Mark Young leads MASY ministries (which stands for Missionary and Servants of Yahwah). The goal of the ministry is to mobilize, engage and develop the next generations of urban youth for missions. As an African-American he has a heart for Africa and he wants to motivate African-American churches to become missions minded.

Website: https://www.masyministries.org/ 

Listen to the Evangelism Podcast with Evangelism Coach Daniel King

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Mark Young leads MASY Ministries, which stands for Missionary and Servants of Yahweh. The goal of the ministry is to mobilize, engage and develop the next generation of urban youth for missions. As an African-American Mark Young has a heart for Africa and he wants to motivate African-American churches to become missions minded.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:23):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King we’re Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:59):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a special guest with me, Reverend Mark Young. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Mark Young (01:12):
Thank you. Thank you for having me. And it is so, so much of a blessing. I’m just as excited as you cause I love to tell people about Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:19):
That’s awesome. You have a strong evangelistic calling on your life. Could you tell me, how did you become an evangelist?

Mark Young (01:29):
Tell you I was not anticipating to becoming an evangelist. I had a heart to put on a Christian concert because I love music. I love engineering music and I came to the Portland Fest in 2007 with the Louis Palau, trying to find out how to put on this concert. And when I left, I had no information about a concert, but I had everything about leading a person to Christ. So that’s when I started to see the calling of my life about leading people to the Lord and a strong relationship with the holy spirit.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:55):
And now you have really gotten involved with missions and you’re working on putting together a base in Zambia. Can you tell me about that?

Mark Young (02:05):
One of our hubs, one of the things was me and my wife said, as we love to share the gospel, we love to tell people about Jesus. We see the salvation and we see the of folks just really give their life to Christ. But then we leave little places like Zambia and Uganda, but those people were still not unemployed. And I look at the disciples and I like he had to call Peter from fishing. So our heart was how do we become a tangible beyond just giving them the gospel. So really we’re trying to build what we call a discipleship community, which is like the Nehemiah movement, not only building a wall, but building the hearts of the people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:40):
That’s awesome. We’re here in the nation of Malawi with a love Malawi festival, with the group of evangelists. That’s under Louis Palau’s ministry. It’s called the global network of evangelists, the GNE. And tell me kind of what you have learned from being a part of this network of evangelists.

Mark Young (03:05):
As you speak of Luis, that was my Papa Honda. We know he’s gone home to me with the lawyer, but one thing that drew us to what he and his calling and his whole ministry was about was we can do more together. And unity is like the DNA of Massey. And what we say is unity does not mean looking the same, but it means everybody bringing their gifts to the table to impact the kingdom. And so that whole thing and allowing us to see what collaboration looked like, and then be a part of it is like a blessing for us.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:36):
What have you been doing in the United States to activate people for evangelism?

Mark Young (03:41):
Well, first of all, we, like I said, we are advantages, but it has missions attached. And we we do a couple of things. We do the city Fest, which is a crusade or festival model, but then we also do something called Massey meals where we serve the home is right on the side of the road on China and tablecloths. And my wife cooks a beautiful meal, but one of the things is we get people to sit to the table, to have a meal with the homeless people. And when we have that meal, the meal with the homeless people, we asked three questions. The first question is, tell us your story. We want to listen to you first. Then the next question is, where’s your walk with Christ that allows people to the homeless to tell their, you know, tell their story, whether they’re in church or whether they’re not in church, but we always say, the Lord will never leave you for safety.

Mark Young (04:26):
So it gives us a chance to share the gospel. And then the third one is how do we help you get you off the street? And what we do is we work with about four or five different churches. One helps them get birth certificates and social security cards that driver’s license. They also get like medical prescriptions with a prescription card, get showers. Then I would search, help some get food. And then there’s other churches that helps them get temporary housing. And all of these churches are different denominations because I know one church can not in homeless. So literally our whole team of massive ministry, we belong to different churches, but we come together as one evangelism group to actually exemplify what UNT looks like in the body of Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:05):
Now, as I’ve heard you speak here several times in Malawi, one of the things that you, you tell them, and you sound very proud of it. When you, you say it, you always say that you are African American. And so you have blood here in Africa, but you live in America. And I actually preach it. A lot of African-American churches across the United States, love preaches, always exciting and fun because sometimes they get the Oregon go in and everyone shouts. They talk back to you. Sometimes other churches, other denominations, you know, are very quiet and informal when they listen to me, but African-American churches are fun to preach it. But what I’ve noticed is that in some of these African-American churches, there’s not very many people that are involved in missionary work or missions. What do you think we can do in the United States to get more African-Americans involved in the mission field?

Mark Young (06:01):
One of the biggest things is they have to even understand that what missions is the name of our ministers missionaries and service of y’all way, because I came out of the AME African American Methodist Episcopal church. And my father was a pastor and I never knew what missionary left the church. I knew we gave up a little offering on a tithing envelope, but it wasn’t until I joined a nondenominational church that I noticed people left the church. So the African-American community is not really even educated on missionaries. So one of the things we need to do is first educate them. And then second to her, there’s a large community of African-Americans even in the Christian area, fear Africa. And as we say is when we were coming here, you know, people was like, well, do they have electricity? And are they living against the elephants in the lions?

Mark Young (06:48):
Or do they have cars or are you going to be sleeping in huts? And a lot of African-Americans have a fear to even come to Africa. So one of the things is education and then to build the bridge back you have, we were in Uganda and 20, 20, 20, 21. And the young girl X, my wife’s like, are you from Nigeria? And my wife, she was 11 years old. We were in Islams and my wife goes, no, I’m from America. She goes, what’s your black, this 11 year old has never seen an African-American that was black or American that was black. So building a bridge back, both sides, learn to know that they’re welcome here to do it. And then also let the Africans know that we are, we are there as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:31):
I think the African-American church has a lot to offer churches here, especially in Africa. Like I work with different communities, different ethnic groups and in different areas. And so, for example, in Tulsa, we have a large Burmese community. We have 15,000 Burmese refugees that have come and settled in Tulsa. And so I go preach at their churches and I challenged them and say, here you have a good job. You have a nice car. You’ve been able to buy a nice house. It’s time for you to send some offerings back to the churches in Burma and help reach people for Jesus in that nation that you came from. And I think it’s time for the African-American church in America to, to rise up and in send money, resources come. Because Africa is wide open for the gospel…

Mark Young (08:23):
I totally agree. And that’s what Massey is trying to create that bridge to bring more of our African-American churches African-American youth. Sometimes we say African-American youth don’t know how blessed they are, you know to see how blessed they are to bring him, bring them there. And that’s a part of that Nehemiah movement is yes. We’re trying to build the hearts and build the people hearts back to Jesus here in Africa. But we also want to bring young folks here and African-American churches to see what God is doing in the country, where your ancestors came from.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:55):
Amen. If someone wants to get connected with your ministry, find out more about

Mark Young (09:00):
You, maybe even come with you on a missions trip, what’s your website. How can they find out more about, you can check us out, connect with us on www.masyministries.org. Or you can connect with us on Facebook, which is evangelist, Mark Young or Instagram MASY unite.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:25):
Now another neat thing is that you brought your wife on the strip and you told me that you never go anywhere without her. What is some of the benefits of serving God with a wife who comes and supports the missions work that you’re called to?

Mark Young (09:42):
Well, one of the biggest things, and I actually have released the book this year and it’s called, don’t try to save the world and lose your home. The thing about my father when I was 14, he died in a pulpit as a pastor on a Sunday, but the Sunday that he died Monday, he was going to divorce my mom. And not only he was a senior pastor, but at one time in the season, he was the mayor of the city, as well as a mortician with his own funeral home. And I say he was saving the world, but he was losing his home. So the fact that my wife always say, she’s my sweetheart. And when I’m not with those I’m sugar-free, but she’s just as much of an evangelist of IO and being co-laboring not leaving her behind or not having her were, were empty nest, empty nesters. And we can go and share what it looks like for a husband and wife to do ministry together and what it looks like for a woman of God to stand up and be just as powerful as a man of God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:35):
Tell me more about this hub that you’re building in Zambia, you’ve acquired 15 acres. What do you plan to do with that?

Mark Young (10:44):
Yeah, so we’ve purchased 15 and a half acres outside of Lusaka Zambia, and what we call this, the Nehemiah movement. And the reason we say that God said, it’s not a project, a project starts and finished, but this movement was started to carry on. And what we want to do is first start off with this five phases, four phases, I’m sorry. First phase is a fish farm and garden where we’ll be able to offset some of the ministry by being able to sell those products and also supply products to the actual community. And then phase two will be a mission home where we can bring missionaries over a school where we will have a curriculum. We will have culinary arts discipleship, English as a second language and computer technology. And then also a, a conference center that we will use for weddings and conferences, but also a church service area.

Mark Young (11:32):
But that also would have a commercial kitchen where we can teach culinary arts. So that’s phase it also with the smokehouse, there’ll be a smokehouse where we can smoke food. So that’s phase two and phase three is a medical clinic because in that area, it’s about 50,000 people in this village. And the clinic is probably like 20 by 20 and that’s just a triage area. And then we wants to do an orphanage where we will have parents living with 40 girls and 40 boys where they’ll feel like it’s a home, not just a center where they’re being processed and in a sanctuary. And so we’re planning to have this done by 2026. And we’re asking God to allow us to not to only do it in Zambia, but to do it wherever we can allow us to be. We’ve all. So have had a pastor out of Atlanta, Georgia who’s in stone mountain, who is from Sierra Leone and has been following us. And he said, if we get this done in Zambia, he will give us land and see every Leon. So we’re asking people one to just pray with us on that and consider a partner with us that we can see God work through the Nehemiah movement.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:34):
Amen. Well, if you’re listening and you’re inspired to be a part of what Masy Ministries is doing, I encourage you to go and check out their website and find out more information about them, brother, mark. It’s such an honor to serve God with you. I’ve been so impressed with you this week and the gift of God that’s on your life. Just the anointing that you operate in when you, when you give an altar call. And so thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.

Mark Young (13:01):
Thank you for having me and Daniel. I’ve watched you quite a few times, met Yuki few times at conference, but I never knew I’ll be co-laboring next to you. And I am so honored and looking forward to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:12):
Thank you, God bless you. God bless. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (14:33):
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.

Holy Keane Ammoti is a talented music artist from Kampala, Uganda. When he is not singing in front of massive crowds, he is leading a ministry that helps the street children whose parents have died from AIDS in Kampala.

Listen to Dr. Daniel King, the Evangelism Coach on the Evangelism Podcast.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Holy Keane Ammoti is a talented music artists from Kampala Uganda. When he’s not singing in front of massive crowds, he is leading a ministry that helps the street children whose parents have died from aids in Kampala. Jesus.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:26):
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 (00:49):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And today I have a special guest wholly Ken Amati. He is from the nation of Uganda from the city of Kampala, and he is a music superstar for Jesus. He is a powerful anointed worship leader and has come here to the nation of Malawi to help with the love Malawi festival performing every single night and ministering to the people through his music. Thank you so much for being on the program with me. I just

Holy Keane Ammoti (01:29):
Glory to God, because this is a big opportunity for me to be here. And also you interviewing me. Yeah. I give a glory to God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:38):
So tell me about how you became a believer.

Holy Keane Ammoti (01:42):
Well after the loss of all, my parents were like, I’m a result of rape. That’s what they say, rape or defilement. After I had lost my mom due to HIV aids, I lost my dad, HIV aids, and my grand mom also died, passed away due to HIV aids. That’s what they say after something like two months, I, we stay, we started staying with our auntie. She also passed away due to HIV aids. Life was really difficult. I have siblings who are HIV positive, and two of them are positive and were rejected so many times. And very many times where I’m in beta, I was beat. I was rejected. Yes, disappointed. So as I was moving around in Kampala city, I saw a crusade. People were dancing jubilating I was like, okay, I need to join them and see what, what exactly is going on. But when reaching dye was captivated by the miracles, I saw the man of God go to go onto the pulpit and began praying for the sick. I saw the sick get healed to the lame walk. And I was like, oh my God, I need to give my life to Jesus. This, I need that peace. I need that joy within me to be replaced. So I gave my life to Jesus. But before, even that I had, I tried committing suicide lake thrice,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:06):
Three times, you tried to commit suicide.

Holy Keane Ammoti (03:08):
I tried taking the poison rat, rat, poison things didn’t work out. I went and crushed. But batteries, batteries, I don’t know. Yeah. So I crushed them, took them. Cause I was so much, I really wanted to die because I have siblings who are HIV positive and there are two of them. And I don’t know, I didn’t know my status by that time. I thought maybe I could have good and also HIV positive. I could have good the the sickness from balm for my parents, but things. Yeah. So Jesus has already has been like, he has been that man who has really put me up here and he has blessed.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:53):
And now you are in Kampala, Uganda, and you are working with the street boys in Kampala. Tell me about the ministry that you do with the street boys

Holy Keane Ammoti (04:05):
For the street kids. We we, we, we sorry. We, we give them food. We feed them, we preach to them. The gospel, we do haircuts. We teach them skills. Like I have a bakery at home that I normally get some two or three people and put them, put them into the baker and land. But the bad thing with them, they are, they’ve noted good in the skill. And, but they are thieves thieves. So sometimes you have to be very keen with which people you take at your place. But with that, we managed like to put them up there build them, teach them, and then others, we, we resettle them with their parents, take them out from the streets and take them back to their parents.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:52):
So tell me about your music. How do you use your music to reach people for Jesus?

Holy Keane Ammoti (04:59):
The youth, the youth love dance hall, music. They love dancing. So I use that. I use the beats beats that are really hard. Like they, the ones that really stupid, like captivate the youth. So I use the, I use that and put the, and put good is what on to, onto the, the music that the beats. So you find that people are so in tangled people, I mean, people are so much air into it and you find that people love Christ, people know Christ because of that. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:36):
And so you are here with the love Malawi festival with a global network of evangelists. And we have been seeing God do tremendous things here in this city. And then in Lucienzo tell us some of, of what you think about what is happening here. Ah, this,

Holy Keane Ammoti (05:56):
This, this, this has been an amazing movement. First of all these small towns are taken by poor people, witchcraft and stuff like that. So we have brought Christ and I am seeing that in the next two years, three years this is going to be a big CIB, be a big thing because now Christians, we’re all we have over something like [inaudible] have given their lives to Jesus. So we give the glory to God and the pastors have also been taught how to reach out to other people. That is a very big thing. So I’m seeing in the next five years from now [inaudible] [inaudible] is not going to be the same again. And then the music that we’ve been like giving out to people, you’ll find that the youth have adopted to the youth, to, to the new music

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:50):
And the trend. You will find that maligns and the chains are going to be up, up, up, up. And, you know, once you bring, once you bring the ghost point to a place poverty the gospel, eradicates poverty, cause the mindset, the mindset changes of the people, the mindset changes completely. And you find that someone who has spending money into witchcraft is no longer going to put it into each car, but always going to church and doing the right things. So the perception, the mindset is being renewed and the word keeps cleansing each and every one, you know, sometimes we sow seeds and we don’t know what we’re doing, but wherever you put a seed of good it germinates. That’s what I know. That’s what I believe it. Yeah. Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. Can we finish with you sharing one of your songs with us? Can you sing something? I know you don’t have your music, but just use your voice and share with us one of your songs.

Speaker 4 (07:59):
JJ, DJA, DJA, DJA, DJA, DJA, DJA, DJA,

Holy Keane Ammoti (08:05):
Jay horn. One of my it godly, godly. [inaudible] Please stop at the ever, ever dripping. No one can never stop with [inaudible] until you get a blessing from Jew keeped up a top in the world. This is [inaudible] of course representing Christ to the fullest. Yeah. Holly can on what is my name? And I’m so excited to be here. Guys are watching.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:34):
Wow. That is wonderful. Well, thank you so much for using your talent for Jesus and thank you for being on the evangelism podcast,

Holy Keane Ammoti (08:42):
The glory to God. And thank you so much for hosting me. I it’s been awesome. It’s been an awesome time and I thank God for that. Thank you so much.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:51):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month, you can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (10:12):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit king ministries.com. Again that’s king ministries.com.

Bryce Kwant is from South Africa. Today he shares stories of what God is doing in South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, and Zimbabwe. In one story he shares about how God miraculously provided for one of his mission teams when they were facing a difficult situation.

Connect with Bryce Kwant on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bryce.kwant

Follow Bryce Kwant on Twitter: https://twitter.com/BryceKwant

Are you excited about evangelism? Listen to The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelism Coach Daniel King

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Bryce Kwant is from South Africa today. He shares stories of what God is doing in South Africa, Zambia Malawi in Zimbabwe, in one story that I know you’re going to love, he shares about how God were rakus Lee provided for one of his mission teams when they were facing a very difficult situation.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:33):
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 (00:57):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King. And today I have a special guest. Bryce quant is from South Africa. He works in Zimbabwe and other nations right now. We’re in the nation of Malawi. Bryce, thank you for being with me.

Bryce Kwant (01:13):
You so much such a privilege to talk to you and we hoping listeners will be inspired.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:18):
So tell me a little bit about yourself and about your history.

Bryce Kwant (01:22):
Well, I am from Johannesburg, South Africa, and I’ve always been involved in church ministry. I’ve grown up in the church and, you know, just kind of seen God move through things. And, and, and part of that has been discovering my purpose and calling. And so I’ve always been one to test as many things as possible to try as many things as possible and just be available. Keep my hands open and say, yes, Lord, I’ll try.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:45):
And you have been doing missions work in Zimbabwe in Zambia now in Malawi, also South Africa, tell me some of the type of ministry that you do.

Bryce Kwant (01:55):
We’ve done so many things, so we’ve always gone and partnered with local teams. And so one of the projects in Zambia actually, sorry, in Livingston in Zambia has been a project where we started with just actually feeding kids. And so we would reach out to the local communities and we’ve developed a farm, a sustainable project, the farm sunk boreholes hauls bowl, the base house planted churches. And we always have been doing local outreach in the community that we believe is the foundation of the work always is preaching the gospel and from the gospel comes all the good things that come from God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:32):
That’s awesome. So right now we are in Malawi for a big love Malawi festival. This is in conjunction with the global network of evangelists, a ministry that’s under the ministry of Luis Palau. And so how did you get connected with the G and D and with this?

Bryce Kwant (02:53):
Well it was actually in about March this year, 2021. I was busy with my home church in South Africa and I got a phone call from one of the team saying that we were busy doing work in Zambia and your names popped up. And so we would love for you to come and help us to partner and to use some of the relationships. And it was all God. And so from there that the relationships have developed and I joined the team in April and in Zambia and then came onto the team for the planning for this trip. And now we here and doing awesome ministry with awesome people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:29):
So what are some of the things that you’ve done to help prepare for the festival here? Last night we had a great festival. I think it was something like 561 decision cards filled out we’re in the city of Lucho Monza, and just tremendous response from the people. But what are some of the things that you did to help organize this

Bryce Kwant (03:51):
Last month? We came through four of us from the team and we met in every city over four days and we were prepaying pasta. So a big thing for us is to prepare the local team. This is about the local church as well. And so we want the local church to be prepared, to be ready not just to receive the salvation, but to work with people in the end, as much as it’s about a vendor, that’s partnering, coming, making these things happen. It’s about the local church, continuing the work of ministry here. So a lot of meetings a lot of preparation and so on the ground. So there’s so much when you think about it, we’ve had nonstop meetings with schools, with pastas, prisons, chaplains evangelists and networks of pastors, networks of evangelists, and all just kind of sharing the vision for what these love festivals are about

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:47):
Yesterday. You shared with me a testimony from one of your previous mission trips, where you were in a vehicle and you had a trailer behind you. Tell me about the tragedy that happened, and then the testimony of how God rescued you.

Bryce Kwant (05:02):
We were taking a team to Zambia. And so this was in 2013 and I’ll never forget it. It was as clear as daylight. We were driving through Botswana and there’s a strip in Botswana where there is literally nothing on the road. So very empty open, and we were driving. And as we were driving the axle or the leaf Springs just kind of popped off. And so the whole trailer came apart and we just had to stop. And we decided to offload the trailer as a team and pack what we could into our vehicle. And we prayed together. We said, God, we, we really need you to come through for us, but we need to carry on with the mission of God. And so we locked the trailer and decided what we’re going to carry on and trust what is his to the Lord.

Bryce Kwant (05:43):
And as we were traveling, so we were about to get traveling and we prayed again, and this vehicle came driving up to us. And it’s the middle of notice. If you can imagine an open road kind of desert-like and as vehicle stops and the guy gets out of his vehicle and he says to us, you know what, I’ve got a welding machine and a generator and they go, I can fix this for you. And so we had already prepared the trailer for him. We had emptied it, and we were able to stay as a team, just kind of lifted up on the side and he welded everything back together. And we were able to load things back in and, and as he was done, he just kind of said, go well, cheers, goodbye. And for us, we thought, wow, this is like an angel. And so we were able to load the vehicle full again and carry on with the mission. And, and, you know, one of the most amazing testimonies about this whole trip is, you know, many people after that, even throughout the trip, just say, wow, the power of prayer, the power of prayer. So God can use what seemed like a disaster for his glory.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:42):
That’s amazing. You’re in the middle of nowhere, the axle on the trailer falls off and God sends a welding machine and a generator in the middle of nowhere to help you deal with the situation. Isn’t that amazing how God provides. He is Jehovah Gyra, the God that provides for us, even when we don’t know what we need, he already has an answer on the way. So tell me some of what you see yourself doing in the future. What’s what future dreams do you have of what you want to accomplish for God?

Bryce Kwant (07:13):
Sure, personally I love partnership. I love working with teams. I love showing people the mission. And so part of my passion is taking people along on trips. And, and so I really love the festival environment. For me, it’s a great time for people to be exposed to many things, as well as obviously the mission and what we accomplish. But I really enjoy taking people along luck. We have a young man with us now, and it sets a privilege him. It’s his first time ever doing something like this. And it’s a great opportunity to expose people to what God is doing around the world and for them to unlock what’s inside of them. And so part of my real, I would say gifting, but passion is to see others come alive. And so that’s really something inside of me. As my dad always says to me, he’s always said, keep your hands open. Because what God places in is to go through and say, this is the moment you close your hands. God can’t give it anymore. So, so I love just keeping my hands open and allowing God to move things through me. And I believe that’s part of my calling.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:19):
That’s awesome. Well, Bryce, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. It’s great to meet you and great to see you and, and, and see your involvement in this, this love Malawi festival. Just a tremendous privilege to serve Jesus.

Bryce Kwant (08:35):
Yeah. Thank you, Daniel King. It’s been awesome. And we look forward to many opportunities coming.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:40):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reached people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (10:00):
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.

Marc Randall was a successful computer programer in Silicon Valley, but God sent him to the mission field in Zambia. Now he reaches out to the lost across Southern Africa with both low tech and high tech. His innovative ideas and enthusiasm for reaching the lost will inspire you as you listen today.

Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/168469990473917 

Check out The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelism Coach Daniel King

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Mark Randall was a successful computer programmer in Silicon valley, but God sent him to the mission field in Zambia. Now he reaches out to the lost across Southern Africa with both high tech and low tech, his innovative ideas and enthusiasm for reaching the lost will inspire you as you listen today.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:22):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King we’re Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:59):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King. And today I have a very special guest with me, Mark Randall. Thank you for joining me on the evangelism podcast. Thank you,

Marc Randall (01:08):
Daniel. It’s really good to be with you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:11):
So we are here in the nation of Malawi for the love Malawi festival with a global network of evangelists, a ministry under the ministry of Luis Palau. And you’ve been helping to organize this event. So it’s wonderful to get to spend some time with you. If finally meet you. Thank

Marc Randall (01:27):
You so much, Daniel. It’s good to meet you also.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:29):
I know we’ve been Facebook friends for a while, but this is the first time we get to meet face to face. So tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you become a believer in Jesus?

Marc Randall (01:37):
Sure. I’m a 43 years old right now and I became born again when I was 25 years old. So I grew up in Canada in a non-believing home. When I was 14, 15, I rebelled I to drugs. Alcohol got arrested many times never finished high school. So many things I just rebelled. There’s a God-shaped hole in my heart that I was trying to fill with so many different things and nothing actually worked. I ended up teaching myself computers. And so when I was 21, I moved down to the silicone valley and lived there doing computer work for several years. After that got laid off from work. My dad died two years after that, after that just started searching out, there has to be more, more, more to life than what I’ve been living for because I had so much success in life yet my heart and my inside was so empty on the inside.

Marc Randall (02:23):
So I started going to church in Canada, moved to the east coast. Once a university started going to church for the first time in my life. I just saw that people in the church had something I didn’t have. And so God just revealed himself to me. I just knew that I knew that I knew that God was real, but I knew that I was away from him because of the sin in my life. So there was one night where I got down on my knees and I cried out to God with all my being just said, God, I believe you have a son. Jesus. I don’t know exactly what this means, but I ask you to forgive me. I want to be right with you. I want a relationship with you at that point, God forgave me and my life changed a new heart. And just everything in my life changed after that, like you made have peace joy contentment for the first time in my life. And just God started to restore all the brokenness and everything else. And just sent me to the, on this amazing journey that we’ll be talking more, I think with Daniel in a few minutes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:08):
Yeah. So now you are a missionary living in Zambia. How did you end up in Zambia? Great.

Marc Randall (03:15):
It was in a 2007. Most of my training has come from an evangelist from the UK. So he invited me to Zambia in 2007. So I came on five short-term mission trips here, pretty much. They were like the book of acts. I get time of salvation people gain physically healed, demon possessed gain, set free. It was like for me, the coolest thing. Then it was finally in 2014 that just God spoke to me in the most clear way. I knew that I knew that I knew that God was speaking to me, that he was calling me into Zambia. It was almost like I was stepping into something much greater than myself. So I knew I was stepping into a calling and stepping into something very special, but I had no idea, really all the plans and purposes that God had in me coming to Zambia to Africa, but just that I was to come. And just that it would be something greater than I could imagine.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:02):
So tell me what type of missions work you’ve been doing in Zambia now in Malawi, you’ve been to some other African nations

Marc Randall (04:10):
Doing many things right now started organizing these larger evangelistic outreaches. So God’s opened that up, which is amazing. So we’re planning in 2023, a big nationwide campaign in Zambia for pastors I’m using the technology that I knew before. So I’m resourcing thousands of pastors using memory cards and wifi points and tablets. So getting out theological resources to pastors, so helping them in that way doing evangelism training with churches and then also working on mobilizing nations to see Muslims come to Christ. So working on that, getting out of them in a big way, and then also we’re doing prison ministry. So we’re doing crusades with all the prisoners in Zambia and hopefully other countries soon.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
I think it’s neat that you’re from Canada. We have a ministry in Canada, king ministries, Canada. What, what part of Canada are you from?

Marc Randall (05:02):
I grew up in Vancouver, but then I became born again in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and lived most of my Christian life there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:09):
Neat to see that God is using Canadians to reach the world for Jesus very much. So your background is in working with computers before you got saved, and now you brought that over into your ministry. What are some things that you think that we can use technology in? What are some ways that we can use technology in order to reach people for Jesus?

Marc Randall (05:34):
Okay. Different ways, like on the trip here, something that I’m going to start working on as a crusade kind of management system. So like it can help for administration stuff like just to get things out, to plan events and that way it can be used in an amazing way. I’ve heard I know many people that are using Facebook and other social media platforms and they’re reaching literally thousands or millions of people like in using those platforms to get out. Technology can be used to help believers, to communicate, to get out resources to them. And so using technology where before you might just have a small Bible school, but now you can reach literally millions of people or train millions of people. So it just really amplifies what you’re able to do for a very, very small amount of money if done in the right way. So you can do so much more using technology for if you’re training in evangelists, you get them a memory card that has a full library on it. And then you can get out to people that way or the same with pastors. So using technology, you can do a lot more for a very little amount of money.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:32):
And so have you been giving evangelists little memory cards with libraries on them?

Marc Randall (06:37):
Some evangelists, yes, but it’s mostly been pastors so far, but that is coming in the near future.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:41):
Wow. I have some tremendous resources for helping evangelists, training them, how to share their faith, train them, how to do crusades and stuff. And so I’d love to give that to you and you can put it on the card and give it away. I donate it to you free of charge and let’s get it into as many hands as we can.

Marc Randall (06:58):
That sounds fantastic. Thank you so much. And I’m going to get you a wifi point.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:02):
Yeah. I think that it’s really neat that there can be tremendous synergy when people collaborate and work together in April, you did a large event in Zambia. Tell me about what God did. You brought a variety of different evangelists together, and it was a collaborative effort. What happened?

Marc Randall (07:21):
It was amazing. It was my first time actually organized in a large evangelists like event. So we had over 40,000 people attend I think around 3000 or more decisions for Christ. We had all these different evangelists work together, work with the local pastors. It was amazing. Just God opened incredible doors. We had like over 800 people in the marketplace here in the gospel get shared. And so it was just incredible just seeing everyone come together as one and then see God show up in the most amazing way. It was very special.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:49):
What were some of the results from that? How many people came? What city were you in and what type of results did you see?

Marc Randall (07:57):
We were in Livingston’s Zambia. So it’s one of the seven wonders of the world. We saw

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:04):
Tell me why it’s what’s there

Marc Randall (08:06):
Victoria falls. If you’ve seen that Agra falls, it does not compare to to Victoria falls much, much better come to Zambia.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:15):
Yeah. And of course, Livingstone named after the great missionary Explorer, David Livingstone,

Marc Randall (08:21):
And he has impacted so many people in like Africa. It’s amazing how he first brought the gospel to Africa and just what started I think from him coming here. It’s amazing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:31):
I really like that this week we’re going to be in blant tire, which is named after the birthplace of David Livingstone back in, in Scotland. I didn’t know

Marc Randall (08:42):
That. That’s amazing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:44):
Yeah. So, so there’s a bland tire back there in great Britain. And now we have a bland tire and Malawi and we’re going to be preaching the gospel of, but of course, David Livingstone wants such a Explorer, went all over this part of Africa, opened it up to, to exploration. And now many people here in Malawi are Christian because of the work that David Livingstone did. It’s amazing. Okay. So you were there in Livingstone, near Victoria falls. How many people got saved?

Marc Randall (09:16):
It was about 3000 decisions for Christ. And so we were in the prison. We were in the marketplace. We went to the youth to a youth correction center. We basically went to every opportunity that we had. We went to share the gospel. So about 3000, I think

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:30):
How many evangelists are going into areas that are very dangerous and sometimes it’s important for their technology to be encrypted. Talk to me a little bit about that in, in what we can start to develop as believers in order to protect those evangelists or missionaries who go into closed access nations.

Marc Randall (09:55):
Okay. Very important. My background actually is computer security. So first thing we need to train these evangelists on how to properly secure their smartphones and our laptops. So they need to be encrypted, encrypted in a certain way. You need to make sure security updates and you have good policies on the way that you protect your laptops and your devices. Then also the people that you work with in those nations, they need training on how to properly secure their devices, because that can be a major thing. If one person gets compromised, then the whole network can go down. Cause all the details are on there. Or if you’re traveling evangelists, you have the numbers for all the pastors in the country. Someone gets your phone and then it takes off all the contacts or it looks at your chats. You could compromise the people that really need protecting.

Marc Randall (10:36):
So you need to be very careful. So training you need to have standards in place where you use certain programs for end to end encryption like signal would be a good program to use. Whatsapp is still good, but signal is fantastic. Just with the way that they have Anton encryption, I just program something similar to signal for another ministry up for Muslims. And so I’ve learned all about the encryption. That’s underlying it. So signal would be the way to go and it’s very secure and you can do a good job with that.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:04):
So over the next couple of years, you’re planning to do several large collaborative events in Zambia. Tell me about what you would want to do. What, what has God put on your heart to do?

Marc Randall (11:15):
It just seems to be growing and growing. Like, I mean, one thing is having evangelists work together. So just having the different evangelists and ministries, collaborate and work with each other, then it’s also seen, I mean, revival come within the local church. So when we come to an area, pastors get built up, believers, get just like get set up for sharing their faith, which is amazing. Then just seeing multitudes come to Christ. Like I would literally like to see like in every region across Ambia to see an outreach happening or like every, just every province, pretty much in outreach happening at the same time. So we’re just looking for doing large events where we could have like 10 or more cities having large events at the same time and then send up other into the surrounding areas in the city. So that’s the hope that we have right now for 2023.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:58):
So if someone is listening and they want to come on a mission trip to Zambia, they want to join in. And one of these large collaborative efforts, how can they find you? What is your, what is your website where they can find more information about you?

Marc Randall (12:14):
You can go to Africa of evangelism.org. So HTTPS colon slash slash Africa, evangelism.org G, or you can email me at mark M a R C at Africa, evangelism.org. So come to Zambia, everyone so far has had a very good experience and I know it would be very special for you to come. So please come and get in touch with me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:41):
Yeah. How many, how many evangelists would you like to come to Zambia?

Marc Randall (12:45):
We’re actually thinking of having a few hundred people come in 2023. So if you’re listening that you’re born again, you have a call for evangelism, get in touch and come. We can talk.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:55):
Wonderful. Well, brother, mark, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. I love your ministry. I love your, your heart for God. And especially your understanding of these technological issues that can really help evangelists

Marc Randall (13:09):
So much. Like I’ve been starting to even to talk with other ministers. Now we’re helping them with technology where if you have some technology aspects, you can just multiply your ministry so much more like with you’re doing a little, you could reach the whole world and just have such a greater impact using technology. It’s very easy to do, but then sometimes it’s just knowing the right way on how to do it, but you can do so much with technology.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:32):
You know, I’m very excited about coaching evangelists and developing resources for evangelists, videos, written material. I’ve written a bunch of books on evangelism and I’m working on writing several more and kind of my, my vision is to have a Bible school on a disc where I can give an entire training on healing and evangelism and prayer, everything that, that someone needs in order to become a mature follower of Jesus.

Marc Randall (14:05):
That sounds amazing. And yes, you can do that. And I’m going to give you actually part of the ministry. We have wifi points. So when I get to the U S next, I’m going to give you a wifi point. So you don’t even need a memory card. You’ll bring around a little device. And then within a few minutes, everyone around you can have that on their device. And that’s someone I’m going to give to so that that’ll help you out. I think that even to create their own memory cards from that, there’ll be even better for you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:27):
Wow. That’s awesome. Thank you, brother mark. I didn’t even know that existed and now you’re telling me about it, so well, thank you. So, so I’m so excited about what you’re doing. Thank you for being on the evangelism podcast so much. Thank

Marc Randall (14:37):
You for your ministry and just, yeah. Thank you so much. God bless you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:41):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reached people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (16:00):
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.

Bob Lenz leads the largest Christian music festival in North America. God has also given him a powerful message on the dignity and value of every human being that he uses to teach an anti-bullying program in public schools. Every year, he shares his message with over half a million people through community outreaches, festivals, school assemblies, church events, tours and conferences.

Website: https://lifepromotions.org/bob-lenz/ 

The Dignity Revolution is a comprehensive, customizable, and interactive bullying prevention program that provides culture change to improve overall academic learning.

Connect with Daniel King, host of the Evangelism Podcast by calling: 1-877-431-4276

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Bob Lenz leads the largest Christian music festival in north America. God has also given him a powerful message on the dignity and value of every human being that he uses to teach an anti-bullying program in public schools every year, he shares his message with over half a million people through community outreaches festivals, school assemblies, church events, tours, and conferences. You’re going to love his humor as you listen to Bob Lanz.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:44):
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.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:08):
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 with me, Bob Lenz. Thank you so much for joining me today. It’s great to be here, man. Now you have been an evangelist for many years. Can you tell me, how did you start being used by God? In the area of evangelism?

Bob Lenz (01:29):
I never wanted to be an evangelist. I wanted just to drive a dump truck and then, but I found Jesus or he found me and I’m like, people got to know this, but I still want to be in full-time ministry. So I went to a Bible school just to share just to learn how to share Christ. And then it came back. The job I wanted as dump truck driver wasn’t open. So I sold pizza door to door, helping a ministry. And I led for families to Christ would tell them about our 24 hour hotline. And it just became apparent that I was supposed to share Christ. So I never wanted to, it was more like a call. It wasn’t something like I aspired to be.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:04):
And God has used you in such tremendous ways. Tell me some of the various projects that your ministry is involved in.

Bob Lenz (02:12):
Well, you talked about how long I’ve been. This is my 40th year in ministry, so it’s only 30, 30, some sounded like a veteran 40 sounds old, but I can’t stop. I feel like I have as much fire as when I was 28 years old. I’m on fire for the letting people know about Jesus. So we do different ministries. We have four, four basic outreaches from us. We have school assembly programs. So in this public schools, we can talk about Jesus. We call a dignity revolution. We talk about value, courage, and respect. And then we invite people back at night to share Christ with them. So that’s one area, that’s dignity revolution. Then we have life Fest. We have one of the nation’s biggest festivals. We have over 25,000 people over four days, close to a hundred thousand people in Ash. Gosh, but gosh, Wisconsin. And then we have quake quake, youth encountering the gospel. We have a boat 12 across the country, youth conferences, where we just train youth in encountering Jesus and how to share them with others. And then we have my evangelistic work where we go around the world and preach. And do you know festivals like we’re doing here right now? This is live from Milan.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:20):
Yeah. This has just been so wonderful being together with you in Malawi and getting to spend some time with you. And this morning, we got to go to a school here in Malawi and you did such a beautiful job. Just sharing your story and talking about value and respect. Let’s talk about the message that God has given you for schools, especially schools in America, where there’s such a desperate need.

Bob Lenz (03:47):
I hope we see my story that Daniel, you may not even know. I was raised with two siblings. One had mental retardation, scoliosis curvature of the spine. Half his body grew half had stopped plus plus epilepsy. And then my other sister was special needs as well. And it was both. I always want to make sure people know it wasn’t genetic, but I think that’s just because I was always afraid of being handicapped myself. But it was, it was because at birth defects are at birth. And so I always searched like this. Every life have purpose. Like we all like to come back stories, but my brother never walked. He never did a full sentence. And so I was in a religion class one time and I asked why my brother and sister were handicapped and I was quote normal. And the teacher in her ignorance had God loved me more than them.

Bob Lenz (04:39):
And I’m like, I got up to kill her. I didn’t know how I was going to do it. Number two pencil, you know, but I, I really did. And it had a stop. And then they got a coach next door to her to come and I cried. And she said, he said, Bob, she was wrong. But I was afraid. She was right to see if God loved me more than them. Then if you’re more athletic than me than God loves you more. And if this person is loved, has more money than God loves them more. And I had to come to the point, go did my brother and sister’s life had value. And when I came down, yes, their life has value than I thought. Then we’ve got to go tell the kids because 1,800 kids a day under 18 in America attempts suicide. And if my handicapped brother has value, so you, no matter what you’re going through, you have value and I will not stop. I do about a hundred schools a year in public schools, bring value and hope in dignity for all. And that’s what we gotta do. We gotta reach them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:34):
You developed a curriculum that schools can use. T tell me about the curriculum.

Bob Lenz (05:39):
What they did is they took my talk called value, courage and respect living life to the fullest, a dignity revolution. If you look at the word revolution, it says love in it backwards, right? And so love is this revolution. And so what we did is the teacher of the year, Deb tack went from the teacher for the whole country. She’s in the teacher hall of fame, a teacher for 40 years. She has made this material around our program and came up with a curriculum, the dignity revolution, it’s evidence-based, if you’re a teacher out there, you know what I’m talking about? It’s proven that it’s effective. It meets all the standards from local and state and national criteria. And if you’re a teacher listening, you can go through this training called DRT dignity, revolution, training, and get continuing credits from Jetson university because every school has to have continuing learning, right?

Bob Lenz (06:35):
And so we can come in and do a whole school assembly program for the kids. And we can do a inservice for every teacher in the public school. And it meets all the criteria. But what it does is it brings value and it brings purpose indignity. And it, it, in the pledge, you go to dignity, pledge.com and it doesn’t have to deny anything you believe it’s just to, to love kids and show them how to work through bullying. Anti-Depression cutting suicide anxiety, what the kids are going through today. It addresses and we have a curriculum from K through fifth grade and six through 12. So we are covered. There’s a there’s 64,000 schools in the country. We need to get this material in every single

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:24):
Let’s talk about what’s happening in the lives of young people in America, because it, it feels like there is a crisis among young people in it’s been even increased with, with COVID people being isolated. Why is it so important to instill these values in our young people?

Bob Lenz (07:43):
Well, we understand the pandemic, but scripture makes it clear that a fool separates himself and we were not meant to live our life alone and is as wonderful as some of the things are in social media. I’m not an anti-social media guy, because it can be used for the gospel. It can be used for connecting people, but it separates people. And since COVID Daniel suicide cost, the hotlines have increased 800%. You did not hear that wrong. It is more than a crisis. It’s an epidemic. If you look at the statistics, more people are dying from the effects of anxiety and depression and suicide than COVID. We have backed the back in areas like in California, where the lactone is so bad and I’m not trying to be political, but we have to understand that we need to address the mental health of our youth in America.

Bob Lenz (08:36):
Today, they are dying, they’re starving. And this program has something for the parents. It has something for the teachers and has something for the students. So we have the dignity, dignity, revolution, assembly program. We can bring the sprinkler to your school. We have dignity revolution training for the parents and the teachers. And then we have dignity revolution curriculum, so that it’s not just a hit and miss. And they had programs here. It can be supplemental to like a health program in the school, or it can be the whole unit and it is supplemental, or it can be a comprehensive in itself for the whole school. We’ve been to the apartment of education to white house. It’s time that we get this out here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:20):
Let’s talk about life Fest. As you said, it’s one of the largest musical festivals in the United States. How long have you been doing it? And what are some of the testimonies that have come out of doing this tremendous musical festival?

Bob Lenz (09:37):
So we are 22 years old, minus one. However you do that because of Covance. So we actually made a shirt. Daniel said the last year, and we had all the artists list on it. And then it said postponed. And then it had canceled. We sold $15,000 worth of t-shirts for the last year. So it was really fun. But life Fest is this. I used to think it was just about evangelism. But my team challenged me. We brought in a consultant in everybody had a different reason because God does so much at a festival. And I said, no, it’s evangelism. We’re an evangelist organization. But when we waited through, after a couple of days of praying, it wasn’t, you know, what the purpose is, is to, is to celebrate the love of Jesus through music and unite the body of Christ. But guess what that is, that is an answer to Jesus’s priestly prayer in John 17, that father may they be one, even as you.

Bob Lenz (10:32):
And one why that the world may know it results in thousands of people every year, given their lives to Jesus. But guess what our goal is to celebrate the love of Jesus and to unite the body of Christ. So I think the highlight for me is two things, a unity. We see all denominations like Catholics and Pentecostals and, and Lutherans people like are there real Christians in those denominations? There’s Christians in everyone. It doesn’t mean I agree with all their doctrine, but if we agree on this, essentially, we can come together and celebrate Jesus. Amen. That’s what we need to do. But my highlight was on our 20th year, we built a million dollar stage. Now we don’t own the land. So we built it. People are raising money to help us pay this off, but here’s the cool thing we’re going to. After 10 years of using it, we’re going to give it to the county.

Bob Lenz (11:26):
We want to be a part of the community. But when we had the dedication for it, we gave glow lights to everyone there. And we have 25,000, not exaggeration evangelistic numbers, right? But real people that come in 25,000 people a day and we gave them each a glow stick. And we said, if you were here during mud Fest where we got eight inches of rain and your tent got swamped, break it and waive it. If you are here for everyone, wave it. And it was so cool to see different. If you met your spouse here, we thought nobody, there was, there was tens of twenties, 30, 40 people at mentor sponsor. But then we said, if you surrendered your life to Jesus, if you received Jesus or we surrendered your life to Jesus here, break your stick. And I got that picture of 25,000 iPads at 20 20,000 were broken, waving them.

Bob Lenz (12:17):
And the whole place was lit up. And I’m like, that is my highlight. That’s why we do it. And so now we that one’s in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, the second week of July. But this last year we started life Fest, music, city, and home of Johnny Cash. Hideaway farm in yes, just 20, 30 miles out of Nashville, Tennessee. And so now we’re doing a second one there. And then this March, March 26th, I don’t know where this all goes. But down in Naples, Florida, we’re going to do a life Fest one day down in Naples, Florida, and bring the hope of Jesus there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:52):
It sounds like God is really multiplying your efforts and giving you more work to do. Isn’t that amazing that when you do something good for God, he gives you more to do well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. If someone wants to find out more about your curriculum or, or maybe even invite you to come to a school or come to life as what’s the best website for them to find out more about you.

Bob Lenz (13:17):
Well, if you want to go, if you want school information, go, the dignity pledge.com take the pledge as well. You take the pledge to stand up for the value of every person, right? So dignity pledge that com or if you want to come to a Christian music festival, life fest.com, right. Life fest.com. And so you go to either one of those in you’ll find out information, how to get my books. I’ve written six books. Anything that you need go to one of those for the public school, dignity pledge that com and for the Christian music festival life fest.com.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:52):
Well, thank you brother, Bob, for being on the evangelism podcast. I appreciate your passion for Jesus and your love for people.

Bob Lenz (13:59):
I’d love to come back some time. Let’s talk about how to encourage others in train them in bringing Jesus to people. Nine out of 10 people never lead somebody to Christ that has to change. How about nine out of 10 bringing some of the Jesus. Let’s talk about that next time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:14):
Amen. It’s a date. We’ll do it. Thank you, God bless you. Thanks. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (15:37):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

Reid Sanders has proclaimed the Gospel of Jesus Christ in both word and deed in over ninety nations and across the United States. Today he shares a powerful story that will encourage you to diligently pray for your lost loved ones until they are saved.

