1 877-431-4276Josh & Chelsea McManus | Missionaries to Mozambique
Josh & Chelsea McManus went as missionaries to the nation of Mozambique. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast they are going to talk about the preparation to get to the mission field, what they saw God do while they were on the mission field, and what their return to Canada has been like.
Connect with SAM Ministries in Mozambique: https://samministries.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Josh & Chelsea McManus went as missionaries to the nation of Mozambique. On today’s episode of the evangelism podcast. They’re going to talk about the preparation to get to the mission field, what they saw God do when they were on the mission field. And then what their return back to Canada has been like. Let’s listen to their story as they share about their mission’s adventure in the nation of Mozambique.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:29):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls in 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. Welcome
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:05):
To the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King. And I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have two very special guests with me, Josh & Chelsea McManus. And they have recently returned to Canada from being missionaries in the nation of Mozambique. And so I wanted to talk to you today about the whole journey of how you prepared to go to Mozambique and then what God did while you were there. And then this whole process of coming back to Canada and experiencing Canada after having lived in Mozambique. And so Josh kind of tell me, what is it that really prompted you and your wife to have a desire to be missionaries and to go serve the Lord on the mission field?
Josh McManus (01:55):
Yeah, so for a long time, I’ve really wanted to to experience missions and yeah, I’ve, like I said, I’ve had the desire since I was a young child, so met my wife, we got married, we both had a heart for missions and we weren’t exactly sure where we wanted to end up, but kind of through a lot of neat connections and a lot of divine, I would, well God’s Providence. We ended up finding Sam ministries. And so I remember the one night we had coffee with the field director or the, the mission leader named Dwight Leor. And I just love him. He was such a cool guy, super honest. He just really challenged us to just to try out some ministries and see what they’re all about. So yeah, through a couple more vehicles, I ended up getting a small time off of work while still maintaining my job. Chelsea quit her job. And we met Mozambique, I think in 2016 for two to three months. And we just fell in love. It was it was a really, really fun.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:55):
Now you didn’t just go for a short term missions trip. You actually put a lot of work into preparing to go to Mozambique. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> even learning Portuguese, which is their, one of their main languages that people speak there. And so you went to Brazil for some, some language training, and then they have a small Bush plane. And so you even got your, your pilot’s license. So talk to me through that preparation time of what that was like Chelsea.
Chelsea McManus (03:28):
So after we went to Mozambique for the first time we came home and we really took some time to pray and trying decide to discern if this was somewhere that God had some kind of long term future with for us. And so we both really felt in our heart that, yeah, this was where God was leading. And I think that was the first biggest step was just praying through, you know, this, the process and really trying to discern if this is where God was calling us and gathering some wise counsel. And for us, that was a huge part of the preparation, because I think after the fact as we started going through the other steps we kept going back to that, that reassurance that this is where God is leading us. This is what God has for us. We’ve done some checks. We’ve had some really strong confirmation.
Chelsea McManus (04:08):
Then the next step was to go to Brazil and learn Portuguese. And so we spent three months there and when we arrived there, we, we knew all of hello, goodbye bathroom, you know, all the essentials. And during our time there, we were just totally immersed in the culture and the language learning. And initially we were kind of resistant to the idea of learning Portuguese and Brazil. We wanted to get straight to Mozambique. We were a little impatient. We thought we could do our language learning on the field. But we were really strongly encouraged by the director and our colleagues that it would be difficult to learn on the field, just cuz you’re busy with other things and looking back, I’m so thankful we did that because we got there and, and we were able to communicate, not perfectly, probably our grammar was pretty broken, but being immersed in the language, being immersed in the culture and then arriving in Mozambique and being able to communicate with the people just opened so many avenues and doors that we wouldn’t have had without the language training.
Chelsea McManus (05:01):
And then the next step was to raise the financial support to go. And for us, when we saw those initial numbers, we had to raise a certain amount of monthly support before we were allowed to get to the field. And then of course, once we were at what the team would think of a stable base, we continued to raise support on the field and it was a huge leap of faith. Those numbers seemed so huge. You know, we had to raise a monthly support and we had to raise a startup cost. But we were so blessed. We just prayed. And then we, we shared some letters. So we sent some letters to churches within our, the fellowship of Christian assemblies, which is our denomination. We sent letters to friends and family and we prayed and God just opened the doors. And then it just felt like little by little by little, the money just came trickling in.
Chelsea McManus (05:46):
And what seemed like an impossible mountain to climb was actually just this journey of God’s provision. And we were so thankful that God led us that way because once we got to the field, the, the faith walked didn’t end. And so it was just like God was preparing our hearts as much as we were doing the preparation on the ground here and sharing the story and visiting churches and visiting friends and family members and just sharing about the work that was happening in Mozambique. And then of course the final step before we left was to saying goodbye. And for me that was both like the most exciting and the most difficult part, cuz even though we were really excited to go to Mozambique there was still part of me that was grieving what we were leaving behind. And so it was that awkward tension of going back and forth and, and just trying to struggle through just all those emotions and all those feelings of saying goodbye, but saying hello and letting go, but trusting for the next step.
Chelsea McManus (06:41):
And then of course we had a struggle with our visas. So I don’t know if we ever shared that with you. But when we were in the process of going to Mozambique, we had to apply for visas there to be a work visa to be working there. And we initially got declined because of some challenges that Sam ministries itself was having in Mozambique. And so we wound up being delayed and having to wait and having to wait. And we were so frustrated and it was lots of politics and lots of paperwork, but it also just was so thankful looking back that God, again, took us through this journey of faith and just prepared us. And it was just all every step was just trusting God, trusting God, trusting God and then seeing him show up. And so I think that was a huge part of our own heart preparation was God just preparing us to just lean into him and trust him a little more with each step, as much as we were doing the work of sharing, the things that were happening here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:28):
I think that’s so wonderful to, to see how God brings us through. And sometimes when people look at missions, it looks like a huge adventure and no one knows all the work that goes into raising money dealing with visa problems. I’ve been having some challenges with those just this last week, you know, with some of the countries that we have coming up and no one understands how much goes into actually getting to the mission field. All right. So you, you have this, this long period of preparation and you 10 years where you were preparing to go to the mission field. And so then you, you ended up in Mozambique, you’re on the ground. Josh, tell me a little bit about what you were doing there in Mozambique and how you were impacting the lives of the people there.
Josh McManus (08:20):
Yeah, so that the nice thing about same ministries is that they’re very multifaceted. So, you know, I always laugh like when we, when we signed our employee contracts at the very end of the contract, it says, and you will do whatever is necessary for the needs of the mission. So I went there as like the youth ministries coordinator. So essentially kind of like a youth pastor. My wife Chelsea was obviously she’s a registered nurse, so she was running the the healthcare and the school clinics and all that stuff. So again, like I was running youth programs for our orphan kids. It was super fun. I was just helping on the farm as a farm hand running equipment. I did a bit of Bush piloting as prior to going to the field. I also got my pilot’s license, which was a lot of fun and yeah, I just kind of did basically whatever the mission needed. When we had first gotten there, there wasn’t really a really well established ministry for the kids in our, in our care. So as Chelsea and I kind of learned the culture, got used to the kids, we started implementing this program and it was so much fun with the kids. We taught them like basic Bible stories, just built relationships and really to show them the love of Jesus. It was for me, it was the highlight of my week, every week was just hanging out with the kids and just yeah, loving on them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:35):
And so Chelsea, you are trained as a nurse. And so you were helping with medical care. What were some of the, the problems, the medical problems that people face there that maybe people in north America wouldn’t think about? Mm
Chelsea McManus (09:51):
Yeah. So for me it was a huge learning curve because obviously the health problems we face here in Canada are not the same ones we faced overseas. So malaria was a huge one. We saw, especially kids, young children, they would come to the clinic really, really sick with fever. Having seizures, having vomiting. And we often would know that’s, you know, do a test low. And behold is malaria. We saw lots of worms, lots of malnutrition, which comes with having no access to clean water. Lots of skin conditions, lots of molds and fungus and growth on people’s skins. And then of course, all the complications that come from HIV that often is an underlying challenge. There. Another aspect that was really special for me was that we did an infant milk program. And so a lot of times in the communities, if mom had passed away or grandma was the caregiver and she was unable to provide for the children, these little babes would come to the mission and the mission would be able to partner with that family to provide milk.
Chelsea McManus (10:53):
And so then we covered all the other basic healthcare needs and it was incredible for me to watch these little babies come and they were tiny and they were underweight and they were sleepy and lethargic and they come back two months later. And these they’re these healthy, happy, chunky, lively babies. And that was really a unique thing for me, just because I think here often we don’t think of malnutrition. We often don’t think of hunger as a medical need, and yet it, it’s a very real thing that impacts all aspects of life. You know, if you’re hungry, your body doesn’t function well, your brain doesn’t function well, you can’t study, you can’t learn, you can’t grow, you can’t communicate. And as soon as you start meeting that basic, basic need, everything else starts falling into pro into place.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:33):
Josh, what was your favorite part about being on the mission field?
Josh McManus (11:39):
Well, there’s so much I definitely, again, it was the children. I just love kids. And so every week we’d hang out with like, again, our orphan kids, there was about 30 of them. And then obviously we’d invite the community kids as well. So like when we first were there, we’d have up to almost a hundred kids on like a Friday and it was just so chaotic, but so much fun, like just loving on them, playing games, telling them really cool Bible stories. It was really interesting cuz like a lot of these kids, they go to church, but there’s not really like they’re, they don’t really understand the Bible. Like they don’t even understand like know what half of the, like the stories that we grew up with learning in Sunday school, they don’t, they don’t know. And so like, you know, we just started with really basic stuff and seeing them respond to the stories was, was really cool for me. And then the next thing was obviously flying cuz I love, I love airplanes it’s it was really cool.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:34):
Now I, I heard a story about how one time a, a lion needed to be flown from one place to another.
Josh McManus (12:41):
Yeah. So there was a lion on the Southern border of Mozambique on the Northern border of South Africa that was in a community and it was actually trying it’s terrible. It was actually trying to eat, eat some, eat some kids. And so they darted it and then Dwight, my boss took all the seats out of our airplane, shoved the line in the airplane with a vet, sedated it and flew five hours north seated first sedated first. And yeah, they, they brought the lion to a game park, which was actually just north of our mission, but like to see the lion, like it was, it was very big <laugh>
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:19):
I think that’s one of the things that you never think you would do on the mission field that is suddenly required. And I think you’d just be praying. Like I hope I sedated it enough that it is not gonna wake up in the back of the little plane. So Chelsea, sometimes it’s difficult being on the mission field. What were some of the biggest challenges that you faced with being there and, and how did you overcome them?
Chelsea McManus (13:44):
So I think for both of us, one of the biggest challenges was just feeling a little bit isolated and lonely. You know, we, we came from here in Morinville, AB where we have a really huge loving, supportive church community, a great family, a great network of support. And we went into a tiny little community in Mozambique and it took us a while to find our footing. But we, of course, one of the things we did was he prayed and, and God was just so good. He brought people into our lives. We built some really great relationships there. But also we were really blessed to have people that stayed connected with us here. And so FaceTime and messaging and WhatsApp and just those regular connections at home helped a lot. And then for me personally, another struggle was just the needs seemed so great <laugh> and often we just couldn’t meet them.
Chelsea McManus (14:28):
And I don’t mean in the sense of like we failed and weren’t doing anything, but just seemed like we just couldn’t do enough. You know, every time that there would be something, maybe we felt like we had accomplished or been able to support one family through a challenge or met a need in a community, there just seemed to pop up 10 or 15 more. And so it was just this real re realization that, you know, in our own strength, we just aren’t enough. And I think it was just this journey of learning to trust God and being responsive to, to what he is saying and what the needs he’s presenting to us to meet and then trusting that what we can’t meet, he’s still going to, to work in those situations.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:06):
And so now you have come back to Canada for a time. Josh partially because you’re getting work done on your teeth here and then Chelsea, you got pregnant. Yep. And you now have a little baby girl, Charlie, who is super cute out how old is Charlie
Chelsea McManus (15:24):
Now? Seven months tomorrow,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:26):
Seven months tomorrow. And, and so it’s so wonderful. And, and, and so now you’ve, you’ve come back to Canada and kind of reintegrated here. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> what has been some of the biggest challenges of coming from the mission field back to Canada and, and now you have that experience. What’s been the challenges of coming back.
Josh McManus (15:49):
I can, I can speak to that. I think one of the, one of the main things that I noticed was for me was sometimes how unappreciative people can be for things that we have in the west. I know that was hard for me even like when I first started a job that I had got when we had come back, I just noticed some people were behaving in a certain way. And I just was like, kind of shaking my head. And I was thinking, man, if they lived in Africa, they’d have a completely different perspective to to what real life is actually like for most of the developing world. So for me that was, that was a challenge.
Chelsea McManus (16:27):
I think too, for me, it was like trying to find my footing again, of like, this is my community and this is my home, but now I’ve been gone for more than two years. And so it doesn’t feel like my community and it doesn’t feel like home. And just trying to figure out like, where do I fit now in my relationships? And of course a lot had changed, you know, like we’d been overseas, people here had moved on with their lives. You know, lots of people had babies. We’d had a baby. Our perspectives had changed and just feeling like I belong, but I don’t belong. And that just kind of uncomfortable tension of just finding home again and processing all the things that we’d seen and just the needs and the, the suffering and the beauty beauty of the people there. And then coming home to a, a just completely different culture.
Chelsea McManus (17:10):
And of course, coming home in the middle of COVID. So when we came home, we were still in the middle of, I think the fourth or the fifth wave. I can’t remember which wave, but, you know, so we came home into a time when people were still socially distancing, still isolating, still numbers were low having to wear masks, not being able to have people in their homes, we weren’t vaccinated yet. And so that was just another challenge of just having a totally different worldview and having navigated COVID in a different culture <laugh> and coming home to a world that was quite polarized.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:38):
Do you sometimes feel like it’s hard for people to understand the experience that you’ve been through?
Chelsea McManus (17:44):
Yeah. And I think it’s hard for us to articulate as well. Like the things that we lived because it was, it was our life. It wasn’t just one story or one experience. It was our life there <laugh>. And so there, there’s very few people here who can really relate to that. And we’re really thankful for the people. You know, we had people who visited us and then thankful for others who maybe have done other work on the missions field, because I feel like there’s just a, there’s a heart connection there that no one else understands.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:10):
I haven’t been to Mozambique yet, but I want to go, but I’ve been to many places in Africa and you just fall in love with the, the people, just such wonderful people and, and so full of life and so full of excitement. And it’s really wonderful. But then also I think when you come back to north America, sometimes there’s a feeling like you’re sharing stories and people don’t really care. Mm-Hmm, <affirmative> what you’re and you’re like feeling it. All right. So let’s, let’s talk about Sam ministries at church last Sunday they showed a video about needing money to dig a water. Well, mm-hmm <affirmative>. And so you’re wearing a, a shirt right now that says walk for water. And that the church here in Canada is, is actively working to, to raise money to, to dig a water. Well, and, and so tell us a little bit about, about Sam ministries and then what their website is, so that if somebody wants to help support them or wants to help dig a water well, in Mozambique, that they’d be able to find out more information about Sam ministry can speak
Josh McManus (19:20):
To that. Yeah. So one of the main facets that Sam is involved in is a Bible school for rural Moza me and Bush pastors, mostly pastors who aren’t well educated. And so three or four times a year, the pastors come out to our mission and they go in about two weeks of intensive biblical training where they do, we teach seminars and do different courses with them. They do exams and yeah, it’s a really good time. But one of the main problems that we have is we don’t have a good water source to provide water for the training center for the pastors.
