Finu Iype is the founder of Passion to Reach Ministries. He is impacting Canada and the world with the Gospel. Today he talks about why local churches need to have a paradigm shift in how they reach out to the lost.

Questions for Finu Iype:

You have had a huge impact on Canada and on other nations around the world. When you were 15 years old, you saw a vision of people falling into a lake of fire. Tell me about that vision and how it impacted your life.

How can a church develop missional thinking?

How did your ministry get started?

You have developed a Missional Church Blueprint that helps turn churches into missional churches. Talk about the three distinct phases of this process and tell me how this process helps churches.

The Greater Toronto Area is cosmopolitan and multi-cultural. There are many different religions and many different nations represented. How do you reach people for Jesus in this post-modern, post-Christian environment?

Books Mentioned:

Websites: 

https://thisisvillagechurch.com

https://www.passiontoreach.com

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Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
The new hype is the founder of passion to reach ministries. He is impacting Canada and the world with the gospel today, he talks about why local churches need to have a paradigm shift in how they reach out to the lost.

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, 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 (00:51):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m very excited to have one of my good friends from Canada with me, the new EIT. Thank you so much for joining me on the evangelism podcast.

Finu Iype (01:04):
Daniel, I am so thrilled, super honored to be on the podcast with you. I’m so grateful for our friendship and for everything God’s doing through King ministries international and yeah, just love what you and Jessica all about and your family, and great to be great to be on the show today

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:26):
For new, you’ve had a tremendous impact on Canada helping the churches of Canada. And you’ve also done a lot of ministry in other nations around the world, but let’s start at the beginning. When you were 15 years old, you saw a vision of people falling into a Lake of fire. Can you tell me about that vision and how it impacted your life?

Finu Iype (01:47):
Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, quick backstory, I grew up, my parents are originally from South India. I was born and raised in a little Island in the middle East called the kingdom of Bahrain. And my parents were believers. They were my mom was second generation. Her dad was a Brahmin Hindu who came to Jesus through a vision of Jesus actually. And then my dad was first-generation you know, evangelical, born again, baptized Christian. They were in previously Orthodox, nominal Christians back in India. So grew up in a Christian home and had the call of God on my life from when I was really young. Actually I think it was 10 years old when I had the first person that I can remember pray for me. And basically give me a prophetic word and say, God’s gonna use me around the, around the world to preach the gospel.

Finu Iype (02:39):
And there’s the last thing I wanted to do, Daniel. Honestly, it wasn’t, it wasn’t like, it was like, yes, I got this prophetic word. It was like, no, no, I don’t want to do this. It’s the last thing I want to do because you know, our context at the time was we were in the middle East and all these pastors and, and, and, you know, ministry leaders would come from India to raise money, you know, cause the middle East is obviously more prosperous and they would come to raise funds. So that was my context of what ministry was going to look like. And I don’t want anything to do with it. And then when I was about 12 or so 12 or 13, I had the skin condition on my face that broke out where literally all of my face. I mean, your audience can’t see me, but I, like I said, I’m from India.

Finu Iype (03:18):
So my skin is Brown, but my skin, my face Daniel looked sort of like your face. It was white. Like it just like we’re all over the skin on my face was peeling off. Went through a really rough time. You can imagine going to high school, a Brown kid with with white patches all over his face. And so yeah, went to the best doctors we could in in Bahrain at the time, went to the American mission hospital which was the best. And yeah, I mean the dermatologist there after two years of treatment said to me for new, I really don’t know what to do. Like I’ve tried everything. The only other option is to do a biopsy of your skin on your face, but that’s most likely going to leave a scar on your face for the rest of your life.

Finu Iype (04:01):
So you need to think about this. So I, I go home and I’m completely devastated, 15 years old, Daniel. And I’m like, God, I don’t, I don’t understand why, why do I have to go through this? None of my friends, even, you know, people that don’t know Jesus have don’t seemingly are not struggling with anything like this. So why, why me? You know what I’m so I’m praying and I’m just crying out to God one night. And all of a sudden I see this vision and I end the vision. It’s like hundreds of thousands of people are walking to the edge of a cliff. Like almost like zombies, you know, like they don’t know what’s really going on. They’re not connected to reality. They’re just sort of following the crowd kind of deal. And then they, when they get to the edge of the cliff, they’re actually going to fall over into this Lake of fire.

Finu Iype (04:45):
And until they get to the last row, they don’t realize that’s what’s going to happen at that point there, I could literally see their faces, the horrified look on their faces and, and they’re trying to pull back, but they can’t. And so they basically get pushed over the edge and I can hear their screams and I’m crying and I’m weeping. I am way I’m like somebody, this thing is so real. To me, it’s a vision, obviously it’s not real, but it’s, it’s so real that I’m like physically just weeping for these people that I’m saying, somebody tell them, this is literally what I say out loud. Somebody tell them somebody tell them. And then, you know, I’ve been a Christian for, you know, most of my life at that point, I give my life to Jesus when I was seven baptized when I was 12 being a, you know, a part of a church the whole time.

Finu Iype (05:29):
And I never thought about souls. Like I never thought about another person other than me, you know, we grew up in a very traditional Indian church where it was like we, you know, we would do like our pastors would wear white only for the most part. You know, the women in our churches would not wear any most of the most part, no makeup, no ornaments, no jewelry, nothing like that. Like it was very like traditional legalistic kind of. And so the concept, even though I don’t think I ever heard anyone say it out loud, you know, the underlying philosophy of what it meant to be a Christian was we are people that have made sacrifices and live differently from the world. So we’re going to go to heaven and the world’s going to go to hell and you need to stay away from the world.

Finu Iype (06:12):
That was the sort of thinking. And so never even thought about it. Wait a minute, we live in a Muslim nation. We live with Arabs all around us. Like these people need Jesus. Aye, aye, aye, aye. Half jokingly. But it’s true. Say, you know, we would, you know, any people we love to pray. Okay. Let’s sorta like the Africans in that sense, like we’re always praying. Like we had prayer meetings every day of the week. We had all night prayers, fasting prayers, 24 hour chain prayer meetings, right? Constant prayer. I don’t remember one prayer meeting ever. The, I lived there for 17 years that was called to pray for Bahrain, like pray for the people of this nation. So so I share that context to tell you that this vision is so out of the ordinary, I’ve never experienced anything like it. And for the first time in my life, I’m actually thinking about souls.

Finu Iype (06:57):
And, and that night, the Lord spoke to me, Daniel. And he said to me, your life belongs to me. C w when I was four from when I was 10 to that point, when I was 15, my mom would always remind me, but all these, you know, sort of prophetic words, like anyone with any kind of a prophetic gift that would come to our church would basically say, you know, you’re going to, you’re going to travel the world. You’re going to preach the gospel. Right. And I’d always say to my mom, I’ll never do it. I’ll never do it. I’d say my life belongs to me and I’m going to decide what I’m going to do with my life. So that night, you know, the Lord speaks to me and says, your life belongs to me. And I surrender my life. So if you asked me, when was the moment you surrender the rest of your life to preaching the gospel and doing what God’s called you to do? It would be that day, December 7th, 2000, I was 15 years old. And that was the moment.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:46):
Wow. And so you launched out into ministry share with me some of the history of your ministry and what you’ve done since that moment.

Finu Iype (07:58):
Yeah. I mean, that’s a, that’s a loaded question. It could be a pretty long answer, so I’ll try to keep it short. So anyways, I mean, I guess after the vision, I’m 15, you know, I, I started in my life to ministry. The Lord ends up. So I ended up going, not going back to the doctors or, you know, taking the medication cause it was all these side effects. And I said, if God really spoke to me that I’m going to trust him to heal me. So I know that this is really God’s plan for my life. So a year later a pastor comes to a home praise for some oil asked me to apply it on my face, just this regular cooking oil, not like, you know, olive oil from Israel or any, any of that fancy stuff, you know, just like zero cholesterol, canola oil kind of thing, you know, and he just prays for it.

Finu Iype (08:38):
And he’s like, you know, for new, I believe God’s going to heal you. And I just need you to put this in your face for a week and see what happens and sure enough, I was totally healed. And I went through like another, like very major healing experience. I don’t want to take time to talk about that right now. But so after that at the age of 17 through a series of what I can only say are like, you know, God opportunities and doors that opened up. I moved to Canada, Toronto to go to Bible college when I was 18. And and my heart was, you know, I want to preach the gospel because I had had multiple sort of words from the Lord that said I would go to Canada. This is before Canada was ever even part of the conversation.

Finu Iype (09:22):
You know, as far as going to a Bible college, in fact, it’s funny. One of the opportunities I had was at oral Roberts university in Tulsa, where you are cause we had someone related to our family that worked on staff there. And so they had reached out and said, Hey, you know, I know you want to go into ministry. You know, it’s already you and you know, something you’d consider it and I would have loved to, but when I prayed, I sense that, that wasn’t the direction in Canada was the direction. So the Lord has said to me from Canada, you’re going to go around the world. And so I got here at 18 and right away, I was like, I got to preach the gospel, you know, and I got to let people know and that kind of thing. And it was hard because a lot of the people I went to school with were, were not necessarily there yet.

Finu Iype (10:02):
They weren’t there. Like, let’s, let’s get a team together, let’s go out. And so I think it was when I was 19 or so I connected with a person that ended up being my mentor was a pastor at the time. I think it was in the sixties and being with the the POC would just basically the summits of God in Canada. And I said, you know what, for new, I, I really sense that the hand of the Lord is on you for evangelism. And I want to help set things up for you. So basically from when I was 19 Daniel, I would go into like all these rural towns. Right. So outside of the Toronto area, talk to pastors, like cold call them door knock. Right. And it was stopped. Like, you know, I’m a Brown kid from a country called battery that no one’s heard about with a name, like for new eyes that most people can’t pronounce until the fifth or sixth try.

Finu Iype (10:51):
And you know, I’m like, you know, I’m showed up to town saying, I want to be the evangelists for you guys. And I want to bring their lives, Georgia, also church and the Baptist church altogether, we rent out a ballroom in a hotel and preach the gospel, you know? And, and it’s, it’s hilarious. Cause I, I feel sad in some sense or sorry for the people that were in those initial meetings. Cause I don’t even think they could probably fully understand everything I would say because of my accent, you know, like, you know, in the Indian now in the Indians, have you ever come across somebody that grew up in India or grew up in an Indian family, we struggle with certain words and certain pronunciation. So the one that I always struggled with, which is sort of universal people, I guess from Indian background is V’s and W’s right.

Finu Iype (11:35):
So I keep saying the window is open, you know what I’m saying? And, and so John would always my mentor that’s like for new it’s window, not Bendo. So, so I’d constantly have to like be, be trained even in my speech. But you know, Daniel, when I think back to that, I haven’t even talked about this in long. So it’s refreshing going back to these memories. What stands out to me is passion. Like it didn’t, I mean, I wasn’t probably the best communicator bro. And I was, I was in second year of Bible college, like I was new to Canada. So probably there wasn’t a lot of cultural contextualization going on or any of that, but it was like, for me it was like I’d experienced something and I wanted other people to experience the same thing. Like I had experienced Jesus. I had experienced his power, his healing power.

Finu Iype (12:23):
I’d experienced that the presence of, of Jesus I’d experienced forgiveness of sins. I’d experienced the reality of, Hey, we’re going to a crisis eternity without faith in Jesus, you know, eternity away from God, eternity in hell. And I want people to know that there is an answer, there is a solution. His name is Jesus. And if you put your trust in him, not your works, but if you put your trust in him, he will save you and he will transform your life. And that was it. Like he was passionate, you know, like money, like, you know, I had met Daniel. I talk about this often that people complain about, Oh, you know what, no, one’s paying me a salary. I’m like, I didn’t go shopping. When I moved to Canada for the first, maybe four years, three or four years, like it was ridiculous. Okay. I was wearing the same stuff, all my initial suits case. So back in the day, I’m sorry to say this, but I wear a lot of suits and ties. Cause part of, you know, how we were trained in ministry, you know, you, you sort of dress,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:13):
You can’t be anointed unless you have the right suit on. And if you can embroider your logo on it even better,

Finu Iype (13:20):
I didn’t get that far. We didn’t, we raise that much money right. For the gold embroidery. But but yeah, my suits are all hand me downs. There was just, people would just say, Hey, if you know, I have this also that I want to give away, do you want it? And that’s my, so like, it didn’t matter. We didn’t have the, I didn’t have the funds to do it. And literally every meeting, it was like, God, I just pray that you would provide that the money will come in and the offering or a business person in that town would write a check for us or whatever. And I was making, I remember we were turning over probably dollars in the thousands and my salary a month at the time was $100. I mean, I lived with family. So that helped, I, I had some relatives in Toronto area at the time, but yeah, a hundred dollars.

Finu Iype (14:01):
I mean probably buy me coffee for the month, but that was it. So no shopping, no nos expenses, but, but the ministry was growing a lot faster because I was like, I just want to go preach the gospel. And yeah, man, that was, that was where I learned. That’s where I learned to figure it out and do it at 19 and 20 and small town, Ontario. You know, and just with pastors who were very generous. I mean, when I think back on these guys, bro, I am so grateful that they gave me a chance. Cause I just, I just think of being in that position now, like, wow, like they definitely either, either they heard from God or they just felt bad for me. They just couldn’t say no to this kid who really believed that God could use them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:43):
Well, thank God that he can use anybody. And you have grown a lot in the Lord since those days. And one of the things I really like about you is you are a strategic thinker. You like thinking about how churches can be effective at reaching people. You like helping churches, coaching churches. Talk to me some about how you help churches develop missional thinking.

Finu Iype (15:12):
Okay. So let me also share with you a little bit about the journey that got me there because initially I wasn’t thinking that way at all. So my model Daniel at passionate reach ministries was crusade evangelism, right? Which is obviously I’m not just familiar with it. You’re probably, you know one of the experts when it comes to crusade evangelism,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:32):
I did my doctorate of ministry on a mass evangelism. So I’m probably one of the two or three experts.

Finu Iype (15:39):
I did not do a doctorate on that, but I mean, I just figured it out on the, on the go. And so initially the first about seven years of my ministry, 20 minutes, but when I was 22, about 27 was, you know, international evangelism and crusades. And we did about 20 nations around the world in that period of time. And and that was my heart and I loved it. I loved doing that. And, and you know, as you know, in Africa or India and South America there’s so much opportunity for this people actually respond to any event that happens in town. Cause they just curious, they want to know what’s going on, you know? And so it’s a great way to reach a lot of people. At one time one of the things I struggled with in those days was in that season of crusade, evangelism was the up like one of the, so we, you know, just like, I’m sure you do.

Finu Iype (16:32):
And most ministries that do mass crusades do we had we had a whole workbook, like we had a whole template and a whole crusade manual and training for followup and, you know, decision cards and, you know, timelines for churches and all of that was built into the crusade. And so we did our best. And when it came to due diligence with, with making sure these people that came up front and made a commitment and signed the card were followed up. But what I found was even with all of that prep work, that we did the culture of the church, wasn’t always the right culture to accept and embrace new people. And what I, what I sort of related to is it’s like an organ donation, right? When you have an organ donor and you’ve, if, you know, if you have a kidney given or whatever it is you generally need to take, I forget the exact terminology for it right now, but it’s like anti rejection drugs or something like that because your body basically rejects the organ.

Finu Iype (17:33):
Cause it says, it’s not part of this body. And so you have to take these drugs forever. So your body doesn’t do that. And that’s what it felt like. It was like, yeah, they had all the systems there, all the tools. But because this guy was the drunk in town and he just didn’t have a home and he didn’t dress. Right. And he didn’t talk. Right. And there’s, you know, half asleep or not there or whatever, it was good. He was just so radically different from that group of Christians in that church, even though they had all the systems, they weren’t embracing this person. And so that’s where the seed of this thinking started. It was like, I was like, God, I love this part of the ministry. I love the crusade part of it. I love calling people to faith, but I also care so deeply about what happens to them, you know?

Finu Iype (18:13):
And, and sometimes this is the trap that, and this is an evangelism podcast. So I can talk about this. This is a trap that us evangelists fall into. Right. Friends who will say to me, Oh yeah, I got 20 Muslim save last week. I’m like, wow, that’s phenomenal 20 month. Like that’s, I’ve never heard of that. I’m like, well, I’d love to talk to them. I’d love to talk to like how the, Oh, I don’t know where they are. Like what, what do you mean? Like what, Oh, you know what? I just, I just asked them, do you want to pray? And I just let them listen to the spread, give them a new Testament and said, just go read this. And I just left it. I didn’t get an information. I didn’t do any. That’s interesting. I’m not, I’m not knocking it. I’m not give me that Bible say that prayer doesn’t matter.

Finu Iype (18:54):
I mean, that’s a great thing to do. That’s a great word. But it’s like, is that really what it means to, to lead something, somebody into a relationship with Jesus, for saving faith to be formed in their heart. I, I questioned that, you know, and so that’s, that’s sort of where it started for me was like, okay, how do we, it helped churches think missionally that I exist. We exist as an organization to constantly incorporate new people into faith in Jesus and into the body of Christ and help them figure that out. So part of the transition process was about seven years ago. Now God was really speaking to me about Canada. And so when I was 17 Daniel, before I moved to Canada, I was praying one night and I had a vision. And then the vision I saw explosions of fire from the East coast to the West coast of Canada.

Finu Iype (19:46):
And the Lord said to me at that point at 17, never been to Canada, didn’t actually know much about, you know, globally people know more about the us than they know about Canada. They assume Canada is similar, but they don’t really know a lot of details about Canada. So I didn’t know much about Canada. And but the Lord said to me, you’re going to be a part of something that’s going to reach the nation. Like you’re going to reach Canada. And so that was my heart. And I felt I had landed, I think from Al crusade in Africa, came to Toronto to Pearson. And I was like, I’m looking around media and I’m thinking the same people. I’m pretty sure there are here. I don’t know if you know this, if your listeners know this, but Toronto is one of the most multicultural, diverse cities in North America, maybe even in the world.

Finu Iype (20:26):
Okay. So we’ve got people from every country. You can imagine living here and working here and, and raising their families here. And I was like, I’d love to do something about it, but my challenge was no one seemed to want any evangelists to come in, to do a three-day evangelistic revival. You know what I mean? I mean, it sounded so old school, none of the churches that I was connected to in the were wanting the greater Toronto area, we’re wanting to do something like that. So I was like, God, I don’t even know where I fit. I feel rejected as a, as a, as a person, as a Christian with an evangelistic gift, I feel rejected, but the organized sort of church structures. And so I had a conversation with at the time was my was my pastor, my church. And I said, I really want to test this out.

Finu Iype (21:10):
I feel like an evangelist can also be an equipper. And that conversation led to working with that church for a couple of years. And we saw tremendous growth. I mean, within the first six months, I think we had like 50, 50 salvations and 30 baptisms, you know, which was like, that’s what record breaking. I mean, the church was about 200 5,300 people at the time probably. And so, so that led to work. This could actually work. And so we started doing so I was doing at the time I was doing, you know, two weeks out doing crusades in different parts of the world. And then two weeks in working with the church as an equipper, helping them figure out how to reach their community. So after about about two years of that, where we at about a hundred ish, 120, 130 people come to fade 70, 75 baptisms, we said, okay this could actually be something that many churches can take advantage of and learn from.