Website: https://reidsaunders.org

If you are interested in evangelism coaching, call Evangelist Daniel King at 1-877-431-4276

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Reid Saunders has proclaimed the gospel of Jesus Christ in both word and deed in over 90 nations and across the United States today, he shares a powerful story that will encourage you to diligently pray for your lost, loved ones until they are saved.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:21):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:56):
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 with me, evangelists, Reed, Saunders. Thank you for being with me today,

Reid Saunders (01:07):
Daniel, so great to be with you and all of you watching, and it’s just a blessing to serve Jesus and proclaim the good news that Jesus and we’re live for Malawi. It’s amazing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:15):
Yeah, it’s so wonderful to be here together. We’re participating in the love Malawi festival with a global network of evangelists, a ministry under Louis Palau’s ministry and both you and I serve on the council of the GNE. And really the vision of the global network of evangelists is bringing evangelists together. Collaborative events. Tell me some about how you got involved with a G and D and in what you’ve been doing with them.

Reid Saunders (01:46):
Yeah, well, I gave my life to Jesus. They just 17 at front of that moment on Daniel. God gave me this burning passion to reach as many people as possible for Jesus. And I have one passion and that’s for Jesus and to reach people for Jesus. And so after coming to Christ, God brought some great mentors in my life and one of them was Louise plow. So Louise plow and Billy Graham both encouraged me as an evangelist. And one thing our members started entering with Luis when I was going to seminary back in 2000. So 21 years ago, the thing that was so great as seen when we worked together and that’s what we do at genie, right? The global network of evangelist is when you think about it, Daniel, when Jesus said behold, the fields were right for harvest, he said, pray for more workers. Right? And that’s what the beautiful thing with you, myself and others on that genius council is that we together, we can reach more for Jesus Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:28):
Amen. And so we are here together in Malawi, tell us what God has been doing.

Reid Saunders (02:35):
Yeah. You know, it’s incredible Daniels. See the hunger people have for Jesus Christ. I love how the Bible says that when Jesus is lifted up, he’ll draw all people to himself. And that’s what we’ve seen through the school ministry, through the marketplace outreaches and through the festival, we see Jesus being lifted up in Malawi and he’s drawing men and women and boys and girls to himself. And I just think Daniel, you know, coming out of, or still being in COVID bedridden, the season, people are so hungry for hope. They’ve been living in fear. They’ve been asking this question, is there, God, does he care about me? And we’ve seen here in Malawi, people literally running to give their life to Jesus. I mean, last night when you were pitching, I mean, you saw the response, people raising their hands on the wall, outside the festival, they’re raising their hands, coming to Jesus. It’s exciting times. I believe the best days are ahead for evangelism. Urgency is great. Now’s the opportunity. Today’s the day of salvation. Let’s go.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:20):
I love your passion for Jesus and your passion for evangelism. How did you realize that you had an evangelistic gift on your life?

Reid Saunders (03:29):
Well, when I came to Christ at 17, I knew all I want to do is tell people about Jesus. And I was amazed when I would share the gospel with Jesus, that people would respond. And remember we share, but God saves, but it gave him a such a burden. And I just naturally, all I want to do is tell people about Jesus shortly after giving my life to the Lord. I got to leave my mom to the Lord. I got to leave a couple of my friends to play football, American football with me to Jesus. And I just saw the fruit that God would use me to share and people would respond. And I remember one of my mentors told me, he said, read you’re an evangelist, go out and share the good news. And I’ve been doing that ever since

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:00):
Yesterday at the pastor’s conference, you shared a really powerful story about how you prayed for your father for many years. Could you share that with me?

Reid Saunders (04:08):
Yeah. You know, I just wanna encourage all of you out there listening and watching it. You know, if you have someone in your life that doesn’t know, Jesus, don’t give up, keep praying for them. So I came to Christ, Daniel, as you know, when I was 17, I’m 47 now. And so for 30 years, every day, I would pray for my dad to come to know Jesus. He wouldn’t come to listen to me preach. He just, he didn’t want to be around that. And we had a good relationship with my dad, but there’s always that little distance. Obviously I prayed for my dad. And then just this last year, he came to hear me preach and at the invitation to receive Christ, I’ll never forget this. Daniel. My dad came up to me and I mentioned yesterday. I’ve only seen him cry three times when his mom died, when my mom left him after 30 years of marriage. And then that morning, when he gave his life to Jesus, he gave me a hug and he said, read, I’m so proud of you. And I want to give my life to Jesus. Jesus changed my life. So my dad said, I’ll never forget that Daniel

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:53):
Such an encouragement that you prayed for him every single day for 30 years and for 30 years, not seeing any fruit, not seeing anything, but then that moment where he came to know Jesus. And there’s nothing more exciting than leading someone to Jesus. How do you feel when you have the opportunity to stand in front of a crowd and preach to people and invite them to come to Jesus? How does that feel?

Reid Saunders (05:20):
Amazing. Two things on that first, like with my dad and those of you who know people who need Jesus, don’t give I’m harmonic, Galatians six, nine. It says, let us not become weary in doing good for the proper time. We’ll reap a harvest. We don’t give up. I just remember that with my dad and I’d given up, continue to pray. And the second question you asked me, it is such an honor. I really feel so unworthy at times, you know, to get up there and preach the good news. But I remember that with Christ, I can do all things and there’s nothing greater in my life than getting up there and sharing the good news of Jesus and watching God move to me. There’s no greater thrill. There’s no greater excitement than to get up there and share the message of the cross, the message of the empty tomb and to call people to Christ. To me, that’s the greatest joy, the greatest thrill in. I love it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:58):
So right now, I want you to imagine that you have a crowd here in front of you and give me a little illustration or something that, that you share with people to help lead them to Jesus. Yeah.

Reid Saunders (06:08):
I love that. I love that. One of the things I talked to you about all the time is the story about this monkey, where he’s from India and this monkey. These has been trapped, trying to capture them for years and they just can’t capture this monkeys too fast. But one idea, one day I, 100 grand idea took a coconut emptied its of its milk, tied a rope around the coconut, put it down by the tree where the monkey plate took the other end of the, of the rope and hid behind a tree. And he wait for the monkey and the monkey would come, would pick up the coconut. He’d shake it. He’d hear the rice, obviously you’d want the rice, right? So he stick his hand in, but once his hand easily could come in the hole, once he felt the rice, he would latch on Daniel.

Reid Saunders (06:42):
And at that moment, his hand was too big. He couldn’t release it and he wouldn’t let go. And so he was stuck and the hunter would come and capture him. And I used that illustration to talk about all that monkey had to do was let go of the rice and he had been free, but he wouldn’t let go. And I talked about so many people, they won’t let go. They won’t go let it go. Their pride, their sin, their lifestyle for fear, many reasons. But Jesus calls us to let go and grab his hand. And that’s why I tell people, what are you holding on to? That’s keeping you from coming to Christ, let your hands go. Cause Jesus said, then you’ll know the truth. They’ll choose to set you free in that truth chooses Jesus. So that’s the illustration I use all the time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:15):
Tuesday night, I heard you use that illustration. And it was actually a very difficult service because the, we found out right before the service was to start that the generator had died. And so instead of using the big sound system and the beautiful lighting system and in the screens and everything that we had, we were stuck with it, just a tiny sound system run by a little tiny generator. And there, there were thousands of people and that it was very difficult for them to hear. And so you were standing up on the, the boards that the, the bike riders use and, and the people were straining and struggling to hear you and kids were playing and they’re running all over the place, but you just stood up there, confident in who you are in Christ began to preach the gospel. And you shared that story. And so many people came to Jesus.

Reid Saunders (08:04):
Yeah. Amen. Exactly. And just a reminder is the Vangelis, we gotta be flexible. Right. And realize too, there’s this spiritual battle. And we noticed that with our team, just a spiritual battle a couple of days ago. But then we saw the big victory and I say this all the time, January when we pray, God moves. So yeah, we gotta be flexible guy be moving. But the cool thing is, despite the chaos, the spirit of God just gave me that calm. You know, the power of the holy spirit works in us. And through us in that moment for God to preach, I just had to call myself and say, Lord, this is crazy right now, but you’re the God of calm. You’re the God who’s going to work in people’s hearts. And then we just saw God, move. God moves despite chaos. You’re right with Jesus. We get

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:37):
Victory. Amen. You know, I so appreciate your attitude several times, since you arrived here, you’ve come to me and say, oh, it’s just, I’m so happy to serve Jesus with you. And that is true. It is wonderful to serve Jesus with other people who love Jesus and just have a passion for Jesus. Isn’t that wonderful.

Reid Saunders (08:56):
It is wonderful. Daniel. And you know, I always say all for Jesus, right? He gets the glory. And I remember hearing the same ones, Daniel, that when I think about collaboration, like what we’re doing here in Malawi, that great things can be accomplished for God when no one cares who gets the credit. Right. And just like Psalm 1 15, 1 says not to us, the Lord, not to us, but to your name, be the glory because of your love and faithfulness, we need more. There’s so few of us, right? We need to work together that Jesus would get all the glory. And I think he’s honored and he’s glorified when we work together for his glory.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:23):
Amen. So if someone wants to know more about you or find out something about your ministry, what is your website?

Reid Saunders (09:30):
I can just go to reidsaunders.org. Love to pray with you, encourage you any way that I can. We got a lot of work to do, but the fields, right for harvest all for Jesus. Let’s do this. Be encouraged.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:44):
Amen. Well thank you for being on the evangelism podcast. I appreciate it. Daniel Love you brother. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month, you can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead. At least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (11:07):
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.

Werner Nachtigal is the German founder of the GO Movement. He started the Global Outreach Day, a day when churches around the world set aside a day to send believers out witnessing. On this podcast you will hear the story of how God gave him the vision for this powerful ministry that has now reached millions of people for Jesus Christ.

Website: https://www.gomovement.world/en

What has the GO Movement accomplished?

• Christians trained in evangelism: 15+ Million
• Christians sharing their faith: 100+ Million
• People reached with the Gospel: 1.4+ Billion
• People decided to follow Jesus: 42+ Million

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Werner Nachtigal is the German founder of the GO movement. He started the Global Outreach day. A day when churches around the world set aside a day to send believers out, witnessing on this podcast, you’ll hear the story of how God gave him the vision for this powerful ministry that has now reached millions of people for Jesus Christ.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:24):
Well, Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:31):
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:36):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:01):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me from the nation of Germany, Werner Nachtigal. He is the visionary architect behind the GO movement originally the Gospel Outreach day. But now they have gone into so many different areas, brother Werner. Thank you for being with me today.

Werner Nachtigal (01:31):
It’s a pleasure. Absolutely. So good to be with you in Malawi.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:34):
So let’s begin with what is the goal movement?

Werner Nachtigal (01:39):
Actually, the goal movement is a collaboration of ministries during the nation prayer movements, digital ministries it was one goal to activate every believer to be a witness and to reach every person on earth within the next decade.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:53):
There’s a lot of people on the earth. I think the statistics say 7 billion people. How can we reach so many people with the gospel?

Werner Nachtigal (02:00):
Well, I mean it sounds impossible, but I believe that we are living in special times, mess 24, epidemics are coming earthquakes. Well, verse 14 at the end, this gospel will be preached. So I believe we are living in a great time. We had a meeting where the was a lot of leaders and the general secretary of the WRA said COVID brought humidity and unity. So here, some of these huge determinations and ministries are working together and some of them are in countries. You will not believe it was going on in the world. And then with digital, I’ve seen the reporting of one of our partner, how they’re reaching people, especially in the Muslim world, I believe it’s possible.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:40):
So tell me a little bit about what the goal movement does and how you do it.

Werner Nachtigal (02:45):
Well, we’ve started, it was a simple starts 10 years ago. The Lord gave me a vision and honestly, for two days I wasn’t the president of God. It was so powerful. I saw a wave around the world, Christians everywhere, sharing the gospel. And then after two days, I said, Lord, it’s only me. You know, I’m a simple evangelists. I’m doing my job. I have crusades was up to 10,000 people. At that point, I had only a small budget and a few connections. I said, Lord, this will not work. So we started 2012 and in the beginning was a connection of prayer and evangelism. So first of all, there is no revival was our prayer. We mobilized a lot of believers to pray for the harvest. It’s all about the harvest, nothing else. And then to send out Christians to share the gospel, because there are still a problem that over 90% of Christians are silent. We have the best message to the world, but, well we are shouting in the church, but we are silent outside of the church. So the goal is to activate the whole church to go out and to win salts. In the beginning, it was a day. Then 2020 was a whole month. Now we are talking about a whole decade. A full year was many activities, was one goal. We want to reach world.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:55):
Now I saw some statistics of the people that you’ve been able to reach. And according to these these statistics here, you have had so many people that you have activated to go out into the world. According to your website, you have trained 15 plus million people in evangelism with Christian sharing their faith more than 100 million Christians who have gone out sharing their faith. You have reached 1.4 billion plus people with the gospel and recorded 42 million salvations. How has this

Werner Nachtigal (04:35):
It’s happened? Actually, the last number is wrong. It’s much higher. It’s now over 85 million salvations. I mean, it was a simple start, 2012. I mean, what can I say? Simple. I mean, we’ve started at the biggest arena in the world in Nigeria, pass out of Bowie with a million people. My dream was to activate a million around the world. And then 2012, I was standing in front of a million. Everybody was shouting, Lord sent me. So it was a small start. But now with some of these huge partners, and this is a collaboration, it’s not that I have reached a 1.4 billion and I’ve led 85 million people. But this is a collaboration of big ministries where they’re all standing together to pray and to activate the whole church like this year, we decided one a day in may to share the gospel every day in may.

Werner Nachtigal (05:24):
And the church of God in Latin America said, well, we will mobilize all our believers to do that with a goal is to await the sleeping giant, the church. So they’ve activated over 250,000. I saw a report. It was quite long. They’ve reached over 6 million. It’s only one example. And 1.1 million God saved. So here, many ministries and denominations are working together. And it’s very simple. I mean, our main thing is every believer is a witness. So every believer can share the gospel and reach somebody. And well only it was our own mobilization with Maura. So many believers. We have country coordinators in many countries like Ghana. We have 150 coordinators on the ground activating the church so well, the Lord is moving pretty amazing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:12):
So if a church wants to be involved in the go movement and activate their members to go out and share the gospel, what are some practical ways they can do that?

Werner Nachtigal (06:23):
Whereas quite similar. I mean, first of all, check the webpage go moving.world register. But I mean, if you check the webpage or not in, it’s always in may between Easter and Pentecost, what does Pentecost received the holy spirit and be a witness that is our program. So in may, we’re starting first with equipping believers and prepare believers to share the gospel before may. Then, then in may we start with prayer early, may we estimated over 60 million. Christians are praying for the harvest already. I mean, the number is growing every year, then the gold days, the last Saturday of may and the world evangelical Alliance, we’ll put this day into the calender for all the churches globally to say, let’s go out and win souls. So if, if people are checking a webpage or not make sure in may that the pastor is activating the church to go out well.

Werner Nachtigal (07:14):
I mean, every pastor is interested that the churches growing, we had a pastor in ivory coast and he said, well, today’s go day 50 believers. I recos. He sent them out. 200 people got saved. And 20 immediately came to the church. We have seen church grows, absolutely amazing in some places in Uganda, our big guy planted over 25,000 churches. But what I really like, and this will inspire pastors and Christians, God is using every believer. I mean, I can tell stories until next week, what the Lord has done with simple ordinary Christians, amazing story. One pastor in Peru, went into a hospital to share the gospel. The spirit of God led him to the fourth floor. There was a guys who run of policemen. He told him about Jesus. The prince of God came. He got saved. Couple of hours later. This pastor saw that man in the national news, you can still see the clip.

Werner Nachtigal (08:06):
It’s the most dangerous, most known criminal Aquila. He led him to Christ. There was a young girl, 13 years old. She got saved on the go day. And then couple of weeks later, her father died. This young girl came home. The man was in bed for four hours. He was called Leanne girl began to pray. Guess what I mean? I was there with a camera team. We had taped the whole story. God raised him from the dead. What I really like God is using believers. And there was a research from Barna. Why people are quitting, especially the young generation, good churches, the reason number one, they’ve never experienced it. God used them. So this could be a good star where Christians could experience. God can use me. God can use me to share the gospel. I can lead people to Christ. I can pray for the sick.

Werner Nachtigal (08:52):
This is only the beginning. I believe in the lifestyle of evangelism. I mean, I many years ago, I decided to share the gospel at least once a week, outside of every programs and church meetings for this year made a commitment every day. I mean, there’s a really tough, but I mean, this is the date is only a piece of a whole concept. We want to inspire Christians, live a lifestyle of evangelism. You can share your face while you are working as a nurse in a hospital, a businessman to another businessman. So we are not talking about a program. Everybody can do whatever he wants to do. I was in a meeting in the Dominican Republic. It was a lot of leaders and everybody was sharing what they have done on the go day. And so many stories and so many moving stories in avert. A lady Vonda in the Dominican Republic was on her way to a bridge to commit suicide. Well, the ch the city was packed of believers. It was go there. Everybody was sharing the gospel and she got saved. So it’s, it’s, it’s a simple program to activate the church to go out into when souls,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:51):
Well, I have been so inspired being around you first, I’m inspired by your, your visionary leadership. God has given you great relationships with so many wonderful denominational leaders and people from many different walks of life and even very important people. God has just given you these great relationships and you have this great vision to reach the entire world with the gospel. But also we are here in Malawi. We were out on the street yesterday, going from house to house, inviting people to come to the crusade. And I saw you out on a corner by yourself with one young man, and you were giving him a flyer. Then I saw you put your hand on his shoulder and you began to pray with him. And so you are practicing the witnessing, not just telling people to do it.

Werner Nachtigal (10:41):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was excited. You preached last night. I bet I did my job as well. And that’s what I just said. I share the gospel every day. I made a commitment. Yes, Lord use me this year, every day. So I had COVID in March. What should I do? I downloaded an app. I will not talk too much about that, but I could share the gospel online, talking to people everyday. I was just on vacation with my wife every day. Even in holiday, I’ve shared the gospel today. I’m struggling a bit with my stomach and I really feel sick, but just three hours ago, I was out of share the gospel. I led somebody to Christ. So I really believe we, it’s not enough only to preach about it. We have to do it. We have to be an example and let so many people to the Lord and in a restaurant.

Werner Nachtigal (11:27):
I mean, even in a restroom, I’ve led people to the Lord. And if we could inspire the church to go out, honestly, I think that’s, that’s a big plan behind it to reach your world. They’ve asked Billy Graham, who is your successor? And Billy Graham said the whole church. And imagine we could awakes a sleeping giant, the church, 1.2 billion Christians to go out and to share the gospel. I tell you, this will shake the world. I’ve met the president of Malawi years ago. At that time, he was the president of the assemblies of God. And he said, he heard about the global Russia. He was so excited. He said, what if every Chinese person would jump from a chair at the same time they can shake the world. I’m not sure about that really, because they are so small, but what if every is a witness we can reassure. That is what the president of Malawi said, and that’s true. We can reach a world. And so that’s what we’ve seen in court with COVID last year in the beginning, it looks like a disaster, but it brought unity. Big ministries came together and say, let’s stand together to reach a world.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:32):
So many Christians, they know that they should be out witnessing, but sometimes they don’t really know how they don’t know what to say. And so can you give me in a nutshell, what you say when you’re trying to lead someone to Jesus?

Werner Nachtigal (12:46):
Well, I mean, I have so many ideas. I’m a very creative person. I mean, here in Malawi I usually I start a conversation talking about the president because I met him and everybody is excited. But I mean, if you have no idea in the beginning, it’s not good to preach into getting, it’s not good to say, Hey, I want to tell you about Jesus. I’m from a Baptist church. And we want to, and talking about the blood of the lamb be normal, be friendly. Ask a good question. Like I was sitting in a taxi in Brazil and I saw a cross in person. I know this guy is from the Catholic church and I asked him, sir, I see the cross. What does it mean to you? So in the beginning show interest. And sometimes I ask a question, have you ever heard that Jesus loves you instead of, I want to tell you about God, you have to repent, be nice and friendly. Have you ever heard that he loves you? Not really. I mean, I haven’t heard that for 21 years. I’ve never heard the gospel and I’m not from a Muslim country. I’m from Germany.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:50):
Tell me some about your testimony. How did you get saved?

Werner Nachtigal (13:54):
Well, it’s a pretty amazing story. On one side, I’ve never heard the gospel. My dream was to become a rockstar and I was living like one of them, parties and everything. And I met them. All I was sitting backstage was Ozzy Osbourne. I was celebrating was kissed. And that night when I was celebrating was kissing, I was so shocked. I saw the empty eyes of the lead guitarist in Australia. And I was so shocked. I bought a Bible and began to read, but if you serve as Genesis, I gave up soon. But on the other side my grandpa was a revival. Preacher. I’ve never met him. He got arrested after the second world war. He was in prison in Siberia and he prayed for his family. Especially for me. He prayed that somebody would stand up and preach the gospel. So this is the amazing part of my story. I saw Jesus when I was three, he stood in front of me. I had a dream about Jesus when I was 15. And she said, I love you. I woke up God, are you real? I was 18. I had revelation I a surf guard as a missionary, never heard about God the gospel. So there are so many people like the Bible says the harvest is plentiful, so we have to go and we have to reach them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:02):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for being a guest on the evangelism podcast. I’m so inspired by your example. And after listening to you these last few days, I think I must dream bigger for Jesus.

Werner Nachtigal (15:15):
Yes, please do it because for God, all things are possible.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:19):
Well, thank you so much. God bless you. It’s a pleasure. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month, you can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead. At least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (16:41):
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.

Dr. Stephen Mutua worked with Evangelist Reinhard Bonnke for twenty-five years. As the international director of Christ for All Nations he was responsible for organizing some of the largest crusade events in history. Now he leads the African Network of Evangelists and he is passionate about raising up a new generation of young people who will reach the world for Jesus Christ.

Website: https://www.eagleschristianchurch.org/bishop-dr-stephen-mutua/

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Dr. Stephen Mutua worked with evangelist Reinhard Bonnke for 25 years. As the international director of Christ for All Nations, he was responsible for organizing some of the largest crusade events in history. Now he leads the African Network of Evangelists and he is passionate about raising up a new generation of young people that will reach the world for Jesus Christ.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:30):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:36):
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:41):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:06):
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, Dr. Stephen Matua. He worked with Reinhard Bonnke for 25 years and has a wealth of experience in organizing crusades here in Africa. Dr. Stephen, thank you for being with me today.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (01:30):
I appreciate it. And thank you very much for inviting me into your program. I’m sure it’s going to be good.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:35):
So let’s begin at the beginning. How did you first start working with brother Reinhard Bonnke?

Dr. Stephen Mutua (01:42):
Interesting. And then Reinhard Bonnke was hosting a conference for all African evangelist. It was called fire conference and it was going to be [inaudible] and it was looking for people from every country in Africa to call the date, the teams from those specific countries. And it’s not my own one thing led to the other. They found me, I was walking at that time with world vision international and they requested if I could coordinate and bring 1 21 evangelist from Kenya, although to RRA. And I did that. And,uthe report came later that world while we’re there, that,uthe team from Quetta was the best coordinated. Everything went from less. It was wonderful. So I wasn’t looking for a, to walk with him because I was satisfied with where I was working, but at the end of the conference,uI was, they, they caught me fire the microphone and they say, we’d like to assist you with him.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (02:45):
The two are from Kenya. So I bet with them privileges in our, you fight another, just chit chat, you know, small chat. And then after that, I left after two weeks, they caught her, they said we are coming into candles, but Peter [inaudible], who is a general manager and right, not bunker. And they came together and said, Hey man, we were impressed by what you did, what you consider walking with us. So at that time I was feeling that I want to go to full-time evangelism. So I prayed a little bit and the Lord undecided, he said go and I joined them. That was back in 1987.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:23):
So you eventually became the international director for Christ for All Nations (CFAN). You organized crusade events all throughout east Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Sudan, many other nations. Tell us what are some of the experiences that you had in organizing some of the largest crusades in the history of crusade, evangelism?

