1 877-431-4276Jabran Inayat | Mission to Asia
Jabran Inayat is the founder of Mission Asia, a satellite TV network that aims to reach over a billion people with the Gospel across South Asia. Today we talk about what God is doing in Pakistan.
Learn More About Mission Asia: https://missionasia.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Jabran Inayat is the founder of Mission Asia, a satellite TV network that aims to reach over a billion people with the gospel across South Asia. Today we talk about what God is doing in the nation of Pakistan.
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 (00:52):
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, Jabran Inayat. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Jabran Inayat (01:03):
Thank you so much, my privilege to be on the podcast, and it’s wonderful. I am excited to talk something special today.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:12):
Your family is great friends with my family. The Inayat family has been working in Pakistan, and then there was some persecution and you had to leave. And so your father went to California. I’ve been to his house in California. Your brother Temran. I was with him in Pakistan just a couple of weeks ago. He lives out in North Carolina. And you’re living in Norway. That’s right. And in Norway you have a wonderful ministry called Mission Asia. Yeah. Tell me, what is Mission Asia doing?
Jabran Inayat (01:49):
Thank you so much for the friendship that we have in the Lord. Mission Asia is a satellite Christian TV channel, and the vision is from Acts 2:11, that everyone here the wonderful works of God in their own language, the vision for Mission Asia is to reach in our own language. And and the vision is for 1 billion people who speaks Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi. That’s the vision to reach to people in their own language because that’s the, that’s the heartbeat that people who are praying, people who are listening and they are reaching, they, they want to be reached. They have never heard the gospel. So this is our vision that we reach by satellites, and we have incredible response where the Lord has been done in last two years in pandemic. We have started that first September, 2020, we were on the satellite.
Jabran Inayat (02:44):
And now as we’re sitting here in two years, we have been on the s we have seen incredible response. The calls has been coming, and people who have been receiving Jesus Christ in Corona time, sitting in their home, watching tv, watching live programs, and you know, that’s the, that’s the heart that we have seen. And it’s because of the gospel. Gospel has the power, the anointing comes on the gospel. So when we have preached the gospel, we don’t have to say many other things to people in Pakistan or about Islam. We have Bible to preach and, and, and that’s the word of God. So we thank God for this vision. We thank God that your program is on Mission Asia. You have listed the office there in, in Pakistan, Asia, the call center. And that is the reason that we have seen, whenever we are doing the live programs, it has been mostly 2000 calls, a recorded calls that we have experienced in one and half hour program.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:44):
Yeah, it was absolutely amazing. I got to visit the offices. I, I saw where all the video editing is done, and then where the call center is, where prayer partners will pray with people who are calling in. And many of the people who call in are asking for prayer. Some of them are asking for a Bible. Some of them are sharing testimonies. What are some of the, the testimonies of lives that have been changed?
Jabran Inayat (04:11):
Yeah, the, because it’s a, it’s it’s a live programs that what we have experienced that every Thursday it’s we call it live prayer program. It’s on Thursdays. And me and her wife, gta, she’s on the program and we, we receive live calls and we pray for the people. It’s ministering to the people. One of the testimony we have seen, it was a guy, a, a Muslim name, a Muslim guy that was watching. And, and he told me it is the story last year, It was a story last year. And he told me that he has been watching Mission Asia Channel. And he told me that he has been reading all the books. He was not a Christian, he was a Muslim guy. And he said that he has been reading all the books. He has been, you know, searching everything.
Jabran Inayat (04:59):
But he has came on a point and he has been watching actually the programs in his own language. And he understood. And he called me, I talked within 58 minutes, he called me from Pakistan and I talked with him 58 minutes. And, and I asked, I went to into the deep questions. I said, What is the reason why you want to receive Jesus? So he told that he has tried everything, but there is no peace in any other thing. There is no peace in any other religion. Jesus has a peace. So I prayed with him and then later on, I mean, he told me that I want to take a baptism. And I said, It is just you. And, and then he said, No, it’s, it’s my family. And I thought that maybe it’s four people. And then he said, It’s, it’s our entire family.