Finu Iype (22:05):
And so I pass was asking me all the time for new, what are you doing? How is this happening at a local church, no crusade, no guest speaker coming in, nothing fancy, nothing out of the ordinary, just working within the culture of the church to change the way people think they changed the way leadership thinks and change the structure of the church to be missional. And so that led to about five years of consulting and coaching with churches on how to do that. So coming back to your question and I give that context to say it, wasn’t like, I just sat down in my office one day, I’d give up with this grand idea of how do you get your, just to be missional. It was more like in my, from my perspective, and this is probably different in the U S and definitely, I’m sure you different where you are Daniel in the Southern part of the U S but in Canada, crusades don’t work.

Finu Iype (22:52):
Partly because churches don’t want it. And partly because people just don’t respond to another event in town, I guess it’s not the thing. So if, from my perspective, the best way for me as an evangelist to function in my context and the Toronto area was to be an equipper of churches and to help people figure out how to reach their community. So the biggest shift I’ll start here and you can sort of ask me specific questions if you’d like to. But the biggest shift is looking at your church as a mission sending organization. So just the same concept, the same thing you would do, like a mission society for instance, would do in finding Christians that have a heart for a nation, equipping them, training them, teaching them language, teaching them culture, teaching them all of that, and then sending them on the field and giving them support a church needs to think that way, like one of the things I would say to churches all the time is your community.

Finu Iype (23:47):
Like literally the people that live in your community are not the same people, not none of the unique people that lived here when this church started 30 years ago, it’s literally a whole new crop of people. So you keep saying, Oh, we’ve evangelize the community. We’ve reached people. We’ve dropped off tracks at every door. I’m like, those were different people. You dropped off tracks too. I mean, it’s the same property, but different people. And in our context, like I said, because of the immigration, these are not, these are not even the same kind of people. There are different kinds of people that, that have different kinds of desires and needs and pain points and, and hopes. And it’s like, how do you speak to them? And the average church pro had no clue. Then they hadn’t even studied the community. They were in to know what are the needs of this community. And that’s one of the biggest challenges I faced was most churches want to do missions in their community based on what they like to do. And my point was, it doesn’t matter what you like to do in reaching people who look like

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:51):
Them and talk like them and that are comfortable with them. And so it was really takes a whole different paradigm of thinking to think the world is a mission field and right outside my door is a mission field. I need to think in a way that I can reach people.

Finu Iype (25:10):
And part of the challenges, see we celebrate what we celebrate is what grows Daniel, right? So we celebrate, Oh, we got another new family that moved in from this part of town or whatever. They don’t grow near the community, the great leaders they’ve got a great job. He’s a manager at a car dealership, or he’s a, you know, she’s a manager of a local hospital or something. And we celebrate that, right? So we communicate constantly. We want well to do, you know, put together families, you know, mom and dad, three little beautiful kids. You know, they’re going to jump on the board. She’s going to be the head of the Sunday school department. Like, this is what we want. We don’t want the guy that doesn’t look like us. Doesn’t eat what we eat. Doesn’t dress decent. Doesn’t have a job. He’s actually right now, you know, in between jobs and actually needs help from the church.

Finu Iype (25:59):
Like we don’t celebrate that. We don’t say, wow, we’ve got a family. You know, they’re in desperate need church. We’re gonna rally around them. We’re going to love them. It’s not what we talk about from the pulpit. We don’t talk about, we don’t celebrate in our annual reports. Sally, who is one of our church members now has built relationships with five families that are non-Christians. And she goes out with all of their kids to the park once a week for a kids activity. No one talks you don’t, you don’t even hear Sally’s name mentioned, right? Because that’s not what we’d celebrate. We celebrate the dollars. We celebrate, you know, new services. We celebrate the influential people we attract. And part of the thinking is we need to change the way, look at the scorecard in the North American church, right? It’s not just about those externals. It’s about what are your people doing to build authentic relationships with people that are far from Jesus in your community, find those stories. And in fact, if possible, find the stories that have not yet resulted in those people becoming Christians. Because when we constantly highlight only the stories where people become Christians, we are, you know not, not obviously, we’re not saying this, but we are communicating that

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:26):
One that finished my man. Yeah. Only the finish line matters. You’re not celebrating the process.

Finu Iype (27:32):
When you asked me, what is missional thinking? How do you help to just figure this out? Is that you celebrate engagement? That’s what you celebrate. You celebrate people getting involved in people’s lives. People caring for their local school systems, people giving to their local charities. Don’t come up with your own. And this is the challenge we have, right? It’s like, it’s gotta be our charity. There’s an issue with the, with the, you know, the paint in our schools. Okay. Instead of just helping the local charity, that’s helping repaint all of our schools. We start the Christian assemblies of God or Christian, you know, community, church, painting service. And it’s like, because it’s like, if it’s not my thing, we don’t want to do it. It’s like no, send your people into local existing charities. So they can be part of the fabric of the community and start engaging in relationships with people that serve there and people that are served by them.

Finu Iype (28:23):
That’s the better strategy instead of taking on the administrative responsibility of creating all these new programs and new projects, which by the way, is why boards ended up saying to bleed pastors. Nope, we’re not doing another thing because it’s too much work. And I agree, but the point is find the people that are doing it. Daniel, I’ll give you this example. Like at one point we were doing this we were doing these events called cycle Fest. And it was basically like we would do this event where people in our community would run walk cycle to raise money for community causes. So let’s say a wing of our local hospital or whatever, but it wasn’t like just church people. It was just community people as well. Part of that, what we would do is we would help give away bikes to kids that couldn’t afford it.

Finu Iype (29:12):
And you know, I I’ll never forget this. I’ll never forget this moment. We connected with a bunch of charities and what these charities would do, Daniel, they would rent buses like big school buses. They would pack these buses with families in the community, send them over on their dime, you know, the, the organizations paying for it so that these kids would get training on. Cause they’ve never written a bike. So we would bring in bike instructors, train them, fit them to the right bike, get them a helmet and all that stuff. And, and I remember the church being full of people. Non-Christians lots of actually a lot of the Muslims sitting in our church, waiting for their kids to get fitted and trained on how to ride a bike. And I’m thinking I’ve done nothing. Literally that event at that point was completely zero cost for the church because all we did was we went out to people and said, Hey, we’re doing this for this community. Would you like to partner with us? And they brought the people to us. We didn’t even have to go looking for the people once they came to us, these people like, who are you over a church? Really? Wow. And the, we got to have amazing conversations, build relationships and, and brought, we literally saw people come to faith in Jesus because of those kinds of events.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:24):
So talk me through the process of how you would help a church say you have a church urban church, 200 people, you know, they’re, they’re doing normal church type things. How would you help that church to start thinking more strategically in how they’re reaching people?

Finu Iype (30:45):
Well, the first step is I would, you know, talk to the board and talk to the pastor, right? Here’s what I believe you can never duplicate or replicate what you don’t live. So one of my first questions when I go to a board meeting was when was the last time each of you shared your faith with someone that’s not a Christian and there’ll be a long pause. So I’d say we’re not going to start doing anything with the church, the organization, the people until we do something here. So to me, and I know that sounds like, Whoa, bro, Rick, seriously, how is that going to work? But I I’ve seen this time and time again, where I’ve deployed missional programs and structures and systems that would not take the, you know, going back to my analogy of the body rejecting it, it would not take, you know, why, because the leadership wasn’t ha wasn’t bought into it.

Finu Iype (31:36):
And the only way the leadership will be bought into it is when they actually begin to live it. So we would, we worked with a model that my friend, Kevin Harney in California, shoreline church came up with called. He wrote a book called organic outreach, and I really loved it. And part of his simple concept was hold the leadership of the church accountable to having gospel conversations once a month. And so that’s literally where we would start. If I was to work with the judge straight, that’s where it started. I’d say for the first three months or the first six months, I say to the pastor, I don’t even want you to people to know that we’re working on anything. I just want your board and your leaders of your departments to know that we’re working on it because we’re going to meet with them once or twice a month.

Finu Iype (32:19):
And again, going back to Kevin’s strategy. What I love about it is he doesn’t he doesn’t reward the finish line. He doesn’t reward in a system that you have to lead someone to faith in Jesus. That’s not the point. The point is, are you engaging? Did you go out with a friend at work and have a gospel conversation? Did you just share your faith? Did you share your testimony? Did you ask them questions to learn more about them? Like what steps are you taking to get to know unsaved people non-Christians in your community? Because here’s the thing. What I found is this. When, when leaders start to have friends and I want to use that word, very strong friends, not acquaintances, not, Oh, I know the guy down the street, no, no friends who are Muslims and Hindus and atheist that begins to change the way they look at the li their own leadership in their church, because it informs them to say, wow, that event is so exclusive, sounding like that sounds like my friend now, you know, I don’t know if he’s a Hindu, maybe his name is Krishna, or if he’s a Muslim, his name is Abdullah, or, you know, or maybe it’s Scott that grew up in a Presbyterian church and had a horrible experience.

Finu Iype (33:32):
It’s like, I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe any of this stuff is real. Whatever your friend’s name is, right? It’s like, what’s caught feel comfortable in this environment. And if not, and why are we doing this as a church, if it’s not going to help them. But here’s my point. If I did that without working with the leadership, first, what happens is the leader said, well, no, no, no. We’ve always done an event like this this way. And I’m like guys, but it won’t work. You won’t reach anyone doing it that way, obviously. Cause the results, you know, sort of prove it, but it’s hard to convince them until they have personal friendships and relationships with those people. So again, I know I’m giving you a lot of detail here, but I would say first step Daniel is. And I think if you’re an evangelistic person, that’s an equipment.

Finu Iype (34:13):
By the way, Daniel, one of my passions is, and I don’t even know how to do it. Maybe you can come up with a strategy for this cause you’re good with this kind of stuff. It’s like, I believe they are evangelist, evangelistically, gifted people, not full-time evangelists, professional evangelists, crusade, evangelists. I mean, I’m talking about just the gifting, the fivefold gifting of the evangelist. I believe that’s there in all of our churches. And it’s like, how do we recognize that gift and allow that person to be an equipper. So if you want it to be an equipper in your church and you’re listening to this podcast right now, my, my advice to you is forget about doing an outreach event. Forget about going out and creating a big splash in the community. Don’t even start there, start with the people on your leadership teams. Let’s get them talking and becoming friends with people that don’t know Jesus and then together. And this is the beauty of it is once they do that, Daniel, the events and the programs and the structure and the change comes from the inside out versus trying to create it from the outside in which is most of what most of us as evangelists trying to do is like we do this big event and we’re like, well, we hope the leadership follows up. We hope they change the way they do things. Well, unfortunately it just doesn’t seem to always work well that way

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:30):
Let’s talk about some of the changes, the recent changes in your ministry. You, you founded passion to reach and use that

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:38):
To help churches across Canada. And, and now you are moving over to a position with the village church there in the greater Toronto area. And you want to reach out to skeptics, reach out to a post-Christian post-modern world. What are some of the new initiatives that you’re planning as you’re, you’re looking to plant churches that can reach people in the greater Toronto area?

Finu Iype (36:08):
Well, Daniel firstly, let me start off saying this, this, this literally happened in the middle of the pandemic. So I just started this position in September and unlike America, we were joking before we went live on the show that you know, America is obviously the land of the free and the home of the brave. We don’t have a lot of freedom right now in Canada. So we’re, we’re pretty much locked down in our homes. We haven’t met as churches now for months. So yeah, so a lot of what we’re doing now is just online and, and, you know, gathering people and connecting people. But yeah, the sort of the bigger, I guess, point to your question is village church and part of what what we’re doing here. And the reason for the transition is as much as I enjoyed helping churches with being on mission and figuring this out, the, the truth Daniel is it’s very hard to make this happen.

Finu Iype (37:03):
It’s very hard to take a church that has operated a certain way for 30 years of 40 years. That by the way, I want to be very careful that their methodologies were very effective and their communication was super relevant when they started. And maybe for the first 10 or 15 years that they started. It’s just that the world around them has changed so much that they’re not able to now connect. So helping them transition was a very difficult thing doing it. And the Lord in a very sort of supernatural divine way connected me with village church and village started 10 years ago with about 16 people. And now they have about seven sites with somewhere between eight to 10,000 people that call the village home. And and they’ve done a really good job reaching skeptics. And I think they’re about 1500 to 1800 baptisms in the last 10 years, which you know, which is amazing in Canada.

Finu Iype (38:04):
And just for context for your listeners in the, in America, you know, that’s not a big number. It’s not a big church, but in Canada, it’s like any church in the greater Toronto area, over 1000 people would be considered a mega church here. So so significant growth. And so I’m really excited to be part of the team and what we’re really focusing on is what does it look like to speak to people that are skeptics that say, I don’t believe in God, I’m done with you know, all of that. So right now I’m basically looking for a lead pastors in our Toronto area church planters that we can equip and and launch as soon as this pandemic is behind us and and start new churches. And to specifically answer your question pastor Mark Clark, who’s the senior pastor of the church has written a couple of books.

Finu Iype (38:57):
The first one was called the problem of God. It was a book for skeptics, 10 things that, you know, skeptics would say we have an issue with when it comes to God. So science was an issue. Jesus is an issue. The Bible is it’s authenticity is an issue. I think one of the chapters is on sex and the biblical idea of sexuality. So all of these things that people would say, I don’t really believe in Jesus. I want to be a Christian because of these reasons he sort of addressed them. And he just came up with a new book called the problem of Jesus, which basically talks about who is Jesus and did Jesus actually exist? Which a lot of people in our culture like, Oh, that’s a fable. And it’s like, no, there’s actually a extra biblical proof of the historical person of Jesus that lived you know, at the timeline of the Bible tells us he lived.

Finu Iype (39:45):
So you know, that’s part of how we do it is, is we use philosophy and we use science and we use poetry and we, we use just, you know human connection to talk about why the Bible is practical, why the Bible is real, why the Bible speaks the truth, why the gospel applies to us today. And and yeah, I mean, it’s obviously been super effective in in British Columbia which is on the West coast. And we’re really excited to see just planted right through this province. And I’m in Ontario right now. Yeah, over the next over the next few years,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:26):
I think you are on exactly the right path. I’ve been very concerned about this area of ministry for a while now, especially asking the question, how do we reach America with the gospel? Like you said, the traditional crusade evangelism has limited effectiveness here in the United States. I mean, it still works great in Ethiopia. People will walk three days to come to a service, but here in America, no one will walk three minutes to go anywhere. And so how do you reach them? And so I just finished writing a book called proof. God is real, and it’s an apologetics book looking at different ways that we can know that that God is real. And I want to reach skeptics. I noticed that on Twitter and on YouTube, there is a very active atheist community that is actively talking to people about atheism. One of the most popular YouTube guys is a, is a Canadian who does videos every week talking about why there is no God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:36):
And I said, you know, the church needs to be in that arena. And so in our ministry, we’re starting to look at how we can produce material and reach out to, to skeptics and, and, and talk to them. And I’ve even reached out and befriended some atheists here in my area to start talking to them, just to, to, to be able to answer the questions that they’re asking. And so I think you’re right on the right path, reaching skeptics, reaching this post-Christian post-modern world, the techniques in the methods that churches have used 30 years ago, aren’t going to work today. So I think you’re doing the right thing.

Finu Iype (42:16):
And can I also say this Daniel, that I, I also believe that the Holy spirit, like I see every church that I follow that is trying to reach people with the gospel in our context is relying more and more on understanding Holy spirit and how Holy spirit works and, and asking the Holy spirit to give them, to guide them in the process. I think the times where churches said, Oh, if we just have a great marketing strategy, you know, if we just have a great facility, you know, if we just have a great kids program, that’s the way to evangelize. And I think we’re seeing that that experiment is basically failed because yeah, you may create fans of your organization and your leadership and your preaching style and your decor and your whatever, you know design sense and all of that. So, meaning people like to be in your space and they don’t mind coming on a Sunday for an hour and being there and grabbing a coffee in your cafe after it, on the way out.

Finu Iype (43:25):
But it doesn’t really do a good job of making disciples. And so part of what I just want to encourage everyone is listen to what the Holy spirit is saying. You know, sometimes it’s not just the North American, you know, presentation that is going to do it. And this is where, and I say this, because you just mentioned, you know, it crusades work in Ethiopia. But I think what also, we need to look at in our model of what is working in, you know, in the nations of the world and places like Africa is the power of God. Like when people experience the power of God, when people experience the presence of the Holy spirit, I mean, I love apologetics and we just talked about apologetics, but I don’t necessarily believe I can convince somebody into the faith. I don’t believe I can just reason with them. And they basically say, you know what? You want the debate, I’m going to be a Christian and I’m going to live my life for Jesus. I don’t really think that we’re really hard to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:22):
Argue someone into the belief.

Finu Iype (44:25):
Yeah. I think it helps them to open their mind, to want to learn it does when you answer some of their sort top questions, it opens the heart to say, you know what? I should actually cause some of these things that I thought were true, obviously don’t seem as true anymore. So I need to learn more and it opens them up. So it has its place. But ultimately it is the gospel is the power of God to salvation and the presence of God that is released when you just communicate the simple truth of the gospel, you don’t need to be on a platform in Africa. You don’t need to be holding a microphone with a massive PA system. You could just literally be sitting with someone across the table at a coffee shop. Just literally sharing what the message of the gospel is. And the spirit of God is able to work in that moment and and transform transform the person’s heart. So I just say that I’d say a lot of prayer, a lot of fasting, a lot of prayer, a lot of reliance on the Holy spirit is what we need today to reach reach this culture that we live in.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (45:23):
Amen. For new, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. It’s a great honor to have such a smart person, such a strong strategic thinker on the program. I really appreciate you. And, and the insights that that God has given you. And I believe God has amazing things coming in the years to come for you,

Finu Iype (45:47):
Daniel, thank you so much. I’ve enjoyed, obviously getting to know you over the past few years and your ministry. You’re doing a fantastic job. Thank you for taking the initiative. You know, I guess, through the pandemic to create this podcast and encourage people. And yeah, if you’re listening right now, I just want to really encourage you connect with Daniel, his ministry get his books cause this guy knows what he’s talking about. And you know what I love about you, Daniel, as usual, you don’t just do it. You actually want to multiply your impact through your teaching, through your books, through the media stuff that you’re doing. So thank you for doing that. Thank you for being an encouragement and an inspiration for so many of us that want to see people come to faith in Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:29):
Thank you. Bless you. 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 for more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our evangelistic

Evangelism Podcast Host (47:30):
Outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.

Will Jones leads Awakening Ministries International. He invited me to go with him to Sierra Leone. We did a pastor’s conference, evangelism training, and village ministry. We baptized 152 people. In today’s Evangelism Podcast you will hear the stories about what God did in West Africa.

