intense teaching on how to install. The goal is to wake and the local church should the need of weaning souls. So you, you have been to some of those crusades with me, you’ve done a wonderful job teaching as well.

Rubens Cunha (13:45):
We teach them on how to insource, how to pray for healing. We teach about the ministry of deliverance. We teach about the power of the Holy spirit to help us win souls. And once that happens, those believers that were trained, they participate in a crusade. They see with their own eyes that what was taught is real. And after we leave down, there is a momentum that continues and several ministries have been birthed out of those trainings and crusades, and they are still reaching schools in their seats. They are doing campaigns in villages and a steel weaning sauce. So third, we do have the campaign, which is the main event of our project during the week in which we preach a C preach, a simple gospel message. Pray for salvation for miracles. Thousands are saved. God shows up with tremendous healings and also deliverance.

Rubens Cunha (14:43):
And then we go to the follow-up, which I believe is essential. As I mentioned before, to have fruit that remains and our strategy for, to follow up is number one, we use a prayer card. This prayer card has tan space as four names and agreed in front of it. And the greed is as for the believer to Mark, if they prayed for that person, if they invited them to the crusade, if the person made a decision for Christ and was baptized, every single believer in town receives a prayer card for free, the idea is to communicate to them that they are responsible to win souls and take care of the new believers. And it really works because if you think about this, if a pastor takes this strategy seriously, and every believer is spraying for 10 people, and only one per card comes to Christ, the church will double in size. And at every campaign we see at least one church doubling in size and, and sometimes even tripling quadrupling insight. So this works very well. We also, as I mentioned, train followup teams in the church and our follow-up starts today. After the decision for Christ, let’s say we have a Friday night crusade. People make a decision to follow Jesus. Saturday morning, they are receiving phone calls and visits, chewing, degrade them in the local church.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:14):
What a tremendous system we need to make disciples, not just convert. So that up aspect of doing the crusade is so important. You have big vision for the future. What are some of the things that you see God doing in your ministry in the years to come well, first

Rubens Cunha (16:33):
You want to do more campaigns, right? This is really my heart. Is this my primary calling to hold mass compaigns, proclaiming salvation signs and wonders. But I, also believe God is calling a new generation of evangelists. I believe, I believe there are people then you’re listening to us right now that their hearts are, are on fire. They feel the fire in their hearts. As they listening to two evangelists sharing about their experiences. God is calling a new generation of evangelists and, and we have the responsibility now to mentor, train them. I’m starting for example, a mentorship program for evangelists. First in the nation of Brazil, our program starts in March with a hundred young people with a calling for evangelism. I’m going to be teaching them, mentoring them and preparing them to go and start their own evangelistic ministries. I believe God is raising an army of evangelists for the end time harvest. I believe that with all my heart and we now as more experienced evangelists are going to play a significant role in equipping and training this new.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:50):
So if there’s a young evangelist, who’d like to get connected with you, and maybe there’d be some opportunities for them to do evangelism or if there’s somebody who would like to support your ministry and help you with this tremendous vision, what is your website? How can people get in touch with you?

Rubens Cunha (18:08):
Yes. If you are interested in learning more about how to be an evangelist, or if you want to support our campaigns, please visit our website, www.gga.global www.gga.global. And GGA stands for global gospel action, which is the name of our ministry. Welcome.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:31):
Rubens you are a very close friend. You are also one of the smartest evangelists that I know you are married to a German wife. And so of course you, your mother tongue is Portuguese. You’re fluent in English. You’re fluent in Spanish and you’re fluent in German. And so you are super smart. And it’s just such an honor to, to know you let’s finish today by praying in Portuguese for the world to be saved.

Rubens Cunha (19:02):
Do you do that? Absolutely. And before that, that just finished by saying, thank you for having me here. You are also a great friend. I’m honored to be here. I always learn from you. And I’m glad we had the opportunity to do this this podcast together. So that spray I’ll pray in Portuguese. And even if you don’t understand my prayer, agree with me (Prayer in Portuguese) in Jesus’ name. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:00):
A man. Well, I think Portuguese is just a little bit more anointed than English because that’s a powerful prayer brother. Rubins thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.

Rubens Cunha (20:12):
Thank you so much for having me. God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:15):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And what we found is that as we go to different nations of the world, it takes us an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach with the gospel. And so some countries are more expensive. Some countries are a little bit less expensive, but on average, we’ve invested about $1 for every person we’re able to lead to Jesus. So today I’m asking you to go to my website, King ministries.com and give $1, $2, $5, become a monthly partner, help us to lead people to Jesus. Imagine you can start a party in heaven with just $1. Also go to Apple iTunes, leave us a review for the evangelism podcast with Daniel King. So lots of people can find this evangelism podcast. God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (21:08):
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.

Alan Greene is from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. His mission is to take the church outside the walls of the church building. To accomplish that, he started the LifeLight Music Festival. Over the twenty years of the LifeLight Music Festival thousands of music lovers have come to the music festival and heard about Jesus.

LifeLight is a non-profit Evangelistic Organization based out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. While on a mission’s trip to Mexico in 1998, God grabbed the hearts of Alan and Vicki Greene with the mission of “Taking the Church outside the walls.” LifeLight exists to bring people together across denominational lines, to reach out to communities and beyond with the message of hope and the love of Jesus Christ.  They are missionaries and base their work on Acts 1:8, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth.”  They facilitate events, mission trips, Youth Center and Training Center by partnering with local churches, businesses and other ministries. Their founding principle is to offer all events/Youth Center FREE of admission so that all may come, and all may freely hear the Gospel message of Jesus Christ!

Website: https://lifelight.org 

Questions I ask Alan Greene: 

What is LifeLight Festivals?

How did you start doing LifeLight?

Why did you decide to use music to attract people to come to the LifeLight Festival? If music is the universal language, then it makes sense that LifeLight would use this tool to reach people’s hearts as we proclaim Jesus’ name.

How do you raise money to do LifeLight?

What are you doing for the Global Network of Evangelists?

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:01):
Alan Greene is from Sioux falls, South Dakota. His mission is to take the church outside the walls of the church building to accomplish that. He started the Lifelight music festival. Over the 20 years of Lifelight music festivals thousands of music lovers had come to the music festival and heard about Jesus.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:23):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King we’re 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 Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:59):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I am excited about telling people about Jesus. And today I have a very special guest, Alan Green. He is the founder of LifeLight music festival, and they have reached lots of people for Jesus up in their part of the country, brother, Alan, thanks so much for being on the evangelism podcast.

Alan Greene (01:26):
Daniel, I’m so excited. I like speaking with other evangelists and, you know our passion, our [inaudible] for sharing the good news of Christ. You know, we share that together and we want to spread that to as many as possible.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:38):
Now you’re up there in Sioux falls, South Dakota,

Alan Greene (01:43):
South Dakota, North central Middle of nowhere.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:47):
And a few years ago, God put it on your heart to do a music festival as an evangelistic outreach. Can you kind of tell me the origin story of how that came to be?

Alan Greene (02:00):
Yeah. You know, it’s a, it’s a quick you know, long story, but I’ll make it short. You know, I was a guy in business. I was in sales and business, all my own business. And and yet many years earlier, God had reached my wife and I through music and Christian music led us into God’s word it, it got us to reading the word and we were on a missions trip to Mexico and I felt like God said, take the church outside the walls, you know, bring the light into darkness and bring the body of Christ together to reach the loss and the scripture, John eight, 12, which we had had had many years earlier when God reaches through music, he gave us the scripture, John eight, 12, Jesus, Jesus says, I am the light of the world. Whomever follows me, will not walk in darkness, but have the light of life.

Alan Greene (02:48):
So we lost a ministry called LifeLight. We came back to our city and as you know, Sioux falls is a medium to large sized city now. And when I say middle of nowhere, a lot of people think that, but it’s a going on now. But in those days people didn’t really understand a lot about festivals or, you know, Christian music and that whole realm. And we felt like I was saying continue to do mission trips like Mexico, but do something in your own city. So we launched this festival on a church lawn and it grew each year. And about three years, we were too large for the church and had to move it to a fairgrounds. And it, that began the story of the LifeLight festival.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:27):
So how many people came on that first festival? How many people showed up? Do you remember?

Alan Greene (03:32):
Yeah, that first festival, you know, maybe 1500 people and which was a lot because it was a residential neighborhood. And you know, I don’t think anybody expected much to happen with this. It wasn’t like we had big band names or big musicians, you know, we just, the whole idea was to gather the church outdoors and you know, bring the gospel to those that maybe won’t walk inside. The church

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:56):
Just started with what you had just on the front lawn advertising. And lots of people started coming. And then how many people were coming when you decided to move over to the fairgrounds?

Alan Greene (04:07):
Well, after the third year at the church, we were over 5,000 people on the church lawn. And so we moved to the fairgrounds and then that’s when it started to explode. You know, then we we were seeing crowds of a hundred thousand people by the fifth year, fourth year at the fairgrounds third, third year at the fairgrounds that they, the fair had said we had 240,000 people. Now that’s over a three to four day period. Cause we, we held the festival Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and that’s how they count those kinds of crowds for fairs and events.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:39):
And so at these music festivals, you had some of the greatest music artists in Christian contemporary music who are some of the guests that you had over the years,

Alan Greene (04:50):
Mo most of any band that people have heard on Christian radio, we would have had, you know, Newsboys and Toby Mac and Lecrae and casting crowns and those, those bands and the list goes on. But what we did is we felt like we wanted three things that we had as distinct distinctives for doing the festival one. We had to offer it free of admission, a lot of great ticketed events and people go to ticketed concerts. But we said, if we’re really trying to say, take the church outside the walls and reach the unchurched Christian, music’s not relevant to them. And so buying a ticket for a Christian festival is not what, what they’re going to do. So we wanted to sponsor it. So it would be free to unified the church, bring the body of Christ together and three be across all generations. So we ended up having six different stages and all genres of music. So one stage might be more of a coffee house setting, praise and worship. Another stage which we called the sold-out stage was pretty hardcore. I mean, we’d have some people that were traditional church people that would look at that stage and be like, Whoa, that’s not music. But you know, it’s hip hop and hard rock and so forth. And then kind of the main stage would, would, would be more of the mainstream music.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:04):
So you had some places for the older people to go. And then some places where you turned up, the music really loud and the old people stayed away from that because their eardrums couldn’t handle it. What a great way to reach to different levels of society and to have a tremendous impact over the years, do you have an estimation of how many people came and, and how many people gave their lives to Jesus at the festival?

Alan Greene (06:30):
Well, you know God knows all their names. I, there, there are people that we don’t know about that we hear years later you know, they didn’t come into a prayer tent. They didn’t fill out a card, but years later we’ll hear their stories. But in terms of crowds, you know, every year from you know, starting 1998 through 2017, we held it every single year in the soup, Sioux falls, South Dakota. So every labor day weekend starting in about 2004, we would see crowds of, you know, a hundred to a hundred thousand, a hundred, 200,000 people every year that would show up. And so over those years, you know, 20 years of festivals again you know, three and a half to 2 million people easily, that that would have come. And I believe that there were over a million souls reached for Christ through that timeframe because of the cards that were turned in the responses in a festival setting where people are kind of crammed against the stage. It’s not really the same as the old crusades where, you know, Billy Graham or someone would leave an open field for people to come. A lot of times people were just raising their hands and, and prayer responders are just trying to get to them so they can hand them material. So some of them get missed, but we know the Lord Lord works on their hearts.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:51):
Wow. What tremendous fruit that is. And I think that’s amazing that you were able to do that right here in mid America. If you go to Africa, sometimes you can gather a big crowd of people. People will walk for two or three days sometimes to come to the festival and reaching a million people in, in some countries would be easier than doing that here in America, but you’re here and you’re proving that there is a way to reach people here in America. And basically as evangelists, we’re looking for bait where Jesus said we’re fishers of men. And so we’re looking for the right bait to attract people to come and to hear the gospel. And so the bait that you used was music. And so I saw something on your website. You said, if music is the universal language, then it makes sense that LifeLight would use this tool to reach people’s hearts as we procreate claim Jesus’s name. And I think that’s so beautiful, just looking for any possible way to draw people into an atmosphere where they can hear about Jesus. And you said something a little bit ago that I found very interesting. You talked about taking the gospel outside the walls of the church. Talk to me about why that’s important.