Chelsea McManus (19:54):
We’re talking like a hundred and some pastors.
Josh McManus (19:56):
Yeah. About a hundred. Oh
Chelsea McManus (19:57):
Yeah. We’re talking like a hundred and some pastors in the middle of nowhere, Mozambique meeting together and needing to be hygienic, have water to drink water, to cook dishes, to wash. Yeah.
Josh McManus (20:10):
Yeah. And so one of the, again, they they’ve been trying to get a water well drilled at the, the mission at the training center just to provide water for these events. And so, yeah, that’s what they’re working on currently.
Chelsea McManus (20:23):
And the second one at the school.
Josh McManus (20:25):
Oh yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:25):
Cool. And so what’s the, the website, do you know it off the top of your head,
Chelsea McManus (20:29):
Sam ministries.org, or you can check steps with Sam.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:34):
Wonderful. All right. Let’s finish up by speaking to people who feel like God has called them to be a missionary. They don’t really know what the next step is, but they’re, they maybe want to go to the mission field someday. What type of advice would you give to someone who feels called by God to be a missionary,
Josh McManus (20:58):
Don’t try and figure everything out, just let God do what he does. Cuz he is really good at it. <Laugh> you’ll order your steps.
Chelsea McManus (21:06):
And I would say, look for wise, counsel, gather around yourself a team of people who will pray with you and help you discern what God might be saying to you and helping you discern. What’s just feelings and what’s God’s call. And what’s the mix of both, because I think for us, that was one thing that we often had to go back to was this feeling like when things got really hard was like, are we really supposed to be here? Is this really where God has called us to be? And we had to really wrestle with that. And we were able to go back to those people who had prayed with us and journeyed with us and they were able to just encourage us and remind us, like we walked with you and we prayed with you and, and we’ve heard God say yes. And so I think having that really strong support of prayer and encouragement is a thing that once you get there helps you stay.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:54):
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. I really appreciate it. And you’re back here in Canada for a time, but I know that your journey with ministry and what God has called you to do is not finished yet. And so in the future, I know God has many more amazing adventures in store for the two of you. And I just love your heart for God, your passion, to follow after God, your passion for following his plan for your life. And, and so I’m just so excited to see what God will do with you guys next.
Josh McManus (22:29):
Thanks for having us.
Chelsea McManus (22:31):
Thank you so much, Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:32):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (23:51):
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John Kingma | Church Planting that Works
John Kingma spent time as a missionary in Indonesia. Now he is taking the lessons and techniques he learned on the foreign mission field and using them to plant a church in St. Albert, Alberta. On today’s episode, he will share a church planting method that actually works.
Connect with John Kingma: https://www.facebook.com/john.kingma
Connect with Life Church in St. Albert: https://www.facebook.com/Life-Church-St-Albert-105181072061422
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
John Kingma spent time as a missionary in Indonesia. Now he’s taking the lessons and technique he learned on the foreign mission field and using them to plant a church in St. Albert, Alberta. On today’s episode, he will share a church planting method that actually works.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:28):
Welcome to The Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:51):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast and I’m Daniel King. And I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, John Kema in St. Albert Canada. Thank you for being on the evangelism podcast.
Pastor John Kingma (01:05):
Well, thanks for having me, man.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:07):
Now we first met in Indonesia. That’s right. You were living there at the time and we came and we got to do a gospel festival with you and we had tremendous results and you actually went there as a missionary, right. And you married a beautiful girl. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> tell me about how that all happened.
Pastor John Kingma (01:29):
Wow. That’s a long story, but make it a little bit shorter. I always said to the Lord, you know, I’m just gonna follow you with all my heart and soul, and I’m not gonna be distracted by looking for a mate in life. And if you have someone for me, you know, my address and you know how to get ahold of me. And so a friend of mine in Indonesia asked me to come and do a series of meetings in his church. And after the service, people were just filing out the church and just shaking hands and saying hi. And when my wife passed by and shook hands with me, I felt the hand of God go in, literally go inside of me and pull me towards her. And so prayed about it and felt this is something of the Lord. And then that’s what started it all. And yeah, within a few months we had made the decision to get married. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:22):
Now tell me a little bit about the, the type of ministry that you did when you were in Indonesia.
Pastor John Kingma (02:28):
Wow. That was very varied as well. We would do large crusades. We did that probably some of the largest ones. We had crowds of around 10,000 people in some of the largest events. But we also about once a month, we go into a village somewhere like remote, many of which had no electricity. And so it was a real missionary experience, but I love villages. I grew up on a farm. My wife is from a village. And so we would go into those places be in a church, set up some sort of small crusade type event. And then during the day we would go and knock on people’s doors and just pop in and visit them and pray with them and whatever, and do that. And then later on, my wife had a word from the Lord about feeding the poor, and we started to feed people on the streets, the street, people that were living on the streets. And eventually that led to her starting a home for homeless women that had mental difficulties. So yeah, that kind of, that’s kind of what we did mostly.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:38):
And so now you’ve come back here to Canada and you are currently living in St. Albert and you are planting a church right here in Canada, but you’re really approaching your church planting with a missionary type mindset because you are reaching out to people that that may not be Christians. So talk to me about how you’re doing this church plant.
Pastor John Kingma (04:07):
Yeah, well, it was very important for us to do it that way because I believe God wants to start a church planning movement. And I saw a lot of churches being planted where they would either send a large, you know, group of people from one church to start another, or they would do something over the internet, try to attract as many Christians as possible. And we wanted to be very organic and, and really reach local people. So when we came here we just started with people we had met and and gotten to know. And then a lot of what we do is just go out in the community, try to meet people. We go to things like farmer’s markets, car shows anywhere where people get together and try to make a friend or two. I also have a business card done up with dream interpretation and divine healing.
Pastor John Kingma (05:01):
And we’ve had a lot of people respond to that, you know, wanting to know what their dreams mean. And then we are able to show them how this relates to what the Bible says, cuz God’s very consistent with what he tells people. And so translate it for them out of scripture and show them how God is actually inviting them into a conversation. And that’s born good fruit as well. And just believe in God, words of knowledge, sometimes whatever, you know, you just go out on the street and meet people and make friends and, and let the Lord move in that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:35):
And so you’re not trying to reach other Christians or send people from one church out to start another church. You’re actually going into the community, looking for people who maybe don’t know anything about God and you’re trying to reach them.
Pastor John Kingma (05:50):
Yeah, pretty much. Yeah. I mean, the thing is, is, you know, if you get a transfer growth comes with its own set of problems, cuz usually disgruntled people stayed disgruntled, no matter who’s in front of them. But the purpose of planting churches is to reach people. I, I personally believe that God wants to do something in this city. That’s gonna result in growth in all churches. And rather than, you know, you always think about as a business person, I’m a business person. You look at where your greatest potential is for growth in your market. And if I’m competing in this space for Christian people, well there’s churches with big budgets, there’s churches with all kinds of stuff, you know? I don’t want to compete in that space, but if I go after people that don’t know Jesus, there’s a lot of less competition and a lot more opportunity. So, and so it’s about identifying who you are, what God’s purpose for you in your community is and connecting with people in that community. And it’s amazing how often God matches you with people that are exactly with what you’re dealing with. It’s just interesting.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:09):
Let’s talk about being by vocational. So you are in ministry, you always have a heart for ministry. You’re always ministering to people. You’re, you’re planting the church. But you also have a business, a carpet cleaning business, which my father ran a carpet cleaning business for, for several years. And so you’re cleaning carpets, but you’re also looking to, to clean hearts. How does that work out? Doing both business and ministry?
Pastor John Kingma (07:37):
Well, it’s hard. I’ll just be honest. It takes a lot of hours. I read a verse the other day in Corinthians where Paul was talking about how the churches were growing because they worked <laugh>. You have to work to get people to come to Jesus. It’s work to get out of the community and meet new people. You know, there’s nights. You don’t feel like it. You feel like sitting at home and watching a movie, but you get off your butt and you go out and you meet someone and you wind up having a great time doing it. And the joy of the Lord shows up in the middle of that thing. But when it comes to work too, you, you know, you need to switch your mindset. I I’m about my father’s business. Now I’m about my father’s business. See, I’m a son of the king.
Pastor John Kingma (08:19):
And so I’m about the kingdom business. So when I come into a home and clean carpets, Jesus wrapped a towel around his waist and he washes disciples feet. And he says, as I’ve served, you, you serve others. So when I’m there, I’m all about serving that person. Cuz that’s what Jesus told me to do. I’m about my father’s business. So the way I do business and the character that I do business with and, and how I’m accountable for what I do and how I’m willing to do whatever it takes to make it right for people and other things that we do in, in the business realm, we’re actually bringing God’s kingdom there. And when the opportunity comes we teach our people in our church. The one question that every Christian needs to be an expert at asking is can I pray for you? And you would be surprised how many times we’re in a home or we’re in a restaurant or we’re in some situation. And there’s an opportunity to say, Hey, can I pray for you? And people respond to that. It’s it’s really amazing. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:17):
So let’s talk about the power of that phrase. Can I pray for you? It’s a very simple phrase, but it really opens up people’s hearts. Do you have any testimonies of what people have asked for prayer for when you’ve been asking them this? Oh
Pastor John Kingma (09:32):
Wow. I have a lot of testimonies. I remember being on at a bus stop in Edmonton guy, sat down with beside me and I just turned to him and said, Hey, you know, I’m a Christian and I’m out here. Can I pray for you? Weirdest response I ever had, he just grabbed my shirt with his two hands and put his head right here and just started a ball. And I found out that he was a backslidden Christian <laugh> and he was on his way and he was gonna go have a bender. And he was just like, you know, God just convicted him. Right there, turned his life around. I remember just the other day we were cleaning a carpet for a guy who owns a restaurant. He was complaining about his back and everything like that. And I just turned to my wife and said, we need to pray for him. So <laugh> we went and we prayed for him and it just he’s like, yeah. Okay. I guess, you know, and he, and then you’re able to pray in those situations. It’s it’s really amazing. Really amazing, you know?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:30):
Yeah. We just did a great outreach in broken arrow, Oklahoma down in the United States at a street fair where we put up a booth and just put up a big sign that said free prayer. And then as people walked by, we gave them a, a drink of water. We had bottles of water and we said, Hey, we, we’re also praying for people it’s free. What do you need prayer for? And we found so many people to be open and it’s over a three day period. We prayed with over 300 people. We had 56 give their lives to Jesus and pray with us for salvation. And so we’re gonna take that same idea to the Tulsa state fair, awesome this year. And they’ve given us permission to have a booth. We’re actually gonna have a little platform with a sound system and then a, a, a prayer tent. And as people come through, we’re going to pray with them last year. 1.1 million people came through the Tulsa state fair. And so I think one of the challenges of evangelism in the church is, is people think people are well, if they want to get saved, they’ll come into the church. But really I think the church needs to go to where the people are. Talk to me about that.
Pastor John Kingma (11:43):
Okay. Well the Lord challenged me in this cuz a lot of churches talk about, you know, how do we get outside the four walls of the church? And the phrase the Lord said to me is forget the walls, just have church outside. And the thing is, is people are not coming to a church unless they have a meaningful relationship with someone. Who’s a believer. I remember doing an evangelistic campaign one summer. I worked in a church as a on staff evangelist. We did an evangelistic campaign. We did follow up, we did all that stuff and I collected data. And what we found out was that 100% of the people that followed through with their decision to follow Jesus and wound up in a church, had a significant relationship with the Christian before they accepted Jesus a savior. So your friendship is everything.
Pastor John Kingma (12:36):
And our, you know, in our church, when we build our church, coffee, pot is one of the most important things. We want to have time for fellowship. We want the, for us, that’s just as important as the service cuz it was in the, in the, in the new Testament. They continued in, in the apostles doctrine and in fellowship in breaking of bread and in prayer. And so those were just as important as prayer. And so that’s vital. That relationship is what brings about discipleship. You think about it. Are you going to go to a complete stranger and say, Hey, what about this in my life? No, but will you go to your friend? Absolutely. So natural discipleship flows along relationship. So we don’t just go out on the street and just randomly talk to people, pray for ’em. Okay. See you later. We always have a point of contact.
Pastor John Kingma (13:30):
So we are continually running an alpha program in our house because we find that’s a very safe place for people from non-church backgrounds to come and discover Jesus. And so we have that constantly running because we can plug people in as we’re meeting them. You know, we’re meeting people, we wanna follow up at Tim Hortons with a coffee, you know, or Starbucks or wherever they like to hang out. And we want to have that relationship beyond going because if you don’t, you’re gonna lose him. You absolutely hard. The relationship is everything. Look what Jesus did. He walked with people for years. He didn’t just randomly call disciples and then take off. He walked with 12 guys for three years and that was a real relationship because they slept in the same place. They went and ate in the same place. You know, they followed him everywhere. That was very important. Concept is the relationship aspect. And to miss that means that you’re not gonna get quality discipleship.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:28):
I really like what you’re saying. That discipleship requires relationship. I think one of the, the challenges of many discipleship programs, a lot of people are, are moving online and they think if I can just put videos together and training materials, then I can disciple thousands and thousands of people. But it’s really hard to disciple someone without that, that face to face connection. It is. So not only are you planning a church, but you also want to train church planters. Yep. Both in the Canadian context and also in the international context you have lots of experience in Africa and Indonesia and other parts of the world. And so we have lots of listeners that have a heart for evangelism. I’m sure many of them would like to plan a church. What advice would you give to someone who has a heart to plan a church?
Pastor John Kingma (15:22):
Just do it, just do it. So in our church and with people that we’re discipling, we always talk about let’s redefine church. Okay. So we’re always talking about it. You know, most modern churches is a building central location. But Jesus said where two or three are gathered in my name I’m right in their midst. And so that means that you have to have people gathering together, not just for the sake of gathering together, but Jesus has to be involved. So just getting together and sharing food is not church, but when you get together share food and talk about Jesus. Now you’re having church. So when you redefine church that way, then it’s about, and the other thing that’s exciting is Jesus never said all three of the people had to be Christians. So if you’re sitting there with two, your unsaved buddies and you’re talking about what Jesus is doing in your life that’s church, Jesus is gonna show up and so go and have church as much as possible.