Website: https://www.awakeningmintl.org

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Well, Jones leads, awakening, ministries, international. He invited me to go with him to Sierra Leone. We did a pastors conference, evangelism training and village ministry. We baptized 152 people who decided to become believers in today’s evangelism podcast. You’ll hear the stories and the miracles that God did in West Africa,

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 say, 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 (01:01):
The evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I am with will Jones. Once again. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.

Will Jones (01:10):
It’s always a privilege, my friend.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:12):
So we are here in the nation of Sierra Leone and you invited me to come along with you on one of your missions here. And we have had an absolutely tremendous week of ministry here. God has moved in, in great ways. What are some of the tremendous successes that you feel that we’ve seen this week?

Will Jones (01:34):
Yeah. You know, due to just the whole COVID thing, we had to restrategize this particular festival, because we weren’t able to do a large gathering, which is typical of our model, but we actually had enhanced some of the outreach methodologies to kind of accompany the festival anyway. And so we basically did mobile festivals with probably just over a hundred locals together that partner with us. And so we kind of had a blitz team of going to all these different areas and throughout, you know, what God did here. We saw that we hadn’t been able to reach just over 5,000 people. Personally, you know, we did a radio conversation, which went out to several hundreds of thousand over this whole district and beyond so 152 people that we were able to personally baptize during this time, five new churches were getting started with some church organizations that had put people in place this past week Sunday they met. And so, yeah, God has did great things goes to 40. I want to say recorded miracles and the Lord did and healings, and it was just a great trip. And obviously it’s always great to have the master evangelist. Yeah, no King with me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:54):
Well, we had a wonderful time. It’s always good to minister together with friends. You know, the Bible says that one will put a thousand to flight, but two will put 10,000. And so I always find that when I’m around other evangelists, we’re able to accomplish more for God. And really what we saw here is just like a week before we were supposed to come the government of Sierra Leone and nouns that no mass gatherings would be allowed because of COVID. And so we had to switch it up a little bit and rather than having everybody come to the festival, we basically went to them. And so we went out into a bunch of villages and towns and, you know, in each village there were where people, especially a lot of Muslims, I thought it was really cool. And every service I think that we did during our time here, we have had Muslims that have been there even at the pastor’s conference.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:51):
We didn’t know that there were Muslims there, but there was an easy mom who was the leader of a local mosque who came to the pastor’s conference and sat there through two days, just listening. And I remember in one village, there were two moms, Muslim leaders that came and they were sitting right in the front row, on the bench. They had the little Muslim caps on and they listened to the entire gospel presentation. And I said, how many of you want Jesus to forgive your sins? And both of them raised their hands. And then I let everyone in a prayer. And I kind of peeked out of the corner when I looked over at them. And both those guys were saying the prayer with us and for a country here that is a very high percentage Muslim. I read on one website it’s like 78% Muslim in Sierra Leone. That is a tremendous victory to be able to share Jesus with, with so many Muslims. What are some of the, the stories or highlights that really will stand out to you from the strip that you’ll take back with you?

Will Jones (04:59):
Yeah, I would say one of our camera guys that joined the media team is from Sierra Leone. His name was darkish and he’s Muslim really traditional and his practices. But for the most part, his family’s Muslim, he’s eight or non-family members. And on the second to last day of our our week of festivities he communicated to one of our team leaders that he wanted to convert. And we were all like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, what do you mean? Explain that. And on the baptism day on the different villages and people were coming, he said, I want to be baptized today. He says, I believe, believe in Jesus, I’m converting. So we had, one of our interpreters was very astute in the Koran is African, but he speaks Arabic. He knows Koran. He was a former Muslim. We had him walk him through the gospel to make sure he understood it and that he was wanting to come to Christ and he did. And we baptized him that day. He’s a, he’s a big strong man, but he came to Jesus Christ and you can see the genuine conversion of the Holy spirit making him a new person. And now he’s ready to go back to share the gospel with all eight or nine of his family members in hopes that they would receive Christ as well. Wonderful stories like that happened on this trip. And he was just one of the mini

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:33):
He’s, one of 152 people that we have the privilege to baptize. And then of course, in all the services, if you add it up together with about 1,740, that made an indication that they had decided to follow Jesus, which is a huge victory, especially for the size city that we were in. It wasn’t a very big city. How many people did they say were in there? Yeah,

Will Jones (06:59):
It was just about 25,000 of in that particular city Penn, Denver, Sierra Leone.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:05):
So we had over just over 5,000 people that we minister to face-to-face, which is about 20% of the population there. So if you can minister 20% of any population center, I, I consider that a huge win as an evangelist. So we also saw some great miracles. We were in one village on Friday night and there was a, a mother who brought her son. He looked like he was about seven years old and he was deaf in one ear. And I preached on healing. Actually, you preached on Zack Kias that night, and then you invited me up after you’re done giving the alter call and you invited me to, to pray for the sick. And so I was praying for the sick and I told the people, I said, you know, take your hand and place it on the part of your body where there’s pain.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:55):
And so this mama, she put her hand on the ear that was death on her little boy. And she said, he’d been deaf for two years. And as we were praying, she said that a black rock or a growth, something fell out of his ear into her hand. And she looked at it and it was all gross and she threw it on the ground. And then she tested her boys here and, and he was able to hear. And so she came up and testified. We tested the boys healing I clapped and he was able to clap and the boy was a little scared, but the moms, she was super excited that her, her boy had been healed. And so that was tremendous. One of the great things that happened here was the opportunity to train eight evangelists and put sound systems in their hands that they’re going to be able to use to go out and to preach the gospel. And so this is part of a new initiative that your ministry is launching out, into train national evangelists. Tell me a little bit about what you see God doing with that program.

Will Jones (09:06):
Yeah. You know, it’s something that we pondered really for the last year and there’s to some prayer and seeking counsel from other orgs that, you know, are doing things maybe in a fashion that we would want it to maybe adopt, or God was putting on our heart. We kind of built this structure for raising up national evangelist and really deploying them to the unreached people group areas. And so there’s a variety of nuances that we’ll go through in that, you know, from the aspect of discovering them in the country, working with church partnerships and organizations, to developing them through, you know, training throughout the year, through deploying them and assignments through what we would call preaching points and unreached areas. And this really came out of an aspect of multiplication. And I don’t, I think evangelists often thinking of aspect of addition, do a festival, do a large event, see hundreds or thousands of people come to Christ.

Will Jones (10:16):
That’s really addition, but when you can help one person know how to reach another person that knows how to reach another person that becomes multiplication. And so the evangelists are going to be practicing outreaches each month, several times a month with the sound equipment we’ve given them, there’ll be a, a leadership in place that is already there that will help encourage them. We’ll help track the results that they are getting insane healings, baptisms people entering into discipleship groups that will eventually lead to church planting. You know, the gospel is not just about conversion. It’s about discipleship, which leads to conversion. And so we want to make sure that we’re seeing people come to Christ preaching the gospel making disciples, but we’re also working with indigenous leaders to see believers become disciples through obedience, to God’s word, and reaching other people that are in their people group or outside of it.

Will Jones (11:13):
And so this will be an exponential aspect that we add to our ministry. And, you know, as we were brainstorming, you were throwing out some thoughts too. And we just kind of really formulated the term Phillip project, you know, which models Philip in acts eight and how he went from town to town, preaching the gospel, even Jesus, every town, every city, every village, he tried to go to preach the gospel. And so these evangelists, you know, we started with eight to go by the end of the year is to have 25 that we’ve identified and discovered were developed, and that there’ll be deployed with the resources. They need to preach a number of times a month in those areas that we’ll eventually see new churches started.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:58):
And so the ultimate goal is to start churches, especially in the rural areas of Sierra Leone that the Eastern area over towards the border with Liberia has a lot of need for new churches. And even this week, there’s potential that five churches will be planted out of what was accomplished this week. Talk to me a little bit about long-term strategy for Sierra Leone and what you’re hoping to accomplish here in this nation.

Will Jones (12:29):
Yeah. You know, we’ve, we’ve partnered with one of the national church organizations. That’s very strong here. They have good credibility and they’re doing great work and we’ve just come alongside of them. And some others that have wanted to join, you know, the, the, the Jesus film and some of the orgs that we’re just going to use the best strategy and method that the Holy spirit gives us to really reach these Sierra Leoneans with the gospel. As you were saying, it’s, you know, literally over about 70% Muslim and the harvest is plentiful here. It’s open. And so we thank God for that. And so w w what we’re doing is really trying to be a catalyst for church planting. You know, AMI is not a church planning organization, but we partner with church planting orcs to really serve as a catalyst for them.

Will Jones (13:19):
And I would encourage every evangelistic ministry to begin to process that because we don’t want to just have a gain conversions. We want disciples, we want the spread of the gospel. And so many of our organizations may not carry that component, but we can surely partner with people on the ground that will, that I’ve seen fruit in are seeing fruit. So that’s what we’ve decided to do is let’s partner with some key orgs that are going raising up leaders, multiplying the gospel through church planting efforts. And we’re doing our role as an evangelistic org to help catalyze that and accelerate that growth for them so that the nation of Sierra Leone may be reached. So it’s about a two to three-year project. You know, w w our, our vision at AMI is to see the nations awakened, arisen, and active for Jesus. And so we believe that awakening happens through the preaching of the word.

Will Jones (14:12):
You know, the Bible speaks of, he says, awake or asleep, you know, arise. And we want people’s light to shine in them through Christ the light of the gospel. So we want to awaken them to the presence of God’s word. We want them to arise to be all that God has called them to be through training and equipping them in partnership with our national leaders. And we want them to live actively of making disciples, which would involve preaching the gospel and teaching people how to follow Jesus. So that’s what we’re doing. And we’re believing the Lord that we’ll see this country in addition to other people that are partnering in other organizations, awaken, arisen and active for Jesus. Amen. Well, thank you so much for inviting me to come to Sierra Leone with you. It’s wonderful to see what God is doing here, and thanks for being a guest on the evangelism podcast. Thank you Daniel, for coming. You’ve been a joy in my life and you and your wife, Jessica and King ministries have been just a great influence in us as an org still consider really a young org kind of in our midway to 10 year Mark. And you’ve been a very influential voice and advisor and how we can continue to preach the gospel. And so, thanks for having me on and thanks for being a friend, God bless you. Thank you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:32):
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 (16:25):
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.

Mark Sesay is the missions director for the Assemblies of God in Sierra Leone. Today he talks about the unique challenges and opportunities for reaching people for Jesus in this nation in West Africa. On the Evangelism Podcast today you will learn about how to plant churches in Africa, how to work in a Muslim majority nation, and how to deal with unorthodox tribal practices.

Questions for Mark Sesay

What strategies are you using to reach people in the rural areas of Sierra Leone?

How are you planting Assembly of God churches?

What is Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and why is it a problem in Sierra Leone?

To learn about evangelism, please subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Mark Sesay is the missions director for the assemblies of God. In Sierra Leone today, he talks about the unique challenges and opportunities for reaching people for Jesus in this nation, in West Africa,

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:11):
On the evangelism podcast today, you’ll learn about how to plant churches in Africa, how to work in a Muslim majority nation, and how to deal with on Orthodox tribal practices. 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. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:08):
With me. Reverend Mark Sesay is the mission’s director for the assemblies of God in Sierra Leone, brother, Mark. Thank you so much for joining me today. Thank you.

Reverend Mark Sesay (01:20):
You so much. It’s a blessing to have you here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:25):
We have had a wonderful time here in Sierra Leone. This is my first time here, and I’ve been so impressed with the people and the wonderful ministry that you have helped to organize. Tell me a little bit about what God is doing in this nation.

Reverend Mark Sesay (01:42):
Yeah, the Lord is doing so much in this nation and we stand very grateful to the Lord. Thank you for coming. This nation is predominantly a Muslim dominated nation. Although the difference is between the, the, the urban areas and the rural areas. Averagedly it’s about 70% Muslims and then 20%, 20% twenty-five percent Christians. So that, that is the situation here. And so the believers minister, mostly to Muslims and the challenge in the rural is higher than the urban. There are more, the percentage of Christians in the urban is a little higher than that in the, in the rural. So we do have a challenge in the rural. So we are happy to have you come far East hundreds of miles away from the capita. We, we are very excited. We have your records.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:43):
So as the mission director of the assemblies of God, you are working to reach out into the rural areas. What are some of the strategies that you are using to reach people in the rural areas of Sierra Leone?

Reverend Mark Sesay (03:02):
Yes. As a missions director, what we have done is that we are raising teams in the rural areas. We have done mapping. We have identified stronger towns, churches that we can train believers to reach out to others. So the main strategy that we’ve adopted over the years is one church plant another church. It has been a challenge over the years to have one team in a region going planting one church after the other, we tried, it was a serious challenge. Maybe we can discuss that kind of challenge, but our current strategy, we train churches. We encourage pastors to grow churches and then plant another church. So it is one church planting another church. What we have also done, we encourage urban pastors to adopt younger churches in the rural, and then courage them, support them to plant another church. Yes, like Freetown planting churches within Fulton is, is fruits and it’s becoming congested. And so we’ve encouraged them to move up country rural and support church planting in the rural areas. So our main strategy for now is one church plant another church.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:38):
I think you have a really wonderful strategy. Jesus, of course went to every town and every village. And so the hope is that there would be a church in every town and every village in Sierra Leone. Is that the hope?

Reverend Mark Sesay (04:55):
That is the hope. And we are beginning to realize this hope. We are beginning to realize this hope. Some of the challenges we are facing, we are seeing God opening a door. So amidst does challenging, and we give God a praise. I may have to share some of those blessings. Yes, please.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:15):
Please share with me some of the challenges, the difficulties of planting new churches, and also some of the blessings that you’ve seen God pour out on that process.

Reverend Mark Sesay (05:26):
Exactly. I was written for this. One of the strongest challenge is the mindsets of pastors. They like being in a local church for years and they do not like going out of their comfort zone to plant another church. They think they should all stay. We have three pastors, for example, in some areas for pastors in one small, nobody wants to go out. We are seeing each changing the conferences we have just completed your teachings and the rest of the team you came with. It is beginning to change the minds, the mindset of the pastors that has been my board and for a while now. So for you to come to Syria alone and you are teaching us emphasizing, we must go. We must go. And evangelists should go. We must go out to the other sheep and bring them in. I’m so excited. Yes.

Reverend Mark Sesay (06:38):
I’m very, very excited because it is one of the biggest problem. We know how our resources are very little, but if the mindset is wrong, even if we have resources, we cannot do the work. But if the mindset is correct, we are open to go out. If we have the resources we can go. So that is the challenge. And you have helped us. The teachings are wonderful that people are now excited. They are willing to go. And now the blessings, for example, you came it’s evangelists. You guys helped us trained have now received a PA system. This is a rechargeable PA system that can stay 10 hours before people go out. Those few willing ones, go out. Speaking with our voices. It was strenuous. Now we have a PA system that can last 10 hours after church to preach the gospel. And so it is a very, very huge motivation to go out to those communities. It can be schools, it can be a marketplace. It can be the general public, the Squire where somewhere, and we are bored enough to actually teach the people and push the people, especially with the encouragement of the sound system. We are very grateful for the sound system.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:58):
Well, you are welcome. I’m here under the invitation of evangelist will Jones from awakening ministries, international and evangelist will in conjunction with the assemblies of God, put together this plan to identify eight people who have the gift of evangelism and then to give each of the eight a sound system that they will use to go out into preach the gospel. And these people are already doing evangelism so that the sound system will just help them to be more effective at it and to be able to, to reach people. And then the idea is that after they do outreaches, they report back and tell us what they have been doing. How many people have been getting saved? How many people got healed, who was baptized and hopefully in these communities where they go, then a church can be planted. So tell me, how did you identify these eight? And what’s the plan to identify more people who have the gift of an evangelist in the future.

Reverend Mark Sesay (09:13):
That is wonderful. Before the equipments were available. Before you brought the equipments, this people, we are already willing. We knew them. We saw the excitement of preaching the gospel, but we also saw the need for a PA system. We could improvise PA systems for them, but they are doing the work without a PA system. We were able to provide megaphones. Do you use the word megaphones loud, speaker loud healers. Yes, it can go, but not too much. Whatever. You’re happy using a megaphone putting on the mouth. Hello, Jesus loves you early in the morning. And so they were doing it without a system. So we identified the need to their passion to do the work before does gift skin, since they were already doing the walk and they were happy doing it. And so it was very easy for us to know that those people are real evangelists there.

Reverend Mark Sesay (10:15):
They have the passion for souls. They have the zeal, they were never ashamed to hold a megaphone in the streets, in the schools, in the market Squire. And so we, we are, it was easy to identify them now. I am planning a major tour in the country for 20 days with my team. We are going to three, three, three, nine communities in 20 days, we are doing training. Sorry to tell you not sorry. We’ll be using some of the materials and your information. Yeah. So it will be stepping down the straining to this communities. We want to invite them because my target is how to change their minds, to let them know that they should move out of the church, to the communities. So within those 20 days of a toy in my country training, we will be looking for, or we’ll be identifying possible evangelists maybe for the next coming together and for the next training, you know, so we’ll be doing training since it is communities. And our eyes will be very open to, to identify evangelist. We may do surveys. We may ask questions about people who are already doing it. Maybe they need the support to do that. Also during the training, we’ll be listening to the kind of questions, their responses. I think the Lord will help us to, to, to know yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:46):
To find those who have the gift of an evangelist who have the calling of event and evangelists and are willing to pay the, to go and to tell people about Jesus. Let’s talk a little bit about this region of Sierra Leone that we’re in. We’re on the East side, very close to Liberia. What is some of the need in this area and what are some of the people groups that are here and, and what is the hope over the next couple of years to accomplish for Christ in this region of Sierra Leone,

Reverend Mark Sesay (12:25):
There is a need on the side of the country. Areas not too different from other far rural areas, but maybe here is the strongest. There is the issue of what we call secret society. It’s like a secret call, the initiate chilled again into the FGM, the female genital mutilation. It is not just the cut-in, but the ceremonies involving the cut-in can be very demonic and is witchcraft. That is for female children and youths. It’s sad. It is very strong. They put their whole life into it. Yeah. For males, you have the, the Poro it’s, it’s a male secret society. The initiates with, with also a cotton, they shed blood. It’s all blood covenant. They put their whole life into it. Yes. It’s it’s witchcraft. It’s demonic ERISA challenge. So what do we do? We, we do a lot of prayer breaking the strong hall over this demonic witchcraft practices.