Alan Greene (09:09):
Well, Daniel, you know, for many years the statistics are real and that, you know, 70% of people in any given community, aren’t going to church anywhere, you know? So, and you know, and millennials, I heard a statistic last week that 43% of millennials don’t believe that. And these were Christian millennials. They’re not even sure that that another person should be telling them or proclaiming about Jesus. And yet 97% of them said the best thing that could happen to their friends is if they came to know Christ and have a relationship with God. So knowing that a lot of unbelievers aren’t walking in the doors of the church, then we, can’t just, we can’t just hope they’re going to come inside the walls. We have to go to them. And, you know, the model of taking the church outside the walls, it’s not unique.

Alan Greene (09:59):
It’s really the call of the gospel and the Bible. I mean, acts one eight is a pretty clear strategy where Jesus says you will receive power when the Holy spirit comes upon you, you will be my witnesses first in Jerusalem, Judea Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. So that really was our model and our prayer. And we felt like if we could make it top quality and relevant to people then people would come. And so that’s kind of what happened over the years. It kind of became the, the media hype secular media gave us a free press because, you know, they would say South Dakota and they will go at Sturgis motorcycle, rally or LifeLight, you know completely opposite kinds of events. But the people came,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:42):
I have a lot of missionaries and evangelists who listen to this evangelism podcast. And one of the questions they frequently ask is, is how do you raise money to do evangelism? And, and, you know, I tell people, if you go to my website, just give a, a dollar a month, you could lead at least one person to Jesus for, for every dollar that you give. Because the Bible says that all of heaven rejoices when one sinner gets saved and over the years of our ministry found, it takes at least a dollar for each person that we’re, we’re able to reach it. So I’ve been telling people, you know, for $1, you could start a party in heaven, but it, it takes a substantial amount to, to do a music festival, like, like you’ve done I’ve hired various music artists to come, and it’s not cheap over the years. How did you raise money to make this happen year after year?

Alan Greene (11:42):
Well that’s you know, and the easy answer is it really was and has been God. I mean, if God, this was a movement of God and he moved upon people’s hearts to give especially Christian business people who said, we can give substantially to this as a sponsorship, but it’s interesting. The business guys, I talked to most all of them, you know, you can say, Hey, there’s a sponsorship benefit. You know, you get advertising benefit and they would say, yeah, that’s great. I appreciate that. But they’re doing it because they saw change lives. And we keep talking about reaching the next generation and they saw that happening. But there’s also a lot of work as, you know, an event of that caliber. The bands do not come for free and, you know, we understand that it’s an industry. And so if you’re getting bands of any high level, there’s going to be quite a cost to that.

Alan Greene (12:34):
There’s quite a cost to production. People see these jumbo screens and, you know, an event that attracts 150,000 people. You have to have everything from porta-potties to the parking lot to security, to just lots of operational logistics, which can get costly. But faithful people in, you mentioned just people that give even a little bit, God, God uses every single gift. And so some people in the church over the years have said, well, mass evangelism doesn’t work. It’s not effective. I can tell you, God works through massive evangelism because it’s, there’s just a, there’s a God awareness in the community when something that big is happening and people get on board. And so people gave even small amounts and large amounts and the church partnered. And so we had a partnership with churches, businesses, and individuals who gave to keep this thing happening for free.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:29):
That’s amazing. You have also had a heart to raise up other evangelists into, to coach evangelists. And so I actually met you through the global network of evangelists, which both of us are on the council for the global network of evangelists, which is a ministry of Luis Palau, who is a great evangelist from Argentina and has a heart for raising up evangelists. But you’re very involved in that. Talk to me about what you’re doing to raise up a new generation of evangelists of evangelists.

Alan Greene (14:05):
Well, first we want to identify who they are. And I think there’s a lot of young evangelists who may not even know that that’s there. I mean, they might have an urge, they might want to do something, but they need someone to affirm them in that calling. And then, you know, we always say identify, affirm, mobilize, and equip them to go. And so I hear a lot of stories around the country. Let’s do this, just take business executives or, or ministry leaders. And they will say, Hey, we wanna, we want to get the next generation involved. And then they never really do all of a sudden they’re 88 years old or 90 and they go, Hey, okay, we can pass it to the next generation. Well I think we need to be involving the younger people in their, their thirties, forties now, you know, and and giving them involving them in all of our events. So we’ve been very conscious about that. One of the things I’ve loved and especially serving with you about global network of evangelists you know, Luis Palau ministry is sponsors that and started that organization, but they’re purposed in and getting younger evangelist involved and finding a way for them to serve. And as you know, is we can mentor younger evangelists. Then that gift comes out and it builds confidence in the new ministries have launched.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:28):
It’s a really a new day for LifeLight. You have transitioned to where you are now doing a lot more international evangelism. And you’ve handed over a bunch of the, the day to day running of LifeLight to, to a team. And they have a youth center. Tell me some about what LifeLight is doing now.

Alan Greene (15:51):
Okay. There’s really four areas. One you just touched on. There’s a youth center. We stopped doing the annual festival. We did it for 20 years in Sioux falls, South Dakota, God moved in incredible ways, but he spoke to us and said, that season is over. We may do another festival in our own city, but it was clear that God said, you need to go and you need to do this festival model in other cities. So and in addition to that, my son-in-law Josh who runs LifeLight now had a heart for the neediest community in Sioux falls, South Dakota. And so they launched a youth center. And just about, I mean, it’s, it’s, multi-racial ethnic it’s kids, it’s young kids who are middle schoolers and high schoolers who gather every week at the LifeLight youth center. And they’re coming to Christ, they’re being discipled.

Alan Greene (16:39):
And it is like a missions field because these young people have zero knowledge of the Bible. I mean, you could talk about Bible stories and there it’s like, they have no idea and yet they’re wide open and once they become Christians they’re very bold about it. I mean, they want to learn more. So it’s a youth center and then we’re still doing festivals. We do them regionally. Some national last year was a festival in Michigan even in a pandemic. And then North Dakota one down in Nebraska of Northwest Iowa rural towns in South Dakota LifeLight is doing kind of the, the smaller festival, but deeper, I would say spiritually with people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:20):
If someone wants to support lifelike or find out more information about your ministry, what’s your website. How can they find out more about you

Alan Greene (17:30):
Lifelight.Org, just L I F E L I G H t.org. And you’ll see the four different areas. You’d center festivals, Josh and myself speaking as evangelists. And then the internship program where we bring people in and train them not only in evangelism, but how to do events. Thank you so much.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:50):
Let’s finish up by praying for people who have a heart to be evangelists. Would you pray for those young evangelists out there that just are looking for any way they can to share the gospel?

Alan Greene (18:03):
Let’s do that. God, we just come before you in the name of Jesus, Lord. We know that at that name one day, every knee will bow. Every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord and father. I know that you have called, and when those that you call you equipped. So we know you have called up a generation of younger evangelists of younger missionaries who have a passion to just go with the good news of the gospel. So the Lord release them, Lord bring them so we can come together in unity for one purpose to let others know about you. Father, I pray that you would provide all the resources as we know that you can pray that you would go before them. And that in all things, Lord, you would be glorified. I thank you for my brother, Daniel and Lord. Those that might be watching or listening to this podcast we believe your Holy spirit is speaking to them. Lord, if there is anyone that’s listening and that they just, they don’t know what this means to have the relationship with you, to put their faith and trust in Christ and Christ alone. I pray you would move up upon their heart. Thank you father, for allowing us to be involved in your work. We pray it in Jesus name. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:17):
Amen, brother, Alan. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I’m Daniel King and I’m always excited about telling people about Jesus and I’m also excited about helping other evangelists. And so if there’s something I can do for you go to my website, King ministries.com and get in touch with me. And also while you’re at it, could you leave me a review on iTunes go and your five star review will help other evangelists to find this program because we want to help everyone

Evangelism Podcast Host (19:54):
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.

Michael Ross runs a construction company but he also has the heart to be an evangelist. Is it possible to support your ministry through your business? Listen to Michael’s testimony today to find out.

Mike Ross received Jesus as Lord and Savior in 1984 in Santa Rosa, California. He received the Baptism of the Holy Spirit later in 1992, in Anchorage, Alaska. Afterwards, the Lord called Michael to evangelism in rescue missions, prisons, on the streets, churches and missionary work to nearly 40 countries. He graduated from San Jacinto School of Biblical Theology in 1997. Starting in 2009, Michael began large healing Crusades and launching International Victory Bible Institute (IVBI) Bible Schools in Africa and India. Presently he resides with his family in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma.

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For more information on how to be an effective evangelist, please subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast with the Evangelism Coach, Daniel King

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Michael Ross runs a construction company, but he also has the heart to be an evangelist. Is it possible to support your ministry through your business? Listen to Michael’s testimony today to find out

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:16):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be 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 Daniel King. Welcome to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:53):
The evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited to tell people about Jesus. And today I have a special guest. His name is Michael Ross, and he’s been very involved in doing evangelism and planting Bible schools, brother, Michael, thank you so much for joining me today.

Michael Ross (01:11):
Thank you for the invitation Daniel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:13):
Tell me a little bit about how you got started doing evangelism.

Michael Ross (01:19):
Well, what happened was I got saved in 1984 when I was a pot-smoking car racing punk and Northern California. And then I went on this journey of studying the Bible with my dad and we ended up becoming total heretics. And that’s another story. But in 1992, I ended up at a Rodney Howard-Brown conference in Anchorage, Alaska, cause we were living in Alaska at that time. And for the first time I saw the move of the Holy spirit and first I thought, Oh, that’s just being emotional. You know? So but I saw those that really abandoned themselves and surrendered in worship would be the same ones that would be on the floor, laughing uncontrollably a short time later. And so I started worshiping like that. And so I ended up getting filled with the Holy spirit Rican recommitting my life to Christ. And for the first time I got mentors that started to really mentor me and the things of kingdom of God, because like I say, my dad and I, we, we were heretics.

Michael Ross (02:24):
We were like the apostle Paul before he got converted to know we were, we were those kinds of guys, guys, you didn’t want to meet, but so you had an encounter with the Holy spirit I did. And once I had the counter with the Holy spirit, right after that, I cooked up with the evangelist of the church and I the local rescue mission opened up for me. And I started to speaking of the rescue mission and the prison opened up for me. But six months later I started speaking in prisons around Alaska, but actually just to go back a step when I got filled the Holy spirit and I was on the floor, I had this vision and in the vision, I was down a hallway with Jesus. He opened a door to my right and I walked in and there was thousands of people for me to speak to and I thought, wow, that’s, that’s crazy. You know? And so I started doing evangelism and I started going out with the guy’s name was Joe Malkay and we’d go into different parts of Alaska doing revivals in different native villages. And we saw some amazing, amazing things, but that’s how I got started in evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:25):
And then what has God done since then? I know you’ve gone to Africa quite a bit and done a lot of crusades over there. What, what doors and opportunities has got open for you?

Michael Ross (03:37):
Well, I stayed up in Alaska for about eight years doing a lot of different kinds of evangelism. Then I ended up moving down to Southern California and I ended up reading of a book, a Chris magazine where talked about Mike Francine and how he’s doing big crusades and overseas. And I didn’t know anybody that was doing that. I mean, that was that’s a, California is like a lost in space kind of area. You know, it’s not like Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there’s evangelist everywhere, it’s missionaries everywhere. And so I, but I, but I saw that and I said, wow, that’s me. That’s, that’s the vision that I had. And so I didn’t know anybody who was doing it though. So I finally just decided maybe, maybe I just gotta go and do it myself. You know, if I could just find somebody to follow that’s like Mike Francine that’d be great, but I couldn’t find anybody. So I just started doing a class called Saturday soul Wayne, which was a relative to Tommy Barnett’s Saturday soul-winning and we would do a carry the cross outreach in front of a Knottsberry farm and Disneyland. I built these two eight foot crosses and then we would do street dramas and we would do what we call the spiritual interview. We would interview in people in a mall with about 10 questions that ended up, gimme some of those questions

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:48):
That you’d ask people in the spiritual interview,

Michael Ross (04:50):
You know, like do you, who do you consider Buddha and Muhammad and, and Jesus to be spiritual people, you know? And then it, it, it asks you all these questions. Do you consider yourself to be spiritually? And it gets down to the question of, if you die today, do you know where you’d go? And so we called it the spiritual interview. I still have it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:09):
And so you’re, you’re opening up a conversation about spiritual things and that, then that gives you the opportunity to, to share the gospel. Because of course many people in California probably think they’re they’re spiritual, but not religious.