Pastor John Kingma (16:26):
I mean, use the local coffee shop, use a local restaurant you know, your breaks at work. You’re, you know, wherever it is that God opens a door for you, you can just go and have church and then start to take that and take the relationships that come out of that and start to put it together into a regular ongoing thing where it could be in your home could be a small location. You rent. Usually it’s really good to start in the home because that is what church is about. So our goal is to raise up people that will think like entrepreneurs, because everywhere you go, you’re gonna have different things. Even you go in the same country to a different city, you’re gonna have different things to overcome in that city. There’s gonna be a different mentality in the people. There’s gonna be different strengths and weaknesses as you go in and you’re just gonna have to figure it out.
Pastor John Kingma (17:21):
So as an entrepreneur in the business world, what you do is you try an idea. If it fails, you learn from it. Try another idea until you find an idea that works and you can build a business that makes money well in the Christian world as a church planter, I go and I try something. If it fails, I learn from it and I try something else. And I keep going until I find something that works and that’s gonna work in that community that people are attracted to, or that people connect with. And that we start getting traction and start making disciples of Jesus. So that’s kind of, if you’re a new church planner, just go try it, just try something. How can I have church here? Help me. Holy spirit. Talk to me, show me the opportunities. Ask that little question. Can I pray for you that opens so many doors and yeah, just go for it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:12):
Well, let’s finish with a word of prayer. Would you pray for people who are called by God to be church planners and to build relationships that lead to discipleship?
Pastor John Kingma (18:23):
Awesome. We’ll do so father, we just lift up those who are either watching or listening. And Lord, we just pray for them. Father there’s many people that the fire of evangelism burns strong and in their heart, but they don’t know how to connect that to a local church. And I know Lord Jesus, that church planning is a great way to do that. And for many people who have this thing, they want to see the kingdom advanced. They want to see God’s kingdom move forward. And they’re not sure where to go, father. I just pray for them. Lord Jesus, that you would just somehow through this conversation, that there would be just an idea, a spark in their life that would just take hold and that they would just be able to go for it. I just pray for boldness like you, like it was prayed for an acts of boldness and that when they pray for people, people would be healed. That demons would be cast out when they prayed for people that you give them authority and Jesus’ name and that you would give them wisdom as they talk. And they share about you in Jesus’ name.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:28):
Amen. Amen. Well, thank you for being on the evangelism podcast.
Pastor John Kingma (19:32):
Well, thanks for having me. That’s a lot of fun.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:33):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (20:53):
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.
Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Apple iTunes
Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Spotify
Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Google Podcasts
Find The Evangelism Podcast on Stitcher
Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Amazon Audible
The Evangelism Podcast is also available on iHeartRadio
Jocelyn Hansen | Moving into the Heart of a Community
Jocelyn Hansen leads Fusion Canada, a ministry focused on working alongside people of goodwill to transform local communities. She does this by building relationships and doing life with people within a community. Fusion Canada is reaching people with the love of Jesus in a uniquely Canadian way.
Learn more about Fusion Canada: https://fusioncanada.ca/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Jocelyn Hansen leads, fusion, Canada, a ministry focused on working alongside people of Goodwill to transform local communities. She does this by building relationships and doing life with people within a community fusion. Canada is reaching people with the love of Jesus in a uniquely Canadian way.
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 (00:56):
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, miss Jocelyn Hanson. She leads fusion Canada. We are in Warrenville Alberta. And thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (01:16):
Thank you, Daniel. It’s really exciting to be able to share the story with you. So thank you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:21):
So let’s start at the beginning. Tell me what is fusion Canada?
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (01:27):
Well, fusion Canada is a branch of fusion international, which started in Australia 65 years ago by a name man named Mel Garvin, who was a young man at the time, searching for his purpose in life and came across a Bible camp and found Jesus there.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:47):
And how did you get connected to fusion international?
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (01:50):
So then interestingly enough, my daughter was working in Canmore, Alberta, right outta high school. And she met the Australians who had come to see bam and Jasper. And they asked her if she had a passion, what her passion was. And she said, oh, she would love to go to Africa someday. And they said, well, come in to fusion inter in Australia. And that’s how it got started.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:17):
And then later you ended up bringing it here to Canada because it had such a tremendous impact on your daughter’s life.
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (02:25):
Then there were some people in Edmonton who were already connected and they had brought the internationals to bam. And so we did our first foundations course, I think 2003. And it just struck a chord with my heart to serve the community in the front lines and to find creative ways to care for people in our communities.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:49):
I really love your focus on going into a community and having an impact in the community. Tell me kind of what fusion does. What is the goal of fusion
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (03:02):
We wanna share? The good news of God’s love, and we wanna do it in a way that’s by making relationships and walking with people on their journeys. The gospel comes alive when we’re walking with each other and we’re sharing God’s love. And that looks many, many, many different ways. Whether it’s for young people at risk or seniors who need help or mental illness we let it be creative where it is it isn’t cookie cutter. And that’s what I love about it. You go into a community and you say, God, what are you doing here? And then he invites you into the story that he’s already well on with. And then we get to be a part of that because God is good.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:53):
Now it sounds like there’s many different expressions of how fusion reaches out to the community and gets involved in what God is doing. And I, I know talking to your son-in-law Mattie, he loves doing block parties and, and going into a community and just bringing people together and having a time of fellowship. And so you have block parties. What are some other ways that you, you reach into a community and make a difference?
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (04:20):
Yeah, so the, the festival, the block party came out of wanting churches and community organizations to work together. So we were in west Edmonton for over 10 years and we did breakfast clubs in junior highs and high schools. And we worked with the police, the community leagues, the churches, anybody that wanted to make a difference in their community, believing always that together we’re better. And together there is hope that we all bring something that is essential to the responses of the needs in the community. And that no one of us has all of the answers, but together we can really shine the light of Jesus in a community. So with that, we also have some training foundations is sort of the underpinning knowledge of the gospel living with God, living with others, living with yourself and then community transformation, but always the goal is to inspire a kingdom cell group of people who can then go and see what the Lord’s doing and, and play the part that they’re invited to play.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:29):
Let’s talk more about the foundations course, because it sounds like that’s really the foundation mm-hmm <affirmative> to discipling and, and really turning people from maybe someone who doesn’t have much exposure to God, to really having a living relationship with God. So kind of describe to me, what does the foundation’s course look like? How does someone go through it and, and what are some of the things that they learn as they go through?
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (05:56):
Mm, thanks, Daniel. When I did foundations for the first time I grew up in the church, my dad was a pastor, so I wasn’t really expecting to blow, be blown away. I thought, you know what, you know, and I probably came with some arrogance in, in all of that. And I think what I loved the most was that it was actually tools of how important it is to listen to another human being and why listening is so profound. And then things about our own like body, soul, and spirit. We’ve all got bruises and deficits. We’ve all got things that have gone wrong because we live in a broken world, but then the redemption of Jesus and the forgiveness of Jesus and the glory of God, justice, mercy, and compassion. And so whether you’re a new believer or whether you’ve been believing for 40 years, I found that the course always meets you where you’re at and the group of people that God in brings together for that time that we share is always for the work that he wants to do. So it allows for a large gamut of flexibility for sharing the gospel and going deeper at the same time.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:10):
And so how does <affirmative> and so how does, how do people go through the foundation’s course? How long does it take to go through it?
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (07:18):
So we could, we have a one week foundations course that would be generally residential. So we’d rent a camp and 40 or 50 of us would turn up and we would do life together. And it would be from 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM. And it was foundations is a really, really jampacked course, most would say, there’s too much for too little time. So now we’ve done a 12 week with two weekend retreats. We’ve done it as small groups in churches, and we’re going to do one starting in September here in Warrenville. It will run till December 14th and we’ll also have pods from other communities. So we’re gonna try something new this time, but the whole idea is that you’re doing it with a group of people that you’re actually doing life with because that’s kind of where the rubber hits the road, isn’t it? The gospel is meant to be lived out it’s meant to be transformational. And so when you wrestle these things with people who are particularly not of the same views as you might be, it even gets more deep and more exciting about finding how much God loves us and how much grace he has for us. And so it has been super profound in my life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:38):
You’ve used this, this term doing life together several times now. So can you give me some examples or some testimonies of how you are doing life together with others and kind of what God has done through those relationships? Mm,
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (08:57):
Yeah, I think for the many people that the Lord has brought that call themselves fusion, Canada has been that small group of friends that wanna do life together, share in the hard stuff cry with each other, laugh with each other, rejoice with each other be on mission with each other, but not as an event or a program, but really where the rubber hits the road doing life together. So I know there’s times when yeah, profound times where I have had crisis in my own family with my children or my grandchildren. And I have been had this group of friends that have been around me that have prayed for me and celebrated me and held me up when I just wanted to fall down. And I think that’s been the biggest thing where, mm, yeah, it, it was very, very deep.
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (09:57):
I, I guess that’s the word that I would use people who have your back prayer warriors who are around you and diverse people that I may not have chosen if I had to choose. And I, I think that’s the other thing I celebrate is that who I was 10 years ago is thank God different than who I am now, the refiners fire and my, my diverse group of small group of friends that I do life with that challenge me, ask me the hard questions. So it’s not superficial. And I guess that’s what I love about it. Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:35):
That’s wonderful right now we’re sitting inside a fusion thrift shop is right here in downtown. Morville more is not very big, no like 7,000 people, but this is the, the little town where my wife grew up and you have this, this thrift shop here. But it’s under the, the fusion ministry. And so you’re using it to, to reach out to the community. You’re right here in the middle of the community. The other day, my, my wife was helping my father-in-law to clean out his house. And so we had some stuff and, and brought it over here and we saw that you already put it out for sale <laugh>. And my wife even came and bought some, some books and stuff at, so we’re being part of the community. And, but kind of talk to me about the, the vision for this thrift shop and, and how you use it to, to help people in the community.
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (11:25):
Yeah. And that’s a really good segue to what do we mean by community? So I will have my community of people around me, and then there’s the community of Warrenville and the people that we do life with. And so how the Lord birthed this thrift story is always an amazing story to me. Kathy, the assistant manager, and I turned up to do sandwiches for a funeral at our church. And we ended up having this amazing conversation and, and we both had a heart to do this. And honestly, within weeks it was happening and both of us would look back and say, wow, we did not see this exact thing coming. And so the goodness of God he wanted something in the heart of this community where people can come shopping. Yes. Providing reasonably priced clothing in housewares, because there is no clothing store in Morville would be one very upfront need.
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (12:25):
But I’ve just found that people will be dancing and singing to Johnny Cash. I’ve been sharing my story with some people who ask questions and, and they say, I gotta get back to church and my son died and I need some support. And so the whole, the whole place has been so holy spirit filled the conversations that we have. Now, we have a partnership with Jesse’s house victim services, social services, the town, the hotel other congregations who have people in need. And really you can’t outgive God Daniel, you can’t outgive God. So as fast as it pours in, as fast as it can go out people are being blessed by the abundance and generosity of people who donate to the store. And we’ve just been able to pour that abundant blessing back out the front door. And I am in awe. I go to tell you, I stand in awe of the goodness of God and yeah, how much he loves Warrenville and how much he loves this community and how much he wants to be revealed to his people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:41):
Well, I so love all the different things that, that fusion Canada is doing. Let’s talk a little bit about vision. What do you hope to see God do in the future and how can this reach other people here in Canada and other parts of the world?
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (13:59):
Yeah, look, that’s that’s a really good question. We walk, we walk by faith, not by sight. We walk day by day and what I see the Lord doing now, moving Maddy and Ashley to Australia here in the next year, it’s going to become very related to fusion in our, in India, Nepal Africa, where we have people who really want to have foundations more accessible. And so using zoom and, and other technology to make the teaching and the training except accessible for the purpose of discipleship, not for the purpose of getting more information in people’s head, but for the purpose of serving remote Indian communities. So that, and in Canada, I would love to fly into Northern remote areas. We’ve always had a dream of flying into Northern remote areas, doing the foundations course, doing festivals, empowering and training teams, so that it isn’t dependent on us, but that you can encourage others who are waiting to share the gospel and give them hope and a way to do that. So across Canada in the Northern remote areas and yeah, Jerusalem Judea, and to the end of the earth,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:22):
What a tremendous vision. Well, we have lots of listeners who are here in Canada and in other parts of the world. And, and so if someone’s listening and they would like to find out more about fusion or, or even support what God is doing through you, what’s your website. What’s a way that they could find more information about you.
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (15:41):
Yes, you can go to canadafusion.ca. And everything that we’ve talked about today, there’s snippets of it. All, all the contact information is there as well, Daniel, and we would love to dream with people. We would say, what’s God doing in your community and how can the tools we have help you to grow that and bring life and hope to that. So that would be our offer and we would be happy to come wherever you are.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:14):
Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.
Jocelyn Hansen – Fusion Canada (16:18):
Thank you, Daniel and blessings to you and your family and king ministries as well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:24):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus. And I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more, but please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (17:43):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit kingministries.com. Again, that’s kingministries.com.
Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Apple iTunes
Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Spotify
Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Google Podcasts
Find The Evangelism Podcast on Stitcher
Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Amazon Audible
The Evangelism Podcast is also available on iHeartRadio
Bill Sikma | A New Era for Evangelism Explosion
Bill Sikma works with Evangelism Explosion, the ministry founded by D. James Kennedy. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast he shares several effective stories for communicating the Gospel.
Website for Evangelism Explosion Resources: https://evangelismexplosion.org/
Listen to a previous episode of The Evangelism Podcast when we talk about Evangelism Explosion: https://kingministries.com/podcast-episodes/pat-kendall-evangelism-explosion-in-the-local-church/
Transcript:
Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
Bill Sikma works with Evangelism Explosion. The ministry founded by D. James Kennedy. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast he shares several effective stories and methods for communicating the gospel.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:27):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King. Welcome
Evangelist Daniel King (00:52):
To the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest bill Sigma. He is with evangelism explosion. Thank you so much for being with me.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (01:06):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Evangelist Daniel King (01:07):
So evangelism explosion is known all over the world. It was started by James Kennedy who wrote a green book called evangelism explosion. And that has been used to train so many people around the world in how to share their faith. Can you tell me a little bit about how the whole ministry got started and, and what impact it’s had over the years?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (01:34):
Yeah. it’s really been a transformative ministry where James Kennedy was actually dwindling down in the size of his church and his wife was even saying, I think I’m gonna have to go down to the church at the end of the street, because we went from 45 to about 12 and we gotta come up with another plan and he got invited to go to a different church to speak. But what he found out that there was an individual there that actually said, well, we’re gonna take you witnessing. And he said, what? And he went out to learn how to effectively share his faith, but more so he saw the tremendous fruit that came from that time witnessing. It was, he had a tool to take back to train people. And he told the remaining people of the church said we’re gonna change the world.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (02:32):
And from that, they literally changed the world one person can’t, but through the spiritual multiplication of discipling people and how to share their faith, by giving them a pattern as in second Timothy one and two, it talks about having the sound pattern of teaching and also entrusting it to faithful men and women who will train others, who can train others. And through that, they saw this multiplication just spread. And before, you know, it, all these other churches are going, what are you doing to make your church just explode and grow so fast? And that’s where evangelism explosion was really birthed out. And he started training other pastors how they can train and equip, lay people how to effectively share the gospel. And so, yeah. Now, now what is considered classic EE is that tool that was being used back in the day, but we have tools from hope for kids, exce prison, EE deaf, EEE, all sorts of things to fulfill the vision of every nation, equipping every people group and every age group to witness to every person. So we believe if you can believe in Jesus, you can share Jesus, but not just stop there. We want you to have the tools to be able to train others who can train others.