Reverend Mark Sesay (13:40):
Yes. So even some who accept Christ and come to the church, we struggle with them. They struggle coming out of it. Completely. Some come to church, badass allegiance, they are still committed to the FGM. We call it here, Bondo B O N D O. They are still committed to reach. So Def fitfulness to Christ into the church seems waving. It is a challenge. And so what we do, we, we encouraged them. We teach them, we teach them, you cannot be loyal to, to Christ. And at the same time, you are loyal to demonic worship. In witchcraft. You, you have to take a decision to be loyal to Christ alone and, and forego whatsoever. It was, that was a pleasure to you. And also what we have done. We have also, we also have the, the, the baldness to point out the dangers of the secret calls and does bundle the, the repercussion medically spiritually in the lives of the young girls. You know, some do listen. Some, it will take some time. Yeah. It will take some time. It is a challenge, you know?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:04):
And what do you hope to accomplish here is the plan to plant churches in this region.

Reverend Mark Sesay (15:11):
Yes. We hope to accomplish greatly. Yes. On this side of the country, the East, they are more open to the gospel than for example, the North, the North Islam is stronger in the North and the East. Yes. So for this East, it is, we are hoping to plant churches. We are hoping to see every town with a local church, at least one local church. Every time I think we can accomplish this, we can accomplish this.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:46):
Amen. We have many people who are excited about missions and who pray for missionaries. Pray for evangelists who listened to this podcast. If someone wants to begin to pray for the church in Sierra Leone, what are a few things that they should be praying for in order to strengthen the church here in Sierra Leone

Reverend Mark Sesay (16:11):
For Sierra Leone and the church first help us pray against the strong holes. One is Islam. Second is the secret societies, the FGM, the witchcraft. It can be strong. So pray that those strong whores, they can be some serious hindrance to the gospel. Help us pray, please, that under strong horse will be broken strong goal of religious strong goal, and this demonic. And we have strong horde for the church, pray that the Lord will help us teach and let the spirit of God bring transformation on the minds of pastors and church members and leaders to know the most go out the most, send missionaries out rather than being comfortable in the local church. And number three, help us pray that God will raise willing workers. I’ve had the benefits and the blessings of having willing workers around me. They are willing to go with me anywhere in this country.

Reverend Mark Sesay (17:23):
And anytime I have the joy of seeing them around doing one thing or the other, some people may have a hat like me to go, but may not have walkers to be with him on the field. So please, please pray with us that God will raise labor as will in ones like those around me. They come not for money. They are just willing for work. So there are not many, they are few in this country, pray that God will raise fateful, liberos harvesters for the field, and also pray for gospel vision. For us. It’s a very poor country. Somewhat needs. Sometimes we go to a place. This, we see the poverty and the needs are so real in the lives of the people we wish the Lord has blessed us to bless them. It makes it easier for them to receive us and receive the word. So pray, pray number four, for, for his provision. Some need rice, some need clothes does some basic needs. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:29):
Amen. Well, I will be praying for Sierra Leone and I know that many others will also make a commitment to pray for Sierra Leone. Reverend Mark. Thank you so much for joining me today on the evangelism podcast. It’s wonderful to get to know you. You are a great man of God. You are so smart and so brilliant at how you’re putting together these strategies for Sierra Leone. And I pray that God would put many resources into your hands to be able to reach this entire nation for Jesus. So brother Mark, thank you for being with me today. Thank you.

Reverend Mark Sesay (19:05):
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure. The pleasure is mine. Thank you for coming to my country.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:10):
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

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:04):
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.

Allison Kliewer is the administrator for Awakening Ministries International. In today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast she talks about why it is important to set up administrative systems and processes in a ministry. Her advice can help your ministry grow.

Website: https://www.awakeningmintl.org

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Alison Cleaver is the administrator for Awakening Ministries International. In today’s episode of the evangelism podcast, she talks about why it is important to set up administrative systems and processes in a ministry. Her advice can help your ministry grow.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:19):
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 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. Welcome to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:55):
The evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I am excited to tell people about Jesus. And today I have a special guest with me, Alison Cleaver. She works with will Jones and awakening ministries international. We are in the nation of Sierra Leone right now, and Alison joined awakening ministries and has been helping them a lot in the area of administration. And so thank you for being on the podcast today. Thanks for having me Daniel. So you went to college. Tell me, what did you study while you were?

Allison Kliewer (01:32):
Yeah, I studied business management and emphasized and project management.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:36):
And so you have a background in business and administration and before you went into ministry, you worked in the corporate world. What, what type of things did you do in the corporate?

Allison Kliewer (01:50):
Yeah, that’s correct. I did. I worked actually for a very high end company. That’s in Oklahoma, very thriving, top 500 fortune company. And what I did specifically that I was hired on was the administration. So I started out as an admin assistant, but ended up working my way up in four years to actually being the executive assistant to the VP and director of our department. And then even being a team lead over the administration team of our department.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:18):
And so you were very successful doing that, but God called you to be in ministry. How did that happen?

Allison Kliewer (02:26):
Wow, great question. So several years after I read it indicated my life to Christ. I recognized I wanted to do something different in my walk with, with Jesus and that actually was meaning to be discipled. And so I began praying God brings somebody to disciple me, to pour into me, to correct me, hold me accountable because I was not changing. I wasn’t I was, I was doing the same things over and over and I realized I needed to change. And so on. What’s crazy is that I ended up in prayer being answered because I met a young woman named Jennifer who randomly joined my Bible study group in Oklahoma. And there was something so unique and different about her because she kept asking our group questions and she was brand new first time visiting. And it made no sense. I’m like, who is this woman?

Allison Kliewer (03:19):
Like, who is she? But there was something spiritual to her about her that God’s like, you needed to connect with her. And so we ended up becoming friends and then all along story short is that it ended up six months later after that prayer I was introduced to her husband who is, will Jones. Who’s the founder and president of awakening ministries international. And during that time I was really wrestling with God of like, man, God, man, I believe there’s, there’s something else that you want me to do because I don’t want to continue living this mundane life. Like I was getting up at six, I was going to work and I was eating dinner and then I was going to bed and repeating it over and over. And at some point you had a car wreck or something. Oh yes. So I ended up at the same time that I was meeting will and building relationship with Jen I was in a car wreck that actually put me on bed rest.

Allison Kliewer (04:10):
I ended up having hip surgery and basically this is where God was saying, Hey, I’m trying to get your attention and I need you to stop. And so during the two weeks of recovery, from my hip surgery, I wrestled with God and was like, God, I was angry and I was fighting him. And he was like, but we have all the time in the world. But I actually came to a place of submission. I said, God, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it. And fast forward a couple months. And I’ll remember it to this day that at my old home church at a revival week I specifically said, God, remember I said, whatever you want me to do, I’ll do it, speak to me right now. And I heard this voice, this audible voice that says, you’re going to have a change of job.

Allison Kliewer (04:52):
And I want you to proclaim the gospel to my lost people. And I said, what, what does that even mean? Because I have no ministry education. I have no experience I’ll set of sort of in the local church. Like where do you, where does, where can I fit in to do this with my administrative background, my experience, and then not having an education or ministry experience. And so it just so happened that actually during that time of the car wreck, I was invited to come on board with awakening ministries, international volunteering as Will’s executive assistant. So I was also working full time and volunteering. Part-Time about 20, 30 hours a week serving as an executive assistant. And so I had shared with will and Jennifer both about the call because I was like, Oh, I don’t know what this is. It kind of terrifies me like to leave a comfortable job and security and leadership and all these things.

Allison Kliewer (05:50):
And and found out that AMI actually has an internship program specifically for people who feel called to gain that experience, to gain education so that they can be propelled into their platform in which God’s calling them to do. And I’ll tell you, there was such rest and peace in that, that I made the decision to leave my corporate job of money. High-End money of salary benefits and leadership and authority and entitlement, all these things because God’s specifically spoke to me and that actually started the journey for me transitioning out of my corporate job into going into full-time ministry.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:28):
And so let’s talk about that transition in order to start in ministry, it’s a unique situation because you basically had to raise your own support in order to be in ministry. So you went from having a salary, working with a corporate job to going and asking people to support you as a minister. What was that

Allison Kliewer (06:54):
Terrifying? I’ll just be straight up honest. It was terrifying because I’ve never done anything like it and just having a mindset or going from being paid to do something then to saying, Hey, this is godly to be able to invite people and ask people to support you, either through a one-time gift, a special gift or monthly on a monthly basis to work. And for somebody that’s in business school and the way I was raised and being corporate world, like that’s not normal. But it is very biblical. And, and with that went through experience of being equipped. And I think that was the biggest part was actually being trained. And then even finding scripture of what is in the Bible that says, this is what God says, that it, he will do like challenge him in this. And he will show you that the churches, even Paul, like ask churches to support him, whether that was food, a place to stay or finances, like that’s all part of being the body. And so yeah, training was huge. And then just resetting my mindset really helps start the process of our funding of my fundraising.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:04):
So how long did it take you to get your initial funding?

Allison Kliewer (08:08):
Yeah, what’s crazy is that with AMI, we have this model of being able to be fully funded in a hundred days. And that’s because of an organization that’s in Texas. They have this model and it’s through a book called God ask. And it actually what’s crazy is that out of the a hundred days, I was fully funded with my cash pot and my monthly within 69 days,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:33):
What a tremendous miracle. So that gave you the freedom to be able to launch out into ministry. And you brought your administrative background and experience with you. And I think administration is extremely important for a ministry. A lot of people, when they think of ministry, they think of the platform moments where someone’s on the platform, proclaiming the gospel, people are getting saved, but in order to make that happen, there’s a lot of things that go on behind the scenes to, to make that happen. And so talk to me a little bit about the importance of administration and why it is important for a ministry to develop administratively. Yeah, I would love to.

Allison Kliewer (09:20):
So as you had mentioned, a lot of people think ministry is the platform or the, you know, out there speaking and being in front of a lot of people. But to be honest for that to even happen, there are things behind the scenes that need to happen so that person can be on the platform so that somebody can be out there reaching people and sharing the gospel with the masses. And so yeah, administration like without having some type of structure or processes or systems in place the whole, the whole end goal of being out on the platform so that people can hear and respond to the gospel will fall apart. Just like every day in your own home, they’re you don’t recognize that their system, that they’re structured, there’s timelines scheduling so that you can get out the door and go to your job and be able to eat and be accomplishing things, right. Just even your own daily life, it’s a very same principles and the same practical things that’s implemented in an organ organizationally for us to even do ministry and even corporately, it’s not just corporate and business, it’s, it’s also in ministry as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:29):
Let’s talk about doing a missions trip. For example, if you want to organize a missions trip, what are some of the things that need to take place administratively in order to make a missions trip successful?

Allison Kliewer (10:43):
Yeah. First and foremost is vision. You absolutely have to have vision throughout your entire team and not just have it with one person, but everybody on the team needs to be able to capture, understand it and have that within them. And then based on that vision, the second thing would be to set up goals. You got to have goals within that vision so that vision can come to life. And then outside within the goals, you need to have the objectives and objectives are the things that help you accomplish your goals to see your vision happening. And so with us in our organization for example, like our evangelistic mission festivals, we have a full process that is documented and that’s so key to have documentation of your processes of what needs to be done. Who’s involved, what roles and what’s your expectations and deadlines.

Allison Kliewer (11:34):
And so we actually have a document for that’s operational. That’s not, we, and we also have a documentation that’s external, which means when we’re on the ground. And when we partner with other organizations in other countries, there’s a whole process and structure for them to accomplish things that need to be done in their country. But for us as an organization and ministry, we have our own internal operational process. And so it’s from like 12 months out to a year and a half leading up from monthly to quarterly, quarterly to monthly, and even the structure of even after the trip. So we don’t just stop and say, Oh, the trip’s done. We’re at the finish line. No there’s even debriefing and there’s evaluations and and, and reporting. And so like you, you gotta have the structure from all the way from the beginning of a mobilization pre-trip of mapping out things all the way to the end of wrapping the trip up at the, at the very end.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:30):
And so you have a series of checklists and steps that have to be taken for everything to be accomplished. Yeah,

Allison Kliewer (12:38):
Absolutely. We, so within that timeline of whatever, it’s a year and a half, 12 months, or even six months we ha we need checklists reason. Why is because it lets everybody on the team know what needs to happen. But it also sets the expectation of who needs to be a part of it. And then the big key is accountability knowing that things are being accomplished. And so for us, so we have a project management system where we have it set up on a timeline. And then within that timeline, we set out that checklist of things that need to be accomplished within that timeline. So now we have deadlines and then within that, we assign those tasks within that timeframe, that timeline of who needs to accomplish it. And we can see if it’s ahead of schedule, if it’s on track or it’s in progress, but also to see if anything was dropped or if it was behind. And then we will have conversations with like, Hey, why was this? And what, what did you need to get that accomplished? And so there’s a lot of the reason of having checklist is not just to accomplish and to do things, but really it’s to hold each other accountable so that we can see the vision be carried out.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:45):
And also it makes it easier to train people as you’re onboarding new members of the team to say, this is what needs to be done. Like for example, I’ve started this evangelism podcast as my COVID project because of COVID, it’s been a little bit more difficult to travel. And so we started three months ago and in three months we’ve now recorded. I think your episode, number 94 or something in there. And I’ve been documenting everything it takes to get every episode done. And I have a checklist of 64 specific steps that have to be taken from recording all the way through to finishing the, the, the posting of the podcast, everything from graphics to editing the recording, to putting together a description of it. But there’s 64 specific steps. And now that I know those 64 specific steps, it makes it easy. When I go and hire someone to take care of this for me, I can say here, this is what you need to do.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:52):
And there’s a very clear benchmark of whether they will be successful or not, because we’ll be able to say, did you do this? Did you do this and go right down the checklist? And so that helps us to manage this particular project. Let’s talk about another system that you’ve, you’ve put in place. As people start to join AMI and get involved, you are challenging each of them to raise their money to do that just as you did. And it’s not just, you don’t just throw them out among wolves and say, you know, go get some money. You give them some specific steps and things that they can do in order to do that. What does that process look like?

Allison Kliewer (15:36):
Yeah, that’s so good. So the first and foremost thing when somebody is being onboarded into our organization is like, is getting them equipped and ensuring that they have the right resources and tools that they need to be launched in to do it because otherwise, like you said, like you’re being thrown into the wolves and you’re, it messes with you and it can cause chaos and confusion and then ultimately end up probably wanting to stop. Right. And so one of the first things that we do is that we actually have a resource, a book, and I mentioned earlier was called the goddess book. Oh, it’s such an incredible book when it comes to fundraising, because it helps break the narrative.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:16):
I hope you caught that there. She didn’t say fundraising. She said friend raising. Yeah. Tell me why you use that, that verbiage

Allison Kliewer (16:23):
Fundraising. Well, one fundraising, when you hear it, it kind of, it can have a negative connotation. Like when you have people who come to the door to ask you, people are like that, they want to stop you. So when you hear fundraising, it can kind of have that same tension or feeling and, but really friend raising for us. And what we really believe is like, man, you’re inviting people who care about you into this journey to financially support you. So that’s like your family, your friends, your colleagues, people who care, generally care about you. And so it’s inviting your friends and your family into it versus just cold asking, like doing a cold ask or a cold invite for people asking for money.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:04):
I think one of the challenges, a lot of people who launch out into ministry have is that they’re so busy doing the ministry that they forget to spend time working on the ministry and in building the processes and systems that will sustain them. Long-Term so they’re just so excited to get out there and preach. And they’re just, we’re going to go on a mission trip and just they’re, they’re making it happen by raw faith. Like, we’re just going to go do this, but they end up getting burned out because they don’t have the proper processes and systems in place to sustain the ministry over the longterm. So as you look at the ministry, what are some of the different administrative areas where systems should be developed if the ministry is going to be sustained long-term

Allison Kliewer (17:55):
Yeah, I think the big thing is having your processes documented like how you had mentioned how you wrote out 64 steps of this podcast, right? That is so pivotal because one, it’s not just it’s not just information, it’s a guideline, it’s a manual that’s laid out of detail of step-by-step so that somebody can come and pick it up, understand it, and to accomplish it. If you don’t have those things documented, then you’re kind of free spirit. And you’re just kind of just going with the flow, trying to figure out. And that actually takes a lot of energy out of you and can take a lot of emotion and time. That’s, that’s costly and that’s where it can exhaust you. But when you have systems and processes in place and documented it’s easier for you to go back to and remember, Oh, Hey, I need to go this so that you’re not wasting time. You’re not wasting energy, but also it helps those who are new coming into the process would be like, Oh, Hey, I can do this. Because I understand this and I can pick it up and I can follow this all the way through versus sideways energy being spent in other places where that energy could be going towards the ministry.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:05):
What are some of the tools that you use in administration? I’ve heard, you mentioned using like Google documents using Dropbox. How do you organize those and, and how do you use those tools to make the, the flow of information simple and effective?

Allison Kliewer (19:25):
Yeah, so we have different applications and tools for all different aspects of the ministry. And so we have ones that are specifically for communication right. Of because we actually have a communication hierarchy. So that’s another process of how we want to be able to communicate among our team within a timeline, whether it’s time sensitive or if it’s urgent how we first initiate a conversation like we have that process actually documented to help our team be able to communicate with one another and how to utilize the applications itself. And so one other thing, like, so one’s RingCentral people can use Slack, text messaging, email phone call, all those different things, help with communication. But for us as project management or doing tasks, we actually have an application called a sauna that we use. And it’s a pro specifically project based project management.

Allison Kliewer (20:19):
And it’s incredible. I get super excited about it. I love it. I thrive in it in a sense because it helps keep the organization organized and it helps keep individuals organized, but also it shows us of how to set things up from the beginning to the end. And then again, I’ll mention it like, it’s the accountability, because without a tool like that, we would never know what’s being done or what is being done and being able celebrate, or be able to say, Hey, that fell through the cracks. Like why was that ball dropped, let’s have conversations about that. It’s otherwise, we’re just really relying on the people to do that, but we also need systems and other applications in place for us as those on staff or within the organization to find the success that we would like to have, to be able to accomplish things.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:11):
Well, I think it’s really neat that you’re using this talent and gift that God has given you for administration, but God’s also giving you great opportunities to minister we’re here in Sierra Leone this week. And we had the opportunity to baptize 152 people. And I saw you down there in the water, you were baptizing all the women that were coming and had given their lives to Jesus. And so what’s that like for you seeing the fruit of all your labor, these people who are getting saved and baptized

Allison Kliewer (21:48):
Wow. Every time that comes up, I’m still in tears because it is such a humbling experience. Because the administration is a strength of mine and being behind the scenes. And I have come to know like men, that’s where I’m supposed to be. And so, and being okay that I may not be the front end and the being the main speaker or being the person baptized, but even having the opportunity to baptize someone, it was my first time to ever baptize someone and knowing that baptism is very personal and intimate between them and Jesus, because it’s an outward proclamation of saying, man, I’ve accepted Christ. I’m I’m ready to live a life for him. And having that opportunity to bow ties women here in Sierra Leone was such a humbling experience. And what an honor, because it brought so much joy to me to see how joyful that moment was for them because of how personal it was. And so, wow. That even somebody who is in administration or behind the scenes, majority of the time, God can still use you in, in ministry and other ways outside of that, because he wants to use all his children, all his sons and daughters to minister, to other people. And you’d be surprised that he can even use you through administration, to minister through people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:09):
Amen. Well, thank you for using your gifts of administration for the Lord. And if someone wants to find out more information about AMI awakening, ministries, international, how can they find out more information? What’s your website?