Michael Ross (05:22):
Right. A lot of new agers. Yeah. And then we also did door to door evangelism. We did, I took this, I took the team down to the rescue mission. I took him to home. Depot is now a good moment for a short testimony, go for it. So I’m, I’m I take him down to to the home Depot and I’m going to set up my barbecue with my 15 event growing evangelists disciples, you know, and I got permission from the general manager assistant manager of the week before. So he would come out there and we’re gonna, we’re gonna cook up Carnegie Assata. And there’s like 150 Hispanics that are waiting for work. So this, this, Hey, here we are. This is our outreach. And so we start setting up and this guy from the HR and home home Depot comes out and says, Hey, you can’t do this outreach here.

Michael Ross (06:08):
You’re contributing to these, these illegal aliens, you know? And so I thought, Oh my God, what am I doing here? You know, this is, this is not working out here. But somebody said, Hey, let’s just go to the sidewalk. I mean, it’s public property that can’t kick us off. So we moved, we moved everything to the sidewalk and we started the Carney side of the barbecue and put on our tables, rice and beans and guacamole and so forth. We went up to try and assemble the people or the Hispanics, Hey, we got free food for you. You know? And the, and the police came and I thought, Oh, this is not going, not going good. But they went to the other side of the parking lot. So, okay. So we went on with the, we went on with the outreach and I have the Hispanic pastor from my church stand up and preach Jesus.

Michael Ross (06:53):
And we had about, Oh, I’m on the, we had about 70, 70, 80 Hispanics there, you know, and we, he preached Jesus like a, like a passionate, mad dog, you know, did a great job in Espanol. And then we passed out these new, new Testament, Espanol Bibles and let them to Jesus. And so about that time, you know, and they’d all eaten and everything, it actually went great. Considering the bad start, the, the police came over to me and he says who’s in charge of this. And I said, I am. And he says, Hey, you know, I’ve been stalling on your behalf, but really you can’t do your outreach here. I said, well, thank you so much. So we’re done now. Thank you. But anyway, so that was one of my outrageous acts actually in my book there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:37):
Wow, you’ve got a great book here. It’s called miracle memories, 42 supernatural stories from my life and ministry. And so I really liked the format of this book. In fact, I liked it so much that I’m going to copy it one of my future books, but you’ve got a story of what God has done in different parts of the world. And then you have a miracle moment with a little application from the story. And so I’m taking this idea and I’m going one of my next books. I’m just going to go through and collect all the stories from, from the 20 years of evangelism that we’ve done. And, and there’s great stories. And I find that when I go preach at churches, people like the stories, they love hearing the stories of what God has done the testimonies. And then I’m just going to do a little teaching from, from each one of them. And so I liked, I liked your book so much. I’m copying it, but I’m not copying your stories. I’m using my own stories, but I love the form. It’s great. So, so tell us some of the, the miracle memories that you have in your book.

Michael Ross (08:38):
Well, I’ll tell you another memory that happened when I was in Anchorage, Alaska. I went to preach and do Advancial the first house with this guy named Joe Malkay, who was a full-time evangelist. And he was training me, discipling me. And then I started to do some of my own stuff. So I went out with this team, my church, and we went out to a place called Bethel Alaska. And this is way back about 1996, you know, and actually what I had been studying the word, you know, and, and really became a heretic. But actually all that Bible study really helped me because now when I stood up to preach, I understood so much of the word of God, you know, from all that years of study, even though we went off into heresy, so I had to make some corrections and so forth.

Michael Ross (09:21):
But so when I stood up to preach, actually the anointing really fell on me and the authority, the presence of Holy spirit flowed through me. And so when, when we were in Bethel, Alaska, it was about, we were doing like a week long of meetings, you know, nightly meetings. And that night it was a blizzard. I mean, it was a horizontal blizzard in Bethel, Alaska. So on the West coast of Alaska. And, but nevertheless about 150 native Alaskans, the village is probably 95% native Alaskans showed up to my meeting, you know? And so I’m sitting on the front row and they’re doing the worship and I’m saying, Lord, what do you want me to preach on? And usually I have time to prepare beforehand to ask the Holy spirit what he would like me to say. But in this case, I was short on time, whatever, whatever the circumstances. And he says, I want you to preach on forgiveness.

Speaker 4 (10:10):
And I said, but Lord,

Michael Ross (10:12):
I talked about forgiveness at least a little bit last night. He said, I want you to pre-con preach on forgiveness. And I was arguing with God, if you can believe that I’m the front row before I’m supposed to speak. And so I said, I tell you what, God I’ll make you a deal. You show up in some powerful words of knowledge and healing, and then I’ll know it’s you. So he says, okay. He says, call people up forward with their problems to the lower back and with their teeth. And so I said, okay. And then it was about my time they, they introduced me. I stood up and I just said, I feel like the Holy spirit says, there’s some people out there that have problems in your lower back and people with problems with your teeth, please come forward. So four people came forward and I walked over the first one, put my hand right behind is just one hand on the lower back and just said, Lord, Jesus, you know, be healed in Jesus’ name and just put my hand there.

Michael Ross (11:06):
And the person literally, boom, when I started praying, flew backwards, like four feet and there was no catcher, you know? And they, the boom like, like almost like an angel hit him with a two by four or something. And I thought, Oh my God, I thought, wow, that’s, that’s amazing. And the people, but, but I kinda liked I’m, I’m cool about this. Like, this happens to me all the time, you know, really it didn’t at all, but anyways, so I went to the next person, I said, be healed in Jesus’ name like that. And they flew back on the ground. The second one did. And then, so I went to two people with teeth, robs, put my hands on their teeth, be healed in Jesus’ name. And the person burst out in tongues. And the last one be healed in Jesus’ name. And then he also flew back on the ground, like four feet backwards with no catcher, you know?

Michael Ross (11:51):
And obviously it was God, otherwise they might’ve been hurt, but wow, that’s, that was good. God, that was you. You’re totally got my attention here. So I preached on forgiveness and in my message, I talked about from my own life testimony about asking God for forgiveness of your sins. And then the importance of forgiving others, very, very powerful. And the third thing, forgiving yourself, which can be the hardest thing for people. So I went to each one of them carefully and told testimonies from my own life. And then afterwards I had the people stand up and I let them do a prayer with those three areas of forgiveness. And about the time I was done with the third prayer, the presence of the Holy spirit fell in that native Alaskan church. And the whole place went wild and I stepped back, Oh my God, this is, this is crazy because people were shaking uncontrollably.

Michael Ross (12:45):
People were going into trances. People fell on the ground. People were crying. People were laughing and not just a few people. I mean the whole place went wild and I’m like, Oh my God. And I looked at my team members and they looked at me, Whoa, this, this is just God, this has nothing to do with us. This is just God. And so as a matter of fact, after that meeting the next day, a girl testified how she’d wanted to heaven and told soul story and people testified of healings and miracles. And I thought to myself, you know, I’m going to get back to the local rescue mission and Anchorage, Alaska, it’s going to be a blowout, but it wasn’t. It was like the same regular meeting, you know, because it was the hunger of the people that was really polling on God. Those people were hungry. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:29):
That’s interesting. There there’s different responses in different places because the ground is different. Sometimes you’re, you’re busy planting seeds. Sometimes you’re wander watering the seed. You’re watering the seed. Sometimes you get to reap the harvest. Sometimes though you got to go out with a plow and dig up big stones out of the hearts of people. So every place you go there, there’s a different response. And that’s one of the things to, to know that that sometimes you can have a great success in one area and then other areas that you’re just working really hard and nothing is happening, but it’s all part of, of bringing in the harvest. One of the things I really like about you is that you are a by vocational evangelist, you love doing evangelism love, going to Africa and preaching the gospel, but you also have your own construction company.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:26):
And you’re doing projects here in the United States. In fact, a lot of the support that you need in order to, to do crusades and do ministries comes from your business. So there’s different paradigms that people have for doing evangelism. And one paradigm is to just fundraise and ask for money, but that’s not the only way of doing evangelism. You can also be a successful evangelist and have a job and earn money in, in some way. So talk to me a little bit about how that works and, and why you decided to do business that way.

Michael Ross (15:11):
Well, I would say Daniel that from the beginning I was a businessman and I’ve grown tremendously in my own faith by running a company. And I’ve been an entrepreneur now for over 30 years. And so when you have to believe God for more jobs and money to make payroll and all that kind of stuff, and you have to be accountable before God to pay your ties and your offerings that, that builds tremendous faith as a, as a human being and as a businessman. So I’ve grown so much through having my own business that I probably couldn’t have learned if I just tried to go into full-time evangelism, you know, under a past pastor or a church or something like that. So I really thank God for how that’s that’s come about. And I would say that now my business is doing far better than ever before my business doubled.

Michael Ross (16:03):
Last year, I bought a siding company two and a half years ago. And my income literally doubled from 2019 to 2020. And so and, and it’s, it’s, it’s good because as a businessman, I can always fall back on my company and not be have to feel like I’m need to beg for money or, or have to do more fundraising. And that puts a certain ease in my heart. And just to say something else about it was which be, God would tell me over, I’ve gone 18 times to East Africa in the last 11 years. And so he would tell me, son, I want you to do a crusade in a city, say like Machakos Kenya. And I said, okay, Lord. And then he would help me set the dates. And then I would call my team on the other side of the ocean and we’d set it up.

Michael Ross (16:51):
And now I might not even have the money to do that, but I’m just, the father says you’re doing a in Machakos, these are the dates. And now I’m just going to believe God for the money. I mean, you have to do the same thing as similar way, but so many times what would happen was like maybe a week or two before I was supposed to go, I still didn’t have the money, but I was still believing in God. And so sure enough, a job would come say a $10,000 paint project or something and sure enough. And I’m like, Oh my goodness, I don’t know how I’m gonna get this done on time, but it would get done on time. I would get the check. I’d put the money in the bag and boom, I had the money to go. That happened so many times, but other times I left and there was one time in particular, I left, I was supposed to do cruise two crusades one in India and one in Africa.

Michael Ross (17:41):
And I was supposed to pay for a Bible school graduation. And when I left, I had $5 in my pocket. So I said, I’m not going to freak out about this. I’m not going to get into fear. I’m just going to speak in tongues and stay in the spirit and just trust God somehow some way, this is all going to get paid for and got on the plane and left. And I had two people coming with me on that trip, and I didn’t want to tell them because I didn’t want them to be discouraged. But nevertheless, I got there and the money started rolling in from my company back in California. And the funds came, some friends found out about it and they helped me. And so in the end I paid for everything. But so thank God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:19):
What a, what a miracle that sometimes it takes a lot of faith to be an evangelist and to step out in faith. And, and we’ve seen God provide time and time again, sometimes from sources that you would never expect and you’re trusting us, Hey, God, I pray for the money in God provides because evangelism is close to his heart. And so what, what percentage of your ministry is supported by your own company and your own efforts? Is it,

Michael Ross (18:48):
Well, I’d say over the last 11 years, when I’ve gone these 18 times to Africa, and some of those times I went four times a year as a short-term evangelist, I would go for typically about two and a half to three weeks. And I would honestly I’d have to trust God to run my company while I was gone and believe God that it’s all gonna work out. And none of my customers are going to get really mad and my employees are going to be able to handle it and so forth. So there, there again was some faith to believe God for that. But I would say about probably 90 to 95% of every, all the crusades I would do. And sometimes I would drop 15,000 per crusade. Sometimes 20,000 would come straight out of my company. And so sometimes I would drop as much as 50, 60, 70, $80,000 a year on these crusades I was doing to reach people for Jesus. And so that was, that’s been an honor and privilege.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:39):
Thank God for providing for you that way. It’s sometimes tough to, to solve a problem for someone in Oklahoma, when you’re on the telephone in the middle of Africa, you got call back and I’m sure you guys still deal with customers and run all the details and make sure people are showing up to do the work that you hired them to do. And yeah, it’s been crazy at times. Wow. And then in addition to doing the crusades, you’ve also been planting Bible schools affiliated with victory Bible Institute. So, so [inaudible] international victory Bible institutes which was the Bible school started by pastor Billy Joe Doherty out of victory, which is my home church. And it’s amazing. They have, I think over 2000 Bible schools now in different parts of the world, how many of those Bible schools have, have you been able to plant?

Michael Ross (20:33):
Well, we have about 12 going right now. And what happened was I went and did this crusade in Katua Kenya. And then we went and did another crusade, a place called Machakos and the spirit of God began to speak to me. Son, these people have tremendous hunger for God, but their depth of understanding is only about an inch deep. It’s a mile wide, but it’s only about an inch deep. And so I realized after a couple of trips to Kenya that nine out of 10 pastors had no Bible training whatsoever. So they would, they would go to a scripture in the Bible and, and read a scripture and then they’d go off in an exhortation because they couldn’t link scripture to scripture, to scripture to make a powerful message. So except for Holy spirit, for example, so they just go off on an exhortation cause they didn’t understand, you know, so the spirit of God’s began to speak to me.