Dr. Stephen Mutua (03:51):
I was, I did all those countries. You say, but more than Africa, I also did many, many countries like petty pins. But when you get in India and other many countries, and yes, it was really exciting. Put it this way. Organizing a crusade is not a cup of tea is a tough job because you go to a country that you’ve never been there before. Remember the different denominations, they believe different things. And vagina is right on bone. Having been an evangelist who is known all over the world as unpleasant, it was not Dawn. You got to go there and introduce him. And here’s what they experienced was quite exciting on one side is what the Chinese would call sweet and sour at the time, because there are those high moments where you go to some places and people are excited.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (04:41):
You go to other places and they have nothing to do with you. You have to beg them for friendship. And so that’s what it was. But there were quite a number of highlights in them. And one of them is to bring the believers together from different denominations, different persuasions and bring them to water plants where you’re telling them, let’s forget about all denominations. Let’s forget about our differences. And let’s just think about one thing. Let’s get this country back to God. And that one, that we’ll all rally behind you. And that’s exactly what we are doing. So there was so many experiences the good ones, bad ones. And but you must go through all of them. Let me say one of them, one of them is you must be ready to be rained on land and proper rains. Even when you organize a crusade.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (05:32):
One of the things to consider is to make sure that you don’t organize a crusade during the rainy season, but somehow, well, the devil has their way of making sure that the red gums and we are, I’ve been rained. I can’t remember how many times and even right on bunk himself and the war people and see the problem when longer icing. And we are the leader. You cannot get an umbrella and just put an umbrella on yourself. And the rest of the congregation are not ever going to umbrellas. And so you have to let yourself be reigned to identify with them, but you know, the beautiful thing, not all of them got sick because of rain ever. There was a protecting hand of God upon them all. And remember, some of the people would be brought to their either cripples or blind, or you would expect something to go wrong, but God would cover and protect them.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (06:21):
But also there were times when our lives were threatened and a number of times, some, two of them, well, you know, I’m well known all over the world. The first one was 1990 in continental. It was horrible when there is Lamech fundamentalist started, you know, rioting in the old city. And then the riot led to the fact that we have come to back them Christians, and they don’t want that to end. It was terrible. The fight at one, for three days, Christians versus Muslims, of course, your number of fatalities, you know, while reported there, we tend to be, eh, lifted. We’ve got to be airlifted from Kana to Legos by jet fighters, because there was a curfew that, you know, passenger planes were not allowed to land. So that was my first time to get in the jet fighter. There was not a suit experience. And that was one of them. The other one was at 2001. In fact, the first one happened 2000. We were in Khartoum in Sudan. And I got, I don’t know how or someone would let into manage to get into my email. So he sent me a bow and he taught me, get out of Khartoum. Otherwise there’ll be boom. And we wrote one b, so many o and the M so I didn’t know we was by that time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:45):
So you received an email from Osama bin Ladin, the mastermind behind that 9/11 tragedy in the United States. This was before that occurred, that he sent you an email in Khartoum saying, get out or

Dr. Stephen Mutua (08:01):
Yes, or some of the original, I didn’t know whether he was there. Of course, when you go to who said it wasn’t that famous by then? But it was so terrible. They knew him. So I took this, that email to them, FBI vol or CID and asked them, oh, is this fellow? They told me, this is a very dangerous fellow. This one is a very indigenous fellow. I said, oh, is see the daughter. We don’t know. This one is Akilah is a mother. So be careful. I don’t know him. I never see them. So I will. I be careful with someone I’ve never seen. Now, if you go to consume is separated into two parts. One part is Al Yusuf. The other party is come to them and they are I’ll use who is more disadvantaged, nothing grade on it. On this other side, of course there’s some trees on them.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (08:47):
So you know, I did a CA I prepare the crusade. We had one of the best crusades, tremendous miracles. So many Muslims give their lives to the Lord. Jesus, nothing happened. They do those in two of those or the other one. I kept back again, let’s say time, because normally the government would never give Christians permission to celebrate holidays except Easter. They, they respect that. So buck again, in his style, I was there preparing the crusade again, this time he never wrote to me, but this time he kept quiet. So what happened? We finished preparation, put on the lights, put on the sound system. And the crusade was beginning on Tuesday. And now it’s on Monday night and Monday night, he came with his group and you know, where we were sitting and then decide, you know, sand is called green square, but there’s nothing green.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (09:36):
So he came and put so many planet, 200 and 320 minds everywhere. The, in the big field, and then waited for us to come tomorrow by the police, got the wind of what he has done. So the next day they call dome. Don’t want to place that I’ve been normal, could go on and decide. Now of the people, not many Christians and Muslims started coming and he told the police told them, you can’t come in there. And you know, they were not telling them why. So they started rioting, not Christians. Muslims are the ones saying, listen, when Reinhard Bonnke came last year, we were healed and we did not need to pay anything. Either, You will give us money to go to the hospital, telling the government, or you let us go there and be healed. And the government will not allow. So there was running battles. Again, I had to live the country, fire the European, back to Kenya. So, and of course, then later then to walk on the landmines and removed to all of them and all that. So those are some of the experiences though, are very, been good experiences that the bad one, you don’t remember them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:39):
Reinhard Bonnke in his lifetime led 80 million people to Jesus, 1 million for every year of his life. And so what a tremendous number that is what, what, what the grace of God that allowed that to happen. But people in other countries don’t really understand the true impact that he had here in Africa. So can you share with me through your eyes as an African, you are African, what impact did Reinhard Bonnke have on the continent of Africa?

Dr. Stephen Mutua (11:14):
I put it this way. If they’re living in Vermont, who don’t have anybody who did what Reinhard Bonnke did now, what are the things? And the key two or three things that I think are very important. Number one, I identify themselves with Africans. How did he do the number one? He told them, you know, look, I am white, outside, but I’m black inside. Our blood is red. Your blood is red. Mine is red, but mine is African. So that when the Africans, all that it was was with them to eat, love to them. You could feel the love of Africans, even when he was in overseas. And I preach with him in other countries outside Africa, you will say, you know what? I am preaching here, but I am feeling like I’m in Africa, everything, you were so proud of the people of Africa and you identified with them and they identified with them.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (12:05):
And the other thing, which was very crucial, he learned their way to explain that gospel, like like a story, like you just said yesterday, you did that. I was so happy the way you did the man that was grant in Africa, you’ll get away millions because Africans are people love stories. And you told the story, not air from, as in, from the Bible, by the SMEs a real life. So if you, if you look, of course, we approach it. But look at the eyes of the people are because it was socking. It was getting African people love stories. What a while growing up, our fathers are ungraded. Fathers will sit with us around the fireplace and they would tell us stories. And we’ll, our eyes will be opened listening to those stories. That’s exactly what Judy and bong captured Africa. That way. He knew African stories, African pottery balls, and it’ll bring them in such a way that the people will appreciate too.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (13:01):
If he goes to a country, we would get a lot, you know, the most useful to AMS or terminologies and phrases and give him. So when he comes here, the grid Sam, like if it’s a sweater speaking, who’s a one as if you had people who go, wow, this is a white man. He knows Swahili eat identification. That way they, even when he died, they were saying he should be bodied in Africa, not in America, because they felt it was a sign of the soil impacted Africa so much because he’s, he’s a visual was kept down to Cairo and he did each of those countries. And he come to a town or start like this one, you will go and to see the mayor of the city, they probably see the president or the people in positions and come and tell them what he has come to do, paying a courtesy call. So whatever y’all I admire or law, it would identify himself with them. And that he wanted one ounce of Africans.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:06):
What are some of the great lessons that you learned from being around the amount of God around Reinhard Bonnke?

Dr. Stephen Mutua (14:13):
He changed my life. It changed my life. I was, before he met, I met with him. I was an evangelist, but not at the level that it brought me to. One of the things that impacted my life so much is a way that he, first of all, he was a man of integrity. He would let me say one of them, you know, that we are big crowds, massive crowds. People cover their lenses, right at buggy. These are 3 million people, right? [inaudible] People. This is one about 150,000 and it will not add one puzzle on top. He said, well, I’m not here to police anybody. I’m here to please the one who called me and he does it. He called the fingers. He call, he calls the heads. So I will not accept that. So integrity was a man of integrity. That’s number one, number two, it was a man who loved his family, man who loved his family.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (15:06):
Many times. He was away from his family and his wife, Annie, together with of course he was walking with his foster son. And but he literally beats the family. Every time the crusade was over, it was in the next flight, going back to his family. And that’s something that was avoided was away so many times, but he loved her family. The other thing that also impacted in my life is his devotion spending time himself with God was his one thing to prepare all the time messages for the crowds. But for him, he spent time with God, for example, I want to come and pick you up. You know, I would go to the crusade and make sure everything is going on very well. And come and pick him like after Noah. And I would find a brain and it would be a nice thing. Like an intercessor would say, God, we can’t be a four. You do all what you can. And sometimes I wondered, will I dog the dog? Because time is it’s about time to preach. [inaudible]

Dr. Stephen Mutua (16:08):
Inside there. So slowly, slowly I would lock the door. And I would say Steven, if it was another crusade that would have continued and that impacted my life so much so that it was not depending on the external intercessors, it was also in the seeding for himself. And it would be say, praying like Lord for the next one and a half hour, because all crusade is pretty good without praying for the people who would take one a one hour and a half because of the interpreter. And it would say for that, for that one hour and a half lot, make a difference in density. You would feel the least crying. I go nicely on calling upon the name of the Lord and God will do just great things. So it was wonderful. And then of course the thing, you know, it was not only a proclaiming evangelist, but it was so healing evangelist.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (17:00):
And you know, you would say the greatest miracle is salvation. That one, he never did all their people or because of the miracles that happened, they will start with the miracles. It wasn’t, that was not his excitement. Excitement. Number one was Africa shall be saved. Everybody must be saved. So salvation to him was the greatest thing. And then he says, salvation comes with the package. So I didn’t want to spend as much time praying for of all this eco explaining. We’ll explain a little bit and a pray and God will just do miracles. There will be so many. We can check all of them so many. So that is what impacted when and the other thing was, he was a man who would be ready to give you his microphone. And he stands there and he did that to me sometimes. And I’ve wondered why you know, if he’s not there, it’s okay, but now he’s standing there and you are supposed to preach.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (17:54):
And that was quite something. But give me it, give me kind of it as this activity, we’ll do it on the international level. And I did that. And one of the other things that impacted Africa, the greatest way is to pray for people to receive the power of the holy spirit. That one, he never forgot it. He said, my secret is not because I’m a gentleman, nor because I have a dedicated, which I am not adding, never been one time savings and you’ll get it. He said it’s because when God filled me with the power of the holy spirit, that it changes my life. So I would always pray for people to receive the power of the holy spirit. So throughout this call, didn’t the other thing is you go out in the villages, you find so many children called [inaudible] is because people loved him.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (18:41):
That even when they get bothered, they say this all the way. Even if it’s a boy, even some girls are called [inaudible], you know, you got to be some, some girls, I call it a bunker and you can see the, that was an impact. But now more importantly, I remember we are here in Malawi now, but when we come to Malawi, 1987, right? Not bogus tude here. And he said in Blanda, and he said, I am male. Not because of my name, but because of people older lay, but before me, people like live in stone. When he was here before he died, he said, [inaudible] so much, and I’ve not one assaulted crossed, but I see a generation that will come up to me and they will get millions and millions of people that was fulfilled here. Whether we came here because you know, they are before we’re using the big tent, it was a largest mobile tent. It appeared in the Guinness book of world records because it was one bottle. There’s one big one in Saudi Arabia. But when we came here, the crowd becomes so big. We cannot use the, the tent because it was taking in 45 to 50,000. When we came here for the first time was so 120,000 people, which are dedicate together, not. So he always give credit where it is. You say that I’m doing what I’m doing because others came before me suffered for it. And I’m making, they’ve been there waiting for me

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:09):
On the night that Reinhard Bonnke went to heaven. You had a vision. Can you tell me about that?

Dr. Stephen Mutua (20:16):
That is something, you know, I wasn’t in my steady around 1:30 AM with home alimony morning, I was just praying and all that. Not because of that. I know. Okay. Put it this way. I had caught right on Reinhard Bonnke about a wicked B fall. And I said, Ryan, I want to come to Florida and meet with you. He said, oh, Steve and the comp and all that time, he was sick. But now going to cover, he said, Stephanie, come, when are you coming? I said right out, I get a copy for next week. He said, no problem. Are you covering the Gladys? That’s my wife. I said, you know, without a big divorce, I said, yes, I’m covered with, I said, yeah, you can’t leave our behind. So no problem. So we bought a ticket and the order to leave. And then on last day, you know, it’s when I ended up dream and the dream, you know, I come from my study and light on the bed, just like two or three minutes.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (21:14):
I was taken out and I saw Reinhard Bonnke looking young. The way I saw the first diabetic read with him was 1986. I was looking young and I saw him going to heaven up to here. After the bus, I saw him like going up, very, not zooming, but just going at a moderate speed. And yet the, of like a, like a Crump I looked up at, I said, rhino, that’s what I said in the vision. And then he turned and looked at me and he said, Steven, take the Baton. And then he looked up and he continued going. And I walk up, I walked my wife, I wasn’t asleep. I said to my wife, you know what I think right on bond has gone to be with the Lord. She said, oh, you don’t. I said, you know, I’ve just had the vision. She said about you have just come and Zed.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (22:07):
Yes. Efficient, take some fraction of a second. Is it a yard? I think he was going to be with the Lord. So I gave her this story. Next day, I called his personal assistant. And when I called, he said to me, Scott, Andrew, he said, Steven, you don’t have to come. Maybe you’ll come from Memorial. I said, why? He said, right. I says, just got to be with the Lord. I said, when that I looked back, I said, exactly in September, whether the vision. So of course I used the ticket. I went to his Memorial and it was one of those times. And God used to be 20 college people. It’s all in the UT up. And it was just, that was a final farewell for VM. Right. And ballgame. So now I took up, I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing. I, I don’t know whether I told you, but I think I did then that I am leading a team called African evangelists network.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (23:03):
Look for many years, I appreciate Africa, many years of crisscross this continent, but the time has come that we have to raise an army of evangelists. So the Lord spoke to me and he told me that was back in 2018. And he said get an organization and network, not organization, network, bring all the good to go to three categories of evangelist, the evangelist [inaudible] before. But now they have become pastors. Remind them of their primary co-op and tell them, yes, you’re going to be a pastor. But remember your primary call is an evangelist. Number two, there are some who are actually that there is that a active Gress to bring that back again. And then he told me, number three is those who are young ones. They probably in university colleges and they don’t know, always go to mentor them, begin to mentor them. So I began a network called African evangelists network. And that’s what we are doing. We are getting them from the village because they are villages villages where you get there. He’s an evangelist, but he has never gone to school, but he has a call of God upon him. We have either universities or the colleges everywhere and to bringing them together and not only in Kenya, but all over the place. So that’s what I’m doing. Now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:26):
God spoke to me one time and said, Daniel, the mission field shall become a mission force. Wow. And I think that’s what you are doing. You are raising up evangelists from Africa and God needs Africa because the African evangelists are full of fire. They are full of enthusiasm. And I think some of the greatest evangelists in history will be raised up by your network. You are

Dr. Stephen Mutua (24:53):
You’re prophesied you don’t. We already seeing that because when I’m here, all, you know, even in the mission field here, I am getting reports of evangelist, you know, for my network. And they say, I want with this village and the village has now bought, I get the house, celebrating the Lord. I’m going to the other town. I’m going there. And I believe in God, and it’s going to operate a very soon because you see there before there was nobody standing behind them, there was nobody to tell them I’m doing the right thing. But remember, we’re also trading them. We also trading them because we met at times they felt their zeal. Like they’re like an Apollo in the Bible. Yeah. The zeal, but not knowledge. So now they have the zeal and we are giving them knowledge. And that’s what that’s, what’s happening. I’m looking forward. This coordinate will not be saved by one man or two, man. It will be saved. As you said, by an army of evangelists equipped who are full of the holy spirit of the power of God and go out from village to village omelet, to omelet, town, to town, terrorizing the devil. Then the Lord will come.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:56):
Amen. Well, I am so honored to have you as a guest on the evangelism podcast, you are a great man of God, and it is such a privilege to serve Jesus with you.

Dr. Stephen Mutua (26:07):
It was wonderful meeting with you. Your God bless you. You are doing a tremendous job. And may the Lord bless you. We’ll keep on pulling together.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:15):
Yeah. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month, you can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead. At least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (27:37):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

This week I was invited to be a speaker at the Virtual Connect Summit by the Global Network of Evangelists (GNE), a ministry organized by the ministry of Luis Palau. They asked me to speak on “Apologetics in Evangelism.” I share from my book “Proof God is Real.”

Order the book, Proof God is Real:

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Hello, this is evangelist Daniel King. And today I want to talk to you about the use of apologetics in evangelism. This week, I was invited to be a guest speaker at the virtual connect summit, organized by the global network of evangelists, a ministry that is under the ministry of Louise. Palauan great evangelists from Argentina. And so they asked me to put together this session on apologetics and evangelism, and I thought I would share it with you today.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:32):
Well, Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:08):
Hello, I’m evangelist Daniel King, and I am so excited to join you for this virtual connect summit. I’m actually recording this a few days early because in this moment, while you’re watching this, I’m actually on a plane. I’m headed to the nation of Malawi to join hands together with a global network of advanced de-list the GNE. And we’re going to be doing festivals in the nation of Malawi. I’ll be joining Desmond Henry Allen green is there. And of course, Andrew Palau will be coming for a great festival in the city of Blantyre. And I’m so excited for this opportunity to collaborate with other evangelists, all of us participating together in order to hold this historic event for the nation of Malawi. So over the next three weeks, if you could pray for these outreaches in Malawi, we would appreciate it so much. I’ve been asked today to speak about the subject of apologetics in evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:16):
And this is a subject that is very important to me. I just finished writing a book called proof. God is real in this book is an apologetics book, but really the throbbing heart of this book is my passion for evangelism. I’ve been involved in evangelism my whole life when I was five years old as called by God into the ministry. Then when I was six, I preached my first sermon. When I was 10 years old, my parents became missionaries in the country of Mexico. And throughout my teen years, we would do lots of children’s evangelism on the streets of Ciudad Juarez, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. We’d run through the streets with flyers, knocking on doors, inviting all the kids to come and we’d fill churches up with these kids. And then when I was 15 years old, I was reading a book about how to be a success in life.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:10):
And this book, it was talking to businessmen. It said, if you really want to be successful, you need to set a goal to make $1 million before the age of 30, become a millionaire before the age of 30. But I realized that because of my upbringing as a missionary in Mexico, that money was not what was important to me. What was important was souls. And so at the age of 15, I wrote down this goal on a piece of paper, I wrote, I Daniel King want to leave 1 million people to Jesus. Before I turned 30 years of age, instead of trying to become a millionaire, I wanted to lead a million heirs into the kingdom of God. And so God started opening up doors in different nations. While I was still in college at oral Roberts university, I began to travel to different nations. And I’m excited to tell you that before I turned 30 years of age, I had the privilege of leading a million people to Jesus in a salvation prayer.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:08):
And then in the year, since then we have now hit our second million and I was praying and asking God, what comes next? And I felt like God say Daniel go for a million souls every single year. So in the natural, that may seem impossible, but with God, all things are possible. So I’m passionate about leading people to Jesus. And a lot of our great gospel festivals have been in Africa, in Latin America and Asia. And we see people walk several days in order to get to our festival sometimes in Africa, for example, but I also have a heart and a passion for reaching people here in the United States. And I noticed that one of the spirits that has really captured so many hearts and minds here in the United States is the spirit of atheism. And I’ve really been praying and asking God gone, how can we reach people who are being attacked by this spirit of atheism?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:15):
And I think the answer to that is in the area of apologetics. That’s why I wrote this book proof. God is real. When I was still a teenager, my family went on a missions trip down to the nation of Jamaica. I remember we were doing a kind of a small festival all day long, were running through the neighborhoods, inviting people to come to the festival. And at the end of the day, we were hot. We were tired. We were exhausted. We were so sweaty because Jamaica is a very tropical nation. We just wanted to come back to the hotel, take a shower and get in bed. But when we got back to the hotel, there was a big problem. All the water in the hotel had been shut off. And so we didn’t know what to do, but someone in the group was a smart missionary.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:05):
They said, let’s go down to the swimming pool and let’s just take a bath in the swimming pool. So that’s what we did. We went down to the swimming pool. We took some soap and shampoo and we’re, we’re swimming in the Shamp in the swimming pool, just renting off. When, off on the edge of the swim pool, I noticed that there was a panel that was smoking and I thought to myself, panels are not supposed to smoke. And so I swam over to investigate this smoking panel and there were sparks coming out of it and everything. And as I’m looking at it suddenly the light that was under the water, it shocked my leg and it scared me because you can die from electricity in a pool. And so immediately this whole side of my body went numb. I managed to pull myself out of the pool and I was walking away, thanking God so much that I didn’t die in that pool.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:57):
And I was about six steps away from the pool. When suddenly I remembered that all of my friends were still in the pool and immediately I became very concerned for their safety. I, I rushed back over to the pool and I started yelling at guys, guys, get out of the pool. You’re going to die if you stay in the pool. There’s electricity. I, I got shocked. Well, I was only a teenager. My friends thought that I was just playing a practical joke. So they laughed at me, but I was serious. The guys guys get out of the pool. You got to get out of the pool right now. It shot me. It’s the electricity could kill you. And so I started even grabbing some people by the hair and pulling them out of the pool. And there were still a few more that wouldn’t get out.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:39):
And if I went over there and talked to them and I showed them the smoking ban, and I said, guys, it shocked me. If you stay in the pool, it could be a dangerous situation. So finally, I rescued everyone from the swimming pool and thank God, no one died that day. But right then God spoke to me and he says, Daniel, you need to have the same passion saving people from hell as used, showed, saving your friends from that swimming pool. You see a lot of people, they get so excited that they got saved. They walk away say, thank you God so much for saving me, but they forget that there is a world full of people out there who are dying and going to hell. And so thank God that you’re saved. Thank God that I’m saved, but let’s not forget about this world full of atheist.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:30):
People who don’t even believe in God, people who are denying the existence of God. And if they die in their sin, they will spend eternity separated from God. And so we need to have passion to go and reach it. Someone said that Christianity is simply one starving man who found bread going and telling all the other starving people where they can find bread. And so thank God we have the bread of life. We have the word of God. We have the answer for a world that is starving without God. And so I wrote proved God is real. And it really comes from one verse in the Bible. Let me read you that verse right now in Hebrews 11, verse six, it says without faith, it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:31):
And so I’ve been watching YouTube and I noticed that there are a lot of videos of atheists on YouTube that are actively trying to proselytize and, and bring people into atheism. And I was thinking, you know, we need to do something as a church to, to combat this spirit of atheism. And I started thinking like, what are the three greatest questions that our generation is asking today? And I came up with a long list of questions, many different questions that people are asking, but I decided that the three greatest questions are these three questions. Question number one is God. There is God. There is there really a God. The second great question. If there is a God who’s out there, does he care about me? Does God care? And then if you decide that there is a God in that he does care about me as an individual.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:34):
The third great question is, do I dare to follow him? So is God there does God care? And do I dare to follow him? And what’s really interesting is that all three of these questions are answered in this verse, Hebrews 11, six. First of all, this verse tells us that he exists. Yes, God is there. Second. This verse tells us that God rewards those who earnestly seek him. This tells me that God does care about me as an individual. And third, this verse tells us that without faith, it is impossible to please God. So this tells me that I must dare to trust him for my salvation. So is God there does God care? And do I dare to follow him? I said, so I started asking these questions and in studying, looking for answers to these questions. And it really came because of a mother that I met at a small church in Missouri.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:47):
I was preaching at this church and after I was done preaching, this mother came up to and she had tears in her eyes and she’s, she grabbed me by the hand. And she says, Daniel, could you please pray for my son? It’s desperate. Well, I thought her son was sick. He needed healing or something. So I said, tell me what’s wrong with him? And I’ll pray for him. And you see she, she went with and her boy, she says, my son has become an atheist. He was raised in the church. He heard all the Bible stories and Sunday school. He knows about Joseph and the coat of many colors. He knows about Jonah and the whale, but he moved down to Austin, Texas, and he got involved with this group of atheists. And now he says that he is an atheist and he even started a blog where he’s telling other people about atheism and recording videos about atheism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:42):
And she said, please, could you pray for my son? And of course I reached out my hand. We, we, we grabbed hands together and I began to pray for her son. And then at the end of the prayer, she said, if I give you his phone number, will you call him? And of course I said, yes. And so she gave me his phone number. I called him the next day. And we had several long conversations even emailing back and forth about the questions that atheists are asking. And honestly, I didn’t really have all the answers to the questions that he was bringing up. And so, because of that, I started to study apologetics and I’ve got a big bookshelf now, full of great books about apologetics and just looking for different ways to provide an answer for the hope that is within me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:40):
And, and so, as I began to study all these books, I took all of these answers to these questions that atheists are asking, and I put them together in this book arranged under these, these three big questions is God, there does God care. And, and do I dare to follow him? And then just a couple of years ago, there was an atheist convention right here in Oklahoma. They, they say that Oklahoma is the buckle of the Bible belt. And so one day I was driving down the highway and I saw a huge billboard and it was advertising this atheist convention right here in my state that has churches on every single corner. And I said, wow, this spirit of atheism is aggressive and strong. And we need to do something to reach people who are atheist or who are skeptical about the things of God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:39):
And so I decided to go to the atheist convention and I went, I sat, I listened to everything that they were saying, sat in on all the sessions. And after words, I wrote up a blog post about what I had seen and heard at the atheist convention and, and my, my website isn’t that big, you can check it out. King ministries.com, K I N G king ministries.com. And normally I don’t get a lot of traffic on my blog posts you know, get a few dozen or a hundred people looking at a typical blog post. But when I posted this blog post about this atheist convention in just a few days, I had over 14,000 views, all atheist looking at this and commenting on it. And I probably got several hundred comments. People were mad, they’re cussing at me. They were angry about what I said about atheism, but I, I saw that there, there really is this tremendous need for Christians to reach out to atheists.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:50):
You know, I think I was the only Christian that went to that atheist convention. Well, I think that there should be dozens of Christians there interacting and having conversations with atheists. I also started to follow a bunch of atheists on Twitter and looking at what they’re saying, listening to their concerns. And, and a lot of what they’re saying is, is mocking Christianity mocking the religious beliefs of of different groups, but there is a core to it that I think the church really needs to listen to in, in our society. I think one of the biggest problems that we’re facing is this spirit of, of skepticism, this spirit of atheism that is attacking. And so I, after doing several years of research and writing and everything, I, I put together this book proof God is real and I have it available as a steady guide.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:55):
And as a book, it’s, it’s up on Amazon, you can find it by typing proof. God is real by Daniel King on Amazon. And it’s these three big questions is God there. And so I want to just give you a little bit of the information about the book. We don’t have time right now to, to cover everything in the book. And of course, there’s lots of great apologetics books out there, but I’d really like to encourage you to, to start looking for ways to reach out to our society. How are we going to reach atheist with a gospel? How are we going to interact with skeptics? How are we going to deal with our generation today? I find that sometimes Christians are really busy answering a lot of questions that is asking you go to church and they preach different sermons, different topics. And it’s not really answering the questions that people are asking.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:00):
You know, how are we going to reach people? I think we need to, as evangelists, we need to become solid in the study of apologetics. Now, sometimes people ask like, like, what is apologetics? Is that apologizing? For, for what we believe and apologetics is, is not in a apology apologetics is a tool that we can use to help to reach people. So the, the word apologetics comes from the Greek word Apologia, which means to give a reasoned response. And this word is found seven times in the new Testament. We find it in acts 22, 1 X, 25, 16 five more times. And it doesn’t mean to make an apology. It means to give a defense. And so someone has described apologetics as the frontline of the battle for people’s souls. And so before you can answer the questions of how do we deal with sin?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:18):
We have to start with the fact that there is a God, is there a God? Well, if someone doesn’t believe that there’s a God, they’re not going to care about Jesus being the son of God or Jesus dying on the cross or paying the price for our sins. I mean, first we have to establish the fact that there is a God and Isaiah one verse 18, Isaiah says, come now let us reason together in acts 19 verse eight, it says that the apostle Paul went into the synagogue and spoke boldly for three months, reasoning and persuading concerning the things of the kingdom of God. And so really apologetics is how we reason with people about the things of God. It’s how we persuade people to come to a realization that there is a God. And so sometimes there is a place for strong preaching and in calling people to repentance.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:17):
But often we need to sit down, listen to what people are saying and offer a reasoned response. And we can do that reason response through social media, through YouTube, through various different methods of reaching out to people in person sitting down at a coffee shop. But I think if you’re going to be an evangelist, if you’re called by God to be an evangelist, you should become proficient in the steady of apologetics. So in this book, proof, God is real. I narrowed down to seven proofs for the existence of God. So the first great question is God there. So I talk about the cosmological proof. So the cosmological proof is that premise a everything that exists must have a cause. Premise be this cause must be a great causer premise. See the only cause or great enough would be God in the conclusion, therefore God exists.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:24):
So the cosmological proof is the proof from cost. So let me give you an example of, of how this works in everyday life. So imagine that you, you have a group of friends and that you’ve got Sarah and Mary and Luke and a group of people. And so Sarah is a little cold and she wants a jacket. So she turns to her friend, Mary and says, Mary can you, can I borrow your jacket? And Mary says, yes, of course you can borrow my jacket, but, but I don’t have one with me. Let me ask Luke for a jacket. So she turns to Luke and Mary asks, Luke and Luke says, no, I don’t have a jacket, but let me ask my other friend Samuel so-so, Luke turns to Samuel and then Samuel turns to Paul and they, they keep asking for jackets, but nobody in the group has a jacket.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:22):
So Sarah can never receive a jacket because what you have is this group of borrowers. Everyone wants to borrow from someone else, but in order for someone to get a jacket, someone must first have a jacket to lend. You must have a first lender of the jacket. And so the same is true about the universe. Everything in the universe is caused. I can lift this book up and, and drop it. It falls on the desk. Well, the sound that comes is caused by the book falling, and I’m lifting it up and that’s what caused it to fall. That’s what caused the sound. Well, what caused me something had to have caused me. Well, my mom and dad gave birth to me and that’s what caused me. And it goes all the way back. And it’s this, this idea of what came first, the chicken or the egg.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:22):
So everything in the universe has a cause in that causer must be a great causer and that great causer is the one that we call God. Another proof that God is real is the tele illogical proof. This is evidence from design. If I was walking through the forest, I found my cell phone laying on the forest floor, and I never seen one before, but I picked it up and turned it on and started scroll through it and saw pictures and stuff. And wow, this is amazing. And then if I opened up the back of my cell phone, I’d see lots of intricate, little tiny pieces of electronics and battery parts. And it would be obvious that this cell phone was designed by a great designer. Steve jobs had the idea to make the apple cell phone and he put a lot of work into designing it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:27):
And there’s thousands of pieces inside a typical iPhone. But, you know, there are thousands of pieces of information in a strand of DNA. And it is obvious by looking at creation that everything that we can see was designed by a great designer in this great designer is the one that we call God. We also deal with the ontological proof, which would be proved from abstract reasoning. If you’re locked up in a room and it was totally dark, you couldn’t feel anything. And all you could do was think, could you prove that there’s a God? And the answer is yes. We also have the morality proof evidence from our sense of right and wrong. So premise a, if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Premise be objective, moral values do exist. Conclusion, therefore God exists. And so the sense inside of us that there is right and wrong proves that there is a great moral law giver in this universe.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:43):
And that moral law giver is God. And so we can prove that God is there by our sense of right and wrong. And in everyone in our generation can see that there are things that are happening that are wrong. People are mad at, at racism. They’re mad at human trafficking. They’re mad at war. And they’re wondering why does this great evil and injustice exists in the world? And actually the fact that we know that these things are wrong, prove that there is a God who gives us an objective moral value of what is right and wrong. We also have scriptural proof evidence from the Bible. So the Bible says that God exists and we can see that the Bible is trustworthy when we begin to study it, therefore we can, that God exists. I also deal with proof from miracles. I’m an evangelist who believes that God is alive.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:54):
That Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever in the same miracles that Jesus did 2000 years ago, he can do today in, in many of our great festivals, we have seen God do great miracles. I was in the nation of Ethiopia a couple of years ago, and there was a man whose name was Mohammed. And he was a cripple and not many people came the first night of our festival. And it was because when our team went and put up posters, there was a team of Muslim, young people that came behind us and they were tearing the posters down from the walls. And in this, this group of Muslim youth, they actually started a fight and they threw a brick through the front windshield of our publicity vehicle. And the police were called. And they said that our guys had started the fight, which is ridiculous because why would we throw a brick through our own windshield?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:48):
And 17 of our Ethiopian team members were thrown into jail and we had to get a lawyer to get them out. And so then the first night of the festival, there weren’t many people in that area. Ethiopia is about 30% Muslim and the area that we were ministering in had a high concentration of Muslims. And, and so none of them were there. So I pray say, God, you have to do something. And so then on the second night of the festival, there’s man Muhammad, the cripple came and Jesus touched Mohammed, the cripple, and he lifted his crutch up into the air. And he began to run back and forth. He came up on the platform and he lifted his crutch into the air. And he said, Jesus healed me. Jesus healed me. And I said, what’s your name? He said, my name is Mohammad.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:32):
And instantly everyone knew that he was a Muslim. And so word began to spread that Jesus was healing Muslims, and that the next night, the crowd size doubled. And then the next night it doubled again. And then the next night, it double again, by the last night we had over 55,000 people in that place, many of the Muslim coming to hear about Jesus for the first time. And they came because of the miracle that God did in the life of this man named Mohammed. And so miracles can help us prove that God is real. You can’t argue with someone who has an experience of a miracle inexperience, we’ll be in argument any day of the week. And so when, when people begin to see God do miracles, they trust that God is real. And then of course we have redemptive proof for God’s existence. God has done great miracles in my life.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:31):
And without God, I know that I would be a horrible person. So God is there. Then this book deals with the question does God care. And I believe that the, that the proof that God cares is in the life of Jesus, the birth of Jesus proves that God cares the life of Jesus proves that God cares the death of Jesus proves that God cares. And the resurrection of Jesus proves that God cares for you as an individual. And so people are asking questions about whether Jesus really existed, whether he really lived, whether he really rose from the dead and this book answers those questions. And then the third grade question, do I dare to follow him? This, this book goes into the details of Pascal’s wager and lots of other great ways to ask people to dare to follow Jesus. And so I encourage you. If you want to learn more about apologetics, get a copy of this book proof, God is real. It’s available on amazon.com and you can also get the study guide to help you go through it. So prove God is real by Daniel King. And I pray that God would use you in a tremendous way to use apologetics, to bring atheists and skeptics to Jesus Christ. Check out my website, king ministries.com. Give me your email address and I’ll send you a free book. God bless you and have a great day.

Evangelism Podcast Host (31:09):
Daniel King is on a mission to save 1 million souls a year, but he can’t do it alone. Would you consider sowing a financial seed today to give, please visit www.kingministries.com 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.

Ryan Lawrence is a financial advisor who has a heart to help ministers. In this episode of the Evangelism Podcast he explains why it is important for ministers to start planning for retirement at a young age. He gives some practical tips that will help you prepare for your future and give you options as you complete the calling God has on your life.

Here are some of the questions I ask Ryan Lawrence:

Why is it important for a minister to think about retirement?

Why does it important to start thinking about retirement when you are still young?

What do you say to ministers who never plan to retire?

Is it a lack of faith to put money aside for the future?

What are some of the steps that ministers need to take to prepare for retirement?

1. Get out of debt
2. Build an emergency fund
3. Put 3-4 months worth of income in savings
4. Put 15% of your income into investments
5. Pay off your house
6. Get Life Insurance
7. Open up an investment account.
8. Budgeting

Should a minister pay social security?

What are some of the vehicles that allow a minister to save for the future?

1. 401K – Pre-tax investing
2. 403-B if you work for a ministry
3. 457 Plan – a church or a ministry can put funds directly into a fund.
4. IRA
5. Roth IRA – tax free mutual fund
6. 529 Account for School Tuition

If you have more questions about preparing for retirement, contact Ryan Lawrence: ryan.lawrence@nm.com

For more advice for the evangelist, call Evangelism Coach Daniel King, 1-877-431-4276.

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Ryan Lawrence is a financial advisor who has a heart to help ministers. In this episode of the evangelism podcast. He explains why it is important for ministers to start planning for retirement at a young age, he gives some practical tips that will help you prepare for your future and give you options as you complete the calling God has on your life.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:27):
Well, Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:03):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And I also love helping evangelists and other ministers prepare for what God has called them to do. And so today I have a very special guest with me. Ryan Lawrence is a financial advisor who specializes in helping ministers prepare for retirement. Ryan, thank you so much for joining me today. Thank

Ryan Lawrence (01:34):
You for having me, Daniel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:35):
I think it’s really important for ministers to start thinking about retirement early on. Can you tell me a little bit about your, your background and how you have helped ministers?

Ryan Lawrence (01:50):
Absolutely. Well, it really started many years ago. Like most people when I graduated from college, I just felt like I wanted to do really whatever God had called me to do whatever the Lord had asked me. And when I married my wife, she’s a pastor’s daughter and a lot of the people that I knew at the time and a lot of the people that I became acquainted with were many ministers and got to know several in that group over the years, ask myself the question, what is it that I feel called to do with my life? Since I’m surrounded by so many people that are in ministry and my family and a lot of my relationships and the more I would pray and seek the Lord about what I needed to do, the more he kept leading me back into business, back into sales, back into just into the the areas of course that many people would say weren’t really ministry, but the longer I prayed and the longer I sought the Lord and obeyed, I just these opportunities kept opening up.

Ryan Lawrence (02:51):
I mean, I even tried a few times to dip my toe in the water of ministry. I taught Sunday school and I was horrible at it. I tried to do a lot of things to kind of open the doors, people would say, and it just wasn’t where God had called me. But the longer that I pursued and just you know, line upon line precept upon precept steps of a good man are ordered. He just kept opening doors more and more doors for me to be in business. And I started to understand why later, when I got into financial planning and I started meeting with a lot of these people that I knew and realized that they had never met with a financial advisor. It didn’t matter if they were new to ministry. It didn’t matter if they’d been in ministry for 30 years, many of them for whatever reason, either just felt uncomfortable, didn’t know who to ask. So it was something that very few of them had even broached the subject on.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:44):
So imagine that you’re sitting down with a young evangelist, someone who has a call from God on their life, and they are giving 110% to the kingdom of God. They’re pouring every single moment of their life into reaching people for Jesus. This evangelist is raising money to go do crusades. And it takes every bit of faith that takes that he has in order to, to pull off every crusade. And he’s young. What advice would you give him at this stage in his ministry to prepare for his future as a financial advisor? What would you say to him? Well,

Ryan Lawrence (04:29):
The first requirement that I have when I’m meeting with somebody is not necessarily how much money they ha they earn, or how much money they have it’s do they care about their family? And the answer is, of course, yes, they do. Of course, no matter how ambitious they are you know, for their calling, I know they care about their family. Usually it’s just something that has to be presented to them as one of the things that they’re going to do in order to be a success with their life. You know, we know the verse, we know the the example where Jesus said, listen, if you’re going to give you don’t have to give the full loaf away. You, you, he only asked you to give one of your coats away, not both of them. And he doesn’t ask you to give the full loaf. So there’s, there’s the other half of the loaf that’s meant for you. And of course, he says that because he wants you to take care of yourself and your family. And we feel very strongly that God doesn’t love you more as an evangelist. If you sacrifice everything that you have and die broke or a missionary or anyone else administry there, there certainly is a precedent that says we can do all of those things and do it the right way.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:34):
So why do you think that it’s important for a minister to start thinking about his finances and to start thinking about retirement? Well, yeah,

Ryan Lawrence (05:43):
We want to have options when you get to a certain point in life. And, and I, I mentioned that I married a pastor’s daughter and of course I know for a fact that he was a minister who took the time to learn these things. His board took the time to help him prepare. And when he got to the point where he was ready to retire, he had options. He didn’t have to keep working because financially he was required to, he decided to continue as ministry, but really focus on the areas that he wanted to do because the finances, weren’t a huge pressure at the time. And that’s something that I think allows people options when they get to that point a for themselves and also for their family, because sometimes retirement is about helping you in your latter years. And sometimes it’s about helping your family and what you leave behind as a legacy. So there there’s, there’s always going to be more options when we decide to set aside and do things the right way. Now,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:39):
I think some ministers have the mentality that they’re never going to retire. They’re just going to refire. They’re never going to get out of the ministry. They’re just going to step into eternity. And it’s easy to think that way when you’re 20, 30 years of age, but sure. Later on you want to have options, as you say. And so why do you think it’s important to start thinking about retirement while someone is still at a young age?

Ryan Lawrence (07:08):
Well, that’s the best time to think about it because Albert Einstein said that compounding interest is one of the great mysteries of the universe. And what that simply means is that the, the younger you start on a plan and the more that you’re not even huge numbers, but the more you’re able to divert a little bit of money in the right direction, the more it’s going to pay back huge dividends later in life. And there’s people right now that are in their twenties that I tell them, look, you know, you’re probably not going to stop working until you’re in your seventies. That’s just the real direction. That’s a, if we’re going to live to be in our nineties, we’re probably going to work until, you know, 72, 73. So, you know, when you have 50 years to do it the right way, it’s amazing what can happen if you just make little tiny adjustments. I mean, there’s plenty of analogies about for example, when a plane takes off in Tulsa and he’s, he’s flying you know, thousands of miles away, if he starts to deviate from his path early on, then by the time he gets to his destination, he’s going to be way off his path. Of course, we also know that when we’re young, if we make those small incremental adjustments to our budget to allow us to happen, it can produce great results.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:17):
What would you say to the, to the minister who might say that it feels like a lack of faith in God to set aside money to the future, say, let’s just worry about today that tomorrow take care of itself. What would you say to those who feel that preparing for the future might indicate a lack of faith in God’s ability to prepare?

Ryan Lawrence (08:37):
Well, I’ve never well, for first off, I mean, the fact that the Bible promises that somebody will all die you know, there, there is a certain there’s a certainty to that, that we know that if we’re going to die, it’s, it’s really wise to have certain things in place like life insurance. But, you know, the administrator of the day I met at a breakfast told me he was a, he’s a missionary in Africa. And he came to me and he said, you know, I’ve, I’ve always quoted the verse of scripture seek first, the kingdom of God. But he said, I kind of used it as a, as a way that I didn’t want to have to prepare, but something happened to him. He ended up getting married and he ended up having a baby. And it changed the way that he thought about the future. And I don’t think that there’s a lack of faith to look at your wife and kids and say, you know what, I’m going to do whatever I can to make sure that they’re taken care of. And I know a lot of ministers that have a tremendous amount of faith for themselves, but what I tell them is do you expect your wife to have exactly the same amount of faith as you do at that point in time, do you expect them to carry that on without even talking to them about it?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:39):
So you mentioned some incremental things that people could start doing. What are some of those things you just mentioned? Insurance talk, talk to me about some of the things that someone should start thinking about in order to have a solid financial plan.

Ryan Lawrence (09:56):
If somebody comes to me and says, how do I start a process? This may sound like a it’s slightly counterproductive. But the first thing I recommend they do is buy some life insurance on someone they care about. Usually their spouse. And the reason is, is because it doesn’t produce a huge result for them immediately. But what it does is it shows that they’re committed to the plan. It shows that they’re willing and committed to doing something for somebody else. That’s not going to produce any results for them immediately. It’s amazing how I’ve watched net worth of individuals over the years, start to head in the right direction. Once they make those little commitments. Sometimes it’s very small commitments. We have to make the steps of a good man are ordered. It’s never the next five steps. It’s always, what is the very next step that we need to do?

Ryan Lawrence (10:39):
Not the leaps and bounds, but what’s the step. So when they make that first commitment, we get that done. We get it done the right way. Second thing we try to do is go ahead and open up an investment account to where they’re automatically putting money into it. And if they’re only able to do a hundred dollars a month, perfect, we’ll start with that. For many people. If we’re talking about specific things, a Roth IRA is a wonderful place to begin. If you don’t have a company or a job, rather that matches your 401k than a Roth, IRA is a wonderful place to begin because it’s basically tax-free investing. So let, let’s

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:13):
Give some definitions here. Explain what is a 401k? What is a Roth?

Ryan Lawrence (11:18):
A 401k is what’s called a qualified plan. And that means you go work for a company. They offer a 401k where you can take money before it ever hits your paycheck. It’s called pre-tax investing. And it goes directly into this account. And sometimes your company will offer a percentage of a match. And if they do, you should always take it because it’s free money. Sometimes they don’t. So not every company offers that if they don’t offer a 401k or a 4 0 3 B, if you work for a ministry, then I always tell people, open up a Roth IRA. You can invest either six or $7,000 a year, depending on your age. And in many cases you might even be able to open up one free in your wife’s name. But it gives you the advantage of investing money into a plan that will never be taxed by the government.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:06):
What if someone is leading a ministry, is there a way for their board to set up a compensation package so that a portion of the minister’s compensation would go automatically into a 4 0 3 B or some type of

Ryan Lawrence (12:24):
That’s a great question. And absolutely 100%. One of the areas that I help ministers decide what options to choose. Let’s say you’re a minister or a head of an organization, and you only have two or three employees, or your employees are technically contract labor. And it doesn’t make sense for you to open up a qualified plan, like a 401k or four, three B, because there’s extra expenses involved to open up this plan. There are several different plans that you can do. There’s one plan that I’m particularly fond of called a four or five seven. And what that is is a ministry, a church, especially, or a ministry organization can put funds directly into an account on behalf of an individual like yourself or whoever is there. And because they are a nonprofit organization, the federal government, or the IRS does not monitor them, or does not ask them to abide by the same requirements as a business owner.