Allison Kliewer (23:24):
Our website is www dot awakening. That’s a w a K E N I N G. Mental that’s spelled M I N T l.org.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:39):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.

Allison Kliewer (23:42):
Thanks Daniel so much for having me. It was a joy. Thank you. Thanks

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:46):
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 (24:39):
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.

Please Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelism Coach Daniel King.

Matt Reed owns a film agency that uses cameras to tell stories. In today’s episode he explains how ministries and churches can increase their impact and raise more money by effectively sharing their story through photos and videos.

Website: https://thirtystory.com

Please Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelism Coach Daniel King.

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Matt Reed owns a film agency that uses cameras to tell stories. In today’s episode, he explains how ministries in churches can increase their impact and raise more money by effectively sharing their story through photos and video,

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:17):
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 (00:53):
Welcome To the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a special guest, Matt Reed. Thank you so much for being on the podcast with me. Thanks for having me. So we are in the nation of Sierra Leone and we have just finished a wonderful week of ministry here, and you have come at the invitation of will Jones with awakening ministries international as a videographer to capture the story of what God did here in this nation with your video camera. And so you have a passion for telling stories with your video camera. Tell me, how did that start for you?

Matt Reed (01:36):
I think early on, you know, it kind of came out of our ministry within the local church. So we have served in a number of capacities, my wife and I both do video. And so that’s when I say we it’s usually myself and Jill. So you know, we, a few years ago helped with the church plant. We were associate pastors and in charge of youth, but then they added on a little here and a little there and say, Hey, can we do video announcements and start to tell, you know, video testimonies? And they put a camera in my hand and once they put the camera in my hand, it just, for both of us, it just something sparked, you know what I mean? It was just, we were pretty excited about what we’re doing and being creative with capturing stories, but also creating some fun content for video announcements.

Matt Reed (02:18):
And that’s kind of the spark as far as where it started as far as using video in a ministry context, but we’ve always had a mission’s heart, my wife and I for a number of years we both went to school you know, kind of grew up, sorry, grew up in church and both had kind of a call to missions, but we knew it would be non traditional. We never felt like, you know, when people said, Hey, w what do you feel called to? We said, we feel called to missions. I said, where do you want to go? You know, we just never felt like there’s one place. So we’ve maybe in more non-traditional role, but we never really felt like we knew what that would look like until about 10 years into our ministry at this local church, it kind of hit us like seeing missionaries come in and share what they’re doing.

Matt Reed (03:01):
And they’re in their con in their church, in their countries. Some of them were amazing with their presentations and others would, would get up and they’d have PowerPoints that needed a little help, you know? And it was just this like this, I dunno, this intersection of like seeing the need to share stories of what God is doing all over the world and partnering with video. And that was kind of the spark of what we wanted to do. And so when we resigned from the church after about five years from there, we I work at the district office as the sons of God in Minnesota on a part-time basis. And we kind of started a side hustle, which was a passion project, was, was doing video creating videos. And that’s where a 30 story the company kind of came about. And from there we’ve really partnered with a lot of nonprofits, and we’ve tried to be really intentional about partnering with missionaries, especially from Minnesota and helping tell their stories and stories of, of the, the, the churches on the ground, the people that they’re ministering to over the last few years,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:04):
They say that a picture is worth a thousand words and a video is a thousand pictures. So it must be worth even more. Why is it important to tell the story about what God is doing using pictures and videos? You know what I feel like

Matt Reed (04:25):
Video just really, really captures an essence of reality that you, you know, even more so than just telling the story. I feel like the cool thing about video is that you can create, you can hear the sounds of what’s around you and you know what I mean? And and you can create wide shots to kind of see like what the environment looks like or in a church. And you can see people at the altars and at the core of it, I think people can really connect with that because they can see themselves in that, in that video here, in a sense, you know, there’s, as we’ve traveled the world, you know, there’s obviously a lot of differences in cultures and the way that, that you know, countries varied all over the world, but at the same time, the core of who we are, we’re not that different. And I feel like when you put that on video and you see people and you’re telling stories, and you’re seeing the emotion on people’s faces hearing how they are reacting to the gospel and seeing that like it’s impactful. And you realize, like, I remember when I was there, I remember when I was at the altar, you know, at youth camp and when God called me and I feel like there’s a connection there, what you can see and hear and experience through video. That’s just really powerful.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:40):
You’ve been around a lot of churches. You’ve seen a lot of missionaries and missions organizations. What would you say are some of the common mistakes that people make when it comes to communication? That’s a really good question.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:00):
And why is it important for people to invest in quality presentation of pictures and video, and really communicating the story of what God is doing?

Matt Reed (06:11):
That’s good. I’ll go back to the original, like the spark within the local church. You know, we would see basically there’s two types of presenters whenever they come in and present a project or whatever they were doing missionally you’d see one where they would get up and probably they’d have a lack of stories. You know, they would just be really heavy on statistics and just the demographics of the country and all that stuff is good, but they might lack the stories on the flip side, you’ll have the other, you know, another presenter who has a really a 92nd video that tells a story and they get up and they share. And for 30 seconds set up the video, play the video. And at the end of the video, they just give an offering and it’s like response just as tenfold, what the other person was. That was kind of what we saw. We saw like all or nothing. You know what I mean? And I think the key is just telling stories. You got to really focus in on stories.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:08):
Yeah. Everyone who listens to this podcast is an evangelist missionary. They’re excited about sharing the gospel, but in order to do that, you need to raise money and you need to communicate with partners and friends and ask them to invest in, in what you’re doing. Like in my ministry, we ask people to give at least a dollar a month, just if you can just give $1 a month, you can help us reach at least one person for Jesus with that dollar. And so we’re always asking people and telling the stories and how does having pictures and videos help with the fundraising efforts?

Matt Reed (07:48):
Well, it really, I mean, it paints a picture, you know, it paints a picture of what you’re doing. And especially if, even if it’s at the very minimal, like you have a story use an example from this week, you know, one of the guys that helped us with video, his name is Dolakha. She is a Muslim. And at first I didn’t know that, you know, we’re just talking about video and we’re both at the beginning of the week where we have a camera in our hands, each of us, and we’re helping each other out and we’re getting different angles and, you know, shooting all day and together. And we began to talk, you know telling each other’s background, you know, and found out he’s a Muslim. And he’s been working in churches, he’s got a Christian friend, Tony G who was there helping us too.

Matt Reed (08:30):
And another pastor who’s already been speaking into his life and just seeing that he has an openness. So it was just kinda cool to see that. And, you know, through that throughout the course of the week, you know, there’s an opportunity then for him, he, you know, he’s experiencing everything of every service and every outreach, and he’s hearing the gospel over and over again, and he’s seeing people healed and he’s seeing people come to Christ. He’s seeing a man show up at the, at these outreaches. And I remember, you know, I think you were doing the healing service the one evening and asked for people to come forward. And he kind of was on the edge kind of holding us back, you know, and, and I just kind of walked up to him and just said, Hey, you know, do you need prayer?

Matt Reed (09:12):
You know, look, he’s like, yeah, I have pain in my back. Cause I let’s, let’s go forward. Let’s go forward. Let’s just pray. I’ll pray with you. And so I prayed with them and it was like nothing fancy, you know, just learn to pray, halos back. And, and that was it. You know, we walked away, I think that was Tuesday night, Wednesday night maybe. And I didn’t find out until when was baptisms was seven Saturday. Yeah. I didn’t find out until he got, well, he got baptized on, on, on Saturday which sort of been Wednesday that we prayed for him. So he gave his life to Christ sometime in between then Wednesday and Saturday got baptized on Saturday and then other celebration service on Saturday afternoon, he shares a story of how, like, you know, the groundwork that was laid through his friend, Tony and, and his pastor MC and, and just seeing everything that God was doing through, through him and in his life this week. And then he mentioned that, you know, when I prayed for him, like 15 minutes later that, you know, God had taken away that pain that he had had for nine months in his back. And it was just one of the things that was just like, God is real.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:17):
Yeah. So for him, it was a combination of being in our services five or six services a day, all week long, hearing the gospel presentation over and over again, and then going up for prayer, receiving a healing in his back, what a tremendous testimony. And then what a tremendous thing, when he came to you and said, Hey, I want to be baptized with the people who have given their lives to Christ. It’s a, it’s a huge victory.

Matt Reed (10:41):
And I used that as an example of a story that I can tell without pictures, but I mean, even at the very least, you know, I just took a selfie with that, right. Just take a picture of me and Del cushion. Like even if I can accent that story with an image and people can see his face and see his smile and see it look into his eyes and realize, Oh, here’s a guy who’s impacted by Christ. You know, at the very minimal, you know, even just a picture of someone I think can go, you know, like, is that a picture’s worth a thousand words. And if I can accent with a story like that, you know, of transformation, what God did in a week and in a life of Dulcie dish. That’s awesome. And how much more that I had video all week of him, you know what I mean? Like I have video of him getting baptized. I have video of him sharing his own testimony. I didn’t expect him to share a testimony either, you know, and, but how much more powerful is that story going forward, knowing that in his own words, I’ve captured on video, what God did in his life.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:36):
And he’s in almost every shot you made because he was there taking pictures and you were probably trying to avoid them to figure out a way to get a shot without the other cameraman in the shot.

Matt Reed (11:47):
So you say that because like you said, this, this story’s powerful in and of itself, but if I add an image, how much more powerful, and if I add video, wow. And even in his own words, like it’s just layer upon layer that can add depth to the story.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:02):
Yeah. I think sometimes evangelists get really enamored with pictures of big crowds in numbers. It’s saying we had X number of people saved and there’s competition. Like we got this number of people saved. How many did your crusade get people saved? But often I think that only evangelists really connect with the picture of the big crowd. Other people really connect with the story of the individual whose whose life was changed. And so like on our website, we always put the picture of the big crowd, but I always try to find that story one in a million, because we’re, we’re trying to reach a million people for Jesus every year, but I really want to highlight that one in a million. And when you’re talking about numbers, it’s important to remember that every number represents an individual whose life was changed in through story. You can highlight some of those stories of what Jesus has done in individual’s lives.

Matt Reed (13:00):
Yeah. In a way it’s just to piggyback on that. You know, I, I run social media for our assemblies of God in Minnesota and a couple of other nonprofits. And what we find on social media is that the greatest engagement is usually when it’s a picture of an individual or maybe two people. If you post a crowd, picture engagement, drops, you know, if you’re posting a promotion engagement traps, but the moment you show like a child or, you know, in your church or a volunteer in your church, active in ministry, your engagement goes up and that’s what people connect with. Cause people it’s harder for people everyday people to connect with a crowd or to connect with even a worship team or, you know, a group of people. But when you, when you can show them create a connection with one, you know, with one person that’s something that really resonates.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:55):
So you have a business and with your business, you help nonprofits to tell their stories. If someone wants more information about you or wants to connect with you, what’s your website. What’s a good way for them to connect.

Matt Reed (14:09):
Yeah. They can connect with us@thirtystory.com and that’s all spelled out 30 story.com and yeah, just reach out our emails on their contact form. We’d love to connect.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:21):
Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. 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 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

Evangelism Podcast Host (15:19):
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.

Mike Shreve used to be a Kundalini Yoga teacher, but a prayer group started praying for him. He was hitchhiking and the man who picked him up led him to Jesus. Today he shares how to reach people who are in the New Age Movement.

Questions for Mike Shreve: 

How did you get saved?

How did you get started in your evangelistic ministry?

What are some of the characteristics of the “New Age Movement?”

How can Christians reach people who are fascinated with the New Age Movement and mystical Eastern religions?

Are adherents of all religions worshiping the same God?

What is the Jesus method of evangelism and what is the Pauline method of evangelism?

Quote: 

Jack London: Bring thoughts in and entertain them royally for one of them may be king and may exalt you to honor.

Websites:

https://www.thetruelight.net

https://shreveministries.org

Download a FREE copy of Mike Shreve’s book: Encountering God 

Check out Daniel King, The Evangelism Coach, on The Evangelism Podcast every day.

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Mike Shreve used to be a Kundalini Yoga teacher, but a prayer group started praying for him. He was hitchhiking and the man who picked him up led him to Jesus. Today he shares how to reach people who are in the New Age Movement.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:19):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord, 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 (00:55):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m super excited to have with me, my special guest pastor Mike Shreve. He used to be a yoga teacher, but now he got saved. Thank you so much for joining me, my friend.

Mike Shreve (01:14):
Well, it’s my blessing, my honor to be with you. I’m looking forward to the interview and I believe we’re going to cover some very important territory.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:22):
Well, let’s start out with your testimony. How did you get saved?

Mike Shreve (01:27):
Well, someone had to be very evangelistic in their mindset to win me to the Lord. As you mentioned, I was a yoga teacher, but I was not just teaching a class on the physical aspect of yoga. I was all the way into the deep philosophical side of yoga was teaching Kundalini yoga at four universities in Florida and running a yoga Ashrom, and this was back in 1970 and the temperature Beaune newspaper did a big article on me. I thought it would increase my class attendance dramatically. Instead it alerted a local prayer group to start praying for me. And they had a 24 hour prayer line, a prayer group where they assigned somebody to be fasting and praying for me every hour of every day. So I was being soaked within her session. And about three or four weeks later, I got a letter from a friend of mine in college, and we had both left college for the same reason to search for God through Eastern religions.

Mike Shreve (02:34):
He had gotten connected to a different group and he wrote me a letter telling me how he had walked into church and heard an audible voice saying Jesus is the only way. And he said, the Holy spirit fell on him. And he experienced being born again, which was the term I was unfamiliar with having been raised Catholic. So that in itself was an evangelistic outreach to me personally because after Larry got saved, he started writing every friend. He had an address for, to share Jesus with them. And so there is a means there is a way to win souls if you have a passion to do it. Well, I pondered that letter for about a week or two. It seemed a logical to me that Christianity was the only path amid all the other religions of the world. But then finally I decided, Hey, I’m a truth seeker.

Mike Shreve (03:34):
I’ve got to deal with this. I’ve got to at least open my heart up to it. If Jesus died on the cross for the sins of humanity, I owe it to him to at least a focus on that for at least a day and see if there’s validity to it saved there’s truth to it. So one day I decided, instead of doing my normal yoga disciplines, which started at three 30 every morning, we would start the day with two hours of meditation and yoga and then various regimens after that, that day. Instead I just decided all it was going to do was read the Bible and talk to Jesus. And, and so for the next 10 hours, all I did was shift between reading the Bible and then praying to Jesus. I didn’t use any mantras. I didn’t use any other far Eastern methods of meditation.

Mike Shreve (04:31):
And then nothing happened. I was expecting a supernatural visitation over and over again. I said, Jesus, if you’re the only way, if you’re the answer, give me some kind of supernatural sign today that afternoon, I was hitchhiking to go teach at university of South Florida. And I had to hitchhike everywhere because I’d renounced all material possessions and owned nothing except a couple changes of clothes. And that afternoon, while I was hitchhiking, I was still praying Jesus, if you’re the answer, if you’re the only way to heaven, give me a sign today. And the man that God had chosen to reach me was two miles away. He was part of the prayer group that was praying for me. But the amazing thing about it is he had a background in yoga. He was a personal student of a man named Yogananda who I respected at that time.

Mike Shreve (05:28):
And so he was two miles away walking in a laundry mat and the Holy spirit spoke to him to get back in his van and start driving. And he had no idea what God wanted him to do, because God doesn’t always give you all the instructions all at once. You have to act on what you hear. And all he knew to do was get in his van and start driving. He didn’t know that the yoga teacher he’d been praying for for several weeks was two miles down the road, hitchhiking. He never picked up hitchhikers, but he felt that compulsion again to pull over when he saw me. And when I opened the door, my heart jumped because on the ceiling of the band, he had taped a picture of Jesus and I knew it was my answer. And so I was sitting on the edge of my seat with expectation and a few moments later, he said, friend can ask you a question.

Mike Shreve (06:20):
And I said, yes. He said, have you ever experienced Jesus coming into your heart? I said, no, but when can I? And he looked at me with utter surprise because he wasn’t expecting me to surrender or to give in that quick we discussed it for about 15 minutes and then I knelt down with him in the back of the van and received Jesus into my heart, kind of a halting prayer. I felt the whole time I was praying it, that it was too simple. It was too easy just to say, I receive you into my heart. Be Lord of my life, wash me in your blood. But I was open and I was I was not only open. I was very hungry, spiritually, very thirsty for reality. And when Jesus came into my heart, it was so powerful. It was so real that I knew I had found the truth.

Mike Shreve (07:11):
And so I asked this man who just wanted me to the Lord to go with me to the yoga class that day. And I announced to all of my students that unknowingly, I had misled them. And that Jesus really is the only way most of my yoga students became Christians. And then all of that week, I went to my yoga classes and instead of teaching yoga, I announced my salvation, shut the classes down, shut my Ash from Dan and went to live in a Christian community in central Florida. So that’s the nutshell presentation of my testimony, but somebody had a heart to be evangelistic one at a time. Phillip did it one at a time with the Ethiopian eunuch. And we’re told historically that Ethiopia was the first nation to proclaim itself, Christian. And who knows if that unit was the main driving force behind it.

Mike Shreve (08:06):
So you’ve gotta be willing to go one to one to one. In fact, God showed me in the book of revelation a number of years ago, how that it starts off saying the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave to him. And he sent his angel to his servant, John, and then John began to expand the revelation. So the revelation came from the father to the son, to an angel, to John from one, two, one, two one, two one, and then it expanded to the seven churches. And then of course, globally, ultimately, and I’ve gotta be willing to be one of the ones in that link of events and that chain of events, rather, I’ve gotta be willing to be one link sometimes as well as preaching mass crusades like you do. And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:01):
Yeah, that’s tremendous. You know, you mentioned Ethiopia and we’ve done six or seven crusades over there. And every time we’ve seen thousands of people come to Jesus. Our last crusade, we had thousands of people that gathered together on a field. It was just in December and, and just a tremendous time of ministry. The people there are very open to God because of that testimony of the Ethiopian unit going all the way back 2000 years ago to fill up the evangelists the first and the only evangelist mentioned in the new Testament. All right. So you’ve got a really tremendous evangelistic ministry. You have a website called the true light.net where you are writing articles, reaching out to people who are interested in Eastern religions, trying to show them that the truth of Christianity, how did your evangelistic ministry get started?

Mike Shreve (10:01):
Well, that’s kind of a unique story to most likely, but after I lived at the Christian commune for about three months I just felt this, this deep desire to just dive into the work of God without reservation. And I was sitting around a campfire with one other brother who lived there at the commune, and he was very excited about a scripture found in Luke chapter 14. He said, have you ever seen this? And he showed me the passage where Jesus said, except a man for say, call. He cannot be my disciple. He said, do you know anybody doing that? I said, no, I don’t think I do. He said, let’s do it. I said, I’m game. Sure. Let’s go for it. And so the next day we gave away everything we owned, which was a greater commitment for him because he owned a car.