Evangelist Daniel King (03:54):
So what is your position with evangelism explosion and how did you get involved in this vision?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (04:03):
Yeah, so really I have a passion just to equipping the next generation. So I work a lot with youth and young adults and training younger pastors in evangelism to give them the tools they need to reach this next generation I’m involved in overseeing our tool XE. And we’re actually working on building some new tools right now. That is gonna be just top of the line stuff to equip this next generation. And I get real excited about leading different short term mission trips as well for them. You know, my story is God grabbed a hold of my life in college. And I grew up in church and knew things about God, but really didn’t live for ’em. And I had an experience May 15th, 2011, that my life was transformed. And I was all in for Jesus. I felt called a ministry to take the gospel to the nations, but there’s a big problem.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (05:04):
I had no idea how to share my faith and where to even begin. So I was fumbling around maybe if I just bring my Bible to my college campus and start at the beginning, I had no idea what I was doing and I didn’t need another sermon or a talk on telling me to share my faith. I already felt guilty because I wasn’t doing it. But the main reason was I was never equipped. And I said, God, please show me how to do this. And by the grace of God, we had a guy in our church by the name of Randy Bowman, who was training and equipping people in a small group through the tool of evangelism explosion. And it was there where I received equipping and how to share my faith and what, I didn’t know what just a little bit of equipping would do within a few weeks.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (05:57):
I was inside a youth prison in juvenile hall, substitute teaching, as I was seeking out, what is God’s call in my life or what ministry and what position there’s many great ways to go into ministry and share the gospel. But what specifically did he want me to do? And I put in a practice in the wreck yard, what I learned while some guys were playing basket, I talked to the guy by the name of Matthew and I shared with him what I learned through the EE course and there in the wreck yard, I gotta pray with Matthew and see him want to begin his relationship with Jesus. And I was like, this is incredible. And from there, that just was the catalyst where I started to confidently share my faith. And I never thought I’d be in a place to be able to help someone else be able to share their faith.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (06:49):
And now it’s so exciting to see people come up and say, bill, I was able to share with my best friend or my grandpa or my dad. It’s just so heartwarming to see it’s I don’t need to be everywhere and be the one sharing, but it’s them. And then to watch them, I remember this kid by the name of Zeke, we’re at the mall and we’re training some youth how to share. And he became so confident and he’s leading the other youth to Christ and all the other youth are going, I wanna be like Zeke and be able to share, and we’re at a shopping mall and he just goes, Hey guys, follow me. I’ll show you how. And it just made me think of Jesus when he says, come follow me and I’ll show you how to fish for men. And so watching that was that proud moment and to see how the EE tool just was a sound pattern, to be able to give the tools, to be able to replicate. So he knew how to train others and they had the best conversations with different youth in that shopping mall to lead them to Christ.
Evangelist Daniel King (07:54):
Now we’re here at together 2022. It’s a great initiative here at the cotton bowl in, in Dallas, Texas led by Nick hall with pulse ministries. And they’re doing a great job, just getting people excited about sharing their faith and praying for, for God to move in this nation. And, and so you were involved in helping to train some of the young people that have come here. Tell me a little bit about how you did that training and, and what you tell people when you’re trying to encourage them to share their faith.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (08:29):
Yeah. So we had a great workshop yesterday where we taught them the different points of the, the gospel message. And we often talk about that. It’s easy to learn and hard to forget. And so we, we really make it simple. The gospel message is very simple and it doesn’t Rob from the power of it. But the main thing is you cannot learn something by sitting around the table and talking about it. So what we did today is go out and put into practice what we learned in a classroom setting. So we call that on the job training or connect activities. In fact, 70% of learning comes from practicing what you’ve learned by putting it in a practice through, on the job training. But 90% of learning comes from having to teach someone else how to do it. So that’s when the rubber hits the road.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (09:23):
So today was so exciting to take a lot of the people who came to our workshop yesterday to say, Hey, let us show you what it actually looks like in person, cuz sometimes things seemed canned or scripted and the same way when you’re learning to play the piano or instruments, things could be very mechanical, but you gotta learn those basics. So you can just turn loose and play this masterpiece, but you start with these basic skills. So they gotta see what that looked like in person today, where we talked to so many different staff workers here at the event, security guards, seeing many people come to faith in Christ and them overwhelmed and thankful for what we shared with them. And in fact, walking out towards McDonald’s and just being out there, just watching the, the different groups and engage people in conversations was just so amazing.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (10:17):
And you know what? We often overlook just people who identify as Christians. And those are some of the best people we can talk to. A lot of them are struggling with, I don’t know, am I good enough? Did I do enough? Does God love me? What they’re missing is the core message of that gospel. So for instance Luana was one of the event staff that we talked to and she thought, oh yeah, you know, I would, you just pray for me so I could just be stronger in the word and you know a stronger believer and she had all those church words and then we asked her what Luana, you know, could we just ask you the spiritual question? What would you say to God if he asked, why should I give you eternal life? Or why should I let you into my heaven?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (11:05):
What would you say? Well, it’s because I’m doing good deeds. You know, I’m doing, I’m doing these good things and I’ll spread the word and doing all these church things. And it was a great opportunity to share with her. It’s not about what you can do, but it’s about what Jesus has done for you on the cross. And it’s us putting our faith in Jesus. And so we were able to go back and say, Luana, does that make sense? Remember when we began this conversation, you told God, it was about all your good deeds and all these good things that you do, but do you see it? None of that, that it’s about putting your faith in Jesus. And then after that, that’s what causes us to wanna live for him and do these things. She’s like, yes. Now I see. So, you know, do some of these people make a first time decision to really transferring their trust to Christ alone? I don’t know. Or maybe it’s a reassurance and they didn’t know how to articulate it. That’s that’s not my job. I, I really don’t care, but I just hope that they have that understanding of the gospel message and the biggest home run of, of that is all the people who gotta see what just happened, where they went, oh my goodness. That’s exactly what they learned. And I could see myself having that conversation. When I go back home with my friends.
Evangelist Daniel King (12:21):
That’s outstanding. You mentioned that when you taught yesterday, you taught them to just share a, a simple gospel. Can, can you share that with me? If, if, if you’re sharing with someone, a simple gospel message, what would that sound like?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (12:35):
Yeah. Well, we talk about, you know, having some great engaging questions and oftentimes we think witnessing about, what am I gonna say next? But witnessing has a lot to do with, what am I gonna ask next? And it’s very important that we listen to other people and ask some good engaging questions to them. In fact, we, we often are very big on asking permission even before we engage in a conversation like that. We don’t want to be, you know, accused of trying to force something down their throat. So we might just say, Hey, would it be okay if I asked you some deep life questions or some spiritual questions? Is that something you’d be okay with? Sure. Go ahead. And, and then stepping in into those, you know, some of the questions we ask are on a scale one to 10, how fulfilling would you say your life is?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (13:28):
It really gets people believing you don’t have to even acknowledge that there’s a God to answer some of these questions. And then we ask them, well, why is it a seven? Tell me all about that. And they’re able to share a lot about what they value in life. And then we ask the question, well, if God was more a part of your life, would that move that number up down, stay the same. And then we get to find out what their view on God is, and then to transition to some deeper questions and ask, well, could I ask you this question? Have you came to that place in your spiritual life where, you know, for certain you have eternal life or would you say that’s something that you’re working on and then to ask them, you know, if you found yourself standing before God, anywhere to ask you, why should I give you eternal life?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (14:18):
Or why should I let you into my heaven? What would you say? And 95% of the people are gonna say, well, I’m a good person. I’ve, I’ve done more good than bad. And okay, well we share five simple things with them. And we talk about the thumb represents our first point and our thumb is pointing up like a, a hitchhiker looking for a free ride. And our first point that we’re gonna share with them is that, well, you know, eternal life is a free gift and there’s nothing we can do to earn it or deserve it. We have some different stories, illustrations to elaborate on that and to share Ephesians two, eight and nine. And that right away connects with people to just go, wow, that was completely different of how my mind thinks and a transition to say, well, what stops us from having this gift?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (15:06):
And that is what the Bible says about us as human beings, mankind, we’re all sinners. And we cannot save ourselves. And we connect with some other stories and share about Romans 3 23, that we all fall short of that God’s perfect standard and we’re all sinners. And then we transition to say, well, how do, how do we think God will react to us sinning against him? Well, God on one hand is loving and doesn’t want to punish us. But on the other hand, he’s just God and must punish sin. So there’s a tension there so we can share Roman 6, 23, some other verses, but we go in to share, well, how does God solve that tension of his love and justice? And that’s where we go in to talk about Jesus and the good news, what he did for us. And we shared that, you know, Jesus came from heaven to earth.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (15:58):
He lived a perfect life. He died on the cross and rose from the dead to pay for sins and offer this gift of eternal life that can start now and go on forever with him and share John three 16 and some other great verses. And one of the most powerful things we have is sharing what we call the record book of sin or the substitute story, using our cell phone illustration to show them where they can visualize how their sin separates them and God, and how Jesus takes that and substitutes and, and gives us his perfection for our imperfection. All
Evangelist Daniel King (16:38):
Right. Can you tell me that story?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (16:40):
Yeah, sure. I’m gonna have to use my phone to so I can share that. So,
Evangelist Daniel King (16:45):
So is it an app that’s that, that you guys have?
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (16:48):
We do have an app called EE helps. It’s just on the apple phone right now we’re working on building out our digital resources. So let’s let this left hand here, represent us and let’s let this right hand here represent God. So this right hand is over this left hand and, and God designed us to be in this relationship with him and experienced this abundant and full life. But let’s let this phone here represent a movie of our lives. Although there’s a lot of great things, I’d be proud like, Hey, check this out. I’m glad it’s black right now, cuz I wouldn’t want you to see the screen of all the things I’m ashamed of the sin I’ve done in my life. The bad thoughts that I even have. It’s all recorded here and you see that’s a barrier between us and God, God loves us, but he hates our sin and that’s that barrier separating us from God and God loved us so much.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (17:50):
He sent Jesus down from heaven to earth to live a perfect life. And the Bible says that we all like sheep have gone as stray. Each one has turned his own way, but the Lord has laid upon him, the iniquity or sins of us all. So where’s our sin. Now it’s on us. It transferred from us. Sorry. Our sin is on Jesus. It transferred from us to Jesus, where he took our punishment. He cried out the phrase. It is finished, paid in full where he took all of our past present and future sins. And he removed those sins from us, paid for him and he rose from the dead and he ascended into heaven to where that sin barrier’s gone. We can now have a relationship with God. And the famous Bible verse sums that up for God. So loved the world that he gave his one and only son that whoever believes in him shall perish but have everlasting life.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (18:50):
So we unlock that by faith. So we, we can only receive that through faith, but here’s what saving faith is not saving faith. Isn’t just head knowledge where we know things about God in the Bible and things like that and saving faith. Isn’t just temporary faith where we cry out to God in a jam just when we need him just soon to forget him. But true saving faith is trusting in Jesus Christ alone for our eternal life. And so that that’s really the key where people get that. And there’s one story illustration I like to share with that faith section. And that’s, you know, let’s suppose we’re out on a boat where fish and having a great time and we, we didn’t pay attention, but the weather started to change and our little boat could not handle ways, but soon the way started to get bigger.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (19:44):
And it just crashed over our boat and our boat breaks into pieces. And there we are grabbing a piece of wood. We’re barely keeping afloat. We’re hoping something’s gonna come and save us. And luckily the coast guard comes out and calls out to us, Hey, grab a hold of our life preserver. And so they toss this ring to us. What would be the logical thing to do, keep holding onto our piece of wood, hoping will maybe drift ashore or should we grab the life? Preserver? The only logical thing would be is grab the life preserver. And if I was to write a word on that board, I would write the word self we’re all trusting in ourself, maybe our own efforts and our feeble attempt to kick to shore and get there. And maybe that’s all of our, well, I’m trying to help serve the homeless or be a good person or give money to the church or do all that.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (20:40):
Those are good things, but they can’t save us. And that life preserver, I put the word Jesus on that only Jesus alone can save. We have to let go of trusting in our own works and our own effort and transfer it to Jesus alone. And the moment we do and grab a hold of that, we will be saved. That’s what gives us our relationship with him. And then I would ask, you know, does that make sense to you? Remember when we began this conversation, you said, well, I’m trying to do my best, but do you see that that’s like hanging on onto that piece of wood and that you need to put your faith in Jesus alone? Yeah. Well the, the question I believe God would want me to ask you is, do you wanna have that relationship with Jesus and receive this gift of eternal life with him that will start now and go on forever with him.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (21:31):
And then from there, if they say, you know, I’m, I’m not quite ready. I need to think about that. We could pray for them or if they go, yeah, well we’d just walk them through and just not make this a flippant decision, but let them know, Hey, well this is one of the biggest decisions of your lives. Let me break that down. So we walk through the response section of emit believe and commit and help them really understand the decision they’re gonna make. And from there helping just launch them into that relationship with Jesus.
Evangelist Daniel King (22:02):
Those are both excellent illustrations. I really like the illustration with the cell phone. I thought you were gonna show me an illustration on your cell phone, but you’re actually using the cell phone as part of the illustration. So, so very creative now, evangelism explosion has lots of resources, lots of ideas and stories that they developed over the years. What’s a website that people can go and get more information to connect with you and connect with the ministry.
Bill Sikma – Evangelism Explosion (22:30):
Yeah. I actually have been handing these out. Well, I thought I had some left, but we have our website, EE works.org can share more about our resources and we also have share life.university is a tool where it just is a simple five week training tool to just get started in the basics. We have equip america.org/together. 22 will also just give some digital resources that they, they can look at of what we shared today of those questions that they can begin just asking those simple questions that will launch them into a gospel conversation and some other digital resources to review on that as well.
Evangelist Daniel King (23:22):
Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. If you’re listening and you have a heart for evangelism, there’s great training available through evangelism explosion. I encourage you to connect with them and get trained and, and, and go out with an experienced, witnesser learn how to share your faith and, and I believe it will bear great fruit in your life. So thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.
Evangelism Podcast Host (23:47):
Thank you for having me.
Evangelist Daniel King (23:49):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more, but please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (25:08):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
Tell your evangelist friends about The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelist Daniel King
Dave Gibson | How to Reach Different Religions
Dave Gibson is the Missions Pastor at Grace Church in the Twin Cities. He also represents the GO Movement in North America. He is passionate about leading people to Jesus and he has worked in many different countries.