Ryan Lawrence (13:20):
They’re non-ERISA is what that’s called. And the government does not put stipulations on the amount of money that can go into that plan or the age that they have to start pulling from. For example, most plans. Now you have to start pulling from by 72 or the IRS will penalize you because they want that money to be taxed. If you work for a ministry or in charge of a ministry, you can actually invest money and not have those requirements. So there’s stipulations. So there are a couple of different, very good options that even ministers have that other companies don’t

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:52):
And then explain what a Roth IRA is.

Ryan Lawrence (13:55):
Sure. Roth IRA is basically a tax-free mutual fund and the government has said, we want to incentivize people to invest in their future. So what they do is they say, if you make less than 124,000 as a single individual, or 208,000, roughly as a married couple, you can invest up to $6,000 a year under the age of 50 or 7,000. Once you hit 50 and whatever that amount of money grows to someday, the IRS will never tax you on it because they have giving you a window that says, if you make below a certain amount, we’ll let you invest this amount of money. Now think about that for a second. If those limitations weren’t on there, then that’s the investment that everybody would use because nobody would really want to pay taxes. So it’s a great thing to take advantage of,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:43):
To at least start out with a Roth IRA, because you’re putting money in that that’s been taxed and then over life of the Roth IRA, you never pay any taxes on that money.

Ryan Lawrence (14:56):
No, never pay taxes on the growth, never pay taxes when you pull it out. Really the simplest analogy I can use is if you go to the store and buy a bag of seed and they say, okay, would you like to go ahead and pay taxes on it right now? Or would you like to go home, plant everything, harvest it, sell it, and then pay taxes. Then most of us would say, let’s go ahead and pay the taxes now and get it over with that’s what you’re doing with a Roth.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:16):
So what are some of the other steps that a minister should take in order to get their financial life in shape?

Ryan Lawrence (15:24):
Obviously budgeting is a huge part of that because it reduces stress and an agreement between you and your spouse to say, okay, we’re going to make solid financial decisions so that we can do these things. It’s, it’s simply the ability to manage your finances and, and be a good steward, not just to take care of your family, but we also want to be generous. We also want to give to ministries like yours. So we want to have the ability to do that. And you come to an agreement that you’re going to budget first, get it done in the right order and make sure that as the Bible says, good measure, pressed down, shaken together. When you’re pressing down, it really means that you’re just producing more room in your bag to be able to hold more later. So I think it’s great to have a well, there’s nothing wrong with just figuring out ways to make sure that you’re able to do all of these things really success in the financial world is, is not necessarily just having a lot of things to show people. It’s the ability to have nice things. It’s the ability to have your finances in order. It’s the ability to have your investments set up so that all of these things are moving forward properly. And the best way to measure that every year is take a look at your net worth. If your net worth is growing every year, that means you’re doing something right.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:34):
So let’s talk about budgeting. What are some percentages of what you would recommend that someone would invest? Like some people may have a big salary. Other people might have a small salary, but if you break it down into some percentages what would you recommend someone should be putting aside for the future? Well, there’s a lot. Yeah.

Ryan Lawrence (16:56):
I don’t have theories on that. I think a general rule of thumb is some people say between five and 10%, I think 5% is a, is a good starting point. If you can manage to do 10%, then obviously you’re, you’re managing your money. Well, because in this day and age, of course, there’s always going to be things that we need and things that we need to do. But when we do it in the right order, it allows us to control our money and control our compulsion’s. If you will, our emotions to where we actually learn how to say no to certain things and come back to it later and figure out a way to get it done. Right. And for many people, it’s usually about the order when they invest, when they give and they invest first, then the rest of the money that they have they’re able to manage their budget very well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:40):
You’ve helped a lot of pastors and ministers to, to prepare for the future. Tell me some success stories of what people have been able to do.

Ryan Lawrence (17:51):
Well, there’s been really most of the success stories I have probably aren’t overwhelmingly exciting. I think what happens is, is I start out with a couple were literally their net worth is just a few thousand dollars. And within a few years, know, their net worth is well over a hundred thousand and going in the right direction. And it isn’t necessarily because they made wholesale changes across the board. It was very small changes that they decided to make. And it just started to add up in the right direction. Now I know that we’ve heard plenty of teaching on tiding and I I’m very much a fan of tightening. And I think we need to give generously as the Bible teaches, but where I think a lot of ministers unfortunately have missed an opportunity is they haven’t encouraged their people. What do they do after they tithe?

Ryan Lawrence (18:36):
And after the tiling is done, if they learn how to get these other things in order, they’re going to start seeing their finances grow tremendously. They’re going to start seeing their net worth every single year, the gap get wider and wider in the right direction because they’re making very small decisions. And most of the success stories I can say that I’m very excited about are people that I’ve been working with for the last 10 years that started off literally at zero that are now doing very well. And it was a very slow process because the Bible teaches that slow growth is the right way. If we gain, if we earn money too quickly, it tends to sprout wings and fly away. That’s what the Bible teaches because people don’t understand how to really manage it. And, and another example that has been researched and confirmed over and over again in my industry is that when people earn an inheritance or receiving inheritance, usually within 18 months, the whole amount is gone. And it doesn’t matter if it’s $5,000 or 5 million, because if they don’t have a foundation in place, how to handle that money, when they get it, they’re going to continue to spend money the same way they always have.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:36):
So let’s, let’s go through some of these incremental changes that you’re recommending for sure. First of all if you have a wife and kids, sure. Life insurance is one of those foundational things

Ryan Lawrence (19:49):
Should do. Absolutely. You can, you can start off with term insurance and you can you, everybody that I’ve worked with can afford some amount. I recommend, I think that every human being should have some life insurance on them. You know, even if they’re a newborn, I mean, there’s ways to do that, but it’s just simply because we’re trying to plan for the future, the best we can. And it allows us to take pressure off ourselves, allows us to sleep better at night. It allows our wives to feel more comfortable when we tell them, look, this is what would happen if something were to happen. And it’s certainly not a lack of faith to tell your wife that she’s going to be taken care of. I think it takes great faith to believe God for a little bit more money to go ahead and pay for these things more than it does to believe God that he’s going to take care of your wife after you’re gone.

Ryan Lawrence (20:32):
So when I look at all the things that happen, yes, life insurance is usually ground zero because it shows a commitment to your family, the investing portion, and there’s other things, depending on your levels of income, there’s other products out there that people will invest in such as disability insurance that will help them in case they can’t work anymore. Long-Term care. Insurance is something that people are starting to look a little bit more at as they get older. But in, in the beginning, if you’re just starting out, I do think that life insurance and starting an investment account is also very important because it gets your mind focused in the right direction. Okay.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:07):
And then another incremental thing that someone could do is get started with an investment account and set up to automatically put at least something in that, in, in on a regular basis, right?

Ryan Lawrence (21:20):
They, they do that simply. You can, you can have every month you can have it, of course pulled out of your bank account. If it’s a Roth or if it’s a 401k, it’s going to come out of your paycheck, but it allows you. I don’t want to say it forces you, but it gets you in a position where you become used to what your budget is. And before you know, it, you’ve already got something started and it’s going in the right direction. But you know, there’s also the ability to drop single amounts. And if you’re having a good year or if you saved a little bit, or you feel like, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and just drop something in at the end of the year, Roth IRAs will even allow you to drop. In a, for example, this is 2021. You can fund your Roth IRA for 2021 until tax day of 2022. So you actually get a couple extra months next year to go back and apply it to this year, if you want to. So there’s a lot of flexibility there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:07):
What other advice would you give to a minister?

Ryan Lawrence (22:10):
Well, I certainly, as I said earlier, I certainly wouldn’t discount the fact that this is something that God really wants you to look into and be prepared. And I think it’ll only enhance your ministry to be that minister that actually takes care of these things as well. And doesn’t just completely ignore them. I feel like that the moment that you step into this room, I’ve never seen a minister who said, I’m going to go ahead and do this and started down that direction where God didn’t provide extra money for him to take care of his family. It’s just simple and he’ll do it every time I’ve watched it happen. And he’s not angry with you for doing it. It’s something that I feel like is up to you to do it. I feel like that we’re supposed to study the word and come to that conclusion on our own, but I don’t believe, I mean, after God has spoken to us through his word, I feel like that he’s not going to spend any time reminding us over and over again to do these things. It’s really our choice.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:59):
I have two young kids. Caleb is 11. Katie grace is nine, and we’re already starting thinking about paying for college for them. Are there some vehicles that can be used to help prepare for saving for college?

Ryan Lawrence (23:12):
Well, there’s the 5 29 plans in just about every state. I think has one that you can invest in and it simply works like this. You put money into the plan and whatever that balance grows to by the time they get to college, there’s no taxation on it. So it’s a tax free investment. As long as you make the payments directly to the university or trade school or whatever school they’re going to go to, then the government will not tax you. Now let’s say, you’re you put all this money aside and both your kids get scholarships. Cause they’re so brilliant, right? Eh, you can even give it to a relative if you want to at that point, or if you decide, you know what, I have no one else to give it to I’ll go ahead and pull the money out. Well, then you’ll have to pay taxes on the growth. And there is a little bit of a penalty. So it’s not, there’s really no advantage for doing that unless that’s the last option, but there are things available. Absolutely.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:59):
What do you think about social security? Some ministers opt out of paying social security. This is something that is only available to ministers. That’s one of the, either perks or dangers of being in ministry. I know some ministers, they say, I’m not going to pay social security. I’m going to invest it instead, but then they never invest. And when they get to retirement age, they don’t have that social security net to fall back on. What advice would you give to a minister in that

Ryan Lawrence (24:30):
Great question I’ve encountered this many times. Sometimes a minister will get ordained and you’ll have a friend say, look, just opt out so you can earn more money. Well, they’re not really thinking through the process correctly. Now that of course is a 7.6, 5% of your paycheck is pulled from pulled to social security. Now, when you work for an employer, they will match that. So it’s actually 15.2% of what you’re earning is going into social security. If you decide I’m no longer going to put my half in, that means your employer is not going to put their half on either. So you’re not just setting aside. You’re not just taking six point or 7.6, 5% off. You’re taking the whole 15.2. So my advice, if you’re going to do that, you need to go ahead and set up a Roth IRA immediately and put 7.65% into it.

Ryan Lawrence (25:22):
If you’re going to take advantage of that, I have no problem with somebody wanting to invest their money. In fact, if I were given the option to do that, I would certainly do that. Because I know we can do better with that. The problem, like you said is when people say I don’t have to pay that anymore. And they look at it as if it’s a raise, I can earn more money, but then when they get to retirement they’re at the very end of the line, I’ve had CPAs telling me that they have ministers that come in their office at 65, 67, just beside themselves in tears, because the denomination they were with says, it’s signed for them to retire. They have to move out of the parsonage and they have nothing, literally have nothing. And they’re of course their wives are trying to be supportive and they’re honestly asking themselves, what do I do now?

Ryan Lawrence (26:04):
I think that question probably should have been asked many years ago. And that is something that I try to a certain amount of reality that I try to shed on the situation is, you know, you do need to prepare for that. But I even have some ministers that worked before they got into ministry and I had one the other day, tell me, you know what, I’m not sure I want to take that money because it’s from the government. I disagree with what the government’s doing. And I said, listen, if you worked for usually it’s about 10 years before you opted out, you’ll still get something, okay, that’s the rule with social security is it’s basically 40 quarters or 10 years. If you do that, then, then you are vested in if you will. Well, if you know, he came to me and said, I’m not sure I really believe in the government’s vision with this. Do I really want to take this money? And I said, you should go and take it. Number one, you to loan them all that money. And now it’s time for them to pay it back. So you should go ahead and take it. I don’t think that many people have a problem with that, but so I’ve heard several different scenarios and I, I just feel like, look, if you don’t want to opt out, that’s really not always a bad thing either.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:07):
There’s a lot more technical details and specific investment vehicles that, that you have expertise in. Thank you so much for, for being on the program today. But if someone has more questions, they want to get more advice about how to prepare for their future, especially if they’re they’re in ministry and, and have some questions about that. How would someone get ahold of you and, and ask more questions?

Ryan Lawrence (27:34):
Just email me. My email address is Ryan dot Lawrence. That’s R Y a N dot L a w R E N C E at, and it’s in M for Northwestern mutual. But in, as in Nancy, M as in michael.com.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:49):
So ryan.Lawrence@nm.com, that’s correct. I would encourage you if you have more questions about being in ministry and how to prepare for retirement, how to prepare for your future questions about getting life insurance, about making investments putting money aside for your, your kids college, putting aside money for the future, I’d encourage you to, to reach out to Ryan Lawrence. He has a lot of expertise in this area. He also has the heart of a teacher teaching people how to properly prepare. I think that’s one of the, the, the key things. When you’re looking for an investment advisor, you want someone who doesn’t just sell you, you need to do this, you need to do that and, and, and gives you the thing that they’re going to make the biggest commission on to, to invest in. You want to be with someone who can teach you and to help you make the right decision for your future to understand why you are making these decisions and why they’re important.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:53):
And so you really have the heart of a teacher. I really appreciate that. And so I’d encourage you to, to reach out to, to Ryan Lawrence and ask him any questions you have about preparing for retirement now, while you’re still young in ministry. Ryan, thank you so much for being with us. I really appreciate you. You been a tremendous blessing to our ministry. You’ve supported us for quite a few years. Been very faithful, and I really appreciate that you guys are good grounded. So thank you for being with me. I appreciate it.

Ryan Lawrence (29:25):
You’re welcome.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:26):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (30:47):
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.

Russell Abbot was one of my evangelism students at Victory College. Today he tells the story of how his first crusade was a major disappointment, but he persisted and now ten years later, his ministry has reached hundreds of thousands of people for Jesus in East Africa.

Website:  http://advanzeafrica.com/ 

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

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:01):
Russell Abbott was one of my evangelism students at Victory College. Today, he tells the story of how his first crusade was a major disappointment, but he persisted in now 10 years later, his ministry has reached hundreds of thousands of people for Jesus in East Africa.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:21):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord. Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host missionary and evangelist, Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:57):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. And today we have a special guest with us, Russell Abbott. Thank you for joining me today.

Russell Abbot (01:07):
Thank you, Daniel and honored to be with you. You are one of my very first teachers back in Bible college. You’ve continued to mentor me and empower me to be reaching the nations. And we’ve been going into over 30 nations and reaching hundreds of thousands of people for Christ. And I think some of those souls may be going into your account.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:34):
Well, that’s awesome. Tell me a little bit about what countries you’re going to and what God is doing through your ministry.

Russell Abbot (01:42):
Okay. So originally I was in south America, a lot to central America. Haiti traveled across and to India a little bit in Europe, you know, a good mix smash of the world. And in eventually God lead me down into Africa. And initially I was teaching and Bible schools and then doing whatever the pastors would ask me, if you want to, can you visit the prison with our team? Can you do a men’s conference? Can you do in an evangelism program? Can you take our team out into the park? You know, I, I had a fabulous time traveling around the world, living and staying with the pastors and then, you know, they would just throw me in the deep end. And we had our famous pastor, pastor, Billy Joe Daugherty. He told us back in Bible college, if you get any opportunity to preach, if anybody asks you whatsoever, just say, yes, don’t think about it. Just say, yes, I can do it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:50):
And so you started saying yes, and you have been doing it ever since

Russell Abbot (02:54):
He started saying yes, without even thinking or praying about it. And Le loaded me and a lot of great ministry situations. I would run back to my little guest house or wherever I’m staying in the room or the pastor crying out to God, God, I don’t know how to do this. Please help me and God would. And that I had a fantastic time and just been so responsive to the holy spirit and the opportunities just developed and grew my boldness confidence ministry. And eventually, as I said, God took me to Africa. We went there to start a Bible colleges. We started Bible colleges in Kenya. I think there’s like just from this one college we first started it’s out of that has birthed about 70 or 80 and about 5,000 graduates from that very first trip. Now this is this is nine years, nine years, 10 years later.

Russell Abbot (03:57):
But so that very first trip was very fruitful. We also did evangelizing out in the marketplaces and many of the poor areas just on the ground, roar our team, carrying the speakers and the sound equipment and stuff on the backs through and between the huts and things sitting up in a local ground, putting on the African Bing, Bing, Bing bong music and, and sitting up the dancers and attracting a crowd and then just bang, launching them with the gospel and seeing 2030, sometimes a hundred or more people give their lives to Christ on that level. And that got my blood pumping, just seeing the response. There was such a hunger there in east Africa.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:49):
Let’s talk about how you got started. So you’re from the nation of New Zealand, the land of sheep and Lord of the rings. And you came here to Tulsa to go to school at, at victory college. How did you end up coming to Tulsa?

Russell Abbot (05:08):
That’s a long story. You know, I was brought up in a heathen family, had a bit of Catholic training and teaching, but God was not real to me. I was just involved in partying and drinking, really a deeply broken individual who didn’t realize it. My mother had died when I was two years old. And I discovered the answer to my life was beer and lots of it. And so I was bearing all the pain and having a great time and I was loving son, but there was demons harassing me every morning. I’d wake up with my heart, still empty and broken. All of that beer in relationships. Couldn’t fix it. And these spirits would start tempting. Tormenting me, your life is hopeless. You’re going nowhere. You’ve got no purpose. Just kill yourself, kill yourself. But you know, good couple of bottles of beer can fix that too.

Russell Abbot (06:09):
So, so I was working but also partying and drinking as much as I could, but those spirits would not leave me. And I didn’t know they were spirits at that time. But as a tough young guy or pretending to be a tough young guy, I had all of that. And eventually eventually I came across a cousin who got born again. He took me to church and the gospel they preached in this particular church was acts 2 38, repent, and be baptized every one of you for the forgiveness of your sins. And you’ll receive the gift of the holy spirit. And they told me if you surrender your life to Jesus, then you need to be baptized and we’re going to pray for you. And you’ll come out, speaking in tongues, right there in the baptism waters. And I didn’t believe it, but I started talking to the people in the church and many of them had miracle testimonies.

Russell Abbot (07:06):
Some of the lot were sinners and me, you know, gang guys that the pastor had been in bikey gangs. And he’d been on run for the law for many years for murdering a guy that was our pastor and then associate pastor had been what is it, Sergeant of arms it’s called and the house angels, New Zealand chapter hell’s angels, which means he’s the God of war for the hell’s angels. I mean, these guys were wicked guys and ex Draghi’s and there were some ex hippies, more kind of still hippie-ish Israeli and some nice old grandmas. And I was like these, all those bunch of people living together in a spirit of love. And you know, it was during my heart that some reality, some of them had had dramatic healings of life-threatening illnesses and asked me on different things. And so rarely really stood.

Russell Abbot (08:02):
This could be something. And if God is real, I want to know God, I want to love him. I want to follow them. I want to experience this love they’re talking about, and I want to live the truth. I want to get into my life and find out that there is a judgment day and that I’ve wasted my whole life doing whatever. And I didn’t live the truth and didn’t live for God when he’s real and calls me to be a son. So I thought, let me at least try this kind as a gamble, but really I partially in faith, but God, if you’re real, and this is really true, the improve yourself and fill me with the holy spirit like these people said, and I didn’t really expect anything to happen, but God was working in my heart. And one night they bet ties me in a bath.

Russell Abbot (08:51):
It’s like, come out of the water. There was a group of them just laid hands praying for me. And I had a vision of Jesus and I saw Jesus on the cross and I saw his crown of thorns on his head. And I saw the blood just running down over his face, over his body and washing into the ground. And it was like, God was speaking Russell. I did this for you. I love you so much. You are so precious and beautiful to me. I paid for your sins for your forgiveness, with the blood of my own son. And they might the pastors. Remember they shook me. I was just entranced with that vision. And God’s speaking to me and they shook me, tid Russell, you know, what’s happening. And I’m like, oh, what’s happening? What’s going on? And they said, you’re speaking in tongues.

Russell Abbot (09:42):
I was like, at the time, same time I, as I was having as vision, I’ve felt a massive and fully enough love and joy and peace and just bubbling up out of me was speaking in tongues was picturing Jesus on the cross. So I had that dramatic darkness to light conversion, bam. And one night give him serene my life to Jesus baptized, full immersion baptism and the water coming out. Speaking in tongues, seen Jesus on the cross. That night I drove home in my car and I was just laughing and crying at the same time, just crying with a thankfulness and gratefulness because I realized God is real. God was very real and by heart from that time on. But I also realized I hadn’t even been seeking him. I hadn’t even been searching him. I was like, I felt like God, out of his love for me, I was just like a grain of sand on the beach.

Russell Abbot (10:40):
And he had just reached down and picked me up out of all those other millions of people. And he had reached up and he brought me close to his heart and revealed his love to me. And it was a very powerful night, very powerful lives, transforming time. I’ve never turned away from God since that time. And I’ve tried to give my heart fully to him. And at that same time as that happened, the next, the next couple of days, I became aware that God had a special purpose for me. I had this feeling inside of me that God had something special for my life. I didn’t know what a calling was. I didn’t know what a destiny was. I didn’t know what a ministry was, but that’s how I was just becoming aware that God had something special and powerful for me. But I, and I also had the feeling that I just wanted to go around the whole world and lay hands on everybody and see the whole world heal.

Russell Abbot (11:36):
And that, you know, I was, I was saved, delivered, you know, those demonic voices were gone. The addictions to the alcohol I’d even been starting to experiment and then drugs. And that was all delivered. I was, you know, just one of these young guys, I was just passing all the time and he just took that change to my heart and my language to be pure. He gave me a hunger for purity. I just love to be good. I just love to be pure. And he delivered me from all of those past. Not all of them, actually there was after, you know, God, there’s some things he delivers you from straight away about all of those initial outward things and those demonic voices. And they had alcohol. And and not only did he deliver him, deliver me bat. He gave me that calling all in that one special night.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:32):
So you experienced true transformation. And I remember when you were my student here in Tulsa victory college, I was doing a class on evangelism in the missions part of the college. And we did some classes on how to do crusades. And I remember just going down through the list, this is how you organize the churches, and this is how you have a platform and this is how you get lights. And this is how you preach the gospel and giving all the different criteria that it takes in order to do a crusade. And then you went to Africa and I remember getting your emails and you always do a great job communicating, showing what

Russell Abbot (13:22):
They want me to do, a crusade. What do I do now?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:26):
And so I remember you sent me in one of your emails, a picture of a crusade that you had done, and you took all of the instructions and had given them to one of the African brothers who helped you out. And you had told him, okay, now for the crusade, we need to set up a platform in the market area. And when you set up a platform, you need to put a hand rail around the edge of it in order to make sure that no one falls off of it. And you sent me the picture of this platform that the brother had built you. And it was only about one foot off the ground. It was about two feet maybe by that hand, red hat. So no one would fall off the platform. And I just remember laughing at him because he took your instructions and just had this little tiny platform. And I think in the picture, there were maybe 10 or 15 people way across the other side of the field, maybe listening to you or maybe they were shopping. I’m not sure. And I just like, oh no, it’s, it’s very difficult. But you recovered from that disappointment. I don’t know what your budget was, but hopefully it wasn’t too much, but since then, you’ve done lots of, I want to tell you the full story of that.