Michael Ross (21:23):
He said, son, I want you to start launch Bible schools here in East Africa. So I went ahead and took a course that Ron Stafford’s wife, Jill Stafford was doing at victory called how to launch an international victory Bible school. I took the course. I probably was not a very good student cause at that time I was flying back and forth to California running my company and missing classes. But anyways, I took the course. And then when I, next time I went to Kenya, I cast the vision with the Bishop I was working with.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:51):
I think what qualifies you as a good student in that course is if you actually plant a Bible, right? So, so I think you get an a plus or now having planted 12 Bible schools. True, true. So you went back to Africa with the Bishop there and cast the vision

Michael Ross (22:09):
Cast division to him and his three overseers that represented about a hundred churches. And they said, great, let’s do it later. He told me, he thought I was crazy, but anyways, so he, we went for it and that was about September. And we were going to start the Bible schools in January. So had a good friend of mine, Russell Abbott, who was a New Zealand or who knows now living in Rwanda, he came and helped me. And we launched the first Bible school. And in the end we had 76 students graduate that year. And it was a smashing success. The students thought this was like the most important, greatest thing they’d done in their life. And you know, we, we made it as free of charge as possible. We wanted to specially reach rural pastors and pastors that didn’t have any means and they would come to class and you know, their callers would be all wore out, you know, cause they don’t really have any good shirts.

Michael Ross (23:00):
They’d have a blue shirt on and red pants. This kind of thing is that really have any money. But nevertheless we’d given the Bible schools 27 courses, 15 hours per course. And it was just, it was just amazing. And these 76 students went off to launch churches, become evangelist, become a missionaries. And the fruit was just there and I’m like, Oh my goodness, this is great Lord. This is, this is a great idea you add. And so since then we’ve had like 3,500 students, you know what you’re doing? Yeah. We’ve had like 3,500 students graduate our Bible.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:30):
Wow. That’s amazing. 3,500.

Michael Ross (23:32):
Yeah. So I usually go every November with a whole box of certificates and we pass out these certificates and because they look so good and I have them printed here. And they’re on American paper, which is a big thing for that. They actually are received by many of the local universities as accreditation schools, even though there it’s not. So anyways, that’s kind of a little blessing because students say, well, when can you accredit the school? And I said, well, it’s quite a, quite a difficult process, but what happens is the paper they, we give them ends up being received anyways as a credit. Wow. That’s awesome. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:11):
Talk to me about being bi-vocational in the, in the faith it takes to do that. What advice would you give to other evangelists who they have a job, but they have a heart for evangelism. How should they get started?

Michael Ross (24:28):
Well, I would say they just first thing is to follow the Holy spirit, you know, and realize that Paul was a tentmaker, he was making money and he was very concerned that people might accuse him of fleecing the flock and taking the people’s money. So that’s one of the reasons he’s he goes into this long argument about it in the book of Corinthians about why he’s, you know, making tents and he didn’t ask anything from their church. So anyway, so I think it’s a, it’s a great star to have your own job or your own business and to start saving money, whatever it may be. And if anything, just accompany evangelists like Daniel and go with him overseas and experience it. And that’s a great place to start is find somebody that’s really doing it successfully and go with them, you know, get discipled, see how it’s done and that that’s only going to cost you.

Michael Ross (25:19):
You can do that for Daniel. Can probably get you somewhere or I could get you somewhere for probably $2,000. You know, I would probably go back to Africa again, you know? So and then a person could get great training skills and do a hands-on ministry. I’ll tell you what Daniel, one of the most greatest things is a little bit diversion from your question, but is when I take people with me and I send them out to the streets, you know, or to prisons, and this has happened, I probably had at least six or seven come with me. They come back weeping and crying. I mean, they lead 50 or a hundred, 200 people to Jesus and it’s like mind blowing for them, you know? And they come back weeping and crying. Like their whole life has been transformed and they see their call and their destiny before them. And now they’re actually doing this stuff, not just hearing about other preachers going out and doing this stuff, but they’re doing this stuff themselves. And so that’s very thrilling. That’s one of the greatest joys I get is releasing other people to help them find their destiny and evangelism and maybe it’s pastoring, you know, but it’s doing the stuff. So, yeah, that’s a great,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:24):
Great place to start. Go, go with someone else. Who’s doing a crusade, learn from them and you’ll find that God will start to open up doors for you to do crusades and into be involved in evangelism. All right. We’re almost finished here, brother, Michael, but give me one more, really good story out of your book, miracle memories. What, what’s something really memorable that God’s done?

Michael Ross (26:47):
I, I had so many great stories, but I think one of the ones that’s really stunning that really rocked my world as well, was my first trip to Kenya, which was, I had gone to Mozambique and hung out with Heidi and Roland Baker with Randy Clark and had a great time there was chosen to be one of the leaders. And that was a great, great rising to a new level spiritual level because the truth is, if you go on mission trips, you’re going to go to the next level. I mean, I, I hear that from people all the time, you know, they, they go on a mission trip, you know, wow. It was so exciting, you know, this, this, this, and this happened to me. And I think to myself, they’ve only gone to one or two mission trips. I’ve gone, you know, to 40 or 50, you know? And so anyways, a little diversion, but anyways, so we, so the second trip was that I had the, with this guy named Chris Walsh and I met Chris Walsh and of course, you know,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:37):
Yeah. We’ve had them on the show before. So if you’re listening and go back and listen to the interview with Chris Walsh on the evangelism podcast, it was a great interview. He has a real heart for the first nations people up in Canada,

Michael Ross (27:49):
Right? So Chris was going to do this crusade with a certain Bishop in Kenya. And and I was all excited cause I just got back from Mozambique and I said, well, I’ll go and I’ll just be here. I’ll just assist you. And he said, great, let’s go. So we set the date and it came to pass that Chris could not come up with any money for the trip or for anything, for a plane ticket or anything. And he, every, every week he was I’m believing God, I’m believing God, but still no money came for him, but I had the money. So finally I was praying. I said, Lord, I don’t think this is going to go anywhere. I mean, Krista’s symphony money, this, this whole thing, Cindy canceled. And he says, yeah. And I felt my spirit something’s going to happen here. So four days before we were supposed to go, Chris calls me up, says, look, Mike, I still don’t have any money and I’m canceling.

Michael Ross (28:35):
But the Bishop has asked me if you’ll come. And because they’ve already promised to these pastors in a place called [inaudible], which was a large witchcraft area that a white man and [inaudible] is coming to preach to them. And so I said, well, let me ask, ask the Lord. And so I prayed after I got off the phone, I said, Lord looked up to heaven and what do you think about this? And he says to me, you’re going to Africa. Wow. So I call up the airline and I said, Hey, you know that ticket, I was talking to you about a couple of weeks ago to Nairobi Kenya. What’s the price on that anyways? And she’s, she looks it up. She says, well, Mr. Ross, it’s still $1,200. And I said, wow, cool. I thought maybe a doubled or tripled with four days, four days notice a sure.

Michael Ross (29:18):
And I, and maybe it was seen three days. I kind of forget. But anyway, so I said book the ticket. And so I, so I went on three days notice and I didn’t know this Bishop from, from a shoe, you know he could have been the, the, the Kenyan mafia for all I knew, you know? So I just, and I talked to him on the phone for about 30 seconds. That was it. And supposedly he was suspicious. So I flew to Nairobi, praying in, you know, trying to stay in the spirit now. I mean, here, I’m going to Nairobi. I don’t know anybody. And and I get off the plane and, and go outside and here’s some guys holding my hold, a sign with my name on it. And I thought, well, that’s a good start. And the Holy spirit spoke to me on the way over there. He said, son, you’re one of my lions. And I said, well, that’s nice of you. That’s cool, Lord. I’m excited about that. So they took me to the hotel and got there Kenya, Kenya’s a good place

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:09):
To be a lion because they’ve got lots of zebras to, for lions to eat.

Michael Ross (30:15):
So I get there, I go to my hotel room and what’s above my bed, a picture of a lion. And so I thought, wow, this is a good start. It’s actually working out some something, you know? So I ended up flying to Eldoret Kenya where the Bishop is, what this Bishop was. And he turned out to be like the Billy Graham of, of Kenya. He liked knew everybody. And he was a nice, really sweet man and full of the love of Jesus. And, and he was an amazing evangelist. And so we went ahead and we did a couple of radio shows and stuff like that. And then we went off to [inaudible]. Now this K2 area of [inaudible] was kind of a semi-arid area. And they hadn’t sinned seen rain in some five years. So we thought, Hey, we’re going to bring the gospel because we know it’s their devotion to witchcraft.

Michael Ross (30:57):
It’s stopping the blessing of rain for Africa, which for them is like life, life, and death. And so we went there and I thought, well, maybe we’re going to have a showdown with a witch doctor, something like that. But we didn’t, we just drove into town and started raining. And so it started raining and we had people doing the Jesus video project at schools, and we were doing street evangelism. The whole team was brought team of about 25 people, you know, Kenyans. And a two is a very poor area. I mean, very sad, but young girls would sell themselves for a bottle of Coke. I mean, that’s, that’s how, how bleak the places, you know, and the cows were skin and bones and they were going through the trash looking for food. And so the rain came though, and that was exciting.

Michael Ross (31:41):
And so the Bishop’s going to do his is meeting that evening and he has me do the pastors conference in the morning. And so it’s raining all day and we say, w so we got together. We said, look, it’s great that it’s raining, but it’s going to rain our crusade. So we prayed this prayer Lord, make the rain stop. And then at the end of the crusade make it poor. And so we prayed this bold prayer and the rain stopped and the Bishop went out there and about 2000 people showed up, you know, small crusade. He preached Jesus, you know, and I gave a short testimony. And as soon as he was done preaching, it started pouring rain and all the Kenyans ran back to their homes. And so it rained all night rained in the morning, did the pastor’s conference. It was raining and then the afternoon it stopped. And so Bishop and I came back there to do the evening crusade, about 4,000 people shows up typical African crusades. They double every night. And so we’ve preached Jesus and all that stuff. And as soon as he was done, started pouring rain and Rained all night long rain.

Michael Ross (32:42):
I did the pastors conference. Rain stopped, came out there the third day, the rain stopped. 8,000 people came, you know, and we did the, we did preaching the Jesus and I got to preach some, you know, for the first time in my, my crusade, first time I ever got to preach in a crusade, actually it was fulfillment of the vision I’d seen as when I first got in the Holy first, got filled the Holy spirit that all these people were there, you know? And so as soon as we were done, it started pouring, raining. I’m telling you the truth. It was weird three nights and three nights in a row, the rain stopped for the crusade. And then otherwise it was pouring rain. All the Kenyans ran back to their home. And by the fourth day I looked on the ground, I could see grass growing and it was incredible. It’s really incredible. And so the, the fourth night we had people bring their items of witchcraft and we burned them on the stage publicly. So it was very powerful first crusade for me. And it gave me kind of a reputation that I was kind of an Elijah or something like that, you know, in Kenya. And then the next crusade, I came back to seam with also witchcraft area Machakos. And I said to Bishop, I said, Hey, Bishop what exactly happened in that Machakos crusade? He said, Brother, Mike, you haven’t heard half of the Story. He said, they had so much rain. They had an overabundance of crops. Wow. And I’m like, wow, that was amazing. So that was, that just really rocked my world, changed my life, gave me a whole new vision, built my faith in everything else.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:09):
Crusade brought physical blessings as well as spiritual blessings.

Michael Ross (34:14):
Absolutely. And I don’t know how many got saved, but we had, we had a great, wow,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:18):
Great. Well, if you’re enjoying listening to Michael’s story, I encourage you to go to Amazon, find miracle memories by Michael Ross, just type in miracle. Memory’s Michael Ross. And you’ll be able to find his book and, and see all the stories from what God has done in his ministry around the world. Brother, Michael, thank you so much for being with me today.

Michael Ross (34:39):
Hey, thanks so much, Daniel. I enjoyed it. God bless you. You too.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:42):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. If you want coaching and how to be a more effective evangelists, get in touch with me@kingministries.com. And could you do me a favor? Go find the evangelism podcast with Daniel King on iTunes and leave us a review. Your positive review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find us. God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (35:12):
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.

Tim Sutton was saved in a Salvation Army church when he was a child and they taught him how to witness using his trumpet. Today, he trains churches in witnessing. Recently he went to Sturgis, the largest Biker rally on the planet to tell people about Jesus.