Learn more about the Missions Program at Grace Church: https://grace.church/global/
Grace Church sponsors 117 missionaries in 42 countries and partners with 24 sister churches. Over the last 10 years, Grace has helped plant more than 46,000 churches and sent over 1,500 people on Go Teams.
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Dave Gibson is the missions pastor at Grace Church in the twin cities. He also represents the go movement in north America. He is passionate about leading people to Jesus, and he has worked in many different countries. Let’s listen. As he talks about evangelism around the world,
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:32):
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 evangels of podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Dave Gibson. He is from Grace Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Thank you for being with me today.
Pastor Dave Gibson (01:11):
Daniel, thrilled to be with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:13):
So you are the missions pastor at the church, but you are involved in so many different missions opportunities around the world. Tell me a little bit about what you do.
Pastor Dave Gibson (01:25):
Well, my you cut me in, I bleed missions. I’m the missions at evangels of pastor at Grace Church, but the Lord has extended that reach into ministries, like finishing the task, working with the evangelism and the church planting finish lines. The chairman of the board of global Alliance for church multiplication. Also the us director for goal movement part of the global goal movement, trying to mobilize believers all around the world to be sharing the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:54):
Yeah, I absolutely love the, the go movement I was with Mr. Verner Nigal who founded the go movement in Malawi this last year. And I got to interview him on the evangelism podcast and it was great. So if, if you want to go back and listen to his interview you can find Verner’s story, wonderful man of God, from Germany who has this vision to equip the entire body of Christ to, to, to share the gospel. And so tell me a little bit about what you do with the go movement and, and how they’re equipping people.
Pastor Dave Gibson (02:26):
Well, the mantra, the theme is every believer is a witness for Jesus. It came out of the global day of prayer led by Graham power. He mobilized almost 200 million people to be praying together on that global day of prayer on Pentecost weekend, Wener have approached Graham power years ago about a dozen years ago. And he says, why don’t we couple prayer and evangelism and make a, a global outreach day on that same weekend Pentecost weekend. Can’t think of a better time to be sharing the good news of the Easter story. And then 50 days later says, wait until you receive power from on high receive the power of the holy spirit and you shall be my witnesses. And so that became a global outreach day. Then it turned into a global outreach month. So the window between may one and the end of may is time we call the go month trying to mobilize believers.
Pastor Dave Gibson (03:17):
It’s really a simple every believer is a witness for Jesus Christ. We say everyone can reach someone and together we can reach the world. And so the question is, who’s your someone, someone in your family, someone in your neighborhood, someone in the workplace someone that you recreate with and identify those sum ones to get five of those individuals. And we call it our favorite five or my five, and then we employ a real simple strategy, pray for them and then care for them. Then lovingly appropriately, try to share Jesus Christ with them. So it’s simple prayer care share. And it’s not a program. It’s not an event that people go to, but it’s just individual believers who are oftentimes so many Christians are sitting on their blessed assurance in the church, waiting for the Lord to return without ever sharing their faith. In fact, bill bright said that I don’t know where he got the statistic, but 95% of Christians will go to the grave without ever leading one person to faith in Christ. So we’re trying to move the dial on that and really energize people to be witnesses for Jesus Christ. There’s an estimated close to a hundred million Christians sharing the gospel this past may. And we’ve got a group of guys, guys like Greg steer and Warner and myself. We’ve got a one a day challenge, kinda like the ice bucket challenge.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:34):
Now. Now tell me about the, the one a day challenge.
Pastor Dave Gibson (04:36):
Okay. Well, we said one a day in may that we’re going to ask
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:41):
The, what, what do you mean by one a day one? What
Pastor Dave Gibson (04:43):
Trying to share Jesus with at least one person every day we say, oh, look for that one loss sheep, Luke 15 Jesus said, leave the 99 righteous. We need to get out of the church and go after that one law sheep, that one person look for the person of peace. Who’s receptive to the message and the messenger and ask God to lead us to that person. And the one of day challenges that I’m gonna try to pray for someone care for somebody, and then try to share the gospel with at least one person every day in the month of may. That’s expanded to beyond that. Now it’s one a day, every day.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:20):
So one a day, every day. And so if you’re listening, I challenge you to take up that commitment that you’ll lead at least one person to Christ every single day. You know, I’m reminded of the story of DL moody. He had a commitment to lead someone to Jesus every single day of his life. And, and one day someone talked to him and said, Hey, did you lead someone to Jesus today? And he says, yes, two and a half people. And they said two and a half like, oh, you mean you, you led two adults and one child to the Lord. He says, no, no. He says, I led two children and one adult because the, the children, they have their entire lives ahead of them. But the adult, his life is half over. Oh. And I’m also remembered of John Hyde. They called him praying Hyde. He was a missionary in what is now Northern Pakistan and over into India. At that time, it was one country. And he made a commitment to prey that at least one day that at least one soul would be led to Jesus every single day. And he, he, he challenged all the Christian believers there let’s let’s believe God and pray for at least one person to be saved every single day. And in the first year they had 365 people that got saved. They completed that goal.
Pastor Dave Gibson (06:33):
Yeah. In fact, that was in 1908. That that story really challenged me years ago when I was ready. How’d you like to be known as Daniel praying king or Dave praying Gibson, John praying hide. He prayed for souls. He had a burden for souls. In fact, his heart was in such rough condition. He went to the cardiologist. He, if you don’t change your patterns, he prayed with such fervency and intensity that his heart actually moved in his heart cavity, but he prayed for one soul a day and had about 400 the first year, 1909. He prayed for two souls a day. And the Lord gave him over 800 that came to Christ. Then the next year, 1910, he prayed for four souls a day. And the Lord answered that prayer. And I said, boy, how big is my faith that he was leading at those people to Christ? And they were, they were being baptized and consecrated to the Lord. I’ve just said, well, the Lord do I have enough faith to ask for at least one opportunity every day. And I, I just really believe we need to see people in the church energized and mobilized for the, the gospel. That’s why I hang around guys like Warner and Greg steer with dare to share. And guys like you, Daniel, you inspire me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:41):
Yeah. Well John Hyde, there, there in Pakistan started a convention called the Seattle cult convention. And it is the longest running Christian convention in Pakistan. And so a few years ago I was invited to be one of the speakers. And they said, this, this conference now over a hundred years, goes all the way back to, to praying hide. And so when I was there, they took me to the house that he used to, to sleep in. And they showed me his bed. And, and beside the bed there there’s bumps in the ground where they say his knees were when he used to get beside his bed and pray. And so even a hundred years later, I don’t know if it’s really his bumps, but, but they, they had that tradition that, that he had been a, a, a prayer warrior and had such a, a tremendous impact.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:29):
Most of the believers in Pakistan to this day trace their spiritual heritage back to that commitment that John Hyde made to, to share the gospel. And they said that he was so excited about sharing the gospel. That like one day he was walking down the, the path and talking to a Hindu man telling him about Jesus, let him to Jesus. And there was an irrigation ditch right beside the road. And he says, come on, let’s baptize you right now. And so they just jumped in the irrigation ditch and they baptized him. So I think we need more of that. Yeah. Ferver for both prayer and for witnessing right today.
Pastor Dave Gibson (09:05):
Yeah. And I, I, I think that’s a prayer that the Lord loves to answer. I pray that every day I was traveling to San Francisco with a colleague, a guy from the church businessman got into the church or into the hotel really late, tired after midnight. And you know, it says in Colossians four, two to six is devote yourselves to prayer, be alert in it. Let’s be watchful, keep your spiritual antenna and be thankful. And he says, pray for me that God will open up a door for the ministry of the word that I can speak forth. A mystery of Christ. I call it praying for Bob every day. First of all, for a burden for the lost, then open doors of opportunity, you know, and Romans nine Paul said, I have deep, deep anguish in my soul for my countrymen.
Pastor Dave Gibson (09:50):
We’ve lost the burden. And we need to ask the Lord to break our hearts and give us a heart of compassion and a burden for the loss like he does and open doors for the gospel. He says, pray for me that God will open up a door and that I would boldly proclaim it as I should. Paul prayed for that in Ephesians six, 19 and 20, he said, pray for me that whenever I open my mouth words will be given to me that I might fearlessly make known the mystery of the gospel and that Boldy proclaimed it as I should. Well pray for Bob, but well, anyways back.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:19):
Okay. So you have pray for Bob B O B. So B stands for
Pastor Dave Gibson (10:24):
A burden burden for the loss
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:26):
Burden for the lost O stands for
Pastor Dave Gibson (10:28):
Open doors for the gospel
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:30):
Open doors for the gospel. And the second B stands for
Pastor Dave Gibson (10:33):
Boldness the holy boldness to share.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:35):
All right, so, so burden open doors and boldness. And so every day, pray for Bob, right?
Pastor Dave Gibson (10:42):
Pray for Bob. Well, I did on that particular day, prayed for that. God would open up a door, came into the hotel, checked in, and it’s like, the Lord said, Dave, you need to pray for this woman ne patid our gal from India. And I said, ne we’re going to, before we retire here tonight, like you seem like you’re really discourage. Is there something we can pray about? And her eyes welled up with tears as she shared, she said, my husband and I came to the us 10 years ago, purchased two hotels. This last year, a man came in and started destroying our property. And my husband went out to restrain him as he did. He reached into his coat pocket and he pulled out a gun and he shot my husband in the head and she’s crying as she’s sharing this story. And we begin to weep along with her.
Pastor Dave Gibson (11:30):
And her, their manager came out, the guy turned the gun on the manager shot and killed him. And her husband died in her arms. And she was about as empty and lonely and distraught as I’ve ever seen a person. I said, NELA, I don’t even know what to say, but can we just pray right now? And we prayed and we prayed and we prayed for her that gotta be merciful and be gracious to her and just have compassion on this dear woman. And just we had a prayer meeting there that night, and then I got done. And I said, NELA, has anybody shared with you? How you can know the God we were just talking to in a personal way. She said, no, but please do. You know, after many years of evangelism training, I proceed that it might be a witnessing opportunity.
Pastor Dave Gibson (12:09):
So I, I just proceeded to share about Jesus, the good news of the gospel that God created us to be with him. Our sins separate us from him and sin. Can’t be removed by good works, paying the price for sin. Jesus died and rose again. And everyone who trusted him alone will have eternal life in that life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever to the simple message of the gospel. Holy spirit just came upon her. She broke down, gave her life to Christ. And this Hindu woman found new life in Jesus Christ. And the tears of anguish turned to tears of joy. She was just overwhelmed. And she came out around the counter and she hugged us and said, God brought you to me tonight. You’re God’s angel. I said, NELA, I’m not an angel. Just ask my wife, Wendy. But I said, God did bring us together.
Pastor Dave Gibson (12:53):
And I could have just checked in, taken the key and said, God bless you, NELA goodnight. But God said, you know, be alert, be watchful be devoted to prayer. And then God will move and give you opportunities. When we start praying for those opportunities. The divine order for witnessing has talked to God about men, then talk to men about God. And we want to try to build a bridge from our heart to their heart, that Jesus can walk across and touch their lives and that heart of compassion. So that was a cool story. Neah just was radically transformed by the power of Jesus and I I’m addicted to souls. I mean, I want to that one a day challenge. And sometimes it’s two or three a day. We here at together, 22, we’ve had a, a plethora of opportunities to share the gospel. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:40):
I know that you mentor and encourage many evangelists and missionaries. What advice would you give to someone who, who has a heart for evangelism, maybe a, a young evangelist or someone who wants to go to the mission field? What advice would you give them
Pastor Dave Gibson (13:58):
Grow deep in your walk with Jesus and go wide in your witness? I don’t think it’s one or the other. It’s the two wings of the
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:07):
Earth, deep and wide,
Pastor Dave Gibson (14:08):
Deep and wide deep in discipleship wide in your witness for Christ that’s evangelism. I believe evangelism will fuel discipleship and discipleship should fuel evangelism. And I think we look at it as an either or proposition sometimes in the church, but growing deep and every day renew your first love for Jesus. Ask the Lord to give you that reverential fearing of him, and really pray for that burden for souls, that you really have a burden. You know, Jesus said the good man out of the good treasure of his heart will bring forth. What is good. The evil man out of the evil treasure will bring forth. What is, what is evil? He Luke 6 44 to 46 for the mouth. We’ll speak from that, which fills the heart. You know, the way they got the early church to witness. You just took your hand away from their mouth.
Pastor Dave Gibson (14:58):
They said, we can’t stop talking about that, which we’ve seen. And we’ve heard, I think we’ve got a heart issue that we’ve lost the heart for the Lord, the heart for the lost keep cultivating that heart for the Lord and the heart for the lost, and then be bold. Pray for Bob every day. I mean, there’s a lot of things I would share with him, but hang around people, you wanna stay hot for God, hang around pee for people that are on fire. That’s why a guy like Greg steer. We’re a couple of one string guitar guys. I mean people that are really passionate about the Lord and passionate about evangelism, and that’s why I’m drawn to you, Daniel, cuz you’re the same kind guy. You’re a one string guitar guy and they renew your first love for Jesus every day.
Pastor Dave Gibson (15:38):
Hang around people that are on fire and then be active in sharing your faith. Finally in six says I pray that you’ll be active in sharing your faith so that you’ll have a full understanding of every good thing that you have in Christ. Jesus. I don’t think we have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ. If we’re not actively sharing our faith, I’ve got a picture of my wife on my phone and I’m not embarrassed to show it to people. She’s very beautiful. But you know, I’ll, I’ll introduce people, but can you imagine if I had Wendy by my side? And I say, well, honey, I kind of embarrassed to introduce you to other people. But no, I love to talk about my wife. We love to talk about things we love and there’s someone I love you. And more than my dear wife, Wendy of 37 years, it’s Jesus.
Pastor Dave Gibson (16:21):
I am so radically in love with Jesus. Be so in love with Jesus that it becomes contagious and I would love to introduce other people to him. So, and I encourage them to do that. And that Lord will set you on fire. Young evangelist and people will come and watch you burn. You know, Daniel, I’ve got a scar on my arm here. It’s a daily reminder. I had a triple bypass back in 2008, had a mild heart attack. And I was pretty healthy going before that time, woke up with some pressure in my chest called 9 1 1. Next thing I know I’m in a putting pulled outta my house on a gurney and the paramedics had had arrived and my five kids are watching. Dad pulled outta the house on a gurneys, quite a feeling and got into the ambulance. We’re going down to the hospital.
Pastor Dave Gibson (17:08):
Wasn’t having cardiac arrest. But I, I, I, I looked at the guy, his name was Doug. He said I said, Doug, you know, I don’t think this thing’s gonna turn out bad, but if it does, you need to know on no uncertain terms. I know where I’m gonna spend eternity. How about you? And so the whole way down to the hospital I was sharing Jesus with him. I thought, man, if I’m gonna go down, I might as well try to bring one lost soul with me, got to the hospital. And I said, Daniel, this ride might have been just for you. And never saw him since that day. I asked him to promise me, he’d come to Grace Church sometime and come up and say hello. He said he would. And had the triple bypass ended up having open heart surgery.