Russell Abbot (14:50):
Can I tell you the full story? Yeah, yeah. You were helping me so much in those days and it’s true. I went down there and I told the Africans, you know, I’m up from America now, I’ve been to Tulsa. I was in TL Osborn and, and den Daniel King’s classes. And so I’m a crusade professional, and really I’d just been in one crusade in Haiti and how build the stage out of sticks. So that was my extent apart from your great schooling. Ubut you know, so really the Africans knew a lot more than me, but on this particular one, I was out in a area,unear Narok with the mass eye tribe. And I’d say, we’re doing in Kenya. Yes. In Kenya,udoing the first Bible school,uand this particular area for the mass high tribes had recently given their lives to Jesus.

Russell Abbot (15:44):
And so I was in school one day and I was teaching on the gifts of the holy spirit and how first I start off with teaching them to listen to the holy spirit, pray, praying for each other. And then they’re getting maybe visions and dreams. And in the class we all prayed and I prayed as well. And I got a little vision. So I then shared on the importance of once you get visions, dream prophecy, whatever you have to properly interpret and then properly apply. So I was sharing these principles and in the process of that, I shared the vision I had, which I saw myself on quite a high stage preaching to a lot of African people. And I used the word stage and the, I went and told the pastor who was the one who organized me to come. And then he came to me, you know, that night or the next day.

Russell Abbot (16:38):
And he said, we have a stage, we have a stage right here. You’re meant to do a crusade and our village. And I was like, what? You have a crusade and you have a stage. And he was talking so excited and he so wanted me. And I was like, I’m not sure, really. And he says, no, you can do it. And then you can come back and teach part two another series for our school. And I was loving being there. They were great people, sweethearts and spirits. And I was just making my schedules going along. So I prayed about, and I felt maybe it is of God. I wasn’t sure. Well maybe there’s a God and it’ll be good to come back and teach again. So I said, yes, let’s do it. Meanwhile, after my first teaching, I, I flew, but this pastor was so brilliant that he helped me, Mr.

Russell Abbot (17:30):
Plane. So I ended up catching the bus all the way through to Tanzania Mwanza. And I actually preached in as big crusade and Mwanza, the second largest city in Tanzania, and was exactly how was in the vision, but the people Mount of people in the height of the stage, et cetera, et cetera. And so I had a great time there just sharing briefly. I wasn’t the main speaker, but I joined them and did some trainings with the pastors then flew back, went back to Narok, expecting this big mighty crusade we had. We had stopped in Nairobi and got them to print posters, et cetera, that churches were promoting. Then the first day of the crusade cam. And I was, I was saying, my house was far away with our hosting me. They brought me into the little village and I was expecting there to be, you know, some music and dancing and crowd gathered.

Russell Abbot (18:31):
And there was just a little, little bunch of Christians going round in this in this kind of open space next to the shops and kind of doing a bit like an Indian rain dance woo. And raising her hands, shut up, blah, blah, blah, blah. And not hardly a person for miles, no one coming around them. Now I didn’t have a, your vision of what a crusade stage or anything. They’re just purely on the ground. And, and I was, I was feeling embarrassed. One good thing they hadn’t before that pastor taken me to visit this crippled lady. And she’d been bid cast quite a while. The whole visual village knew we prayed for her within a couple of minutes. You’d got up walking around, completely healed. And so she came down to she, her testimony at our big crusade. And and so at that stage, at that stage, we didn’t have a stage.

Russell Abbot (19:35):
We just went out into the middle and it’s like that people were far away. I’m trying to call them, come close. We’ve got a special basis. You know, they are just hugging the few people that there were hugging the side of the walls of their shops. And I was just literally preaching to the choir. And so that was the first out of the crusade. And I was a bit baffled by it. And it also is that the past the city had a stage and there was no stage there. And then I went back and asked her, the pastor, pastor, where was the stage? And why didn’t the people come? I thought you said, this would be a fabulous crusade. Why are we doing a crusade? And he said, you know, the people that we’ve had lots of crusades here and lots of teams and people go through and they hate crusades.

Russell Abbot (20:24):
They don’t even like them. And I said, now that you tell me, yeah, I said to him, so why are we doing a crusade here? And he said, well, you had the vision. You’re the one that had the vision. So we had to have it. And then I said, and where was the stage? You didn’t bring this stage down. I thought you said you had a stage. Where was it? And he said, oh, the word stage here means means bus stop. We have of a bus stop. We would, they were doing a crusade, was actually where the buses come through every few hours and stop the, pick the people up. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:00):
You really kind of had a, a translation error, cultural.

Russell Abbot (21:05):
Yeah. It’s like a visionary,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:09):
But did anyone get saved at that?

Russell Abbot (21:13):
So being a man from victory, Daniel King background, you know, we’ve trained that there’s not just one way to evangelize. And so I went back to the drawing board that night, praying to God. And I was like, let us form the church and to teams and let us go around and visit the people in the, in the town and little teams of twos and threes. And so the next day we did that and we just had a fabulous time talking with the people. They don’t want to come to the religious crusade and jumping and shouting in that little place. They were crusaded out. But when you just go and spend some time and talk with them, we had great times talking open our hearts. And I think on that second day between it was like three or four teams we created, we lead about 20 something, people to Jesus. And I think we ended up going for about four days the mayor of that huge metropolis city of about 3000 people. He was a drunkard. He gave his life to Jesus by nev on, as you said, then I had gotten angry with the pastor and I told him, you have to build me a stage promise. So I gave him that design because we had no budget. It was only two foot square, but it did have a handrail. And I felt like kept

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:34):
Just at a hand rail to make sure No one would fall off.

Russell Abbot (22:39):
Yeah. Let’s

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:40):
Come on to the important safety

Russell Abbot (22:42):
First. And really, I let, I let the Africans do both of the preaching. I was just a novelty Muslim guy. I was enjoying going around visiting with the people more. But by the end of that week, the beer had gotten saved. Like over a hundred people had gotten saved. We had a revival meeting the church, the whole church was packed out with people standing around and somehow God turned it into a great success. And we just went on for like three or four hours at meeting. Even the mayor came down and testified again. And yeah. So, so

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:16):
Since then, you’ve done many crusades in different countries there in Africa. You’ve done things with our friend, Michael Ross, who I’ve had on the evangelism podcast before. And you’ve organized events for Jennifer Wilde. Yeah.

Russell Abbot (23:38):
One day one Africa,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:39):
One God, one day, one Africa. Tell me about some of the different places that you’ve done, crusades and what results you’ve seen.

Russell Abbot (23:48):
So, so one of the first breakthrough moments in my life, I’d been into Kenya a couple of times, and I’d been working with this particular Bishop who some people called the Billy Graham of east Africa. And they were just crusade professionals. And they had whole teams when they would go into a town, not only would they mobilize for the crusade, but they would bring a team of about 30 evangelists and they would be mobilizing the whole town with the marketplaces. Jesus. And what was the Bishop’s name? His name was Bishop Ben Behati.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:23):
And he’s gone on to heaven now.

Russell Abbot (24:25):
Yeah, he’s been promoted. I think God said, look, Bishop, you’ve got so many souls to your account. I’m going to have to take you out just to leave some for the other people just to leave samples, but I’ve heard of him.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:36):
I mean, he had a tremendous ministry.

Russell Abbot (24:38):
Yeah, yeah. A lot of Vangelis went through him, some quite famous ones. And so that really scald me an African evangelism being there on his big crusades, out in his little market, preaching crusades, et cetera. And some people were speaking about Burundi and sharing how there’s many, it’s a really impoverished nation and many unreached people. They are. And I started weeping and crying for the souls of Burundi. And it started stirring in me go and get one of our gospel vans we have in Kenya with the team, with the generator of the whole, the whole sound system speakers, et cetera, and traveled down to Burundi and, and just go through all the places you can. And Burundi preaching the gospel, saving as many souls as you can. And this time I flew into Rwanda, stayed with some missionary friends there, and God just downloaded the whole plan.

Russell Abbot (25:38):
And then, you know, God is he’s widest, maybe the right word, God. Sometimes he doesn’t tell you the whole story until you get halfway into it. And when I was in Rwanda, he said, I’m not just sending you to Brenda, you’re going to go to four nations. You’re going to take the van through and to Uganda and to Eastern Congo and to Rwanda and into Burundi. And so I had to set up all of these ministry. I hate to go to various churches and all of these nations beforehand and set up these ministry times, we’d spend a week in each church and we spent 10 weeks on the road with my evangelism team, having the most fantastic, craziest, exhausting time of our lives. Staying in little broken down and guest houses, et cetera, and rising up early, going having two to three or four Vince per day, preaching in the market.

Russell Abbot (26:37):
Places preaching in the schools, preaching on the side of the village hill, sitting up the Jesus movie at night out there, especially in the nations of Burundi and Rwanda that dense most densely populated nations in Africa. When you sit up the Jesus movie, it is the light shine on the hill. There can be just like 20 or 30 people you start with. Then you can get up to over a thousand. People have seen that and come and see what’s happening here. And so within 10 weeks just preaching these little meetings. We had over 50,000 decisions for Christ. Wow, God give me the goal to pray for and believe for. And it’s like we pushed and I pushed my team at our one stage. They all abandoned me and went back to Kenya. I was lifted on my own with a whole big bowl of, to pay God just just went back to the, to the floor, praying, okay, God, what now they say, they’re going to arrest me if I don’t get somebody.

Russell Abbot (27:36):
So, and God sent me the money. God gave me a new vision, how to work. My, my one coordinator from one that came back and we put together a plan and we finished and a power and authority. And we, we saw those over 50,000 souls and that was already a life transforming time. And it was after that is when I started praying. Maybe I should settle in east Africa and through a series of themes, God confirmed that I came in 2012 at the end and started working there just on a very low level preaching on the ground and little marketplaces and gathering people soon heard of, as people said, can you sit up crusades for us? So then we started getting a bit of money. We’d build some little wooden crusades for a couple of hundred stages for a couple of hundred dollars and have a rickety sound system we’d hired.

Russell Abbot (28:31):
And it just got bigger and bigger until we were using some of the biggest stages there in east Africa, we did the capital of Burundi and the end with my cross, the president’s wife came, brought all of her, you know, soldiers and securities. And she spoken, preached from the stage. It was broadcast right across the nation on national TV. That was one of our highlights. We’ve done other major cities with even larger crusades in Rwanda and also down in Tanzania. And so, so now a few years later, it’s like hundreds, hundreds of thousands of souls have been reached and a few, few, very large crusades, quite a few mediums and still a lot, still a lot of small village crusades, hundreds of them really

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:29):
That’s wonderful that God has given you such tremendous fruit and all started from the one foot high rickety stage with handrails. And now

Russell Abbot (29:39):
God was my first where I was the star billing preacher. And yeah, it was a requirement.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:46):
It wasn’t your last stuck with it and kept

Russell Abbot (29:51):
That taste of preaching from the big stage. Well, I had an Haiti as well and there in Rwanda. And so God was preparing you now. It says, do not despise the day of the small beginning. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:06):
So now you’ve established yourself there in east Africa. You’ve met a beautiful African woman who you asked to be your wife. Tell me about that and tell me about your children.

Russell Abbot (30:21):
Yeah. So for you, young evangelists, ladies and gentlemen, it’s I would just say echoing Kenneth Hagen, pray and obey most simplest keys, just pray, listen to the holy spirit, what he speaks, shows you, and then just go and do it. That is just powerful keys for success right there, but not just keys for success in ministry, you have dreams and your heart vision. Some of them are often connected with a families and children, et cetera, as you pray and obey, God will lead you to your highest destiny. And he will even bring the exact partner and help mate, or husband, whatever for you. And I was all the time being single for so long traveling. And so many nations, many times so lonely on the road. And many times I think it’s time. Lord, I think it’s time. I need my wife. I’ll be much greater traveling round with my partner beside me.

Russell Abbot (31:22):
And as many times I told God that it was time for me to get married and I didn’t hear very much. And when I went and settled there in east Africa, I pretty much given up on marriage and God came and spoke to me. I want you to settle here and not just to settle here and build a ministry, but to find a wife, build a family and she will be your help mate for you. And she she’ll help you with the culture of the people. And God has truly answered my prayers above and beyond. He brought me a beautiful young woman of God who loves Jesus so much. She was a worship leader in a church. He was already ministering with the orphans. She is a powerful and to Cedar, even now when I’m praying, I start to, you know, after a little while, get tired, but she’s still going strong. So I can’t let her beat me. I have to keep praying too. So I think she’s maybe three quarters of the success, plus our supporters and great mentors like Daniel to our ministry. What was it

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:24):
And your children? Tell me, tell me about your children.

Russell Abbot (32:28):
Yeah, we got three beautiful little cuties. They rarely, I think children at that age, they have a ministry in it’s called the ministry of laughter and giggling. When you’re in ministry, sometimes you can get to be a bit serious and thinking and planning and calling and praying about all this stuff. And sometimes, sometimes we need a great sense of humor on the mission field. Sometimes we need to roll around on the floor with our kids, just laughing and giggling and letting them jump on top of us and just have some fun days with the family. So really it’s, it’s brought me back. It’s like, it’s renewing my youth within me. I’ve been on the road for a long time. And now God has given me a beautiful young family and a real, really a blessing. Our little oldest daughter’s called area Anna. She is super smart.

Russell Abbot (33:25):
She speaks three languages. She’s not even five yet. She just, this morning, Daniel, I was talking to, to the mother saline, the international beauty queen. And she was saying, we’ve got a big problem with your daughter, daddy. You know, when they start talking about your daughter, you know, you’re in trouble. Yeah. And she said, you know what? She did. She filled up her school bag with all of his sweaters and shoes. And she took them to the school and she gave them to all the children in the school. And then she took other things, jackets and different things to the family, friends who have a bunch of little children. And she gave them away without telling me to all of those babies and children. And then someone visited him, young little babies and she got her little dollies and she gave her little dolls.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:21):
Wow. It sounds like she has a ministry of clothes distribution.

Russell Abbot (34:26):
She’s got a beautiful, sweet heart. She loves people. And that’s the first time she’s done that. But part of our ministry also in Africa is we try and we go out to the families that are in extreme poverty and we take emergency supplies and food and clothings, and we try and lift them out of that. And then we work over that period of time to where they are self-sustaining and she’s sometimes been with us on those trips. And other times she sees us loading up the car and she’ll say, mommy and daddy, you going to visit the poor people in the visit village again. And so really the whole thing of, you know, not talking is good saying the right things, but living Christ and being Christ is having so much of a powerful effect on the children, around you. And they’re seeing them soybeans things that you don’t even realize and add a little boy, he’s nearly three.

Russell Abbot (35:20):
He’s very smart. He’s kind of shy, but you can see he’s creative. And then our very youngest is just one and a half. And he’s a very tough little guy. He wrestles with his older brother and sometimes he wins and when he was being born myself and mommy and some others, we felt this is going to be a man of authority. He just has a presence and a power to him already. So God is a dream maker and the dream for filler pray and obey every day. Like, you know how I got to this where our ministry now, before hundreds of thousands and seen God fulfill, fulfill that God put on my heart to start ministry and just going out and preaching to my neighbors first. And it was, it completely destroyed my social status in New Zealand to be a Christian as bad, but to be one of these Bible bashing Christians, there, it goes all of your friends.

Russell Abbot (36:21):
And so, but I evade God and I was faithful and not a single neighbor gave their lives to the Lord. Then I started going out on the church evangelism teams, then God would put on me. I read Smith’s walls with book that he made a, he made a vow to God that he would lead at least one soul to Jesus every day. And he was working at time as a plumber. And I’d been in the Lord or quite a while. Then I was back now settled in a city and I sort of led me. I felt stirred in my heart. Let me vowel that are at least maybe I can’t lead them in New Zealand. It’s very rare that someone will give their lives to Jesus on the street, but are at least preach to one or two people every day before I go home.

Russell Abbot (37:04):
And I was faithful to that for years and seen a very little fruit. I was faithful to where God put me into the heavenly calling and serving in the churches and God developed me. And I think he saw that spurt of faithfulness. And it’s like, I have to take this guy somewhere where he can actually bear a lot of fruit for me. You know, I’ve been a fishermen and you can go one place and fish all day long and not catch a single fish. And then you can just move, you know, quarter of a mile, even around the corner by some rocks or something with your boat, throw the anchor out. And you’ve just got the fish, almost jumping in the boat, positioning and seeing where the harvest field is as a powerful. And right now the harvest field is, is hungry and east Africa and other parts of Africa,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (37:54):
Your ministry is doing crusades. You’re graduating Bible school students from Bible schools. You’re planting churches. You’re, you’re ministering to so many people and you’ve been able to do all that with, with very few resources. But if you had more resources, you’d be able to reach more people. And if so, if someone is listening to this and wants to find out more about your ministry, or maybe even support your ministry what’s your website, how can someone find out more about you?

Russell Abbot (38:29):
Okay, thanks for bringing that up. Daniel. Yes. Anyone listening? We need dozens. We can say hundreds. We’re not shy of hundreds of people to come on as monthly supporters, but God has sent me back. No, I live full time. And one, the Africa traveling across Africa, God has sent me back to USA at this time with a mandate to bring on more monthly supporters because he wants us to expand our mission to, to stop working just for my little home office to have a proper offices, to have department leaders. And we’ve been there for nearly 10 years. Now, we have a great level of experience and God is saying, now’s the time to expand and multiply your leadership team. And to be full-time reaching all of these areas to go from the thousands to the hundreds, to even reaching the millions per year. And so we would love for you. We’d be very honored for you to come on board and support us. Our website is advance africa.com and how you spell advance is a D V a N Zed, not C, but we put it with a Zed

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:47):
Z for those of you in America. Okay.

Russell Abbot (39:50):
Z. Yeah. I’m reached where each in all cultures. Thanks. Daniel advance

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:54):
Africa. It’s Z or Zed instead of a skip.

Russell Abbot (39:59):
See a little bit of extra zing Daniel. That’s wonderful. Yeah. Advance africa.com with a Z and on our websites. You’ll see a lot of the different works we do in fact that we need to update that because we’re doing a lot of crusades and larger ones since that time. And we’ve brought on board some more ministries, but you’ll get a good, a taste of our ministry. You’ll be able to see a lot of nice pictures of what we’ve been doing. And there is for those who have PayPal, it’s a very easy to click on that link there, and you can shoot money through to our 5 0 1 C ministry accounts here in USA, where you will get a tax receipt for it. And you can even click make this a recurring monthly payment. And you’ll be set up as one of our monthly supporters. And we will contact. You get to know you we’ll be praying for you daily. And you’ll become part of our African miracle making team. And if I get a chance, I’ll visit you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:04):
That’s awesome. Well, Russell, I’m so delighted to hear about all the fruit that your ministry is producing. It is wonderful to hear about what you’re doing in Africa and the thousands and thousands of lives that you’re impacting there. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. Appreciate it.

Russell Abbot (41:26):
And Daniel just so happy and excited to be here. And thank you for being new. You know, when you first came into the Bible school, I thought there was just Billy Graham and a few other evangelists in the world TLS born and Reinhard bond key. And then you come in and you just shook my world. And, and you were very young at that time and young and so passionate and so knowledgeable. And you’d already been over half the world. And I was like, if this young guy, who’s almost like a teenager can be doing that. God, what can I do? So you really helped to just give me even the vision to start believing for these type of things. And not only that you’ve stayed with me all of these years, mentoring and training me, taking me level by level, step up, and God bless you. God, please stay secure in your family. You’re a wonderful example. Wonderful mentor, wonderful friend, just so happy and honored to be here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (42:32):
Thank you. Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (43:52):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

Alejandro Arias started preaching the Gospel when he was just a boy in Costa Rica. Now he has traveled to 45 nations on five continents and led thousands of people to Jesus. Today he shares the amazing story of what God is doing through his life.

Website: https://alejandroarias.org/home/ 

Check out The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelism Coach Daniel King

Transcript: 

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Alejandro Arias started preaching the gospel when he was just a boy in Costa Rica. Now he’s traveled to 45 nations on five continents and led thousands of people to Jesus. Today. He shares about the amazing story of what God is doing through his life.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:20):
Jesus said, go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord 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 (00:55):
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 with me, Alejandro RDS. Welcome to the evangelism podcast, my friend.

Alejandro Arias (01:08):
Thank you, Daniel. It is such an honor to be on your podcast and I’m blessed. Thanks for the invitation

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:15):
Start at the beginning. Do you remember how you and I met?

Alejandro Arias (01:21):
Sure. I tell the story to my friends and everyone that knows you and anyone that is acquainted with your ministry that I happened to meet on the road. We met at a very large gathering in Costa Rica. A number of years ago, probably two decades ago. I was 12 years, so, and back then I was just starting the ministry. I was known as the boy preacher in Costa Rica. I had just started and being preaching for a year. The Lord called me at a very young age. And so my, my testimony is quite unusual because I actually happened to, to lead my dad to the Lord when I was 12, he came to one of my camp meetings and he got saved and one of my meetings. So anyway I heard that TL Osborn he was coming to Costa Rica and he was going to be holding a large rally crusade.

Alejandro Arias (02:21):
And he was also going to have a pastors gathering. And so some of my pastors, some of my friends invited me. They said, you should come. You know, at that point I had already read some books. I had already heard some things about Dr. DL Osborn. So I really want it to be there. And it was like a divine connection and I was able to get I think I was sitting in the first row or second row. I don’t remember, but I was, you know, with all the other pastors and I got to meet you there. And I think you grabbed me and you said, would you like to meet TL Osborn or something? Like, I don’t quite remember the details, but I know you took me into this office and TL Osborn was there and it was just you and somebody else. And me and we were just sitting chatting. And then you know, he got to pray for me, pray for both of us. And I think that’s how we got connected.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:18):
That’s such a wonderful story. You’re a 12 years old, you’re already preaching the gospel. You were the boy preacher, and you came to the TL Osborn seminar and what a privilege it was to be prayed for by Dr. TL Osborn. I call him the grandfather of healing crusade evangelism, and he was a great man of God. What did you learn from TL Osborn at the age of 12?

Alejandro Arias (03:49):
His boldness, his tenacity, his, it was a very courageous man. The stories that he shared, the stuff that he went through. And actually one thing that I learned while I was in this and then in the seminar is that he was many years before that and thinking the fifties he was kicked out of Costa Rica. He had a very difficult experience. You know, the government actually deported him because he was doing he was seeing a lot of signs and wonders and they actually accused him of what is that criminal charge back then? It was like, you know, practicing medicine without a license. I think there is a term for that. If you help me with the term. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:42):
I don’t remember the term, but I do remember that he was kicked out of Costa Rica back in the 50’s. And when, when he was there, they gave him a pin from the senator’s office in Costa Rica. And I remember him wearing that pin all the time and telling people, this is a pin that only the senators of Costa Rica have. And he was so proud of that pin. Yeah.