Every year Tim Sutton goes with the Chariots of Light to the motorcycle rally in Sturgis which is called “The Larger Biker Rally on the Planet.” This year they prayed with 8,000 people there. He also goes to witness at the Daytona Beach, Florida.

What are “Impact America” Crusades?

Website: https://www.tsuttonministries.org

William Booth was the founder of the Salvation Army.

Quotes from William Booth, the Founder of the Salvation Army: 

Can we go too fast in saving souls? If anyone still wants a reply, let him ask the lost souls in Hell.

Go for souls, and go for the worst!

“‘Not called!’ did you say? ‘Not heard the call,’ I think you should say. Put your ear down to the Bible, and hear Him bid you go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burdened, agonized heart of humanity, and listen to its pitiful wail for help. Go stand by the gates of hell, and hear the damned entreat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters not to come there. Then look Christ in the face — whose mercy you have professed to obey — and tell Him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the march to publish His mercy to the world.

I’m not waiting for a move of God, I am a move of God.

If you need Evangelism Coaching, Call Dr. Daniel King, the host of the Evangelism Podcast.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Tim Sutton was saved in the salvation army church when he was a child and they taught him how to go out on the street in witness using his trumpet today, he trains churches in witnessing recently, he went to Sturgis the largest biker rally on the planet to tell people about Jesus. And today we’re going to find out what God did at Easter.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:25):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be 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 Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:01):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited to tell people about Jesus. And today I have a very special Guest evangelists, Tim Sutton. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Tim Sutton (01:15):
Hey brother, Daniel. Good to be with you today, sir. All right.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:19):
Knowing each other for a while through ICFM the International Convention of Faith Ministries, and then a couple of years ago, you had the opportunity to come with me down to the nation of Brazil, and we got to do a crusade together and had a wonderful time. And so it’s just so much a delight to get to know you because you are a true evangelist. Tell me a little bit about how you got started in evangelism.

Tim Sutton (01:53):
When it all started back there with the salvation army. That’s where I was born and raised where I got saved as a young man, 10 years old. And then when I was 15, the salvation army Bible college students, they call them cadets were at a revival service as well. You might know them. Most churches might know them in our church, preaching go to all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. And it was so loud. I heard the spirit of God say, you’re going to do that. And that’s where it all started. Man, just go to the world, preach the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:22):
Let’s talk a little bit about the salvation army. It was originally started by William Booth over in England, back in the mid 18 hundreds. And William Booth was quite the evangelist and he would dress up all of his people in bright red uniforms and they would have big brass instruments. They’d go out to the street corner and they would start to play music and it would attract people. And when all the music attracted a big crowd, then he jumped up and begin to preach to them. So, so William Booth was a salvation guy. He, he named it the salvation army because they had ranks in the army. They had lieutenants and captains and, and of course he was known as the general of the salvation army. So, so tell me some about what you learned from the salvation army about witnessing.

Tim Sutton (03:23):
Well, we move it all started at a place called the blind beggar. It was a bar of the day. He would go and preach outside of the blind beggar and what they did. They would take the songs that they were singing inside of the bar. There was one notaria song that the words went here’s the good old whiskey, drink it down. And they changed the words to here to storm the force of darkness, bring them down. And so he would go to the corners and preach the gospel. And one day he went home and he said to his wife, Catherine, when he’d been out preaching darling, I have found my destiny. So it was just born in the street like that. And as far as me, man, when I was 10 years old, they had me out on the corner. I would used to go, my dad played the trumpet. He taught me to play the cornet trumpet. We would go to a place called Clara Cox apartments and preach the gospel. When I was 10 years old, before I even started playing an instrument, they had me beating the bass drum and they would get me up to give my testimony. So that’s where it all started. I’ve had a love of going to the streets ever since brother, the Daniel

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:23):
And you continue to play your trumpet. I remember you, you brought your trumpet down to Brazil and, and played, and it was just a tremendous way to usher people into the presence of God. So

Tim Sutton (04:38):
It gets their attention. Yes, sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:40):
So now you train people in evangelism and you also take people out to do various evangelistic outreaches. What are some of the evangelistic outreaches you’ve done?

Tim Sutton (04:56):
I do well, the, the, the Lord spoke to me several years ago in Monks Corner, South Carolina, and said your purpose is to stir the church for the harvest and get them out of the four walls into the street. So that’s what I want to do everywhere. I want the church and it was last year, man, with all that happened last year, the church left the building and I’ve been telling everybody, don’t go back. Amen. Don’t stay in the building. Keep going out. So as far as outreach, there’s a, you know, I worked with the chariots of light. I’m a member of the church of light. And people often ask me, do I own a bike? No I don’t. But I’m a soul-winner that goes and helps them. And we went souls to go to Daytona. We go to Sturgis and we also take people out in the local churches. One thing we’re doing in April is an evangelism school out in Iowa, and we’re going to birth evangelism teams in a church there again, so that I fulfill my purpose there, the church for the harvest, get them out of the four walls to the street. Amen. You know, you don’t catch a fish in the bathtub. You gotta get out there with the fish on the Lake. So that’s what we do. So I’m intrigued go with the

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:58):
Motorcycle riders. And for the last several years, you’ve gone to the big motorcycle rally up in Sturgis, which is called the largest biker rally on the planet. And they have all kinds of bikers from all over America. Come to that. What response have you received have, have you been able to lead any bikers to Jesus?

Tim Sutton (06:20):
Oh Lord have mercy. I don’t do it by myself, but all of us together, I was this morning. I was doing some video work and just last year alone in Sturgis, I don’t have the actual figure in front of me, but it got nylon and close to eight or 10,000 people that receive Christ in streets as Sturgis. Same in Daytona last year, over 6,000 that were saved in the streets. I’m not, I’m talking about one by one. When there’s a, you know, 15, 20, 30 of us a day out there. If we all talk to a hundred people a day, it adds up really quick, really quick.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:56):
Talk to me about those conversations that you have with bikers, because bikers tend to be tough. Burly kind of the, the mental image I have is a guy with a beard and wearing black leather, probably some patches on the back of his, his leather jacket. And he’s not the type of guy that you would want to mess with, but how do you start that conversation? And where does that conversation go? How do you turn the conversation towards Jesus?

Tim Sutton (07:27):
One of the things that the president of the church of light that’s brother, bill horn, many people might know him. What God gave him several years ago was what we call the hand of God. And when we reach our hand out to shake their hand, that gets them to stop and we take their hand, they put their hand in our hand, we believe that the Holy Spirit’s going to touch them. They don’t know what’s happening, but God gets a hold of them. And our simple question is that, you know, for sure, without a doubt, 100% certain, are you on your way to heaven? I used to be like, what you said at first, I’ll be honest with you. I was intimidated. You need to think about bikers or whatever. I found out something. Some of them are just big bears, big Teddy bears. Okay. They may put up a front, they may put up a tough man image, but inside they’re people just like anybody else.

Tim Sutton (08:13):
And Hey, every biker that comes to the rally, they’re not a, in a motorcycle biker club, you got everyday people. That’s what I love about it. You got dentists and lawyers and all kinds of people that love the ride bikes. And they come to this bike rally. And because the loss people don’t come to church, it’s a great opportunity to get a hold of them, where they made, never received the gospel somewhere else. So they’re just like, we are just a matter of sharing. The love of God reminded them how much Jesus loves him. Yes, sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:44):
You’re going out of the walls of the church to where people are, where they need Jesus and talk to them about Jesus it’s is tremendous. And then you’ve also been doing impact America crusades. Tell me about that. What’s an impact America crusade.

Tim Sutton (09:00):
Well, it started several years ago. Well, what I called SWAT attack evangelism weekend. And that was when we would go with our ministry just on a Saturday, we’d go into a community. We give out toys, candy hot dogs gift cards, all kinds of things. Because fish comfort bait. We would do this in a community, setting an apartment complex, the section eight housing, somewhere like that started out as a one day event. But about three or four years ago, the Lord began to direct me to take that same template and go to a church where we hand out the five to 10,000 flyers in the days before the impact America crusade, we don’t build it as a church service. It’s built as gospel. I spring Fest or as fall festival or something, a community event. A lot of them may realize or come to church, but many people show up to get the free stuff.

Tim Sutton (09:47):
Gift cards, free cell phones, bicycles, toys, candy, thanks for the kids, whatever. But when they come, we preached the gospel. So now we take it beyond the one day on Saturday and we go for three or four days in the evening and people get saved, touched, healed, delivered, set free. And then we involve the local churches in that when they get saved, we have several pastors that get involved. We have them come up each night, introduce themselves so that those who received Jesus are fed into a local church. We want to be sure. And we’re believing God that when that crusade ends on Friday or Saturday, whatever we do in that particular community, that on Sunday morning, they are in church somewhere. That’s our goal impact America crusades. And with all this going on and has been going on in our country in the last few months, I told my wife a couple of days ago, Lord have mercy. That name that he gave me impact America. Crusade is even more pertinent now than it was when he put it in my heart about three, four years ago. I think.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:44):
Amen. One of the things I’m excited about is training other evangelists and coaching evangelist. And I just loved your attitude when you came down to Brazil, because you told me brother, I just want to learn everything there is to know about doing crusades. And now God’s put it on your heart to start doing some crusades of your own. So what are some of the things that you learned being there in Brazil and in seeing the ministry there and what are some of the things that, that you’re hoping to imitate and start doing in your own ministry?

Tim Sutton (11:21):
Well, I’m believing for the masses years ago, when the Lord spoke to my heart, he said, go to the world and preach the gospel to every creature I had. In fact, when we were there in Brazil, you remember I shared with you that the first time we stood up on that stage and saw that massive of people it’s undescribable, because I know I’ve seen that in my heart and, and even really in a dream before years ago, I saw this that God’s going to do there. I don’t believe I’ve touched what God wants to do. So my heart is to go to the world and I learned down there, it’s just the same template here. If you hand out the flyers, get the word out, blankets with what’s happening. I believe the people will come. And I saw, you know, some things that that, that work here and work there on a massive scale.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:11):
Amen. I remember you showed me a little track that you give away with, with a woman on the front. Tell, tell me about that track and why that the story of that woman is effective.

Tim Sutton (12:24):
Well, God dropped in my heart to write a track from that experience. It was at Sturgis, South Dakota, probably about three, maybe four years ago. It was a young lady who I encountered on the street as we were out during the day that she didn’t say it. But to me, it was evident. She probably worked in one of the strip clubs or one of the clubs of that one. She wasn’t a nice girl. Let’s put it that way. And the way she was dressed. And I just took, began to tell her about the love of Jesus. She looked at me and she said, well, I’m too naughty to be saved. I said, really, this is not about naughty or nice at this Christmas. Hallelujah. I said, here’s the deal. God is a giver. He gave Jesus. And if you received Jesus, you go to heaven. Simple as that.

Tim Sutton (13:07):
Well, she did right there on the streets. Amen. And so I wrote a track from that little testimony, praise God of that young lady there realizing that God will touch anybody. When they hear about the love of God. See what’s happened is people look at Christianity. Sometimes as religious, I’ve got to do a certain thing to live a certain thing, keep a lot of rules. They don’t realize it’s simply receiving a free gift of God. That’s what people got to discover. That’s what the body of Christ has got to discover. They think brother Daniel, that it’s hard to tell somebody about Jesus. No, it’s not. Has God ever done anything for you? Just tell him what Jesus has done for you to share the love of God. And that’s basically what happened with that young lady on the streets. It’s not about religion. It’s just about telling people to receive the free gift.

Tim Sutton (13:55):
In fact, I often use that particular terminology. I just ask people, did you ever get a Christmas present? Well, yeah. I said, what did you pay for it? Well, no, that’s right, because it’s a gift. You just receive a gift. And so that’s how the approach I use in the streets. Hey, receive the free gift of God for by grace. Are you saved through faith? It’s a gift of God, not of works. So that’s what we tell them. That’s what I told that young lady. And I’d say it changed her life. And Hey, it’s changing thousands of people’s lives because I got a good track out of it. Hey man. And I share it all over the world.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:28):
What’s the front of the tract say

Tim Sutton (14:31):
The front of the tract says you’re too naughty to be safe.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:35):
You’re too naughty to be saved. And so people start looking at it, but then they find out that it doesn’t matter how naughty you are. Jesus died for you and you can be set free from all that naughtiness. Amen.

Tim Sutton (14:48):
Exactly. Yes sir. Yes, sir. Tell me some more

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:52):
Testimonies of people that have been impacted as you’ve gone out witnessing and, and training others to witness.