Pastor Dave Gibson (17:50):
I called Wendy, my wife and I said, honey, bring every single track that you can find in the house. And I’m gonna share Jesus with every single person that walks through the door of this hospital room. I was urgent about the gospel till then, but I was ultra urgent. And I have been every day, since life is short and hell is hot and I wanna do everything I can to prevent people from going there. Live my life to depopulate hell and populate heaven for the glory of Christ. So I’m Sharon Christ with these people and it’s led to things like this one a day challenge, 10 years later, I’m down at in Nebraska speaking at a fellowship of Christian athletes event and a good buddy of mine played for the corn Huskers. And he was introducing me. He says, Dave doesn’t even know this, but we were up in the Minneapolis area.
Pastor Dave Gibson (18:36):
This last summer, one of our girls tweaked her knee and a guy named Daniel, a paramedic came out, his name was Daniel. And he said do you go to church anywhere? He says, yeah, I go to Grace Church once in a while. And he said, well, do you know pastor Dave Gibson? He said, yeah, he’s the guy who led me to Jesus Christ through an ambulance ride. And I never knew that he was so far out there, but you know, the word says one will plant and another will water. And it’s the Lord who brings forth the increase so that he who plants nor he waters as anything. It’s the Lord who makes it grow. But you know, that God’s word never returns void. When you plant that gospel seed, it’s the power of God under salvation to those who believe so gave me a sense of urgency. So I look at my arm, I, they took one of the veins outta my arm and couple out of my chest. And that’s my daily reminder of we need to be urgent with the good news of Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:26):
Yeah. None of us are promised tomorrow. So we need to make every single second count for God.
Pastor Dave Gibson (19:31):
Amen. Only one life will soon be passed. Only what’s done for Christ will last. I think that’s an old CT stud quote and let’s live our lives for Jesus no matter.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:43):
That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. It’s great to have you here today.
Pastor Dave Gibson (19:48):
Thank you Daniel. Great to get to know you better and thanks for the good work that you’re doing too, to reach the world for Jesus.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:55):
Thank you. Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (21:16):
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.
Can you Subscribe, Like, and Share The Evangelism Podcast with your friends?
Filipe Drumond | It’s Time for Revival in Canada
Filipe Drumond is from Brazil but he now lives in Canada. He is the founder of Last Harvest Evangelistic Association. He has a heart to lead people to Jesus in Canada and around the world. On today’s episode we talk about what it will take for revival to break out in Canada.
Website: http://www.lastharvest.ca/
Transcript:
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (00:00):
Filipe Drumond is from Brazil, but he now lives in Canada. He is the founder of last harvest evangelistic association. He has a heart to lead people to Jesus in Canada and around the world. On today’s episode, we talk about what it will take for revival to break out in the nation of Canada.
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.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (00:57):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I’m with a very special friend, Philip Drummond is a great Canadian evangelist. Welcome to the evangelism podcast.
Filipe Drumond (01:11):
Thank you so much, Daniel. It’s a real privilege and pleasure to be here.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (01:14):
And so right now you’re living in Canada, you’re from Calgary. But where are you from originally?
Filipe Drumond (01:21):
I was born in Brazil.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (01:23):
And tell me about what type of evangelism you’re doing
Filipe Drumond (01:27):
Well, <laugh> it, it really takes shape in, in so many forms. I’m invited to go as a, as a pro proclamation evangelist. I share the gospel with neighbors and friends, and so basically finding of any way possible to communicate the gospel. And there’s a lot of relationship in all of that.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (01:48):
And how did you first become interested in evangelism?
Filipe Drumond (01:51):
That’s a great question. It was really I think it was mostly through my parents’ example. You see the gospel was so practical. The church was so practical in the way I was raised. And my mother knew the power of prayer. My father loved scripture and he was a great storyteller and there were church planters. So we, we saw God saving, transforming lives. And Sunday school also played a huge part cuz even as I was very young, I wanted to see my neighbors, my cousins having an experience with Christ, a relationship with the Lord. And so I started inviting them to come in, to come to Sunday school. I think that was Sunday school was, was, was the foundation of it.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (02:31):
So how did you come from Brazil to Canada?
Filipe Drumond (02:34):
Great question. Well there’s two elements. I think we’ve lived in the us prior to that. And my parents also, my father received an invitation to pastor church in Toronto in Eastern Canada. And so that was those two motivations. I think they wanted to give us as well, another shot in north America, but there was this invitation. So early 2001, we moved from Brazil to Toronto.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (03:02):
And so you have your own ministry. You are a Canadian charity. Yes. And so people in Canada can give to you. And we actually have a Canadian ministry as well, king ministries, Canada, and I found that people in Canada are very generous towards evangelism. What, what’s the name of your ministry?
Filipe Drumond (03:24):
So it’s called last harvest evangelistic association. Our website is last harvest.ca.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (03:33):
And tell me about what you see God doing in the nation at Canada. I know living in Calgary, you have a, a heart for Canada. I always like to say all of Canada for Jesus. What, what do you see God doing in the, the American neighbor to the north
Filipe Drumond (03:52):
<Laugh>? Well, you know, I think there’s so much changing, happening, happening around us in so many levels, our notion of ministry. I think it’s changing the role of a minister. I think it’s changing the role of the church placed in a particular community. I think it’s also being challenged and changing. So to be honest, I think it’s, it’s, it’s hard for, to, to say, well, this is really where things are going, but for me as an event, just it’s really exciting because especially after the pandemic or as we’re still kind of going through this is that, that everything has been put to test. So church goers are asking fundamental questions. Like, what is the church really? What, what is this that I’ve been part of for the last 10, 15, 20 years? Or what does it really mean to follow Christ or what is the gospel message?
Filipe Drumond (04:40):
I, I, I, I went through loss. I saw family members dying through during the pandemic and, and I wasn’t ready to go through all of this. So what does it really mean to follow Christ? So these fundamental questions opens this huge door for discipleship, for inquiry and people to go desiring, to go deeper, to know more and also with, for non-believers. I think there’s a, there’s a greater, let’s say softness and desire to understand more about life purpose, meaning why am I am I in this earth, so to speak? So I am finding amazing opportunities for the gospel.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (05:18):
Now you’re you’re from Canada, but you also travel to other nations. What are some of the things you’ve been seeing God do in other nations?
Filipe Drumond (05:26):
Well, I just came back from the upper belt of Nigeria. And today I think Nigeria, there’s such a systematic massacre really, of, of Christians in Northern Nigeria, especially in the Northwest and Kauna state. And a lot of the students that I’m working with in evangelists that I’m working with there brings, they bring so many stories of what is going on the persecution. However, in the same place, you see a church that is so fervent in prayer. And so many followers of Christ who are really fervent and sold out to the gospel despite persecution. So that’s one thing. Another country that I was recently last March was Ethiopia. And what I sensed as, as I prayed and prepared to go into Ethiopia in my heart, but also confirmed with local leaders in Ethiopia is that leaders in Ethiopia are find they, they realize that they have a window of opportunity to reach the nation, to plant churches, to mobilize believers, to disciple, to equip, identify evangelists.
Filipe Drumond (06:30):
And there is this huge sense of urgency because they don’t know for how long. So these are the most recent places I’ve been. Now. I’m also leaving in a couple of days on July now to Brazil, which is a nation in Alaska. It’s almost like they, we in Brazil, we’ve, we’ve had a a hundred year revival almost considering the rate of, in which the church is growing, but there seems to be most recently this new fire and passion, especially in the hearts of young people, for missions. And and they realize now that they have a global voice to social media and content production and all of that. So there’s so much to say about Brazil, but those are the three recent nations that I’m in touch with
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (07:14):
Years ago, God spoke to me and said, Daniel, the mission field shall become a mission force. Yes. And I think we’re seeing that in many different nations around the world, like Brazil, where they are on fire for God, historically missionaries went to Brazil, they went to south America, they went to Africa. But now what we’re seeing is that the, the global south is where Christianity is on fire. People are excited about serving God. I mean, when you go to a Brazilian church, often they are singing songs, they’re dancing. They are, they, they don’t just do a 45 minute service. The service can go for several hours sometimes just because people are excited about God. And, and I love that passion and excitement in Brazil, but I, I really like what you said about how they’re starting to think about missions in Brazil. And so now God is sending people like you like your family other people from Africa and other parts of the world, back to these nations that have historically been mission sending countries.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (08:25):
And so when you think about Canada over the years, Canada has sent missionaries all over the world. They’ve been a great missionary sending nation, but there’s so many people in Canada right now that need Jesus. Yes, there is a need for revival. And so now and Canada is very welcoming to people coming from other nations people who, who want to come there’s there’s work for them to do. There’s a way for them to come in that in many ways, they’re way more welcoming even than the United States is. And, and, and people want to immigrate to Canada because there is a good life there. But what I think we’re going to see is that, and what I really hope God does is that people that are on fire for God come to Canada and, and will join hands with the churches that are there to now take Jesus yes. To Canada. Absolutely because God loves Canada.
Filipe Drumond (09:21):
Yeah, absolutely. I think, again, I, I think, you know, Canada is, is a very different country, government culture. The, the identity of the church in a certain way is very different from what we see here in, in the United States. And there is this subculture within the Christian world, I would say in Canada, where there are, there are miracles happening in so many people coming to Christ within the Persian community Iranians and African community and Asian community within the Chinese community the, the north north north Indian community people from Gujarat or Punjab. And this is really, really amazing. I think what I think for the, for the for the, the, the main church in Canada we need to catch up when it comes to working with these ethnic groups. And we have a large number of these people in those communities. So it’s very exciting. It’s a mission field. Canada is a mission field. So if you’re planning to plan a church, if you’re an evangelist, if you have a burden to reach the world, you can go to Canada and, and one day you can, you, you can meet you with so many cultures and lead so many people to Christ.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (10:36):
Yeah. God is bringing the mission field here to us. So tell me about Calgary. Are there people from lots of different countries in Calgary now?
Filipe Drumond (10:45):
There is there, there, there certainly is. I think some people say that Calgary is the most Americanized city in in, in Canada, but yet it’s a, it’s a, we have the largest mosque, one of the largest mosques in the in, in the Western hemisphere that certainly the largest in Canada in Calgary, you have over five or six gures, which are the Sikh temples anyways huge Ethiopian community and so on. So there’s people from all over the world in Calgary. And the cool thing about the culture in Calgary, it’s a very entrepreneurial mentality in that city. So what I’m trying to say is someone who wants to go and start something either in the, in, in the marketplace or to plant the church or house church movement evangelism personally, I think the harvest is ripe. The time is now, the Lord is ready. Not only in Calgary, but in Canada and throughout the United States.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (11:43):
Well, I am so thankful that for the heart that the Canadian people have for the world, I actually met my wife when she was working for a Canadian evangelist and, and my wife is Canadian. She grew up in Warrenville right outside Edmonton. It’s just a little tiny suburb there. And, and so she came from this little tiny Canadian town. And from there, she has now traveled around the world. She spent almost 10 years on the mission field. She was two years in India, a year in Nepal, and you’re in Papa, new Guinea a year in Kenya. And then she started working for this Canadian evangelist. And that’s when I met her. And so she we got married and we actually got married in Canada right near Niagara falls and, and St. Catherine’s. And now my wife is Canadian. Both of our kids are Canadian and I’m American, but my kids say it’s okay, dad. No, one’s perfect.
Filipe Drumond (12:48):
<Laugh> Daniel. I’m so excited about, about what you’re doing about your family and also the heart that you have for Canada, for the nation. Not only that, I mean, but you also understand culture. And for me, living in Canada as a Canadian resilient Canadian meeting you in, in these evangelistic events, or as to a, from one evangelist to another evangelist, it brings me so much comfort that I don’t have to explain you too much. You get it, you understand the culture. And I think this is one of the great assets that you give is because again, for those who are for, for perhaps in the us who want to do ministry in Canada, you would know how to navigate those waters. So I thank God for your experience in your life.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (13:30):
Let’s just take a moment right now to, to pray for the nation of Canada and pray that that God would do something new and, and that there would be revival in Canada. Would, would you lead us in prayer?
Filipe Drumond (13:41):
Absolutely. you know, just as we’re, we’re thinking we’re we’re, as you you’re mentioning prayer, it takes me to the book of Ezekiel, where the Lord said, you know, I’ve looked for a man who would stand in the gap before me on behalf of the people. So I pray that this podcast would reach the minds and hearts of people who are listening, that they would feel a call to Canada, your father. We thank you so much for the power of the gospel, for your presence in your, in our lives and father that even though we are made of clay, but yet there is so much power in the gospel and you are present, and the harvest is ripe Lord, that you would open our eyes, that you would give us more faith or father, and that we would come together with greater expectation to work together, but make the use of all opportunities.
Filipe Drumond (14:30):
We can to proclaim the gospel, to announce the good news of Jesus Christ father. I pray for the nation of Canada and for the churches and pastors and the churchgoers Christians in Canada, father, that you would bring revival. We historically, we have never had a nationwide nationwide revival. So father, I pray that you would bring revival father. I pray for this young generation who is longing for you, who is longing for purpose and father. I pray in the name of Jesus that you would give us such a breakthrough in the nation of Canada and father that we would have once again, a fire, a passion to reach our own and to reach the globe with the good news of Jesus Christ father. Our desire is that the name of Jesus would be lifted up that you would receive all the glory and honor, and father, for those who are listening right now, that you would stir up their hearts for the nation of Canada, that they would be moved to pray for Canada, to know more about Canada, to visit Canada, and to find ways to collaborate, cooperate, invest in the proclamation of the gospel in that nation father.
Filipe Drumond (15:42):
We pray, and we are thankful in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (15:47):
Amen. I say yes. And amen to that prayer. Powerful. Well, Philip Felipe Philip, the evangelist in the Bible was the only one in the whole Bible who specifically called an evangelist. So Felipe is a great name for an evangelist, Philip, the evangelist. If someone wants to invite you to come speak at their church in Canada, or they want to support your ministry, or, or maybe from another country, they wanna invite you to come and, and, and minister, how can they find out more information about you? Well,
Filipe Drumond (16:19):
Perhaps one of the ways is through social media. My name Felipe F I L I P E my last name Drummond, D R U M O N D. On Instagram, Felipe underscore Drummond. And you’ll find me on Facebook, but again, you can go to our website last harvest dot CA or contact evangelist, Daniel, and he will direct you.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (16:45):
Awesome. Well, Philly, thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. I love what you’re doing and I, I love your heart for, for Canada and for the rest of the world. God
Filipe Drumond (16:55):
Bless you. Thank you. God bless you and all your listeners. And I hope to be back again sometime soon.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (17:01):
We’ll hang out in Canada, one of these days, so,
Filipe Drumond (17:03):
Oh, let’s do that. You’ll be wonderful in Edmonton or in Calgary.