Alejandro Arias (05:13):
Yes. And the amazing thing is, you know, he came, he prayed with the pastors you know, there was an act of reconciliation. And I think even there was a prayer of forgiveness. The pastors came together and they basically asked forgiveness to Dr. TL Osborn. It was such a humble moment, you know, when you saw these pastors coming together acknowledging the anointing, honoring the ministry and the legacy and just saying, you know whatever our precedent did back in the forties and the fifties that has nothing to do with what God is doing now. And so we actually felt you know, the past is there felt like there was such a blessing by doing that. It was almost like a prophetic act like an act of a release and reconciliation. And I think that that allowed the next move of God to come even stronger because after his visit, I believe we had some other generals and Benny Hinn came, then others came and then there was an explosion of church growth where God began to move from nationwide and Costa Rica you know, in a greater metal. So we definitely sell revival after that really.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:31):
Now you’re not a boy preacher anymore. Now you are growing up, you have traveled to many different countries around the world and you have grown into a beautiful evangelistic ministry going and preaching the gospel in nations all over the world. Tell me a little bit about how your ministry has developed for you.

Alejandro Arias (06:56):
Yeah. So I’ve been preaching now for 22 years nonstop in 50 nations and it’s been an amazing journey. I never thought I was going to be to all these amazing places around the world. I never thought I was gonna married an Australian, someone from the other side of the world. We actually met I was in Perth on the other side of Australia, was doing some ministry there. And she was Austrian during the one of the meetings. And we met in the meeting and you know, the Lord has actually blessed us. You know, we, we have two beautiful daughters. We have carry out who is eight years old, Celeste was three years old. And one of them was actually born here in Florida where we are living. We, we, we have our ministry based here in Orlando, Florida but to make a long story short, you know, it’s, it’s been God’s grace.

Alejandro Arias (07:55):
I’ve received a lot of prophetic words when I was a little boy that I was gonna go around the world that I was going to preach the gospel to thousands of people that I would actually forget the number of airplanes and airports that I would be that I would go to. And so the, those words have actually come to pass because now if you asked me how many airports have you been to? I tell you, I don’t even know that, you know, and that probably is your experience, you know, once you travel so much and you go to all these different cities, towns, villages, nations everything just becomes a, you know, part of the journey all the highlights, all the miracles and everything that God did, and it’s doing it’s part of the journey. And over the last two decades, I have seen God move in a mighty way you know, in many nations.

Alejandro Arias (08:47):
And so it all started when I was 11 years old and missionary from Venezuela, he was doing an outreach in one of the local parks there in, in the city where I was living Alajuela and Orlando Lopez, right? Yes, that’s right. So he actually gave me the opportunity to preach in, in this rally. And he gave me a new test. I mean, he signed it for me. He gave it to me. It’s like, you know I believe in what you carry, I believe in our calling. And I would love for you to share the gospel. And this is my first time because I had never done it out in public. You know, I had to preach to my friends at school. I had done some, my home groups, cell groups and things like that, you know, but I had never done anything out in, in, in, in the public arena.

Alejandro Arias (09:39):
And so when he gave me that opportunity, obviously I was struck by fear and motion, you know, I was overwhelmed and I’m standing there. I don’t know what to say. And you know, trying I’m trying my best, but I’m having a hard time putting my thoughts together, but then I just looked at it. I felt like the holy spirit just inspired me. I felt like this boost of power. You know, I felt like I was struck by this lightning supernatural force. You know, it was like, God just gave me this boost. And so I began to preach with a bonus that I had not known a bonus that I didn’t have before. And so I preached for like 45 minutes, you know, it was, it was my first time. My first message. I remember my first message was based on Jesus is the way, you know, there was a narrow way in a white path.

Alejandro Arias (10:28):
And so you got to choose what path you need to be on. And so I preached on that message, you know, and seven people came to Jesus as a result of that message and revival broke out, you know, God began to touch a lot of the attendees. P people came forward. I was able to pray for them. It was almost like falling marriage. And it was like, God just decided to push me into the pool. I had no preparation, nothing. Just, God just pushed me, you know into the, this pool of ministry, full immersion. Right. And so I had never been to Bible school. I never been to a ministry school. I was just a church kid. My mom, you know, she had been a believer for a number of years. She came to Christ when I was seven years old.

Alejandro Arias (11:20):
So that’s when I got saved. I came to Christ like two weeks later after she made her decision that I went to a cat meeting. And I just, I remember running to the alter and giving my life to Christ and the preacher gave me a new Testament. And I remember keeping that new Testament, like it was the best treasure, you know, it is. So I remember holding into it. I didn’t want anybody to take it. I was you know, I was beginning to read, so I was reading it little by little and just putting the stories together and learning about Jesus. And I just fell in love. I fell in love with the power of the gospel, with Jesus, with his his power, his persona, everything about him. And so I began to preach in my community, you know, to my friends when I was eight years old, I was tested big time.

Alejandro Arias (12:10):
Cause I was diagnosed with a deadly tumor between my heart and my lungs and the doctors. Back there, they basically gave up on me. They said, I had only, you know, I have two alternatives. One was laser surgery, which was out of our you know, out of our financial reach. And at that point it was new technology and they were only trying it here in the United States, in Miami, in some places. So it was definitely out of reach and the other one was a miracle. So it was basically the number two choice. We had to rely on God for a miracle because that tumor was growing and it was going to it was actually located right in between that there’s an artery that’s right in between your heart and your lungs. And it is a very, you know, important battery. So it was right there and it was growing.

Alejandro Arias (13:03):
And so the doctors basically said, you know, we, we give him a year if he makes it well, that’s good, but you know, you may not make it so they weren’t planning their study and to start talking about chemo and all of that. And so before that, before that went into effect, the Lord actually came through. I began to pray. I begin to pray for three consecutive months and I, I remember receiving a prophetic word. And I remember you know, hearing God speaking through this pastor, this guest speaker again to our church, and God basically said your testimony is going to be known around the world. So I just knew that God was going to heal me. And so I was holding into that word. And next day, I went to see the doctor and, you know, to make a long story short, they, you know, they took an x-ray three hours later.

Alejandro Arias (13:53):
They called me and called my mom. I was with, with my mom. And so they walked us into the doctor’s office and the doctor was speechless. Like, you know, I’m taking your medical file, I’m looking at all the files and looking at the history. And there’s no way for this test to come back, you know, with a different result. And he was astonished, you know, he couldn’t believe it is looking at the test. It’s like, I know what to tell you. All I know is that this is a miracle. So at that moment, I just knew that God had a special destiny for me. And I just devoted my life to preaching the gospel to my friends, to my family members, to people around the community, you know passing out literature. It was my favorite hobby giving out tracks and, you know, talk, talking to people about bowel Jesus.

Alejandro Arias (14:44):
It was my favorite hobby. So that’s what I did. And my dad knew that. And so that’s why he, he, he me to do it and, you know, out in the public and he met this missionary and he happened to have a pile of tracks. And that’s how the conversation that started when the missionary asked him about me and, you know, my story, my dad told him, named the missionary, decided to invite me. And that’s how the Lord just, you know, open a chapter of ministry, which has been a journey, you know, more than 22 years of ministry. That’s when that everything started.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:18):
It sounds like your ministry really got started when you were healed of this tumor that had invaded your body. What role do miracles play in your ministry today?

Alejandro Arias (15:33):
Well, that’s such a good question because I, I believe that is number one and knowing thing you know, I, I love preaching to the loss. I love seeing, you know, the last come to Jesus, but I also love seeing miracles and seeing, you know, the power of God at work. So I started seeing miracles at a very young age. It, you know, I saw the miracle with my with this tumor that disappeared, the Lord just removed that and was gone. And the Lord healed me of all their things like prototype test and chronic asthma and things like that. And at the age of, you know, when I was doing these rallies at the park a lady two weeks into this, came to one of the meetings she heard about the revival meetings. She came forward. And she, you know, she told me what was going on.

Alejandro Arias (16:30):
She had been dealing with cancer with a rare type of cancer. It had invaded her bones. And so she was dying. I mean, she looked like she was almost dead, you know, to be honest, I mean, she was pale. She was really sick. You know, she had the sick look in her face. And so I just had faith and I just laid hands on her. I prayed, you know, rebuke the spirit of death. And two weeks later she came back and she had a, a folder and she was so excited, you know, she was so happy to see me. And, you know, she was almost like, you know, like jumping and with joy. And so she came around and she’s just like, you gotta see this, you gotta see this. And so she told me this story, she was totally cancer-free at that day, when not prayed for her, she received the power of the holy spirit.

Alejandro Arias (17:23):
She was healed. Two weeks later in the, during the period of two weeks, she was experiencing a lot of miracles in her body. And so her body just recovered quickly and the power that God healed, you know, her body and remove the cancer. And two weeks later, she comes back with a medical report she’s cancer free. And so we begin to see a lot of this miracles. You know, a lot of people then brought the sick, you know, the deaf, the blind, you know, with different needs. And we begin to see a mighty move of God. You know, this revival took place right there, right there, out in the public square of five weeks of consecutive meetings every Saturday. And God, we did the roof. I mean, we had young people, kids, you know, families, whole families that would just come and there would be like glued to this you know, evangelistic outreach.

Alejandro Arias (18:16):
And it wouldn’t move. You know, they would stay there because he had no idea. It was so strong. It was like a magnetic field. You know, when the anointing is like that, when it’s moving like that, it becomes like a magnetic field. And so people were just stuck to their seats or wherever they were standing, even taxi drivers would help. They would dump out of their taxi and they would just, you know, listen to the gospel and come forward and receive Christ. It was that kind of annoying thing was very special. They’re unique. And so at the end of the five weeks and missionary, you had to wind up the meetings and he felt he needed to go back to Venezuela, to Euro you know I guess he to take care of some personal affairs and some of his business deals. Anyway, he said he was gonna shut down the meetings.

Alejandro Arias (19:01):
And I was really upset. I was really sad, you know, emotionally distraught. He was like, this is my, you know, my first love. I mean, I’m doing this for five weeks. I’m all excited. I’m building momentum. God is doing amazing things. And then all of a sudden, this missionary tells me he needs to wind up and shut down the meetings. And you know, he’s almost like blessing me and same song, you know, I believe in you keep going. That’s got amazing things for you. I see that your destiny is promising. So he’s almost like, you know, releasing me. And I was really disappointed. Daniel. I went back home. I was really upset, almost mad. You know, I’ve got like, I can’t believe this is happening to me. I’m like eating the best season of my childhood and I’m living my dream. And this missionary is about to shut down the meetings because I was having fun.

Alejandro Arias (19:48):
I mean, I was having a great time. You know, every Saturday seen God move miracle signs and wander salvations. He was awesome. So that night the missionary had a dream and an angel came into his bedroom and spoke to this missionary and basically gave him instructions. You are take care of this young man. You are taken to Venezuela with you. You are pay for his airfare. You are to provide for him while he’s in Venezuela to take care of his food. And all of these expenses does ongoing to give somebody something amazing. And so this missionary, you know, he obeyed in the next few days later, and then the next Saturday or last meeting, he basically had a one-on-one meeting with me and he told me the stream. And he said, oh man, I really feel like you, you need to come with me to Venezuela.

Alejandro Arias (20:42):
I don’t know how this is going to be possible because your dad is not a believer, but we’re going to pray and we’re going to believe God. And so what I told my mom, she was excited, but then she’s like well, you’re a miner and my husband is an unbeliever. So I don’t know how this is going to work, but you know, it had to be God. So when I went to my dad and I approached him and I told him the dream and you know, everything that was going on, I mean, my dad was taking me to these meetings. So he was seeing some of these miracles. He was a firsthand witness. They would actually you know, at the end of the meeting, see what I asked questions to those who received miracles, that he were interrogate people, you know, almost like telling me it’s not real, you know, real miracle.

Alejandro Arias (21:27):
Yeah, exactly. He was so curious and so hungry at the same time, but he couldn’t understand it, you know? And he’s in his mindset as an unbeliever, he was trying to rationalize everything. And so when I told him my dad, my dad just went quiet and we were actually having dinner. And he says, you know what? I ended up, I had a dream last night and I saw something weird. I never dream of airport airplanes, but I just saw you at the airport. And we were saying goodbye to you. You were waiting and you were going somewhere. And so, you know, this is before I even share my dream because I hadn’t, I hadn’t even started, you know, I hadn’t said a word, you know? And so I’m standing there and all I’m like, well, dad, I’m about to tell you something I’m about to tell you.

Alejandro Arias (22:22):
I’m about to share this invitation that I just received it from, you know, our friend Orlando, he wants to take me to Venezuela with him. So my dad is like, well, you know, I, I barely know this guy. I’ve only met him a couple of times, but I believe this, this has gotten, you know, he even said it like, this has gotta be God, you know, he wasn’t a good Catholic, but you know, he, the loader was really working with them. And then he was starting to kind of, you know, come to that realization that there was a supernatural God that something was going on that God really was, you know, doing some things in his life. And so God began to deal with him, you know, and a few weeks later he came to Christ. That’s when I, I actually bothered him to one of my meetings and he got saved, but this is how everything started. It all started in Venezuela, this missionary July 1st, 1999, that was my first international trip. And so I went to Venezuela. I did a bunch of meetings preached the first time, you know, in front of hundreds of people. Then, you know, some Christian radio stations heard that I was in town. They invited me, we, I had interviews, TV interviews. And so everything that I had been prophesied and it, you know, over by different prophets, it all came to pass in one trip.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:52):
That’s tremendous what a tremendous viewpoint you have on what God is doing around the world. You were born in Costa Rica, ministered it all over Latin America. And then you married a wife from Australia. You are living in Orlando, Florida, but working next week over in Africa and doing crusades over there. So with this bird’s eye view of all these different places where God is moving, what are some of the most exciting things that you’ve seen that God is doing right now?

Alejandro Arias (24:35):
Well, I believe this is the best time for return. I mean, I have no doubts that the Lord is about. And then we are leaving in a post pandemic season. There is a great falling away happening, but at the same time, there was a great revival. And it’s kind of you know, is happening side by side. It is a parallel situation where you have God moving around the world and you have God staring up the hearts of the hungry and the thirsty have got awakening, new generation of believers. And you have God even using a nameless and faceless generation. It’s like, God is really doing some amazing things. He’s bringing some people out of you know, out of the cave, you know, and, and putting them out on the spotlight. And so God is really using some amazing voices right now.

Alejandro Arias (25:29):
People that we haven’t heard of people that have never written a book, or they don’t have a website and have a Facebook profile, nothing yet God is doing something in this hour. This, why do you need where God is using a new generation of evangelist? And so I’m excited to see that I’m excited to be part of that because you know, I’ve been doing this for almost, you know, of two decades or more, and it I’ve seen God raise some evangelists and profits, and I’ve seen all their boy preachers, you know, come after me. And, and the Lord has really done amazing things. But what I’m seeing in this hour, it’s like, God has decided to put his foot on the accelerator. And this is revival time. This is harvest time. This is a time where we need to be awake. We need to cease the opportunity that God is giving us.

Alejandro Arias (26:19):
And don’t waste any time, because time is precious. You know, time, I know that we have the same inner ear in America. You know, time is money and, you know, time is equivalent to money. Well, in having time is equivalent to a divine appointment. So we got to seize our opportunities in God, we gotta have a, a kingdom mindset and we gotta use every resource. God has given us to spread the gospel. So that’s what we’re doing. I’m excited. This is the hour for the church. This is the hour where we’re going to see a great awakening among those that are hungry, thirsty, and ready to be used by God. But you also have a great falling away happening too. Where one out of five believers in America. I think that’s what I heard recently. Don’t want to go to church. You know, you have one out of three churches, a lot of churches are shutting down.

Alejandro Arias (27:16):
I mean, a lot of evangelical, a lot of institutionalized churches are shutting down. Like I just I have a friend in a small town out in Iowa, you know, you would probably consider the middle of nowhere, you know, a really small town and the Lutheran church just call him. He’s a senior pastor. He was a pastor of a rather small church. And the pastor called him and said, you know what? We’re about to fold our minister. We’re about to shut down everything. There’s a small group of people that are still wanting to, to meet, but they are actually willing to transition. And if you’re willing to buy this building, this building is a, has been on the market for $500,000, but we’re going to sell it to you for $5,000. So if you’re willing to take this building, we’ll give it to you for $5,000. And we also give you the people. This is the kind of a crazy transactions that we are seeing right now in this hour where God is moving, but in celebrate it, Ray, and he’s awakening the church.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:21):
I think it’s really neat to see how God’s hand has been on you since a very young age in, in my life too. I preached my first sermon when I was six years old, I was called into the ministry when I was five, a prophetess prophesied over me that I was going to be an evangelist. And then at the age of six, I preached my first sermon. And then when I was 10, my parents became missionaries in Mexico. And, and, and so I never had a moment in my life where I back slid or had a time of rebellion. And I think that’s the way God wants it. You know, I, when I share my testimony and say, you know, God’s saved me from a life of alcoholism, God saved me from a life of drug addiction. God saved me from a life of prostitution and theft and a life of murder. You know, God saved me from all that. I never experienced it because ever since I was very young, I’ve been serving God. And it sounds like you’re in the same position. What advice would you give to young people, maybe a child or a teenager, maybe early twenties who feel like they have a call from God on their life? What advice would you give to that young person

Alejandro Arias (29:33):
Pursue the calling? Don’t look back. Believe every prophecy God is giving you, embrace your calling and your destiny, no matter where that takes you. God knows. And he’s got the last word. So pursue your calling and don’t listen to others. Voices. You know, the enemy is going to use a lot of voices to discourage you, to put you down. You know, God’s got amazing things for you. And, you know, I believe in this hour, he’s going to use you. You are needed, your voice is needed. So we need more people like you. And the loan has gone to use millennials generation Z. This is your hour and God’s about to use you big time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:20):
Another question I have is you really feel like you’re called to be an evangelist. You you’ve really walked in that calling ever since a very young age. And, and nowadays a lot of times when people want to be in ministry, that they immediately think of pastor, okay, I want to be a pastor. And they, they go to school in order to learn how to be a pastor. But you, you have walked in the calling of an evangelist, preaching, the gospel, seeing miracles. What do you think are some of the differences between a calling of an evangelist and maybe some of the other ministry gifts like being a pastor or a teacher in the body of Christ what’s unique about being an evangelist?

Alejandro Arias (31:06):
Well, the unique thing about the evangelistic calling is that, you know, we, we get to share the gospel and we get to take it outside of our local community city nation. We get to take it to the world. You know, that’s a very unique mandate that God has given the evangelist. And I, I believe that you have the evangelistic gifting, you have the evangelistic spirit and even, you know, you know you know, Paul said we, we are all called to evangelize. We’re all called to reach the lost, you know, I think that is the global calling for the body of Christ. Now not everybody’s called to the office of the evangelist, you know, because that’s that’s one of the offices of the five ministries. And so there is a difference between the anointing and the office, and also a difference between the gifting and the office.

Alejandro Arias (32:01):
And then, you know, I have a teaching on this where I break it down, where I actually teach on the spirit and the gifting and the ministry and the office rarely because the office is when he becomes full-time, it becomes your whole life. It becomes your passion. It becomes your, your calling, your primary calling, and you can operate another Colin’s as well. You know, like I can teach, I can prophesize, but I would say my number one calling is a calling of an evangelist. And I love what I’m doing right now. And this is, you know, I can tell you something. I went to Australia recently we, we moved back in 2019 and we had a short season about 10 months during this lockdown in, in 2020, you know, between 2019 and 2020, we were based in Brisbane. And so we experienced the tough lockdown.

Alejandro Arias (32:55):
And so I had the privilege of working with a local church and they actually gave me this role of an associate pastor. And I was enjoying it. I was having a great time, you know, pastoring people getting to work with the local church, doing some of the inner workings of the local church, you know, trying to understand that world and trying to understand how pastors work with our people. And let me tell you something, Danielle I liked it for 10 months, but then after 10 months, I was glad I was out of it. You know, pastors are very, very special people. They have a very special place in my heart, and I can tell you, I just take my hat off to them because what they go through the pressures of ministry that they’re mans the expectations that people have and they place on pastors, you know, is, is unbelievable.

Alejandro Arias (33:50):
So I’m glad that you and I get to just go and share the gospel and we get to, you know inspire a grip and power believers. I’m not saying that our ministries are not challenging at all on the opposite. And you know, our ministries are very challenging, especially when you, we go to places and nations where we have to face witchcraft, where we have to face the monic legions, you know, where we have to face, you know, unbelief, or we have to face unwelcoming spirits, you know there’s some horrible attitudes, you know, I’m sure you’ve dealt with that. I have dealt with bad where pastors and even churches are not very welcoming to the ministry of the evangelists. And so you have to kind of break ground. So every gift has a responsibility and a sign and an anointing. And I think we all need to just learn to recognize or acknowledge honor the different giftings in the body of Christ and the different ministries in the body of Christ. Because just like Paul said, you know, the, the body we’ll work together as one body. You can’t tell your leg, Hey, I don’t need you today. I’m just gonna, you know, I’m going to walk without my legs. That doesn’t work right. You, you need your legs to work. I mean, to walk, you know, so that’s, that’s the thing. We are one body in Christ. And so we need to learn to honor the different giftings too

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:10):
Well, Alejandro, I want to say thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast with me, I’m really excited because in a couple of weeks, we will be together on the mission field in the nation of Malawi. We’re both going there to participate in a big festival with Andrew Palau and the global network of evangelists, which is a network of partnering of different evangelists under the, the ministry of Luis Palau, who is a great Hispanic evangelists from Argentina and is now gone on to heaven. But his, his sons, Andrew and Kevin are continuing the ministry and doing a great job. And so I’m very excited to be there in Malawi with you. And I’m expecting God’s going to do tremendous things. And before you even get to Malawi, you’re, you’re going somewhere else. Where, where are you going?

Alejandro Arias (36:05):
I will be in Tanzania. I’ll be doing a GO evangelism conference with Vernon. So yeah, it’s going to be exciting. I’m expecting the Lord is going to do wonderful things.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:17):
That’s wonderful. Well, I look forward to seeing you and again, thank you so much for being on the podcast with me.

Alejandro Arias (36:25):
Thank you. It was an honor. Appreciate it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:26):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today, our ministry is supported by people like you, who help us go to the nations to preach the gospel. Our goal is every soul. It only costs us an average of about $1 for every person. We’re able to tell about Jesus. And so could you do me a favor, go to my website, king ministries.com and become a partner with us for as little as $1 a month. You can start to partner with king ministries and help us lead at least one person to Jesus every single month. Imagine for $1, you can start a party in heaven every single month. So right now, go to king ministries.com and partner with us and help us to preach the gospel to those who need to hear the gospel. The most, the least reach people in the world. Also, I’d like to ask you to go to apple podcasts and give the evangelism podcast a five star review. Your positive review will help other people find this podcast who are excited about evangelism. Thank you so much. And God bless you

Evangelism Podcast Host (37:47):
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.