Tim Sutton (14:59):
I was just doing a live video this morning. And one of the things God has shown me is that because my purpose is to serve the church or the harvest and get them out of the four walls in the street several days ago, he just dropped him a heart. I’ve got to begin sharing more and more of these testimonies so people can realize it’s not about you have to be fancy, or you have to know a lot of stuff. It’s about sharing what Jesus Christ has done for you. Amen. And one thing that people need to realize is if they will just listen, if they’ll just be observant, if they’ll just pay attention to what’s going on around about them, you don’t have to get a word from God. They’ll tell you what they need. They’ll tell you how you can minister to them.

Tim Sutton (15:40):
And I’m thinking of a certain situation that I talked about this morning when I was on the way to Sturgis South Dakota, just last August. I stopped at the rest area there to, to stretch my legs and walk around a little bit in South Dakota. And I heard this young man well, he’s younger than I am. And he began talking, I guess you may be in his early fifties. And I heard him say, well, I didn’t think I lived to be 38 years old. And so I’m just listening. I didn’t run up. I said, what do you mean? What are you talking about? You didn’t think you would live. I just listened. He was talking to a stranger and he was having a conversation. So I just ma I was milling around there in the, in the register. He reading the historical markers and the different things that had gone on in that area.

Tim Sutton (16:23):
And when it got off by itself, I just walked up to him and I couldn’t. And I, this morning, I was talking about seizing opportunity. A lot of times people will let opportunities pass by. That can be a soul winning opportunity. And so I simply walked up to him and said, Hey, how you doing today? Good to see you just started a conversation. And then I said, couldn’t help. But over hearing, I heard you say, you didn’t think you’d live, but to be 38 years old, I said, did you ever read what Psalm 91 said with long life, will I satisfy you and show you my salvation? That’s what God wants for you. So we had a little conversation there. Then I went right to my question. What do you know, without a doubt, sir, that you’re on your way to heaven. He didn’t. But before we got done, he did brother.

Tim Sutton (17:05):
Cause I don’t ask them. I don’t say, would you like to pray? I simply say, let’s pray right now. Say this with me. And he prayed and received Jesus right there. The thing I was trying to point out this morning to people, brother Daniel, is that you don’t have to be a rocket scientist or somebody with a PhD or a lot of training in evangelism to grab and seize an opportunity. Every Christian can and should be doing that with the people that they meet. There, there are hundreds of testimonies like that. Just talking with people out there where you are. Amen. So that’s what, what I tried to do. Start people. I get the testimonies in every church that go and every evangelism school, let them know what God did through us and remind them that God will do the same thing through you. Amen. Praise God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:51):
Amen. Let’s circle back around to William Booth, who started the salvation army and I’m working on a book about the history of bass evangelism. And one of the chapters in the book will be about William Booth. And so I’ve been collecting some of his soul winning quotes. And I just love these quotes because every time I hear them, it makes me want to be a soul winner. So here’s, here’s one. He says, can we go too fast and saving souls? If anyone still wants to reply, let him ask the lost souls in hell. And so that, that that’ll fire you up. If you

Tim Sutton (18:37):
Fast, faster, one time he told him about that. He said he said I I’m trying to remember just how it went. But he talked about if I have to hang over a hail and play the tambourine with my toes, come off in order to tell them about Jesus, I’ll do it. And another one I love with William Booth, you probably got this one written after researching him. One of the things he often said was go for souls and go for the worst.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:00):
Yeah. What, what does that mean? Talk about that. And how does the salvation army go after the worst?

Tim Sutton (19:08):
Well, the salvation army, the thing about them is, you know, differently than us. And I’ve often told him, I said, you guys don’t forget because I came out of the salvation army. I said, don’t forget the opportunity you have because they help people. They come to them, they come into their doors. They come in to receive help that, you know, they are a blessing to people. So they’ve got an opportunity that some churches don’t have just because they come there. So go for souls and go for the worst. You know, the drug addict, the homeless person, the prostitute, whoever it is, you know, God can change anybody. I can’t say that I can get into the heart of William Booth or the mind of what he meant when he said that, but I that’s quoted all of the place, go for souls and go for the worst. And it always touched me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:49):
The salvation army has always done that. They’ve always here in Tulsa, that right in downtown Tulsa, they have a mission here where they, every single night, they allow homeless people to come in. They give them beds then. And some of these are very rough individuals that are dealing with addiction and they’re addicted to alcohol, to drugs, you know, have very serious issues in their lives, but they’re there ministering to them and feeding them and giving them a place to sleep. And what a tremendous legacy that William Booth left. Here’s another one of his quotes. He says, not call. Did you say not heard the call? I think you should say, put your ear down to the Bible and hear him. You go and pull sinners out of the fire of sin. Put your ear down to the burden, agonized, heart of humanity, and listened to its pitiful whale for help. Go stand by the Gates of hell in here, the damned and treat you to go to their father’s house and bid their brothers and sisters and servants and masters. Not to come there. Then look Christ in the face whose mercy, you have professed tow Bay and tell him whether you will join heart and soul and body and circumstances in the March to publish his mercy to the world. What a tremendous yeah.

Tim Sutton (21:11):
At Harper. So he had a heart for souls. I mean, that’ll just fire you up. My prayer will be God, do it again. You know, do it again. Do it in every denomination, every church, every body of Christ, every, every believer do it again. He had a heart for the lost, had a heart for the lost

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:27):
Another quote from him. He said, I’m not waiting for a move of God. I am a move of God.

Tim Sutton (21:33):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:34):
What a Tremendous legacy to, to think that you’re not waiting for God to move. You’re going out and taking God’s love to people who need them the most.

Tim Sutton (21:46):
Amen. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:48):
Tell me about the book that you wrote. You just recently read your book and yeah.

Tim Sutton (21:54):
Yes, yes. You, you may not remember it Daniel, but I called you years ago before we really got connected and was asking you about that. And I didn’t know what to do, how to do it or whatever, but in the timing of God, yes, we just released a book last year called warning. Don’t forget what you’ve got. And that is the power of the anointing. And the ability of God is on the inside of you. The body of Christ needs to realize that we are the temple of God he’s in us. And all he’s waiting for us to do is to let him out. People run around and talking about, like you said what are you boosted? I am a move of God. You know, years ago, the Holy spirit spoke to me and he said, many people are wondering, where are the miracles?

Tim Sutton (22:34):
Where are the miracles of Elijah? Where are the miracles of the prophets? Where are the miracles of Peter and John spirit of God spoke to me? He said, the miracles are inside of you. Amen. So this book, the premise of it is that we can release what’s already on the inside of us so that people can come to Jesus. You know, years ago, brother Hagan used to talk about healing being the dinner bell. So when we released the power of God on the inside of us, I believe that they will cry out just like that. Philippian jailer did and say, tell us what must I do to be saved. Yes, sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:09):
If someone is interested in finding out more about your ministry or interested in supporting you, what’s your website, what’s the way for them to get in touch with you.

Tim Sutton (23:19):
I can get us in touch with us at T Sutton ministries dot O R G R. We of course, on Facebook, just Tim Sutton, the personal page and Tim Sutton ministries international the ministry page, praise God. So they can get in touch with us like that. If they’d like. Yes, sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:37):
That’s awesome. And if a church wants you to come and teach about soul-winning, you’d be willing to come and do that. Absolutely. Let’s go yesterday.

Tim Sutton (23:46):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:47):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. It’s always great to

Tim Sutton (23:52):
Talk to you. Yes, sir. God bless you, sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:54):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. If you want coaching and how to be a more effective evangelists, get in touch with me@kingministries.com. And could you do me a favor? Go find the evangelism podcast with Daniel King on iTunes and leave us a review. Your positive review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find us. God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (24:23):
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.

The Global Network of Evangelists was started by Luis Palau. Their goal is to identify, affirm, equip, and mobilize younger evangelists by developing a network of evangelistic networks that seeks to celebrate and accelerate evangelism worldwide. Today, we are joined by Desmond Henry, the director of the Global Network of Evangelists.

Questions I ask Desmond Henry 

How did you become passionate about evangelism?

What is the vision of the Global Network of Evangelists?

What’s the origin story of the Global Network of Evangelists?

What are some of the ways the Global Network of Evangelists can help those called to evangelism?

About Desmond Henry: https://btc.academia.edu/DesmondHenry/CurriculumVitae

For resources on evangelism and to join the Global Network of Evangelists, I encourage you to visit the website: https://www.evangelist.global/

For Evangelism Coaching, check out The Evangelism Coach from King Ministries International

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
The global network of evangelists was started by Luis Palau. Their goal is to identify, affirm, equip, and mobilize younger evangelists by developing a network of evangelists networks that seeks to celebrate and accelerate evangelism worldwide. Today, we’re joined by Desmond Henry. The director of the global network of evangelists.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:24):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. 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 Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:00):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a special guest Desmon. Henry is the director of the global network of evangelists, brother Desmond. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast today.

Dr. Desmond Henry (01:21):
Thanks Daniel. It’s so great to be with you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:24):
So I’m in Tulsa, Oklahoma, you are in South Africa and you were recently awarded a PhD in mission studies. Tell me a little bit about what you studied, where you studied and what came out of that study about evangelism.

Dr. Desmond Henry (01:45):
Yeah. Thank you for that, Daniel. I graduated with a PhD in the field of misseology from the university of Pretoria in South Africa, actually 2012, if I remember correctly. And so it’s been a little while since the study has been concluded, but I’ve, I’ve done some studies into the, the history, particularly of the Baptist movement in South Africa, its beginnings, how it’s developed and how effective churches are in evangelism and discipleship in the 21st century. And I did that primarily, obviously I taught within the Baptist seminary at that time. And and because I grew up Baptist, one such, you kind of know a little bit more about our history in the country and and, and more recently, of course how we can be effective as ministers within that particular denomination in South Africa and throughout Southern Africa as well. So it was a very interesting research project that took me on a road trip visiting probably about 80 or 85 different back sister congregations in South Africa. And they’re very diverse from like very Calvinistic and reformed on the one hand to very charismatic and spiritful than the other hand as well. And so it’s fascinating studying those different congregations and, and just seeing what God is doing in these movements throughout South Africa. So it was a great learning curve and I’m so glad I did it. I’m pled to, it’s done. Phd studies are not always easy, right? Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:23):
I agree. I graduated a couple of years ago with my doctorate of ministry from oral Roberts university and it was good going through the process, but I am glad it’s done to praise the Lord. So while you were studying and then before and after, you’ve also been very involved in, in planting churches and pastoring churches and in ministry and churches, you’ve always had a passion for evangelism. Where did that passion come from? How did that develop in your life?

Dr. Desmond Henry (03:55):
That’s a, that’s a great question. Daniel. I remember being a kid probably seven years of age, standing on the sidewalk in a city called Florida in Johannesburg. Can you believe it? We have a Florida here and, and this big bus came past and the driver stops right next to me and then asked me, Hey, young man, do you want to come to church? And what was particularly interesting about that experience because I’d never been to church before. And this, this bus driver was was nonwhite in, in South Africa. And those were during the, the, the days of apartheid in South Africa. And so it was very unusual for you know, to have a, in nonwhite best driver. And so I was really curious, like, what, why is this happening? You know, what is this got to do with church? And, and why does the church suddenly look very different to, to what you know, society does in general.

Dr. Desmond Henry (04:51):
And and his name was Willy and incidentally. He actually comes to the church that we pastor and we helped appliance a couple of years ago in Johannesburg now. And it was just such a wonderful experience that just catching up with him a little bit and and just hearing, you know, how he, he kind of served the board in, in ministry, but that was his deal back then in the early nineties or late eighties rather he served as the best driver and he brought a number of children to Sunday school back then as they called it. And I gave my life to the Lord at a young age and really had amazing mentors in my Christian faith. And, and that was probably what led me to become more evangelistically minded, I guess, is because that was the culture that I was brought up into our pasta moments, Schaffer.

Dr. Desmond Henry (05:43):
I was very missionally minded. He loved serving the community. He took me on, on mission trips and, and he really encouraged me in that way. And so I started my first church plant with a former rugby player, a national rugby player called Johnny Bookner. And we planted a church when I was, I think, 16, 17 years of age in a squatter camp, which is an informal settlement or shanty town just across the, the, from where we lived in Florida. And we, we planted a church in a bar and eventually the owner of the bar came to faith and we turned the bar into a meeting hall and eventually the church grew so big that the bar close down and replant the church in its place. And so just so encouraged to see God at work. And that’s really how I became very passionate about serving the Lord in evangelism and mission at a young age.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:42):
Wow. What a great story. The bar becomes a church and hopefully everyone who was in the bar becomes a believer. So that’s wonderful. And so recently you were asked to be the director of the global network of evangelists, and I’m also part of the global network of evangelists. I’m on the council, which I’m very honored to be a part of that. So let’s talk some about the, the vision of the, the global network of evangelist. What’s that all about?