Mike Shreve (10:56):
All I owned was about $1,500 worth of music equipment, and a lot of clothes. And I gave away all my clothes and my music equipment. He gave away his car. We gave away all our money. We didn’t keep not a nickel, not a penny because Jesus said all and all means all we did, we did keep one change of clothes and a Bible when we felt a little bad about having a change of clothes. But we found out later on, that came in real helpful when we washed our first set. But anyway, we’d just set on hitchhiking and hitchhiked about 500 miles. I think it was no, no. It was probably double that from Ovida Florida all the way up to Bloomington Indiana. And we had an invitation from a little country church and bless their hearts. They were very fundamental, strong, fundamental folks that had invited us.

Mike Shreve (11:55):
And when they realized we were kind of ex hippie types they got scared and closed the revival before we even got a chance to preach the first sermon, which was very disconcerting to me to give away everything you own hitchhike a thousand miles, and then your first revival canceled before you preach one sermon. That’s that’s discouraging, but it was God. It was God Daniel. And I have found out in 50 years of evangelism, and this is my 50th year, by the way, I’ve found out that often when you deliver your life and the steps you’d take into the hands of Jesus, disappointments become divine appointments. And you’ve got, you’ve got to look past the initial disappointment and say, now what’s God doing here. Well, I didn’t see readjusting here. And so I was discouraged at first and the other guy had been saved five years.

Mike Shreve (12:50):
So he slapped me on the back and he said, Mike, we came to Indiana to preach. So we’re going to preach. And so we started walking down through that college town, university of Indiana is there. And we pass by an open field that was purchased by the Yippies. Now not everyone remembers the MPS. They were hippies that got politically oriented and, and socialist Stickley and communist tickly minded in their philosophy. And so they had a big sign out in the middle of the field that said, it’s the people’s park. It’s right. Downtown Bloomington, near the university. It’s still there, by the way, it’s been built up some, but there was a large sign that said it had been purchased by the hippies for the free use of anybody that wanted to use it. So Bob looked at me as a man. That’s our church.

Mike Shreve (13:43):
The communist bought my first church for me, praise God. So we set up church on that property and he said, Mike, we’ve got to have advertisement. If we’re going to have a meeting here. I said, man, we don’t have any money. How can we get advertise me? He said, sh I’ll show you. We walked across the street and bought a 25 cent magic marker. We had 50 cents. So we had enough money for a magic marker, a red magic marker. I remember the color. And then he said, follow me as I follow Christ. And it walked across the road to a pizza joint. And when we went around the back and I’m wondering, what’s the guy into, you know, and he said, Mike, I feel led for you to climb up in that dumpster. And he was a big heavy guy. So I’m sure he felt led for a logical reason for me to do the dirty work.

Mike Shreve (14:31):
But he said, I feel led for you to climb up in the dumpster and get a bunch of old pizza boxes so that we can run our advertisement on it. So we got these pieces of boxes, folded them backwards and roll wrote on them, revival, old fashioned street preaching in the name of Jesus, miracle signs and wonders healing, the sick prophesies and casting out devils every night at seven 30 and then down at the bottom in parentheses, we put no snakes. And if you know, Mark 16, 16 through 18, then you know why I referenced that. And I’m sure you do. And then he said, Mike, we gotta have pews. The ground’s wet. The Dew falls, nobody’s going to want to sit on wet grass. So let’s go back to the dumpster. And we got a bunch of paps blue ribbon beer, cardboard boxes that we busted down and flattened out and, and set pews.

Mike Shreve (15:24):
So to speak all over the field, sit down pews or something to keep them from getting wet. And so the communist bought my first church and a beer company provided the pews. And I preached my first sermon except a man loses his life for my second for the gospels. They shall not find it. That was my main text we had about 70 people show up that night. Most of them hippies druggies. There was a guy there that played in the lead group that worked with led Zepplin. I preached my message probably about 90% of them gave their hearts to the Lord. And that’s how my evangelistic ministry was launched. Because from that point forward, I never quit traveling. And eventually it opened up to churches. Open-Air crusades like you do in foreign countries and tent meetings. I, I took a tent around the United States for about 25 years and we had some incredible meetings, but if you have a heart to win souls, you’ll find some way to do it.

Mike Shreve (16:27):
And you’ve got one of my favorite quotes. Daniel is by Jack London. I don’t know if he was a Christian or not, but I read his book when I was a boy, the call of the wild. And he said this, he said, bring thoughts in and entertain them royally for one of them may be the King and may exalt you to honor. And I like to alter it a little bit, bring thoughts in and entertain them royally for one of them may be from the King and may exalt you to honor. And God will give you innovative thoughts, creative thoughts about things to do in order to reach the loss. And I did that with the website that you mentioned a while ago, the true light.net. And God’s really blessed in that. And maybe we can talk about that some too,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:17):
Let’s jump into it a little bit. Now you got saved out of a mystical Eastern religion and you have a heart for reaching people that are involved in that same type of a philosophy. And so let’s start by just defining like the new age movement. What would you say are some of the characteristics of the new age movement and how can we recognize when people get involved in that?

Mike Shreve (17:47):
Well on the, on the website, the true light.net, there’s an article about, I think it’s 15 different characteristics of the new age movement, and there’s no way on this podcast.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:01):
Yeah. I’m looking at it here. You have like fascination with a supernatural pluralism believing in an impersonal God pantheism monism sacredness of nature, the divinity of man, the power to personally and subjectively create reality. You have a weak view of Satan and sin a week view of salvation and forgiveness, enlightenment, reincarnation, evolutionary optimism, the coming of a Messiah, and then a global family outlook. So let’s just pick a couple of those to look at what is enlightenment

Mike Shreve (18:38):
Well, enlightenment within the framework of new age, spirituality or Hinduism is achieving a place where you have realized, and not all Hindus, believe this. Let me preface the statement with this. The majority of Hindus do believe in monism and Mona ism is the idea that everything is of one essential substance. And most of them believe in pantheism which is the belief that everything is an emanation of God or a manifestation of the Godhead. And the Godhead is an it not a, he it’s an impersonal lifeforce. So enlightenment comes when I realize my oneness with the one Hindus would call Brahman, who is this ultimate reality, this cosmic level of consciousness, this force that flows through the universe. And when I realized my oneness with God within the framework of Hinduism, that means you realize that you are God, which is the total opposite of the truth, the antithesis of the truth because it was an original lie that Satan presented in the very beginning in the garden of Eden.

Mike Shreve (19:52):
And of course has tried to perpetrate that same line ever since. And that has one of the primary points in that list. You just read because it, everything else hinges on that, I believe that you are divine. Now, why do I have a problem with that? Because if we say that we are God, and if we say everything is God, then the next step of logic is to believe that we are God. And if we say we are gone, that statement includes monsters like it off Hitler and benevolent people like mother Teresa. And so it reaches out and gathers all the wicked and the righteous into one group and says, we are all God. Well, the next step of logic you have to take, if you believe that is that God is both evil and good. If God, if the God hadn’t manifested itself in expressions of darkness and light, and God has darkness and light, but the Bible says God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

Mike Shreve (21:04):
So there’s a disconnect there. How could that be? Because within the Christian worldview, the biblical worldview, God exists apart from the physical universe. And so in order to come into a relationship with God, he enters into you from, without, it’s not an awakening. You asked me what enlightenment is. Enlightenment is something that’s according to new agers, according to Hindus achieve through various rituals, meditation processes yoga, and not only the meditative part of yoga, but the physical exercises are all designed toward this desirable goal of being enlightened and coming to the realization that you are God. Now the scary part, Daniel is that in Hinduism, it is taught that this happens when you have something called a Kundalini awakening and the word Kundalini means serpent power. And I’m sure anyone who has any knowledge of the Bible knows that a serpent is symbolic of evil, not so in Hinduism because the serpent power is a description of what they believe is a coiled energy, a dormant source of energy at the base of the spine that is awakened through meditation and like a serpent striking.

Mike Shreve (22:36):
It rises up through the spine through something called shock shockers, which I believe do not exist now, but shockers are supposedly energy centers spinning wheels of energy up through the spine. The one that’s most famous is the third eye. That’s the sixth chakra. And then the seven chakras called the crown chakra. Well, when you come to enlightenment, this serpent power rises up through you and then merges with the crown chakra. You leave your body, you become one with the infinite. So why do I have a problem with that? That’s the demon possession because Jesus said, I am the way the truth and the life. And no one comes to the father except by me. And, and so you’ve got to go through the Lord Jesus to come into a valid and genuine oneness with God. And one is with God within a biblical framework is much different than what a Hindu call oneness with God.

Mike Shreve (23:36):
But yeah, that’s a very concise view, but most new agers believe in chakras. Most new agers believe in the Kundalini. And I have people call me from all over the world, Daniel, desperate for prayer and deliverance because they’ve yielded to this force. And now it’s out of control that going to yoga classes and then started having spontaneous Kundalini awakenings, where they feel these energy surges through their bodies. And it drives them to the point of insanity because there’s an invasion spiritually that happens in soullessly where they come under the control of these dominating demons that want that, that want to possess them completely and give them psychic experiences in the process where they think that they’re having a genuine encounter with supernatural things, but it’s all, it’s all leading them in the wrong direction.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:35):
So let’s get down to the really important question. You’ve explained some about what people who believe in the new age movement would, would practice what they would believe. But the important question is how can we, as Christians reach people who are fascinated with the new age movement, with mystical Eastern religions, you said you’ve had people call you because they’ve been entangled in this deceptive, demonic belief system. How are you able to reach them? How can we set them free?

Mike Shreve (25:10):
Most new agers will not respond to any kind of language like are just used. I’m using it with you because you’re a believer and you shook her hand what I’m saying, and you deal with the deliverance all the time. I’m sure in your ministry but most new agers recoil from the idea of Satan or demons or hell. And if you tell someone that their belief system is wrong and they’ll end up going to hell, they’ll shut down on you immediately. I use what I call the Jesus method. And sometimes the Pauline method in reaching people who are involved in the new age, what do I mean by that? Well, Jesus met the woman at the well, and she was a Samaritan Samaritans had all kinds of false doctrine in John four. Yeah, right? Absolutely. And he could have easily nailed her and started enumerating all the things that were wrong that she believed.

Mike Shreve (26:13):
But he saw past this massive false doctrine that she was entangled by as a Samaritan and saw thirst in her heart. And he said if you ask water me, I’ll give you water where you’ll never thirst again. She said, Oh Lord, give me this water. And he said, it will be in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life that never got involved in a doctrinal squabble. He just saw she was thirsty for reality. And he appealed to that. Usually when I witnessed the new ages, we always hit an impasse where they start picking out certain things they don’t believe. And thankfully about Christianity. And thankfully the men who wanted me to the Lord avoided that because right before I prayed, I told him, I said, Kent. I said, listen. I said, I gotta be honest with you. I said, I don’t, I, I don’t believe the Bible is the inspired word of God.

Mike Shreve (27:16):
I can’t believe that. And he just looked at me with this big beaming smile. And he said, don’t worry about that. Just try Jesus. I said, well, I’ll never believe in a literal hell. I can’t believe God would send anyone to hell. He said, don’t worry about that. Just try Jesus. And I said, Oh, one other thing, I gotta get off my chest. I said, I’ll never quit believing in reincarnation. I said, it seems to me the only fair and just way to look at life. He said, don’t worry about that. Just try Jesus. He knew that if I ever had a genuine personal encounter with Jesus, then the spirit of truth would come in my life and lead me and guide me into truth in all three of those areas and many others. And I think sometimes Christians try to prove doctrine before they empower a person with an encounter.

Mike Shreve (28:12):
And it’s more important to get people to Jesus. And then they have the God of truth. They have the spirit of truth within them. They have the one who said I am the truth. And so they come under the influence of truth and they’re much more able to comprehend it once they have a genuine born again experience. And so that’s one thing I would encourage people if you’re going to reach out to new agers, then don’t try to slam them over every belief that they have kind of navigate around their favorite beliefs and find an entry point. Find something that you know, would create a curiosity in them. And that’s the Pauline method. And that’s found in the book of acts where he was on Mars Hill. And he said, I saw this statue to the unknown God. Well, that’s the God. I know he appealed to their intellectual curiosity.

Mike Shreve (29:10):
And the other way that I reached new agers is by following a line of logic that causes them to think because most of them are very Hetty and very I won’t say proud, but is not that they’re proud in a bad way, but proud of intellectual reality. Like they don’t just receive something because somebody teaches it to them, which can be good because I was raised Roman Catholic and if I’d persuaded easily, then I would still be in that belief system. And there’s a lot of beautiful, wonderful people in the Roman Catholic church, but none of them ever told me how to be born again. And thank God, there’s a huge movement in Catholicism. Now people discovering that. But Paul of course reached the Athenians by appealing to their intellectual curiosity. And sometimes I’ll do the same. And like the statement I made a little while ago about pantheism.

Mike Shreve (30:12):
I often when I preach in India apply that somewhere in my sermon because I tell them that that if this is true, if we are all God, and if the universe is an emanation of God, and if God is an impersonal force, then our ultimate destiny would be to become impersonal. Because they believe after over a million reincarnations, you merge with this oversoul. And and I said, that’s not progress. That’s not progression that’s digression to move from being a personal beam to an impersonal beam where you blend in with an impersonal force. I said, that’s not progress. And Oh, one other thing most Hindus have you witnessed to them. And, and if you say, have you ever experienced Jesus coming into your heart? If you’re on a one-to-one witnessing thing with a Hindu person, usually they’ll say, well, there is only one God and most Christians have no idea how to get over that.

Mike Shreve (31:18):
Most new agers will say, well, there’s only one God and most Christians are kind of brought to a standstill by that statement because that’s true. There is only one God, but a Hindu means something completely different by that short statement than a Bible believer would mean when a Hindu says there is only one, God is a way of reaching out and embracing pluralism, which is a sign of new age belief system. Pluralism is the idea that all paths are legitimate paths to ultimate reality. And so Hindu, when he says there is only one God is saying is presenting an all-inclusive view that every spiritual path is legitimate. When a Christian says there is only one, God, a Christian is indicating that there’s only one correct revelation of the Godhead. And of course we believe in a triune God, father, son, and Holy spirit.

Mike Shreve (32:18):
And these three are one God, you don’t find that anywhere else in any other religious group or religion in the world. And so we are distinguishing Christianity as being unique when we present that view of the Godhead and it is, it is completely unique. And so my point from that point in the discussion is usually the truth has got to be objective. It’s not subjective because most new agers can say, Hey, you can create your own reality. You can have your truth. I can have my truth and we can both be right simultaneously, which to me is completely illogical because no scientist would apply that rule to the process of discovering truth. In the natural realm, you discover truth by experimentation and observation, and you reach some results that cause you to distinguish truth from error and as the same, a good example that I use often as an analogy is how Ptolemy in the second century taught that the earth was the center of the solar system and the sun revolved around the earth.

Mike Shreve (33:40):
A thousand years later, the Copernicus came along and said, no, no, no. The sun is at the center and the earth revolves around the sun. What if they were contemporaries and discussing their views? Would it even be remotely possible that Copernicus can say to Ptolemy, Hey, you can have your view and I can have my view and we can both be right. Simultaneously. One view is right at the expense of the other view, being wrong and Daniel I believe it’s the same way in Eastern religions. There’s a spark of divinity within every human being to find God’s you look within in Christianity, God exists outside of us. And to experience God, you invite the Lord Jesus Christ to come into you from, without both of those views cannot be right. Simultaneously one is right. The other is wrong. And of course I contend as having embraced both belief systems at one time or another in my life that the Christian biblical path is the only correct one.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:41):
Yeah. I find it valuable if you’re going to go into preach in a Hindu majority nation or a Buddhist majority nation that knowing some of these things about how they think is really valuable in communicating the gospel. And even when you’re preaching the gospel to be aware of how they think, what they’re thinking. Like, for example, if you preach on you must be born again, a Hindu may interpret that as you need to be reincarnated. And so you can preach on being born again, that’s a very biblical concept, but it’s important to define it as your preaching from the biblical standpoint. And so when I go preach in different nations, I try to think through everything. I’m saying how I’m saying it in, put it in terms that they can understand. So if you say, God is one God, well, you need to define that within a Christian context, a Christian meaning so that you can, and, and I think a lot of evangelists, they just go and preach the same message on the other side of the world that they might preach in America, but is not always understood the same way. So first you have to XG the Bible, understand what the Bible is saying, but then you have to XG your audience and understand what your audience is hearing when you’re speaking. And so that’s why some of the research that you’ve done, some of the, the articles that are on your website are so valuable and can help evangelists who are ministering to these regions of the world.

Mike Shreve (36:26):
And you have to win a person friendship before you can win their soul. And, and I love what you just brought out about being culturally and religiously sensitive to what people believe predominantly in certain regions of the world, because you can’t go in with with spiritual guns on your hips, shooting down everything. They believe you have to find an entry point. Yes,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:52):
Jesus is the entry point. Jesus says, I’m the way the truth and the light. And so if you can bring people to Jesus to have an encounter with Jesus, then later on, you can start dealing with some of their different beliefs and different systems of thought. But I, like you said before, I think Jesus is that entry point that brings people to salvation,

Mike Shreve (37:16):
Right? And that’s why when I preach in India, normally I don’t preach against their gods. I may suddenly mention things to try and bring them a little at a time to the understanding of the real nature of God. Of course you have to, to open up their minds, but I don’t blast them over their present belief system. I had somebody sharing an analogy with me years ago, many, many years ago when I first began winning souls. And they said, if you have a starving dog, that’s knowing on an old bone that has no meat on it. If you try and pull the bone out of its mouth, that will fight you for it. But if you plot down a juicy steak next to that dog, it will leave the bone without any coaxing. And, and so that’s what we need to do with our preaching, present Jesus in such beauty, empowering and love that they automatically turn from their false beliefs and want to know this Jesus.

Mike Shreve (38:17):
And so I emphasize that the beauty of who he is and how he wants to heal. And of course in our meetings, we emphasize healing in because that, that, that really draws people to the Lord when they don’t understand all the doctrine biblically, they understand that there’s a real God that will heal me in a real way. In fact, one of the greatest revivals I’ve ever held over in India, and it should have been my last revival or my last I like to call them gatherings, not crusades because of the negative connotation of the word crusade. But I had a prayer gathering in Kumba Kona, India. I was actually the first Western missionary to hold an outdoor meeting in the middle of that city, which is a Hindu center. And thousands upon thousands of people gathered to this open air meeting and I’ve preached, but it was such a labor because most of the people were completely ignorant about biblical things. And when you have a crowd of people that don’t understand anything hardly about the Bible is, is very challenging to lay the groundwork effectively, just within a 45 minute to an hour period of time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:35):
Let me give you an example on being careful with your vocabulary. You’re talking about the Bible, but someone who’s not a Christian May not even know what the Bible is. So when I hold up my Bible, I don’t call it a Bible. I say, this is God’s book. And so I’m defining it within it. And then I begin to read from God’s book. So if someone doesn’t know the word Bible, they’ll still know what I’m reading.