Daniel King – Evangelism Coach (17:07):
Bless you. Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus. And I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more, but please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (18:27):
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.
Listen to The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelist Daniel King on iTunes, Amazon, and your favorite podcast platform.
Greg Stier | Dare 2 Share The Gospel in Six Words
Greg Stier is the visionary behind Dare 2 Share, a ministry that helps youth learn how to share their faith. On today’s episode he talks about how to share the Gospel using six key words.
Website: https://www.dare2share.org/
Download to Six Words Gospel App Today: https://li6w.com/
The Six Words Gospel
You can tell someone about Jesus using a six-letter acrostic that spells out the word GOSPEL.
GOD created us to be with him. (Genesis 1-2)
OUR sin separates us from God. (Genesis 3)
SINS cannot be removed by good deeds. (Genesis 4-Malachi 4)
PAYING the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. (Matthew-Luke)
EVERYONE who trusts in Him alone has eternal life. (John)
LIFE with Jesus starts now and lasts forever. (Acts-Revelation)
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Greg Stier is the visionary behind Dare 2 Share, a ministry that helps youth learn how to share their faith. On today’s episode, he talks about how to share the gospel using six key words,
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:29):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:53):
Welcome to the evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest Greg steer and he is from dare to share. Thank you so much for being with me today.
Greg Stier (01:04):
Thanks Daniel for the opportunity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:06):
So we are at the Cotton Bowl here in Dallas, Texas at the Together 2022 event led by Nick Hall from Pulse ministries. They’re doing a great job organizing this whole event and getting people together that are excited about evangelism and just crying out to God for a move of God in this nation. And you’ve been invited here to, to speak. And you just shared at a, a workshop. Could you tell me a little bit about the, the workshop that you just shared at?
Greg Stier (01:38):
Yeah, we did a workshop on how to reach different world religions. And so, you know, basically the way you reach any world religion is by lovingly caringly sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. And we gave ’em some apologetics hacks, but, you know, I think quite honestly, when you share Christ, we use three words, ask, admire, admit, ask good questions, admire what you can about what they believe, find common ground like Paul did and act 17. And then admit the reason you’re a Christian is you desperately need Jesus and then lay out the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:08):
Okay. Let’s break down those three words a little bit. Give me some examples of, of walking through that process of how you would open up a conversation about God.
Greg Stier (02:19):
Yeah. So I, you know, one of the things I do is I just start talking to him, what’s your name and where you’re from, if I’m just meeting some person and is we kind of get to know about their family, their life, you know, I say, you know, one of the things I love to do is pray for people. Is there any way I can pray for you? And what I’ve discovered Daniel, is that when you do that, oftentimes people will stop and pause and they’ll think, and they’ll say, you know what, actually there is, they begin to open up. It’s almost like you kind of become a priest to them in a sense, and they want it. They begin to kind of share their journey and their story. And, and then you admire what you can, whatever their spiritual background is. And then you begin that process of laying the gospel out.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:57):
Now you’ve developed a very innovative way for sharing the gospel and it’s called life in six words. Can you explain to me what that’s all about?
Greg Stier (03:07):
So we’ve been training teenagers for 30 years at dare to share. And one of the things that you wanna do with teens and adults is you, you really want to help them have a conversation, not just make a presentation. So we have an app called life in six words where there’s 14 words that come up on it, like meaningless purpose life happiness, money, God brokenness. And you just ask them, Hey, if you were to describe your life in six words, what would they be? And they look at the app and they choose six words out of the 14. And then you ask them, tell me why you chose those words and you hear their story. And you, you admire what you can about that. You find common ground. Then, then you say, can I share with you my six words, which are already on the app? You push my words and those words come up. That’s the way you share your testimony. And then finally you say, can I share with you God’s words? And then that’s when you walk through the six words from the Bible, God, our sins paying everyone life, the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:05):
So that’s an acronym, G O S P E L, gospel that you’ve you have a word for each of those letters in the word gospel. So it makes it really easy to remember. If someone wants to know how to share the gospel, they can memorize these six words and it will help them to keep it clear in their mind so that they’re able to, to share the gospel if they ever have a chance to, to do that. And so could you walk me through those six words?
Greg Stier (04:35):
Yeah. And it’s really important. It’s what we call gospel fluency. So you wanna, you want to have the people you’re training really know the gospel. So G has God created us to be with him. So that’s Genesis one and two starts, you know, God made Adam and Eve to be in relationship with him, made humanity. O is our sins separate us from God, Genesis three when Adam and Eve got kicked out of the garden, S’s sins cannot be removed by good deeds. You see that from Genesis four through the last chapter of the old Testament, Malachi for, you know, the blood that sweat and the tears, the blood of the sacrifices, the sweat of trying to obey all the commandments and the tears of contrition when they failed to none of that could remove their sin. So P paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again, you see that in Matthew, mark, and Luke Jesus paid the price in our place for our sin.
Greg Stier (05:19):
And then he rose again. E is everyone who trusted him alone as eternal life. You see that in the book of John, you know, the one requirement for salvation is faith alone in Christ alone. And then L life with Jesus starts now and lasts forever acts through revelation. It is a personal permanent relationship with God and it cannot be broken by you and we’ll never be broken by him and you’re sharing the gospel, but you’re also sharing what’s called the meta narrative. The big story of the Bible from Genesis one to revelation 22 in six simple sentences. And it’s really important, Daniel, in this current post-Christian culture that we communicate the gospel in a way that tells the whole story of the Bible.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:01):
Your website is dare to share.org and the ministry is called dare to share. Can you tell me some about what resources are available on the re on the, the website? Yeah.
Greg Stier (06:14):
Well, first of all, I would just say right away, go to your app store and download life and six words. It’s a free app and it’s in 16 different languages, actually, 17th Korean was added today. So all that app changes just with a push of a button to a different language. So life and six words on your app store. And then we have free curriculum for teenagers on our website. We do an annual event for youth leaders called dare to share live, where they can have their youth groups trained simultaneously on November 12th, how to share the gospel. And we’ll take ’em out to actually share Christ from coast to coast. So that’s dare to share live countless articles. I’ve written 22 books. I mean, we’ve got a ton of stuff to help youth leaders. And I would say parents, grandparents and evangels and pastors really build a culture of evangelism and then give ’em the tools to do it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:00):
Tell me a little bit about your story. How did you get excited about telling people about Jesus?
Greg Stier (07:06):
I don’t come from a typical religious church going pew, sitting him singing family. I come from a family filled with body building back at you and beer drinking thugs. And that’s just the women, you know, sadly, I mean, my family were urban. They were crazy in and outta jail. The Denver mafia nicknamed my uncles, the crazy brothers. So when the mafia thinks your family’s dysfunctional, it is not good. But at hillbilly preacher nickname, Yankee, for whatever reason, planted a church in the suburbs of Denver and reached my whole family on a dare. And one by one, my whole family, you know, over the course of a, you know, couple years, they all came to Christ. I got involved with the youth ministry and to be involved with this youth ministry on, on a leadership level, Yankee trained you and equipped you how to understand the word, execute the word, and execute the mission. And so I was equipped as a student to share the gospel when I was 12. First person on my list was my ma my mom almost aborted me. She was like this woman at the well with the baseball bat. But after three years of trying, I was able to lead her to Christ when I was 15 years old. So I was equipped by, by a youth leader and a pastor. And that’s why probably I love focusing on equipping youth leaders and teenagers and pastors, how to, how to share the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:20):
And what’s the history of dare to share. How did that get started in, in what is your, your primary mission?
Greg Stier (08:27):
Our primary mission is to energize the church to mobilize youth, to gospel as their world. You know, and we started just in small churches and doing weekend trainings and I was pastoring a church at the same time until April 20th, 1999, the Columbine high school shooting took place. I resigned from the church cuz I knew a lot of the kids at the Columbine high school and focused on dare to share full time. And so now instead of doing weekend conferences, we do a, an annual assign cast. We do summer full week trainings and we work with other ministries to really help them strengthen their evangelism DNA so that they can train others to, to multiply the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:08):
So if someone has a, a youth ministry or a college group and they want to equip them to learn how to, to share their faith, how can they find more resources or how can they get connected with you and, and what what’s available to them?
Greg Stier (09:24):
They can follow me at Greg Stier. I’m on Instagram and Twitter. So just at Greg Stier, or just go to Dare2share.org. That’s number two, dare two, share.org and just start clicking away. So many resources, so many articles, so many videos, so much help.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:44):
Well, let’s just go through the six words one more time. And I encourage you. If you’re listening, memorize these six words, the acronym gospel, and it will equip you to be able to share your faith anywhere you go. So we’ve got, God created us to be with him. Our sins separate us from God. Sins cannot be removed by good deeds, paying the price for sin. Jesus died in rose. Again, everyone who trusts in him alone has eternal life and life with Jesus starts, starts now and lasts forever. And so what a powerful six words that can change someone’s life for all of eternity.
Greg Stier (10:26):
Amen. Romans one 16. I’m not ashamed of the gospel of Christ for it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes, I don’t know how God infused divine power into a stick that Moses used to open up the red sea. I don’t know how God infused divine power into a message that will blast the sin from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. I just know it works so we need to share it out loud. You’ve heard the quote before preach the gospel. If necessary use words, I hate that quote. I’ve changed. It preach the gospel. It’s necessary. Use words out as, as a parent will tell a toddler, use your words. I think God is leaning over to banister of heaven, telling a church, use your words. Of course we wanna live it, but we also gotta give it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:08):
I, I really love the concept of, of the six words. I I’m reminded of a story. Someone went to the famous writer, Ernest Hemingway, and challenged him and said, could you write an entire story in six words? And he says, yes, I can. And this is the story he wrote for sale. Baby shoes never used. It was a tragedy. And he wrote a whole story there. You can feel all of the emotion and everything that comes through that story of someone who had baby shoes that, that were never used. And there’s trying to sell ’em, but six words can literally change someone’s life. And if you take the gospel to them, it’ll change their life.
Greg Stier (11:49):
So I’m gonna steal that story now, cuz that’s awesome.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:52):
It’s a good story. Yeah. Well go and find the app life in six words, download it to your iPhone, to your, your your droid, whatever type of technology you have. Go ahead and download it and, and it, you can just go through it and it screen by screen and witness to people and is a really great conversation. Start that that’s what I really liked about it is you’re asking like, Hey, if you could describe your life in six words what would it look like? And you know, you just show it to them and it generates curiosity. It opens that conversation. And then once you have the conversation going, it opens people’s hearts to receive the gospel.
Greg Stier (12:31):
So my good friend, Dave Gibson and I were in Scottsdale and we were at a restaurant and we asked Sandra this server, how would she describe her life? In six words, she took a look at the words and began to weep and had to excuse herself. And she came back. She goes, I’m sorry, those words just open up a floodgate of emotion in me. She started sharing with us, all of her struggles. We go through the gospel with her life in six words. She puts her faith in Christ on the spot six months later, Dave and I are back in that same restaurant looking for Sandra. We asked the server at Sandra, here she goes, oh, she’s not working today. And I said, well, let’s look, how would you describe your life? In six words? She goes, oh, Sandra already took us through that. And I trust the Christ, my savior. And now, I mean, I was like my goodness, just from one encounter. And it’s not the app, it’s the gospel. So I tell people I don’t go into a steak restaurant for the plate. I go for the steak, right? I want it served on a plate. Well, the gospel message is is the stake and the life in six words, app is just a really nice plate to serve it on.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:33):
Well, I love this tool. It’s a great tool for sharing the gospel. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast. I appreciate it.
Greg Stier (13:39):
Thanks Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:40):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (15:00):
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.
Subscribe Today to The Evangelism Podcast with Evangelist Daniel King
R. York Moore | The TikTok Evangelist
R. York Moore is the President and CEO of the Coalition for Christian Outreach. He also happens to have a massive TikTok following and many of his videos get up to half a million views. He is preaching the Gospel in sixty second sound bites to a generation that does not like going to church.He has over 50 million views, nearly 400,000 followers, nearly 4 million likes and most importantly, over 140,000 indications for a decision for Christ! Learn his secrets to TikTok success on today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast.
Website: https://tellthestory.net/
Read an Article about the Future of Evangelism on TikTok: https://churchleaders.com/outreach-missions/426177-tiktok-evangelism.html
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
York Moore is the president and CEO of the coalition for Christian outreach. He also happens to have a massive TikTok following, and many of his videos get up to half a million views. He is preaching the gospel in 60 second soundbites to a generation that does not like going to church. He has over 50 million views, nearly 400,000 followers, nearly 4 million likes, and most importantly, over 140,000 indications for a decision for Christ. Learn his secrets to, to success. On today’s episode of the evangelism podcast,
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:52):
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 (01:17):
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, York Moore. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.
R. York Moore (01:28):
Hey, thanks for having me Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:30):
So let’s talk a little bit about evangelism. How did you get started doing evangelism?
R. York Moore (01:36):
Well, I was saved as an atheist. I went to the greatest university in America, the university of Michigan. Go blue! And when I went to Michigan and my nickname and my fraternity was Satan wrote papers against Christians, persecuted Christians. And then I became one, which is a whole, we could have a whole nother episode on just that. And when I became a Christian, I became just convinced that every single person around me needed to know the saving message of the gospel. And I was dangerous. In fact, I, I would say that my first people that I would share the Lord with, they, they were my first evangelism victims and I didn’t know what I was doing. And so just sharing Christ on campus. I started sharing Christ with my professors. With students, started a ministry of campus, save for Christ at the time before going on staff with inner varsity. And now I’m the president of the coalition for Christian outreach. But in those early days, it was just infectious. Like I would literally come home from campus with my tongue swollen because I could not stop talking about Jesus. Now, Daniel, I’ll tell you. I didn’t know that I was actually doing evangelism. I didn’t know that word. I was just telling everybody what Jesus had done for me. I didn’t even fully understand the gospel at the time.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:44):
And you have been sharing the gospel a lot on TikTok and you’ve had absolutely phenomenal success. What, what have you seen God do on TikTok?
R. York Moore (02:55):
Well, it’s been incredible. I started a year ago almost almost to the day. So July of 2021, I went on TikTok. I was so tired of waiting for live audiences to come back. And a friend of mine convinced me to start preaching on TikTok. And I like my first day. So as an evangelist, I had no idea what I was doing. I was dangerous, but immediately I began to see the impact in the organic reach. And so it’s been a little under a year now. I have over 400,000 followers. I have a hundred million plus views across my library, but most, most importantly, I have 200,000 people who have indicated a first time decision for Christ. And what’s, what’s interesting is a lot of people will wonder, well, can a 45 second video really change somebody’s life? Well, the answer is yes, but most of those people whose lives are being impacted. They’re not watching one video. They’ll be featured my videos through the algorithm, the F four U page. We’ll push it to their, their account and they’ll end up watching dozens and dozens and dozens of my videos. In fact, I like to save most of the kids that are getting saved through my TikTok channel. By the time they’ve watched me for a couple of months, they will have more theology than had they been in a youth group in person for an entire year.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:04):
What was it that really encouraged you to, to start using TikTok?