Dr. Desmond Henry (07:15):
I know we certainly are very pleased to have you as part of our, our council there. And the global network of evangelists of course, was was something that was planted the seed that was planted at the 500 celebration of the reformation in Vincent Berg, Germany, where through the Lausanne Movement, they gathered a cup about a hundred leaders from around the world in Wittenberg and Kevin Palau got to sit around the table with a number of different leaders, Rafael Anzenberger from France, Emmanuel, Chris Xera from Kenya and Emma barista from Botswana. And they spoke a little bit about what God was doing around the world. And it was the vision for GE was really spot at that time. Now, of course, the Luis Palau Association have been working collaboratively through what is known as the Next Generation Alliance for about two decades, a ministry that was started by Luis Palau to encourage and equip and mobilize younger evangelists.

Dr. Desmond Henry (08:22):
But of course, this had been primarily a North American movement, and hadn’t really seen a lot of growth around the world. And when Kevin Palau made some of these leaders, of course, the vision was to take this expression and model those around the world, including evangelists from Africa, from all over Europe, Southeast Asia, and all parts of the world to join in those, this global network that would again identify from equip and mobilize evangelists around the world. And so the vision of GNE was born a number of years ago and has gained momentum and keeps growing as we progress forward in this great vision.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:10):
Let’s talk for a moment about Luis Palau. He is a great evangelist. He was born in Argentina and has often been called the Billy Graham of Latin America. He started his ministry doing lots of crusades across central and South America, and is been very well known in Spanish speaking countries for, for many years. And then he came to the United States and started doing large festivals, using a festival model of evangelism here in the United States and, and has done tremendous work. And I’ve had the honor of going to several of Luis Palau festivals. I went to one in New York city a few years ago where he said that when he was very young, God put the dream and vision in his heart to do an evangelistic outreach in New York city. And it took almost 60 years for that dream to come to pass, but we went and he preached the gospel right there in the, the middle of New York city in, in central park and then a new times square.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:25):
It was so awesome because of course, times square has all the big television screens and, and all the advertisements. And for 30 minutes while Luis Palau was preaching the gospel, all the advertisements went away and it was just a presentation of the gospel that the thousands and thousands of people that go through times square every day could hear a clear presentation of the gospel. So, so Luis Palau is a, is a great evangelist. And in about 20 years ago started the next generation Alliance, which was the goal of that was to, to raise up evangelists. And one of the things that I really like about the, the Next Generation Alliance, the NGA was this phrase that they have, there are many expressions, but one message. And so in the, in the next generation Alliance, they have many different types of evangelists. Some of the evangelists are what people typically think of, of evangelists, you know, standing on a platform, preaching the good news, but they also have action sports evangelists that ride bikes and do bicycle tricks, and then preach the gospel as a way of attracting attention that the, the everyone comes to watch the bicycle tricks, especially the young people, but then they take it an opportunity to, to share the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:48):
And then they have musicians that are involved in, in sharing the gospel and a motorcycle trick riders and many different expressions. And, and they’ve been very open in extending their arms to evangelists and making a place for evangelists to build friendships together, and then to collaborate, working together, to do evangelistic events, which I think collaboration is such a great value to have because none of us can accomplish what God has called us to do alone. We need one another. And so I’ve done several large events in different countries where evangelists from the Next Generation Alliance have come and participated and we’ve joined hands together. We’ve linked arms together in the fundraising aspect of it, and then in the preaching in the ministering. And so I’m very grateful for the Next Generation Alliance. And now there’s been this transition from the next generation Alliance to becoming the, the Global Network of Evangelists, which, which the next generation Alliance has 700 some evangelists that are participating many of them from North America. But now the vision is to develop a network of networks that the, all the different groups of evangelists from many different parts of the world can join together, work together, be in relationship with one another, encourage one, another cheer for one another, and start to develop relationships with one another. So, so talk to me some about this, this network of, of networks and, and kind of the vision, the goal of the global network of evangelists for building a worldwide network of evangelism, people who believe in evangelism.

Dr. Desmond Henry (14:05):
Awesome. I just love the way you described this ministry and and I think you’ve captured it so well. You know, we’ve, we’ve really had a heart to see evangelists working together for the sake of the kingdom for so many years. And I think part of that comes from the reality, of course, there, the plows association is headquartered in Portland, Oregon. And so I think in, in many ways, being in Portland has shaped more of a creative mindsets and innovative mindsets around how we can effectively reach secular cities for the more Jesus Christ. And what we’re really excited about as you, as you mentioned, is is in the next three years or so launching about 50 country networks of evangelists around the world where we elevate evangelism at a national level. And, and very often going into a particular country, you will see that there are pockets of things happening in different areas, but really at a national level, will you see leaders coming together and be willing to lay aside what we call their logos and their egos,ufor the sake of pursuing ways of reaching people in their country from a national perspective.

Dr. Desmond Henry (15:25):
And so we see ourselves as coming alongside these national leaders and evangelists and, and really supporting the work that they’re doing in bringing people together. And so we would love to convene leaders around the world and, and speak through what’s happening in their country and their cities and help structure them more of a plan towards evangelistic effectiveness and further in their particular communities. And so ultimately we have to be in 150 countries but we’d really want to do some deep work in these nations, working with leaders. And so for us, it’s not about numbers, it’s about names, people, ministries, countries, bringing people together for the sake of unity and working together with those countries. And so we’ve, we’ve pursued that and continues to do so, but even national level is not probably deep enough. You need to move down into cities.

Dr. Desmond Henry (16:25):
And so we’ve selected about two to three cities in every region, and we have UN nine regions around the world where we going to be focusing in and meeting with city leaders are doing a little bit of research as well to ask them, you know, what is the temperature evangelism in this city? What’s, what’s happening. And often we find that just bringing pastors and leaders together in a particular city can have a profound impact on what happens in their particular city. So asking some key questions around what’s happening, vandalism, what resources are there that what they feel is lacking what’s some of the needs are around this and what they feel God could do that particular city and another wonderful initiative that we, that we are very focused on it right now is what we calling advanced advanced group mentoring. And so this is more on a local basis.

Dr. Desmond Henry (17:23):
We have the national, we have the city, and then we have the grassroots level where evangelists majority world evangelists are bi-vocational generally speaking. There are very few evangelists that have ministry that sustains them financially. And so they serve in business as or have a secular job or they pastor a church. And so there are a lot of pastors to revenge lists too. So we, we like to bring these groups together and we’ve got some great material, great friends at the message trust in the UK has been Ben Jack wonderful mainstream guide that allows leaders to meet once a month for about two hours to pray together, to get sharpened on the word of God, to, to speak about and, and encourage one another about what’s happening in ministry share testimonies of effectiveness and, and even allow each other to share about what projects they have going, which of you to collaborate.

Dr. Desmond Henry (18:35):
And another big part of this, this movement called advance is is accountability, very evangelist you know, develop character alongside competency and skill in, in their particular focus area. Because I think character matters a lot in, in, in, in, in how we serve the purposes of God in our generation. And so asking those deep accountability questions. And so that’s, that’s a strategy that we have, and we’ve got the grassroots level, city level national level. And we’re really excited about what God is doing in exploding. These groups. We have advanced groups meeting now in over 35 nations, we’ve translated the material it’s about nine or 10 different languages with about six or seven store to go. And it’s just wonderful seeing hundreds of these groups meet around the world. And and we’re working in a number of cities around the world

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:35):
I’m involved in, in several different groups of evangelists. I actually have my own group of evangelists called the, the, the soul winners Alliance. And it really came out of a desire to build relationships with other evangelists and to see how I could help other evangelists. And so we’ve had a variety of meetings here in Tulsa of gathering evangelists together. And then I’m also part of the the network of empowered 21, which is a group of Pentecostal, charismatic spirit, empowered evangelists called the Global Evangelists Alliance. But I’m also part of the global network of evangelists. And I think it’s important to paddle your canoe and many different rivers to not limit yourself to just one group of relationships or one group of friends, because what God is calling us to do in these times is bigger than what any one group can do.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:41):
We all need to work together and to have relationships with one another and to, to join hands. And, and I think during this time, it’s important to draw circles of inclusion and not lines of separation for too long members of the body of Christ have, have been separated over sometimes very small theological issues. But I think it’s important to, to open our arms wide and to accept people of many different expressions of the faith. And so I’m just so delighted in, in what the global network of evangelists is doing, building these, these networks of evangelists in these different countries and the advanced groups. This is going to have a significant impact on evangelism around the world, which, which it’s harvest time. People all over the world are ready to come to Jesus. If someone will just go and talk to them about Jesus. And so part of the, the mission of the global network of evangelists is, is to encourage and lift up those who have a gift of evangelism upon their lives, and then to connect them with others so that they don’t feel alone so that they feel like many of us together can, can accomplish something great for God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:03):
So if someone is listening and they have a calling to be an evangelist, what are some of the things that the global network of evangelists can do to help people who have a a calling in evangelism or have that desire in their heart and how can people get connected with the global network of evangelists?

Dr. Desmond Henry (22:25):
Thank you. Thanks, Daniel. That’s great. And I so agree with you. Luis Palau has often been quoted saying you know, one evangelist, one church, one leader can only go so far, but together we can do so much more that you can rapidly capture God’s heart for us in this cultural moment, unity and the coming to all these streams.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:49):
What’s the website of the global network of evangelists.

Dr. Desmond Henry (22:54):
If you go to the evangelists.global, I think you’ll be absolutely blown away by some of the amazing resources available to you. The first one is a resource on collaboration where we’ve got some practical guides that we’ll be able to help you to take your collaborative efforts to the next level of collaboration, manuals, and helpful resources along the way, and advanced groups section, where you can download great curriculum and join advanced groups that are meeting globally and bespoke resources on a number of practical areas that will really bless you as an evangelist.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:32):
So I encourage you if you’re listening, if you’re a, an evangelist, a missionary, a pastor who has a heart for evangelism, if you want to be used by God to lead people to Jesus, go to evangelists.global, find out more about the global network of evangelists and more of the resources that are available to you. And, and so the website is evangelist.global and, and it will be a blessing to you Desmon. Thank you so much for joining me today on the evangelism podcast. I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us about the global network of evangelists.

Dr. Desmond Henry (24:14):
It’s been a great joy and privilege for me, Daniel. Thank you so much for having me. God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:20):
Thank you for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I want to encourage you to go to Apple iTunes, subscribe to the evangelism podcast. And could you do me a favor, please give us a review on Apple iTunes. Your review will help other people who are excited about evangelism to find this podcast. And if you need coaching in evangelism, give me a call, check out my website, King ministries.com

Speaker 4 (24:52):
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.

Ben Jack is advancing the Gospel by forming Advance groups that are designed to equip, encourage, and empower evangelists through monthly mentoring sessions. Advance groups have been wildly successful in Great Britain and now they are spreading to many nations in a variety of different languages.

What is Advance? The Advance Evangelist Movement exists to promote and stir up the gift of the evangelist. Through Evangelist Group Mentoring and the personal witness training offered from Advance Bootcamps, they are committed to equipping and empowering those who have a desire to prioritise the sharing of the gospel, be it from a stage or a one-to-one conversation.

Website: advance2020.org

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Ben Jack is advancing the gospel by forming Advance groups that are designed to equip, encourage and empower evangelists through monthly mentoring sessions, advanced groups have been wildly successful in great Britain. And now they’re spreading to many nations in a variety of different languages.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:20):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. 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 Daniel King. Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited to have a special guest with me today. His name is Ben Jack, and he is from the other side of the pond. He is from great Britain. And so we’re just so delighted to have you on today. Ben, thank you for joining me.

Ben Jack (01:15):
Oh, it’s great to be here, Daniel. Thanks for having me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:17):
So tell me a little bit about your background in evangelism and how you got passionate about serving Jesus.

Ben Jack (01:26):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I became a Christian in my teenage years. I grew up in a Christian home, but it took a while for it to kind of stick in my, in my heart, in my mind that Jesus was going to be Lord and not just the kind of part of my culture, you know, and when it did finally stick, I was thinking about going off to university or college as you call it in the States. And because of this new relationship that I have with Jesus, I felt like, you know, I’m not sure if I should go to college at this time, I feel like I want to go serve the Lord somewhere. So I ended up at youth for Christ here in great Britain. And I did a couple of years with them as an evangelist reaching out particularly to young people in a high schools, we’re very privileged over here to have access to high schools, to be able to share faith religious education as part of the curriculum.