Mike Shreve (40:01):
That’s awesome. That’s a fantastic point. But anyway, I labored through an hour long of teaching and felt like I got nowhere. In fact, there was such demonic opposition. I was right in the middle of seven, huge Hindu temples all around the field. And it was a such a thick, dark, demonic atmosphere. I felt like I was being choked the whole time I was preaching. And then right at the end of my message, God dropped a word of knowledge into my spirit. And he said, call for the death. And if what, and tell them if what you’ve taught is true, every deaf person will hear again. And so I’d like to say, I boldly acted on that word without any sense of in trepidation, but I was shaking like a leaf inside. I thought hinge and the whole night on every single deaf person hearing again, wow, this is a step of faith, but I did it.

Mike Shreve (40:58):
And they brought seven people. Four were totally deaf, three had one deaf ear. I said, bring me somebody totally deaf first, not knowing that was the key to that whole night. And they brought me a 23 year old young man who had been deaf for five years. I did not know that simultaneously there was a group of six radical Hindus climbing up the stairwell behind the platform. And there was a big 20 foot high gate that normally was supposed to prevent break-ins. And it had a huge padlock about this big on the gate. Well, they had a sledgehammer and right when I started to pray for this young man to get his ears open, I hear this crunching crashing sound. I didn’t know it was six guys with a sledgehammer hitting that lock. And, and one of the guys would just hitting it again.

Mike Shreve (41:54):
And again, finally it clattered to the concrete, right? When I was about 20 seconds, 30 seconds into praying for this guy and the gate swings open, and six guys come running my direction. Now let me interject something here. Most Hindu people believe in tolerance and gentleness. And it’s a very very peaceful approach to relations with other people, but there’s radical elements in every religion, every society. So anyway, the six guys came running me with this fierce look on their faces. And I turned around thinking to my horror. I can’t afford to get distracted right now. What’s going on. And right when I turned around to see who they were, the guy jumped out of my hands and started screaming that he could hear again. And the head of the radical Hindu group stopped wide-eyed he walked over and started whispering in the guy’s ears and getting him to repeat it back.

Mike Shreve (42:57):
I did not find out until the next day that the guy that got healed was the next door neighbor of the guy who was the head of the Hindu radical group. God set that up in such an amazing way. And I, I thought, well, this must be a pastorally appointed checking committee because they all started checking the guy on verify and he can hear, he can hear. And so I prayed for the second one and the second one heard again, and I asked them to check the second one. And they ended up verifying all seven people, getting their hearing. And I gave an invitation and everyone on the platform was amazed when those guys fell to their knees and repented and got right with the Lord. And about 500 people came out of the audience and gave the hearts to the Lord. And the next day they met with me and told me what their intentions were.

Mike Shreve (43:52):
They had planned to beat me up publicly timing to the bumper of their car and drag me through the city and in order to stop missionary activity in their town. And it, and, and the victory that not hinged on following the directive that God gave me in the form of a word of knowledge. And I tell you what, you know, this, if anybody knows that, you know, when you function on foreign fields, you’ve got to have divine direction. And you’ll face situations like that where God God came out with the enemy in amazing ways.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:26):
That’s a tremendous testimony, Pastor Mike, I want to say, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. Your website is the true light.net. And on there you offer your book, encountering God for free. If someone just goes and gives you some information, and it looks like a really wonderful book, I was going through it earlier, and you also have Shreve ministries.org. And so you’re available to go minister at churches to do evangelism, to help churches with evangelism. And you also do crusades overseas. So if someone wants to support you or help you out with what you’re doing go visit his website. And if you want more information about the new age movement, mystical Eastern religions check out his website, the true light.net brother, Mike, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. It’s a great honor to have you here.

Mike Shreve (45:32):
Hey, it’s been quite a blessing and I respect what you’re doing for the kingdom, and I’m so glad to get connected with you, Daniel. Thank you, God bless you. God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (45:43):
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 (46:36):
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.

Evangelist Aaron Perry leads Radiance Ministries. Their goal is to release life, love, and power into a new generation and they want to radiate the love of Christ to the lost. Today he shares his vision for reaching people for Jesus.

Website: http://www.radianceministries.org

Do you like The Evangelism Podcast? Let Daniel King, the Evangelism Coach, know how it has blessed you.

Transcription:

Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
Evangelist Aaron Perry leads, radiance ministries. Their goal is to release life love and power into a new generation, and they want to radiate the love of Christ to the lost today. He shares his vision for reaching people for Jesus.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:17):
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,

Evangelist Daniel King (00:54):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King. And today I have a special guest with me. Aaron Perry is the founder and president of Radiance ministries. Aaron, thank you so much for being with me today.

Aaron Perry (01:09):
Yeah, thanks for having me. It’s always good to spend time with you.

Evangelist Daniel King (01:14):
So tell me a little bit about your ministry and how you got started in ministry.

Aaron Perry (01:21):
Yeah, so our ministry is mainly focused on evangelism overseas. We do missional evangelism and we actually started, it’s a unique way. It’s been a incredible journey, but we started a group of us gathered together out of Christ for the nations institutes. And we started you know, passionately wanting people to encounter God, to get saved experiences, presence. And so we started traveling, started a traveling ministry in Texas and Oklahoma traveling all over doing ministry. And that’s, that’s kinda how we first started and it kind of blossomed into what it is today, which is traveling all over the world, preaching the gospel.

Evangelist Daniel King (02:05):
What are some of the countries and places that you’ve been able to minister?

Aaron Perry (02:10):
Yeah. our first crusade we ever did, which was I think we’re coming up on five years ago now was in Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka right South of India, and then been to India been to Uganda Ethiopia, Honduras. And then of course you and I were in Cuba at the same time. Just what was that two years ago? So, yeah,

Evangelist Daniel King (02:38):
That was the last time that we really talked was that time in Cuba, we had a really wonderful time together. It was tremendous there to see what guy was doing in Cuba. So tell me some about the heart of your ministry and what you mean by radiance ministries, kind of what you, your mandate from God is.

Aaron Perry (03:02):
Yeah, so radiance ministries you know, our slogan is revealing life love and power. And so we, we just want people to encounter the living. God, it is something that has always been in me. And I’ll tell you when I did the Sri Lanka crusade, I would say it was the strongest conviction. Seeing the response of people coming down to give their lives to Jesus. I committed in my own heart and told the Lord, God, I give my life to this life. This is what it’s all about. And so Radiant’s, our vision is simply to preach the gospel for the rest of my life and travel all over the world and go to the places that need the gospel the most. So

Evangelist Daniel King (03:48):
Who are some of the ministries that have had the biggest impact on you?

Aaron Perry (03:55):
Six, seven years ago? That was seven years ago. You know, I worked for Reinhardt Bunky. I was Reinhardt Bunky and Daniel Glenda’s crusade director here in America. And as I was doing that for over two years it, it just gets on you, you know, it’s contagious, the just winning souls and the passion for evangelism, it gets on you. And so that’s kind of the start of just the, the transferring of, you know, doing local youth ministries to now preaching the gospel all over the world and matured out of working and serving Reinhart and Daniel Kolenda.

Evangelist Daniel King (04:36):
And now you’re, you’re married. You have a little girl, tell me how you balance life and ministry and providing for the family and also doing all the ministry things that God’s called you to do.

Aaron Perry (04:54):
Yeah. So I would say that I’m in the lane of, by vocational ministry. So we’re running a business, which is we work on a Questran ranch and we also, you know, do a few other things. And so we’re in business and in ministry, you know, and whatever else that’s coming to our plate. And you know, it, it definitely is something that we try to balance and we make sure that we do it well. And the thing is, is, you know, we’re just I think it’s, you know, it’s plowing with the focus that, you know, Christ is the end goal. So even with our business where we’re pushing Christ with our clients and with our people that come around our ranch, and then at the same time, you know, it’s just the discipline of just diving into the study of the word and prayer and God, what are you calling us to do today, tomorrow? You know, and, and in the future. And so that’s kind of how we operate.

Evangelist Daniel King (05:58):
What are some of the things that God has been speaking to you recently, what’s really been on your heart

Aaron Perry (06:05):
For this year? It’s nothing is impossible for God. And for, for me, it is the plowing, you know, across the board with COVID it has taken a big hit on a majority of evangelists. I know that you’ve been still traveling and plowing, but you know, for me, it’s been difficult. I’ve had to cancel like four crusades last year, and it’s been a difficult time. So we’re coming into this new year. It was standing on that promise. Nothing is impossible with God. And so believing that this year we’re going to see great victory. We’re going to see a lot of souls come into the kingdom and we’re going after it, we’re setting up and scheduling a lot of ministry for this year to win souls.

Evangelist Daniel King (06:50):
That’s great. That’s really a tremendous theme that nothing is impossible with God. Yeah. In the last three months I’ve been to Tanzania, Ethiopia, and I just got back from Sierra Leone. And so I’ve been traveling. It’s a lot harder to travel these days for the Sierra Leone trip. I had to have five COVID tests, so it’s a little bit of a challenge to travel, but it’s worth it because we saw people get saved. We saw people baptized and we’re S our ministry is supported by individuals that believe in what we’re doing. And if we’re not out there telling people about Jesus, getting people saved, then what reason do people have to, to support us? So I always tell people, you know, for every dollar you give, we’re able to leave at least one person to Jesus, just, and so I want to stay out there on the mission field because eternity is real heaven and hell are real and eternal destinies hanging in the balance. If we’re not going out leading people to Jesus who will, and it’s difficult to go out right now, but I like your theme with God. Nothing is impossible. What are some of the impossible things that you’re asking God for in the coming year?

Aaron Perry (08:09):
Yes, we’re, we’re trying to actually go back to Shalom the very first crusade I ever did out there. We’re we feel like God is calling us longterm to, to that country. And so we’re, we’re trying to plow one of the challenges right now is that if you were to go to that country you have to be quarantined for 14 days before you even do tourism. And so you know, that’s one of the challenges that we’re coming across. And so we’re trying to figure out strategize, like we’re going to go, but when are we going to go? And, you know, just trying to time it, right. And we do believe it’s this year that we’re going to make it happen.

Evangelist Daniel King (08:48):
That’s a big commitment to that. That’d be a long time to be away from your family to quarantine for 14 days, and then do ministry back. That’s a lot. Wow. Well, when you read the stories of the old time missionaries, you know, they’d get on a boat and they’d leave for the next 26 years, you know?

Aaron Perry (09:10):
Yeah, yeah. I know. Yeah. This is a, yeah, it’s going to be a small sacrifice, but we feel like it’s something that we want to pursue for sure. So we’re excited

Evangelist Daniel King (09:23):
When you go and do a crusade what type of miracles have you seen in some of your services?

Aaron Perry (09:33):
Well, we, we do see a lot and you know, I think that probably you and I, we are very similar in our, our push for the gospel, which is to present it with evidence, present it with power. And so we always pursue the miracles. And it is something that is very evident in, in many of our crusades. And, and it’s, it’s the, it’s the icing on the cake. It’s the, it’s the greatest part of, you know, once you’re, you’re drawing people in to expose, not, you know, not just get them safe, but show them the power of God. And I will say there has been a few miracles that have marked me, and one of them was in Uganda just a couple of years ago where we sold the blind eyes open. And it was right in front of my face.

Aaron Perry (10:24):
I got to see it. And the outcome of the blind eyes being opened. And it w what was strange was it was only a partial sight that came to, but he had a haze over his eyes. And after prayer, you know, he opened back up his eyes. There was a difference, there was a different color of his eyes. And because of this partial miracle, we ended up seeing five other blind eyes open because of it. So it was a powerful miracle that we saw. And I’ll never forget it, never forget that miracle that happened in Uganda.

Evangelist Daniel King (11:01):
Early on, we had a little boy who was deaf in one ear, and I asked everyone to put their hand on the part of their body where there’s pain. And the reason I do that sometimes it’s because we can’t lay hands on the entire crowd. Cause there’s just too many people. So the Bible says, lay hands on the sick. And so I just ask people to take your hand and place it on a part of your body where there’s pain. And so this little boy is about seven years old. His mother placed her hand on his ear, which was deaf. And she began to pray for him. And as she was praying for him, a black pebble or a growth fell out of his ear into her hand, and she thought it was kind of gross. And so she shook it off onto the ground.

Evangelist Daniel King (11:49):
And then she started to test her boys, hearing in the boy was able hear. And so he came up, we tested his hearing. The whole crowd was able to see that he was able to hear, you know, I clapped and then he clapped and then I clapped twice and he clapped twice in the crowd, just erupted in shouts. And it was really a unique creative miracle because as she’s praying for him, whatever obstruction or blockage there, wasn’t his ear fell out of his ear into her hand. And so it’s really neat to see when, when God does miracles, you have a, another miracle story that you were about to share.

Aaron Perry (12:27):
Yeah. you know, in fact it was actually at this crusade that I have up here. We were in Ethiopia Africa with, you know, you and I have our good friends with Wagners Josh Wagner and I, we were out there with, with pastor evangelist, pear pear activists. And when we were out there, we were in this village. You know, you could see the crowd. I mean, we were seeing thousands and thousands of people give the lives Lord. And I believe that crusade, we saw over 8,400 people get their lives to Jesus. And there was a young girl who was in the far back of the crowd. So you can kind of see, she’s probably in the far back of the tree line and she’s carrying the gospel. She is from a Muslim family and in the crowd as she’s hearing the gospel we then start pursuing to pray for miracles.

Aaron Perry (13:27):
And I remember on the stage, I just said, if you have an issue with your arm, I want you right now to stretch out your arm right now, just stretch it out. And so that’s a weird word of knowledge. And surprisingly this girl, she actually had a lame arm. She was not able to move her arms. She was not mobile in it. And when she heard these words stretch out your arm she did, she ended up a miracle immediately happened. I think it was probably the faith that she was believing, heard the gospel believed, stretched out her arm. And I mean, she was healed. She was instantly healed. And one of the, and that was amazing. But upon that, her father who was the Muslim man standing behind her, sees her, his own daughter sees the miracle happened. And this man was a mosque builder for the Muslim community.

Aaron Perry (14:24):
So he would go to village, to village building the mosque. And when he saw this miracle, he said, I must give my life to Jesus. And he got saved right there on the spot because of a miracle with his own daughter. And I remember we were trying to ask him, you know, can we, can we film this testimony? Can we re, can we interview him and get this on, on camera? And they said, no, no. Like, you don’t understand if this man comes out as a Muslim man who converted to Christianity, they might kill him. They’ve and I was thinking, well, we don’t want him to die. He’s already now living in Christ. We don’t want him to die again. So we just held onto that testimony and, and it was amazing. It was incredible, incredible miracle that took place there.

Evangelist Daniel King (15:10):
Wow. That’s, that’s amazing. That’s very cool. Yeah. Yeah. In Sierra Leone, we had another testimony of we, we hired a camera man from a local television station to come and take pictures during the crusade. And he was Muslim. He came from the Mandingo tribe which is about 95, 98% Muslim, and historically very strong Muslim from the North of Sierra Leone. And he followed us around taking pictures all day, every day. And we were doing five or six or seven services a day out in the villages. And so he heard the gospel presentation over and over again. And by the last day we were doing a baptism service down in the river. And the night before he came to one of our team members and says, I want to be baptized. I want to become a Christian. And so the Muslim cameraman heard the gospel over and over, and then we, we baptized him into the faith and there’s nothing like that to, to see someone come out of darkness into the light. It’s just such a tremendous Testament. Aaron, how did you get saved? How, how did you become a follower?

Aaron Perry (16:29):
Well, it happened at a very, very young age. I believe I was around four years old when my mother would always you know, when she would tuck me in at night, we would pray to this man, Jesus and I didn’t, you know, I don’t, I’m only going into the motions. Every single night we would do this prayer, but I remember one night there was a storm that was taking place outside and it woke me up and I was scared. And I would, you know, as a child, so scared that, you know, I’m, I’m putting the blanket over my head thinking that that’s the best protection. Like, I’m so scared that I’m not even going to run to my mama. You know, my mom was bed that night. And I remember saying, Jesus, I that’s because I was just remembering what we talked to this man, Jesus, maybe he can help me.

Aaron Perry (17:21):
And so I, at a very young age, you know, saying, Jesus, I’m scared, will you help me? And it was, I would say a miracle was taking place in the room where all of a sudden the storm stopped. My window was open. So rain and the curtains were blowing. I mean, it was, you know, as a child, that’s very scary. And so I remember just everything stopping the moment. I said, Jesus, I’m scared. Will you help me? And I immediately fell asleep. I had this peace come over me. And I remember waking up the next morning, understanding the saving knowledge of Jesus that anytime that I was to call upon his name, that he would be there for me. And that was the start of my journey of being saved in Christ.

Evangelist Daniel King (18:04):
How did you know that you were called to be in ministry? Was there a particular moment that you got a call from God or was it something that developed over a period of time?

Aaron Perry (18:15):
I remember being at a youth camp at 13 years old, and I remember just in my own prayer time, you know, it was after the service and just in my own prayer time. And I remember just dedicating my life to the Lord. I would say, you know, I’d never felt like this call from the Lord, but more of like initiated the call. And so just took it on myself at 13 years old saying, God, I, I give my life to this. You know, there’s nothing else that I desire. There’s no other passions that I have, I I’m yours. And I would say out of that, the passion for evangelism just started brewing and may even, you know, at a very young age, 13 years old to just want to see people come to Christ.

Evangelist Daniel King (19:03):
What were some of the, the big things that you learned when you were going to Christ for the nations in Dallas, Texas?

Aaron Perry (19:11):
Yeah. So you know, a lot, there was a lot Christ for the nations, I will say was one of the best experiencial training learning centers, therefore Bible college ministry students. And yeah, there was a lot one was just the constant every day diving into worship, encountering the Lord and then, you know, getting fed scripture and teachings on the word of God. But you know, for me, one of the things that I loved was there was an evangelism group. So there was you got credits to actually go out and evangelize for your schooling. And so somebody that you and I both know, Chris Michaelson was one of the leaders of the evangelism group there at Christ for the nations. And you know, we would go out to the streets and we would share the gospel. We saw the miracles happen, people get saved. And you know, when you see that it’s kind of like a spark that happens where you want to carry this on. You don’t want it just to leave it at the college, but you want to take it where you go. And so yeah, there was a lot that was learned there. I mean, I had incredible for feccers, that was a great school really enjoyed it, really enjoyed that place.

Evangelist Daniel King (20:32):
And then you got recruited to be a crusade director for Reinhardt Bunky, helping set up some of his big events here in the United States. What was that like? What what’d you learn from that experience?