R. York Moore (04:09):
Well, like I said, I was just so sick and tired of COVID, you know, was waiting for COVID to be over and just dying to get back on that platform, that podium, wherever I could to preach Christ. And you, you know, as well as I do, there’s something electric and intoxicating, a standing in that moment where you’re giving that call to faith, seeing people’s lives, change where the spirit of the living God is stick in the room and you just know eternity is pressing in on human hearts. And I just couldn’t wait to get back to that. And so I say, I’m desperate, you know? And so I, I was on a live stream with a, a guy named Brian Barcelona. He’s a young guy’s founder of one voice ministries, and he was talking about TikTok and I had been following him on Instagram.
R. York Moore (04:47):
I was pretty excited about him. And I said, Hey Brian, I said, I’m gonna fly down to Texas and take you out for brisket. So I flew down here and took him out for, for lunch. And the course of that lunch, he convinced me that I needed to be on TikTok. And I said, I’m too old. I’m in my fifties I’m unfamiliar with the app. He said, don’t worry. All you need to do is be willing. And so I flew back home, we set up a zoom and, you know, within probably 30 minutes, I recorded my very first TikTok. It had over 2000 views. Now, now I’m seeing, you know, many that are over a hundred, 200, 500,000 views. But what was most important to me is the comments. When I got into the comments, I would hear kids say things like this. This has changed my life forever. I had no idea who Jesus was. I’d never heard this before. And they would say things even this morning, I had probably a dozen or so comments like this. They would say you’ve changed my life. I never knew about Jesus this week. I’m getting baptized. So I got my first Bible. I joined a church and these are things that, you know, before a year ago, I would never conceive of being possible through a social media platform. But TAC has changed everything.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:55):
I think this is such a amazing way to reach out to people. Young people spend so much time on their phones. I’ve got a 12 year old. He is always asking me, daddy, can I have your phone? He wants to spend time looking at videos and, and seeing fun stuff. And so everyone’s that’s under like 20 is on TikTok. It’s now all the, the older grandmas that are still on Facebook. Everyone else has moved over to these other platforms. And, and you’re there ministering to people who need Jesus and evangelists often are looking for a platform. They’re looking for a crowd of people. And here you are, every single day, you’re preaching to thousands and thousands of people. I mean, how far would most evangelists fly to preach to 500,000 people? And here you give that on a regular basis.
R. York Moore (06:46):
Yeah, I think about that every morning. I didn’t have to get on a plane. I didn’t have to sit in a crummy hotel. I didn’t have to hope the crowd showed up. I write my tos for an imaginary kid that lives in my brain. I call him Nick, he’s a 14 year old kid. He’s addicted to porn. He’s so socially, you know, he’s acceptable, you know, but he has problems at home. He has a normal struggles, but he’s open. And I think that persona, it does typify the, the gen Z students that we’re seeing coming onto our college campuses. Like I said, I’m the president of the coalition for Christian outreach and we are welcoming gen Z. I like to say that gen Z is the most available generation in American history. In fact, I believe that we’re on the precipice of the greatest evangelistic opportunity in American history.
R. York Moore (07:27):
I really do believe that. And I think one of the reasons why is that this is the most available generation. They don’t come with the same religious baggage and trauma that the gen Xers and the millennials did. They don’t come in with all of the demands and requirements of millennials. The millennial generation was a very difficult generation when we were doing campus ministry and inter university with them though, we had great success, but I think that we’re gonna have even more with gen Z. So when I write that TikTok for 14 year old, Nick, in my mind, he’s in the back seat of his mom’s SUV, he’s on his way to soccer practice or some after school kind of deal. And I have, I have a few minutes with him and I’m speaking directly to him, six to eight inches from his face. I didn’t have to get a permit.
R. York Moore (08:07):
I didn’t have to visit his school. And I had this intimate moment with Nick and the Knicks of this world they’re responding and TikTok is very different than the other social media platforms. In fact, it’s now surpassed YouTube as the most watched app. The most in-app watched time it has caused Facebook or meta to now change the Instagram and, and create reels. Youtube has created shorts, and those are responses to this algorithm based technology that TAC has really created. And for me as kind of a, just an individual it’s unheard of in the social media space, without a publicist, without an agent, without big dollars for production, I can go ONAC and I can actually grow a community care for that community and have a very large influence. And that’s every evangelist’s dream.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:56):
Let’s talk a little bit about the content. A lot of the videos that do well on TikTok is funny. Dance moves. Do you do funny dance moves or, or what are you talking about? What is the, the questions that you’re answering that is giving your audience something to stop and, and to watch this, this avatar, Nick mm-hmm
R. York Moore (09:18):
<Affirmative>. Yeah. So, you know before TikTok existed, it was a company called musically and they made their fame through trending dance, videos, voiceovers, those kinds of things. If you haven’t been ONAC lately, the whole thing has changed. It is now the new YouTube. You can learn how to garden, you can learn how to cook. You can learn how to travel. Everything that you can imagine is on TikTok. There’s a niche for anything that you can imagine on TikTok. And so what I’m teaching is very basic Bible doctrine. So I teach about sin judgment righteousness, the, the Trinity, the divinity of Jesus, the death of Jesus, the resurrection of Jesus. These are things that, you know, you and I, we kind of take for granted. And but there is a hunger in this generation. Once they start actually putting the pieces of the story of God together and applying it to their lives, it’s electric, it makes sense.
R. York Moore (10:08):
It connects with everything that they were hoping for and longing for. And no one has been able to put their finger on it. Nobody’s been able to tell them the kinds of things that, that I’m telling them on TikTok. And here’s the thing I do preach a lot on hell, the lake of fire. I talk about Satan quite a bit. I talk about pornography all the time. And you know, if you were to go to my TikTok channel, which is just York dot more, what you would see is a very kind of click Beatty appearing account. But once you start watching the content and you get fir past the first seven seconds of each video, what I’m actually doing is preaching the gospel and teaching very basic Bible content and applying it to their lives. Number one response that I get, especially from the videos on hell and condemnation is thank you so many, many kids are telling me, you know what?
R. York Moore (10:53):
This now makes sense. I never understood the Christian message because it just didn’t make sense. I didn’t understand why Jesus had to die, why I had to be forgiven on my sin because there were no consequences for that. And when we preach the judgment of God, when we preach the wrath of God, it actually makes the entire message make sense. But we have been raised in the United States for the last 20 years to put that in the broom closet to save that for another day, right? Don’t preach the wrath of God. That’s going to turn people away. And this is the very thing that I’ve based my account on this is probably probably 50% of what I preach on is the wrath of God. And it’s leading many, many people to Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:29):
Now, one of the things that makes TikTok videos be popular is the algorithm behind the, the software. And, and so can you tell me some of the things that you’ve learned that help you to work with the algorithm so that it knows that people want to listen to your videos?
R. York Moore (11:51):
Yeah, sure. And again, we could have a whole hour on this, but I would say the number one thing, the first and foremost thing the algorithm is looking for is consistency. Can the algorithm rely on you to provide consistent quality content for an audience that it knows it has for your content? So if I’m posting once a week, twice a week, five times a week, the algorithm says here’s an account. It’s occasionally good to me. I might reward it with a, a jackpot every now and then. Yeah. Yeah. But if you post three times, five times a day, and we’re only talking about 45, 50 second videos the algorithm says, well, here’s a, here’s an account that I can rely on to push consistent quality content to an audience that I already know exists. That’s number one, number two, the, the algorithm is looking for one thing.
R. York Moore (12:34):
And one thing only, and that’s watch time. The algorithm only wants to keep people eyeballs on the app. You don’t wanna migrate people to zoom. You don’t wanna say to your audience, check my Instagram. It doesn’t want any of that. If you can keep your audience engaged in the, in the TikTok app, it’s gonna reward your account more than most. The, the third thing is it does have to have a hook. I, I see so much good content on TikTok and people are assuming that it operates the same as YouTube as Instagram. The expectation for a video. If you’re not hooking your audience in the first three seconds of your video, you’ve lost them. They’re just gonna scroll. And so you gotta do something those first three seconds, that’s really gonna captivate the imagination and incentivize that person to watch, because there is an equation behind this for the algorithm.
R. York Moore (13:22):
The algorithm is looking for shares, likes comments, and follows. And there’s an equation that it puts together to say, this video is actually gonna do well. It tests it with this 100 people and then this thousand people, and then this 10,000 people. And that’s how videos actually go viral. It’s not because you made a good piece of content. You could make the very best video in the world, but if you’re not giving consistent quality content to the algorithm, it’s not gonna take a risk on you. You can make a great piece of content, but if it doesn’t have a hook, it’s not gonna be, it’s not gonna be watched by, by an audience. But once the algorithm says, okay, this has a universal appeal. It’s done well with this smaller audience. I’ve watched videos go 500, 800,000, go on all over the world, outside of the United States.
R. York Moore (14:04):
So it first, you know, focuses on the United States and then it pushes it across the world. If it has success. Now that’s not every video. I mean, many of my videos, they, they fail, but I’ll tell you this, a failure ONAC is a wild success on an Instagram. A view have 5,000 views on an Instagram, you know, real, you think, oh, it’s a good day. And you know what Instagram says, you did pretty good. You’d do it better. If you gave us some more money, TikTok, isn’t asking for money. In fact, they give me money, right? And so that’s not why I’m doing it, but the reality is bility. The organic reach on TikTok. It’s unlike anything that we’ve seen. In fact, I’d say that this is perhaps the greatest opportunity for the gospel since radio and television. It’s almost like when we went from the BlackBerrys the, as the epitome of the smartphone to the iPhone, that’s what hap that’s what’s happened. So a lot of people are making the mistake that TikTok is just the next social media platform. It’s not, it’s like going from the Blackberry to the iPhone.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:59):
What’s different about it than other social media sites,
R. York Moore (15:03):
The algorithm itself. In fact, you might remember when president Donald Trump threatened to ban TikTok in the United States, why would, why would he do that? Right. Part of the reason why he did that is here. We have military grade artificial intelligence that had collect, collected data on American citizens banking information. When I get paid from TikTok, I have to give them a W2. They have my social security number. They have my routing number and all of that money was going over to China. It was being stored on Chinese servers. And Trump said, well, this can’t, this can’t continue to happen. So we have American investors. We have Walmart, we have Cisco, we have American investors. So now our data actually remains on the us shores. Why was that so important? It was important because the algorithm itself is a, a proprietary piece of technology that has never existed before it’s people are trying to replicate it. They’re trying to mimic it, but there is nothing on earth, like the TikTok algorithm.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:59):
And it’s so wonderful that you are able to use it as a tool for the gospel. What, what a tremendous benefit that is now, you are not just a, a talk star. You also lead a wonderful Christian ministry. Can you tell me some about what your ministry does you just recently took over as president and you have big vision what what’s coming in the future?
R. York Moore (16:22):
Yeah. So it’s the coalition for Christian outreach? It’s been around since 1972, so 50 years. We celebrated our 50 year anniversary agents recently and we’re, we’re growing nationally. And so the big difference between the coalition for Christian outreach and many other great, fantastic organizations that do college ministries, we partner with the local church. And so when we place a staff to reach a campus for Christ, that person is shared by a local church. They are on staff of the local church. And we’re reaching the campus through the local church based in Pittsburgh, but we’re expanding all throughout the country. So if you’re listening and you’re a pastor, you’re a church leader. We’d love to talk to you about partnering together, to reach the church, reach the campus for Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:03):
Okay. So if someone wants to follow you on TikTok, how do they follow you on TikTok?
R. York Moore (17:08):
It’s just York dot more
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:09):
So York dot more, go follow him, see his content, see what is impacting so many lives. And then if someone wants to find out more about the ministry that you’re now leading, how can they find out more about
R. York Moore (17:20):
That? Yeah, it’s CCO CCO jubilee.org, or you can Google the coalition for Christian outreach.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:28):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much. I am so honored to, to be with you that the, the ministry that you’re doing through TikTok is just so amazing. And I believe that God is going to bring many, many young people into the kingdom of God because of your ministry. So thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.
R. York Moore (17:46):
Oh my pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:47):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus. And I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism podcast on apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with king ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more, but please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much. And God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (19:08):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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Happy Independance Day
Today, we are celebrating our independence in the United States of America. On July 4, 1776 the Congress of the thirteen united States of America signed the Declaration of Independence. In it they proclaimed, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”
Recently, I visited Philadelphia during the middle of the night with a friend. We parked our car and walked around Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was signed. I walked around the building where Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington walked. In this building, fifty-six brave men mutually pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to uphold the ideals of liberty. They risked their lives to bring our country freedom from tyranny.
Right across the street from Independence Hall is a small building where the Liberty Bell is displayed for tourists. Back when the bell was forged, it was tradition to inscribe a verse from the Bible on every bell. What verse do you suppose the foundry chose to engrave around the edge of this bell when they cast it? It was as if the foundry knew that this bell would ring for freedom because they wrote, ‘Proclaim Liberty throughout all the land to all the inhabitants thereof.”
This quote is straight from Leviticus 25:10. This verse was supposed to be yelled at the time of the year of Jubilee! Once every fifty years, every slave was set free and everyone had their debts canceled.
Another famous day of Liberty occurred when Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation on January 1, 1863. With a single stroke of his pen, he freed thousands of slaves. Those who were held captive were suddenly set free. The chains fell and black Americans were able to take their rightful place in society as free men.
Yet both of these significant events pale in comparison with a day two thousand years ago. On that day, Jesus made it possible for every person on earth to be free! Thomas Jefferson once said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots…” Our spiritual tree of liberty was watered once and for all with the blood of Christ.
Jesus’ purpose for coming to earth was to bring liberty and independence! When Adam sinned, he caused the entire human race to be put in bondage. Sin became the chains that kept mankind from fellowship with God. But, when Jesus died on the cross, He provided a way for every person to be freed from the bondage of sin. The Gospel is a worldwide emancipation proclamation of liberty from bondage to the power of sin.
Independence was the main reason Jesus came to earth. At the beginning of his ministry, Jesus said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised,To preach the acceptable year of the Lord“ (Luke 4:18-19).
Jesus came to preach deliverance to the captives, to set at liberty them that are bruised, and to preach the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor. When is the acceptable year of the Lord’s favor? Why, the year of Jubilee, of course.
Jesus’ purpose for coming to earth was to bring Liberty and Independence!
In America we live in a land of great freedom. In America we are free to gather together to pray. In America we are free to serve God. But, if we do not exercise our freedoms, we are no better off than those who have no freedom. On Independance Day, I will humbly thank God for our freedom and ask Him to continue to bless our nation. Will you join me in prayer?
ABOUT DANIEL KING
Evangelist Daniel King, D.Min is on a mission to lead people to Jesus. He has visited over seventy nations preaching good news and he has led over two million people in a salvation prayer. To support King Ministries in our quest for souls, click here!