Ben Jack (02:08):
And often Christians will be invited in to teach about Christianity and other subjects as well, which is great. So we would do that, but we would use creative arts to help engage the young people. I was a DJ. And so we’d use music to get them engaged in workshops with them and music classes as well, and then invite them to concerts where they could then have a good time, but crucially hear the gospel. And out of the back of that, I then continued on and I became a DJ in the, in the club scene for a few years and was just reaching out to that challenging environment, a lot of lost and broken and hurting and needed people in that world. And just trying to be light in, in what is often quite a dark environment after doing that for quite a few years, felt like the Lord was calling me then to more specifically turn DJ concerts into you know, evangelism comp concerts is that you can’t preach the gospel while you’re deejaying in a nightclub. You can talk to the, to the bar owners and the staffing be very relational, which is great, but I really felt like I wanted to use the music as a platform for them proclaiming from the stage. So we began to do those concerts over many years, but then for the last six years I’ve been working for an organization in Manchester in the UK called the message trust where we have established this, this project called advanced, which is all about equipping and encouraging the church for evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:20):
Yeah. And you’ve had really tremendous success in great Britain raising up evangelists in, in helping to, to mentor and coach evangelists. And it’s all through the advance group mentoring guide, which I have a copy of it right here, the bright red cover, which is beautiful and I’ve gone through it, great material here. And in fact this next week I’m going to Sierra Leone and we’re going to be training some evangelists there. And so we’re taking this material with us and we’re going to put it in their hands and they’re going to be starting advance mentoring groups in Sierra Leone, which is super exciting. So, so tell me how this got started and what you’ve been doing with it.

Ben Jack (04:07):
So the founder of the organization, the message trust is excuse me, as an evangelist called Andy Hawthorne is, is well known over here in the UK for really pioneering evangelism and evangelistic opportunity, particularly in the city of Manchester, but then around the UK as well. And he, six years ago really felt that as he gets older in years, he wants it to mentor younger preaching evangelists. So he gathered 12 around himself. I was one of those and he began to mentor us once a month for a couple of hours. And it revolved around five basic principles that we would meet regularly. That’s once a month, we would sharpen at each other in what the gospel is to really make sure that we weren’t miscommunicating, that we weren’t starting to preach our own ideas or the culture of the age or anything like that.

Ben Jack (04:51):
But what is the truth of the gospel and let that come through clearly, rather than through any of our clever, you know, communication or anything else. So sharpen each other, what the gospel is, accountability, that would be Holy people who carried a Holy message. Again, not to take away the accountability of the local church or the accountability of within a marriage or something like that. But just to be another layer of accountability that particularly focuses in on things around the task of evangelism and proclaiming living and proclaiming the gospel communication was another principle that between group meetings, we communicate with each other stories of encouragement, prayer requests and things like that. And then number five was that we’d think about multiplying one day that we would also then do what you’re doing by taking this guy to Sierra Leone. And that we would think about taking on a new group of our own or encouraging others to do likewise. And so we started that one group in Manchester six years ago, and now we have a thousand or so groups in 55 countries around the world. And I think it’s simply because the, like God likes it when we prioritize his gospel and his, and his breathed upon it. And the church needs as much resourcing and help as it can get that to be faithful to what God’s called us to do.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:07):
That is absolutely amazing. I think it’s a huge miracle. What you’ve done getting evangelists together. Talk to me about why you feel it’s important for evangelists to be in relationship with one another.

Ben Jack (06:22):
Well, I think evangelists could often be wired a particular way where there’s still quite a lot of diversity within the fraternity of or the sisterhood of evangelists, but there, we can often be wired quite similarly. We can be quite a Maverick in how we approach things and, you know, always wanting to get out and a back out. And sometimes we can come become a little bit disconnected to our local church community. One of the things that advanced really seeks to do is, is create community for the evangelist to grow and thrive, but consistently points back to the local church community and says like, you don’t get detached, don’t become isolated. Isolation will actually harm your ministry rather than help it. And so I think we need to be called in to fellowship. We need to be sometimes we want to champion enthusiasm.

Ben Jack (07:09):
We want to say, yes, keep going, be enthusiastic, keep, keep going and doing what God’s called you to do, but never neglect fellowship, never neglect the preparation. That’s why we have installed in it as as the first principle regular meeting. And we say, you know, you should treat that as a secret thing, even if a good opportunity ministry wise comes up, that you’ve already got your date in the diary. How seriously are you going to take it that God can do more with you in the secret place than he can in the public place. And if you want to go serve in the public place, you need to first prepare in the, in the secret place for want of a better term. So we certainly don’t want people to neglect their responsibilities out there in the world, but we also want to take it very seriously that God wants to prepare his people for his purpose.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:51):
So some of the 12 lessons that you have here in advance are the identity of the evangelist, the message of the evangelist, the task of the evangelist, the power of the evangelist, the devotion of the evangelist. I’m seeing a theme here of everything has to do with the evangelists. So the submission of the evangelist, the character, the opportunity, the commitment, and then the, the inspiration of the evangelists. So talk to me about some of these key principles that you feel it’s important for evangelists to talk about with one another.

Ben Jack (08:27):
Well, we’re actually developing a new version of the guide at the moment that gives you three years worth of group sessions, or what you have at the moment is just the first year. And in that first year, what we really wanted to do is make sure that we were talking about the character of, of the, of the people that are called. And I think we have a lot of evangelism training and equipping that is, that revolves around method. I’m going to give you a particular tracks or a particular way of explaining me, ABC of Greg gospel. And those things are very helpful and important for us. But before we employ a method, we need to make sure that we’re, we’re going to be good messages. And I don’t mean as communicators. I mean that our hearts are right before the Lord. And if we want to do that, then we need to understand the message deeply and richly.

Ben Jack (09:13):
Again, not just intellectually, but we need to know it, it needs to know us as much as we know it. And so are we letting God actually transform us into his ambassadors? That, that we, that we would know what it is to be ministers of reconciliation, because it’s not just a title that we hold. It’s the reality of who we are when we become Jesus followers, where we’re now not going to be ministers of reconciliation into the world, simply because Jesus has told us to, we’re going to be ministers of reconciliation, because this is who we are. Now we have a new identity. It’s just what flows forth from a Jesus person. So the character stuff that we outline in that first year is very much about what if we thought a little bit more about the people that God is calling us to be in light of what his gospel is, how might that affect us for our evangelism into the world. And, you know, as Leonard Ravenhill said, any method of evangelism will work, you’ve got is in it. So how do you make sure that God’s in the mandate? You make sure he’s in the messenger. How do you make sure God’s in the message and you make sure the gospel is in the messenger. Yeah,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:11):
That’s powerful. So what’s going to come in years, two and three.

Ben Jack (10:15):
Is a reflection on the challenges and the fruit of the evangelist. So it flip-flops each month. So one month you’re looking at a challenge that there is for us as evangelism, whether it’s, you know, persecution or, or focus or something like distraction, you know, whatever. And then, and then on the other month, you’ll be looking at a fruit. So what is the fruit that comes the fruit that comes out of you personally, the fruit that comes from your effort, the fruit of relationship with Jesus. And obviously looking at honing that in a little bit on the fruit of the spirit that we read about in Galatians. And it’s kind of like trying to look at the reality that often our walk with Jesus evangelism or otherwise is, is the rough and the smooth, not the Jesus is rough. His burden is light and his yoke is easy, but outworking our faith in this fallen world, that’s, that’s rough, that’s difficult.

Ben Jack (11:01):
And so what we wanted to do in the second year was having established character and who God’s calling us to be, what does that now look like? Well, sometimes it looks very hard. These are the challenges let’s think about those. And sometimes it looks incredibly fruitful. This is what that fruit can look like. And then the third year is actually where we really open it up for more of a bespoke approach for the groups. And instead of providing pre-written sessions to cover the whole year, we provide a whole wealth of different ways that you can approach it. So that by the third year, you know, your group better than we do, you know, their different needs, you know, where everybody’s at, you can take the suite of different ways of thinking about it that we offer and potentially create your own sessions month in, month out to specifically meet needs of your and developing groups.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:49):
So if someone is interested in getting involved in a group or, or starting an advanced group, and they have a passion for evangelism, they know some other people that, that have a calling from God to be an evangelist, how would they go about getting started having one of these advanced groups?

Ben Jack (12:07):
Well, what I would say is, first of all, if you are an evangelist, then, then this absolutely could be really helpful and beneficial. You know, we, we’ve been blessed to impact and work with a variety of different types of Angeles from all over the world and hearing their feedback and of how they use it. And there’s, there’s enough flexibility within how to use the sessions. There’s a level of prescription, but there’s also a level of look, make it your own, make it work for you. We don’t ultimately care if you follow the material. We, we just want you to be helped and to develop that by God’s grace and power in fellowship with one another. So use it to that extent. And, and we seeing real fruitfulness of it, but we’re also seeing more and more men and women who don’t necessarily believe they have the calling the office of the evangelist on their life, but they certainly want to do the work of you and you think they want to be a faithful witness into the world.

Ben Jack (12:53):
And so we actually have a number of people now engaging who wouldn’t say that they’re primarily evangelists, but they do have a passion for advantages. So look, whether you’re an evangelist, whether you just want to be faithful to the witness that God has called you to, you can get connected@advancedgroups.org. And there’s a, the website is available in English, Spanish, Portuguese. There’s also various sub sites for a few different countries. But even if there isn’t a sub-site in your country, just get in touch with us here in the UK, we’ll help you to get started, add, Hey, maybe we could even get a, a new sub site set up in your nation, get a translation of the material we’ve got about 14 translations of the guide currently available. The new guide we’ll be launching in March, which we’re excited about, but there’s everything you need to get started is right there@advancedgroups.org.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:37):
What are some of the languages that are available?

Ben Jack (13:40):
So we’ve got English, Spanish, Portuguese, German, French Arabic Swahili. What else have we got? We’ve got we got a couple South African languages in there. I think Amharic is, is Ethiopia is on the way if it’s not up already. So yeah, various languages, they’re all, they’re all for free. The whole thing’s free by the way as well. It doesn’t cost a penny. You just go and download it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:10):
Wow. What a tremendous resource for evangelists? I think this really answers a big need in the body of Christ for evangelists. Just the, there, there, there is a need among evangelists to, to be together, to work together, to encourage one another. Sometimes other parts of the body don’t always celebrate the evangelist the way that evangelists would like to be celebrated. You know, sometimes I’ll go on a missions trip to another country and lots of people get saved and, and God will do amazing things. I’ll come back. And the number one question I always get is, you know, what kind of food did you eat? I was like, you know, I want to talk about all the people that Jesus saved, you know but evangelists get excited hearing about all the people that were, were saved. And so just being around other evangelists encourages me and helps me to, to be in a better evangelist and to keep the fire in my own heart. And so if you’re listening, I’d encourage you to, to go in and get a copy of the advance group mentoring guide download it, it’s free and start a group of evangelists or start a group of people who have a heart for evangelism. And let’s encourage evangelism in the body of Christ brother. Ben, do you have a one final thought about what Jesus is doing in the world today?

Ben Jack (15:35):
Just to encourage people and say, yeah, just encourage people to say that the, you know, we’re in some very strange days at the moment with, with COVID and all the other challenges that are associated with it. And we have plenty of challenges even before COVID came along. So this world is a complicated and strange place. And yet day by day, God is continuously revealing his glory. And I have seen more opportunity for gospel proclamation and engagement with my neighbors, with those closest to me with strangers than at any other point in my 20 year evangelism journey and my 38 year life journey. This is a moment where people are open. They’re thinking through their foundations. They are scared, they’re concerned. We in no way seek to come in and exploits the chaos. What we seek to do is come in and exalt the one who can bring peace to the chaos and through you right now, any way, shape or form feeling a bit deflated or defeated. Let me encourage you brother or sister. God wants to work in your life powerfully and he will do wonderful things. If you will simply say, here I am, Lord, I’m available. I’m willing and he can take care of the rest.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:41):
That’s awesome. Well, Ben, thank you so much for joining me on the evangelism podcast. I love what you’re doing and I believe it will result in many people getting saved around the world. God bless you.

Ben Jack (16:54):
Bless you, Daniel, take care. Thank you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:56):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, I’m Daniel King and I’m always excited about telling people about Jesus and I’m also excited about helping other evangelists. And so if there’s something I can do for you go to my website, King ministries.com and get in touch with me. And also while you’re at it, could you leave me a review on iTunes go and your five star review will help other evangelists to find this program because we want to help everyone

Evangelism Podcast Host (17:28):
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.