Aaron Perry (20:46):
Oh, it was, it was incredible. It was it was a lot of work. It was absolutely work. But it was, it was a great exp experience. You know, I was, even as I was doing it, I was saying, this is the greatest training ground for evangelism and men. It was, it was experience. Just the way that you know, one thing that I loved about Reinhardt Bunky and Daniel Kolenda is their position of faith. You know, when they would lock down the cities to preach the gospel it was always a faith move. I mean, you know, there’s tons of funds that have to be raised to have these massive meetings and every time without fail, God provided for these crusades. And we stepped in and, and you know, kind of did the, I did the legwork on the ground for six months to a year in a city for, for a two day harvest. And yeah, it was a lot of work, but incredible experience. I will never forget the memories that I have of everything that I did with that ministry. Cause I learned so much for my own ministry you know, to, to do for evangelism. And so it was a good time.

Evangelist Daniel King (21:59):
Yeah. I think you, you, you can’t help, but catch a passion for souls and a passion for people being around Christ for all nations and Reinhard, Bonnke Daniel Kolenda. What a tremendous blessing that was in the early years of your ministry. That’s really cool.

Aaron Perry (22:14):
Yeah. Was, it was awesome.

Evangelist Daniel King (22:19):
Well, if someone wants to support your ministry or wants to invite you to come and minister at their church, how can they find out information about you? What’s your website?

Aaron Perry (22:32):
Yeah. So our website is radiance ministries.org. And you can just go on there. We have a place, you know, if you want us to come and minister, we have a place for you to you know, kind of submit an application. And then if you want to give there’s a place for you to give us as well for our ministry and all the places that we’re trying to go to this year. So.

Evangelist Daniel King (22:55):
Awesome. Well, thank you Aaron so much for being on the evangelism podcast. It’s great to have you with me today.

Aaron Perry (23:04):
Hey, thank you so much, Daniel. And Hey, you and I, we gotta go do something soon in the future as well

Evangelist Daniel King (23:09):
Would love to let’s do it. Let’s take over a country for Jesus. Amen. 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 (24:09):
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.

Per Hyldgaard is a missionary evangelist from Denmark. He is a Master Evangelist who has been my friend since I was ten years old. Today, he shares the story of the greatest miracle he ever experienced in his ministry and also shares some tips on how to share the Gospel.

Buy Per’s Book:

Website: www.gospeloutreach.dk

Key Quotes: 

The Gospel is really simple.

For evangelism training, call Daniel King, the Evangelism Coach, at 1-877-431-4276.

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Per Hyldgaard is a missionary evangelist from Denmark. He is a master evangelist who’s been my friend since I was 10 years old. Today he shares the story of the greatest miracle he ever experienced in his ministry. And he also shares some tips on how to share the gospel.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:19):
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. I’m Daniel King and I am excited about telling people about Jesus today. We have a special guest

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:04):
From the great nation of Denmark brother Per Hyldgaard has been a friend for many years. He’s the founder and president of gospel outreach, brother Per. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Per Hyldgaard (01:20):
Hey, Dr. Daniel, good to be with you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:23):
So let’s begin at the beginning, I’ve known you for quite a long time. When I was about 10 years old was when I first met you. And that was when you were a Bible school student here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and you were staying in some missionary housing that’s here. And my parents at the time were also about to go on the mission field. And so they were staying in the same missionary housing. And of course I was very young, but we’ve known each other ever since. I was looking at your 30 year anniversary newsletter that you put out recently in, in it, you were sharing about a vision that you had that kind of launched you out into ministry. And it was about that same time that we met back in eight, 1989, that you had that vision. Could you tell us about the vision and how that impacted your life?

Per Hyldgaard (02:26):
Yeah, well I came to Bible school in Tulsa because I felt that drawing it to to get into ministry and a drawing to somehow to me it was a crusade, evangelist and mentor. It was really something I felt drawn to. I had these posters of Reinhardt Bunky and so on the wall at home. And but I didn’t really know how is this what I’m supposed to do? And what is this all going to be about? And long story short, God opened up the door. So I ended up in Tulsa, Oklahoma to attend Bible sport. And to me it was quite a challenging time financially with also very limited English and many challenges. So when the, when as school day was over, I was usually very tired and went to bed really early.

Per Hyldgaard (03:33):
And then one night God woke me up all of a sudden at two, 2:00 AM. And it was just like in a split second. And I sat up right in my, in my bed. And the presence of God was really powerful. And as soon as I set up, I was awake immediately. And then he showed me a vision, a vision that is just as real as we are sitting here today. And what I did see was this, I was standing on a huge, solid unshakable rock and all around this rock, there was like an ocean of, of people standing stacked and packed people of all backgrounds from all different nations language, language groups. And I mean, high and low from all walks of life, but they were not standing on a solid rock. They were more standing in sinking sand and they were sinking deeper and deeper and deeper.

Per Hyldgaard (04:40):
And I can still see the faces for my for my unit. I how they in, in despair, desperation and fear and oral, a yelling and screaming to get my attention because I was standing on this rock and everything was fine with me. And they were stretching their hands tall to get my attention. And if I could just grab their hand and pull them up on this same solid rock, and I never saw Jesus, but I just felt that he was standing right behind me. So I said to him, Jesus, you must do something. You must help them. And then his calm voice just answered me and sent this. I have done my part. It is you they’re calling on. And then it all ended. And I jumped out of bed and I fell on my face there in the middle of the night.

Per Hyldgaard (05:47):
And I just said, Lord, I’m willing to go. I just helped me to pull up as many people from wherever you send me up on you, who the solid rock. And at that time I’ve never preached a sermon or even list on a crusade, you know, or anything like that. But that was kind of what was like a burning a Mark, you know, I, I got in my heart that has been kind of what has been the the backbone or the guiding star in, in what we are doing now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:27):
You’ve written an excellent book called Impact, Rescuing the Lost With the Gospel. And I’ve really enjoyed reading your story. And when you first came to Bible school in Tulsa, it sounds like it was a huge step of faith for you with almost no money with almost no English, just coming and trusting God and God honored your faith. What are some of the miracles that you’ve seen God do in your ministry over the years?

Per Hyldgaard (07:08):
Well we have seen many miracles in the, in our finances in our health miracles and God opening doors. And then of course, miracle last we, we minister to people. We are, we are very blessed with with God confirming his word with signs and wonders many miracles in terms of the blind, the see and deaf that he a mute the speak. And, and it’s not something that happens every now and then it’s something that happens all over and again, and we’re very thankful for that. So that’s some of the great miracles. What is really interesting is that now you mentioned that how it began with me going in faith to Bible school, the principles of walking in faith, I learned in the Bible school, it’s the same principles we are. We are living after today. This just more digits, more zeros behind the, the checks and, and so that we need to believe for.

Per Hyldgaard (08:21):
And, and so, so, so that has been, that’s very interesting, so it works on all levels. And I think it’s important just to, I mean, in Denmark, we say this, you need to learn to crawl before you can walk. Okay. And and it is step by step to learn that it’s always difficult for me to tell what is the greatest miracle we have ever seen? I think it’s, it’s, it’s hard to, so one of the miracles that I must say that has a very personal touch to it is when we lived in Tanzania. Yes. Back as missionaries. We went there with a, at that time we have two kids oldest son here, David, he was aged three. And then we have our daughter who was at that time four months old, and we will live way out in the Bush, in Tanzania, in East Africa. And I tell way out, and this is in the mid nineties it was days of driving days of driving with, you know, just dirt roads with all the potholes in the world and no really, I mean, comfort at all. And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:50):
That takes a lot of faith to move to the mission field with your wife and two small kids with you comfort.

Per Hyldgaard (09:58):
Yeah. When we knew that this was what we were supposed to do, you know, so, and then what happened was that one morning as I was early to have my personal devotional time and my wife, she calls, yelled my name and I realized I better calm right now. And when I came into our bedroom, stood with our little daughter and with no life in her. And I thought what’s the what’s going on here? And I started to give her a first aid and I thought she has Schwab something that was stocked in her throat. So I took her legs and shook her and nothing came out and she was just like, ah, it’s just like a door. I mean just swinging and you know, with no life, not blinking all pale and blue lips. And so, and you know how things from one second to the next can take it at dramatic turn in your life.

Per Hyldgaard (11:01):
And all of a sudden we felt not, we felt all the water in the boat. And we were about to sink in that split second. And we yelled out loud and some of our missionaries friends, they came running in and one started to breathe in her nostrils that give her first aid. And I was so desperate. I could not even pray. I just called out, geez, help us, Jesus help us. And when then she started to breathe at least, but it was like she was, she was paralyzed. One half of her body. We jumped in our, you know, I’ll be called with road to to a hospital that Catholics from Italy had made a a great hospital nearby. Just amazing building, such a hospital way out in the Bush there. And as soon as we came in the hospital, the doctor there, he said, I know what this is.

Per Hyldgaard (12:03):
There’s this metal area in her reign kind of malaria. You can, you can ever get. And and the doctor, she said, you know, we can try to give her the strongest treatment we can, but if the fever is not leaving her within the next three days, see we’ll either be in coma for the rest of her life, or she will die. And we stood there and we thought, what are we going to do? What are we going to do? My wife is a nurse and we decided to take her, our daughter with us back home. We felt that was the right thing to do. And those next three days, I tell you, it was emotionally, we were going up and down one moment we were, we were praying and believing God to do something. And the next moment we were just such a despair.

Per Hyldgaard (12:57):
But before we moved to Africa, I got, gave me a word. And that word was that there would be done no harm to kids. And that, that promise. I kept praying. And I was, sometimes I felt, I was maybe even too old as I was praying. I said, God, you said that no harm should be done to our kids. What testimony will it be? That if we come home, while we have our daughter in a coffin, then I was really old and day three came. And you see, it was really far away from everything. Nothing had happened. She was still just, you know, with high fever and really, really sick.

Per Hyldgaard (13:45):
So at the end of the third day, we, we made a long range walkie talkie call. This was before internet or cell phones or anything, you know, so we made this long rate range to walkie talkie called to some Christian dumpsters from Sweden. We knew they were located about 500 miles away. We told these doctors the story and the more we told, the more quiet they became. And at the end we asked, so what can we do? Aid was really quiet. And then they said, there’s nothing you can do. And that was what, not what we had hoped for, of course, but we ended the radio call and this was about 11:00 PM now. And, and I told the other missionaries, will you please, that we could join maybe just one last time and pray together. We annoying the little napkin.

Per Hyldgaard (14:53):
And of course they all agreed in doing so. We made in this little, really humble, poor kitchen of, of ours found far out in the Bush. I mean, we’re so far out that if you wanted meat, you need to go and hunt yourself. Okay, you need to have your own, well, you need to, I mean, you’ve built your own thing all the time. And we met in that little kitchen, just a little handful of missionaries. And as soon as we met, even before we started to parade, the presence of God was so tangible. I’ve never imagined or felt anything even close to that. It was like, Jesus just stepped in together with the rest of us in that little kitchen. And instead of, you know, we just started to laugh. We were laughing, we were crying tears of joy. Like somebody has told the greatest joke ever in the history we were looking at, whether another, and just having a great time.

Per Hyldgaard (15:59):
I’m still with people stood from outside, watching through the window. They would think we have been drunk. And I don’t know for how long this was taking place, but the presence of God, it was like heaven was all of a sudden in that middle kitchen. And, you know, then after a while, I don’t know how long it was like that powerful person just SM that again. And we started to become more. Can we call it normal? And we’ll look at one another. And you know, I’m a very organized guy. I so I said, well, this was powerful. Jesus was here. I wasn’t neat, but being so organized as I am. I said, well, but maybe we should a nine, this little nap can still, you know, so, so we got anointed that little napkin. And I went from our kitchen into the bedroom, our bedroom, where our little daughter was, was in her little bed.

Per Hyldgaard (17:05):
And when I came in, she was already miraculous healed. Wow. The next morning we took her to the hospital. She was about one years old. At that time she ran herself into the doctor’s office. The doctor just sat there with mouth wide open, said, I don’t believe this, this, this cannot happen. You know? And of course, because it’s so personal and it’s so close to us as a family is of course, one of the miracles that is really loft and dear to us, our daughter is now 26 years old. She has been in Bible school and in Redding, California for three years is involved in ministry. Love missions has traveled all over the world. And, and, and, and as you said, I never get a mosquito bite anymore. She says, interesting. Isn’t it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:10):
Wow. How many countries have you visited and how many people have you ministered to over the years and what results have you seen?

Per Hyldgaard (18:23):
We have ministered in 50 plus nations and we have ministers to some millions of people. One of what we really like where we really like to target is to go, and not really that many are doing crusades. We like to go to the cities where there has not been a crusade, hopefully never, maybe smaller crusades, but not a citywide event. Or if there has been a crusade, then it must have been, I mean, decades ago, that’s where we feel led to go. We kind of said it has to be a low population of Christians. It’s often a bit more difficult to reach out there, but but this, it gave me great pleasure and I’m sure Jesus is smiling big time as well, but because we’re reaching out places like that, we have quite a focus on church planting to, to follow it. It’s not a goal to have a great crowd. It’s not a goal to have great numbers. It’s a goal to have lasting fruits. And of course we get all the churches that might be in the area, but then we also encourage and train and work together with people who wants to start churches afterwards. And and we have seen 300 cluster churches being started as a direct fruit from, from our crusades. So we are really thankful to the Lord for that.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:07):
Wow. That’s amazing. And over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to, to minister with you in many different nations. First in Mexico, my parents were missionaries in Mexico. And so I remember you came many years ago and did a tent crusade with us, and then we’ve been together. I was just trying to think, I know we’ve been in Haiti, we’ve been in Brazil together. I went with you to Mali, which was a, a really great crusade, a festival in a nation that is mostly Muslim. And we have I think we’ve been to some other places to Pakistan. Yes. We went to Pakistan together and I’ve always really considered you a master evangelist and, and learned so much from you and especially hearing your stories and the way that you share the gospel. So masterfully through stories, could you share with us some of the, the stories that you use to communicate the gospel the, the large events, and, and before you share a story, tell us kind of why you feel as important to share the gospel through stories.

Per Hyldgaard (21:28):
Yeah, well, I think we need to always realize that we should be standing in front of a crowd that is not having a lot of knowledge from the Bible. Okay. if, if it’s all believers, we are in the wrong place then. Okay. so it has to be people that we are aware of is going to, to hear it as simple as possible. And the gospel is really simple. It’s, it’s complicated in one way. If we start to sit down and we’ll try to understand it all, but basically it’s really simple. So that’s why we always make like the few steps. And every night to me, it’s important to preach salvation. So it has to be from maybe from different angles. We need to to, to make it clear for people that they are lost without Jesus.

Per Hyldgaard (22:31):
We need to make it really clear for people, how good God he is and how much he loves them, especially when you’re a minister in nations that is maybe Muslim nations. And so they they need to hear how God loves them. That’s one thing that is irresistible, and that is to be loved by somebody. And when they start to realize how much God loves them, we need to re to somehow we make it clear that the only way back to God is through Jesus Christ. And he’s the only one who can save. And also make it clear that this is just not a matter of your raise your hand at the end, but you must really want this from your heart. One of the inspirations I love the most, that seems like, I think it’s really displaying for people. What are we saying?

Per Hyldgaard (23:32):
Is that I, I simply, I use many illustrations and one of them is one, I think maybe many already know, but I have two people helping me and have them first spend together. And I say, this is so-and-so. And he used to go straight and being God. And this is the other guy is, is then you and I, and then I start to pull one of them, that person away from God, you know, and see, we’ll create it to be with God and then slow the other. Guy’s moving away from God and how that person want to get back to God. He’s trying to reach back. But the distance is then to me and God still wants to reach that person. And then I come up with ideas of how people try to get back to God through religious action, trying to behave better reach or so many different things.

Per Hyldgaard (24:34):
And how God at the incentive son, Jesus Christ. And that, that would be me illustrating that by taking the hand off the person, illustrating being God, and then stretching out. So I sent, you know, with my arms filling up the gap between the two, two persons. And I, and while I’m doing that, I’m sharing how this is why Jesus was crucified. So they start to make, Oh yeah, I could imagine this is how this was crucified. And all of a sudden, I believe they get the idea of, okay, so this is why Jesus was crucified and it’s all about, and inviting that person to grab the hand of Jesus. I sometimes I use it several nights sometimes it’s kind of the major illustration in my sermon. Other times, it’s just, if I quickly have to come to the next point, you know, it’s really, it can, in, in few minutes really make it understandable that this is the situation, and this is the important of Jesus. So that one I really like to use and all the way she will say, I think, yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:52):
Tell me another, I remember one that you used about a smelly man who came to your house one time. Do you remember that illustration

Per Hyldgaard (26:04):
As smelling

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:06):
Smelly man came to visit you and he needed a bath really bad, and he wanted to hug and talk to you and use it. You are welcome in my house, but first you must take a bath.

Per Hyldgaard (26:19):
Really? Yeah. I have it in my notes at four. I was another one

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:25):
I remember that you shared was about a snake with a flat head. I think it was from your time in Tanzania. Can you tell that story?

Per Hyldgaard (26:34):
Yeah, that’s the illustration or not illustration. It’s a true story actually, from when we lived in, in Tanzania, as I, we live out in the Bush and three times we experienced having snakes in our house. And then there were all the other pieces coming every now and then, but, well, there was one time I came into our living room and there was the snake, you know, you know, living room. And and I of course I have not invited it and I didn’t want to share at my house with, at once. So I tried to hush it out, but it would not. And it just raise its head and was he saying aggressive and went out in our garage and I took her this big sledge hammer. And when they, and then the snake was still there and I took this sledge hammer and I hammered it right in the head of the snake.

Per Hyldgaard (27:34):
So it was, the head was totally flat and now it was kind of I mean, it was conquered. So I picked it up. The interesting thing was that the, the hip was not there or totally flat, but the body was still moving. Like it was more life and dangerous than ever. And I took it and I went out because, you know, there’s nothing to be afraid of anymore. And then I’d throw it away. And I use this illustration to tell about how the, how the devil wants to intervene our life and take over our house and take over our life. And so, but how Jesus on the cross conquered the devil and and how there’s hope. And yeah, I mean, most places they that really excited about that, you know, and yeah. So, so a bad experience was turned into something. Great. I think, yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:34):
Wow. That’s tremendous. Well, we have lots of people who listen that love to support missions. If someone wants to know more about your ministry or to support you, what, what’s your website? How can they get in touch with you?

Per Hyldgaard (28:54):
That is gospel outreach, ministries.org,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:58):
Gospel outreach ministries got.org. And I also found gospel outreach.dk. So yeah. Is that right

Per Hyldgaard (29:08):
To to United States and the other is, is more connected to Europe.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:12):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, brother pear for being on the evangelism podcast. I’ve learned so much from you over the years. Appreciate you. And I’m so thankful for what God has done through your life. It’s really amazing.

Per Hyldgaard (29:29):
Well, thank you. I thank you, Dr. Daniel is just great to see from what God has turned you into from when when we met and you were 10 years old and now you’re a mighty man of God changing the world. So thank you very much. It’s was a joy to be part of it. And God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:48):
Thank you, God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:52):
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 (30:45):
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.