Jabran Inayat (05:44):
My brothers there. And there were 15 people. There were 15 people together. It’s one of the testimony that I’m telling what the Lord is doing, and I believe that this is the last time, this is the end time when God is doing his work, when because of his word, we have seen that incredible hunger is there in the people of Pakistan and, and in all over the world, the hunger is there. What is the truth? And there is only one truth. And Jesus is the truth. He is the life. And you, we have seen that kind of miracles, that kind of life changing testimonies because that’s a big miracle when, when someone gave their life to Jesus. That’s the biggest miracle in the life. So we thank God the response is incredible good. And that’s why we have seen the satellite. We have seen calls coming from India because we speak in, or we speak in Punjabi, we speak in Hindi language.
Jabran Inayat (06:39):
These three languages are our focus. And we want to reach our people, even though wherever, if they’re in us, we have ip, TVs, people watch the programs on IP TVs like Apple TV and RO car TV and, and Amazon and every, every platform that we are there. So we thank God for the vision that God has given, but it is, it is the vision to work together with churches, work together. This network is not, is just for one church. It’s a network open for everyone who has a heart, who has a vision to come together for people in Pakistan. And we thank God, God has been faithful in everything what he has provided. It’s a very costly thing. But the Lord is the source. He has been giving, he has been providing, he has been showing what he has. And he said in his word, what I have what you have started in spirit, it will be not in finished, in, in flesh. So we thank God that the vision is growing more. We have seen many testimonies what the law is doing in the network.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:42):
And so in order to reach people in these areas, you have the, the air battle. Yeah. And you also have the ground battle and you’re actually working in both areas. And so in just a couple of weeks you’re going to, to go to Pakistan and they have recently experienced flooding. Yeah. That has covered 70% of, of Pakistan. 70% of the people there have been impacted by the floods. And so people are hungry. Some of them are starving. They, they have lost all of their possessions if their house was covered by the water. And so tell me, what are you going to do to help reach these people that are hurting? Yeah,
Jabran Inayat (08:30):
It’s a very sad story. It’s but I have seen in the crisis, Christ has been all always glorified. This is the time when we have seen there is an unreached area in Pakistan that, that is very difficult to reach people with the love of Christ. No churches there, there is no campaigns. You cannot do anything. And we have already partnership with other churches together. We have already helped more than thousand families with the food. That was our first, you know, aid. Because initially the need was hunger ness was so much people were starving. So in the start, it was that we have helped together with the churches, together with the partners, help more than thousand families. We gave them floor and rice and sugar and, and we bought, you know, mosquito nets because of that the, the water, because of the, the flooding, it was diseases, malaria mosquitoes has came.
Jabran Inayat (09:27):
And you know, I have, I know some stories. Children’s had been died because of that. So the compassion of Jesus in our hearts, it is that we are there to help. The church is there to help when there is a need there. And it is not just we are helping, we are just sh showing the love of Christ in action. And I believe in coming times that this unreached areas, I I speak by faith now that in unreached areas, I believe that now when they are in need and as a church, we are going there and and giving them food, giving them what their need is. But the, but the most important need is Jesus. And we are sharing the love of Christ also. So we are already planning to do some of the things in Bloche stone, in, in, in the areas in sin.
Jabran Inayat (10:15):
We have already, our teams are there, they are on the field. This time when they were there, they have borrowed the, the, the small boots. They went into the places. They worked really hard. They were themself on the risk because mosquitoes and other things. But I thank God that the vision that God gave us, it is inside the team also. And they’re working hard. So I ask people who are listening, pray for us, help us stand together with us, that we can reach these unreached areas that was not possible. But crisis can bring Christ in these areas.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:54):
There’s a lot of evangelists and pastors who listen to this podcast. And if someone is interested in putting their television program on your network, you actually have the ability to translate it into ou, into air, someone’s TV program in Urdu. What is your, your website or how could someone get in contact with you if they’re interested? Maybe someone is listening and would be interested in helping to support this unique outreach to the nation of Pakistan. How can they find more information about you? Yeah,
Jabran Inayat (11:30):
They can go on Facebook, just write Mission Asia. Other information is there. There’s a website called mission asia.org, mission asia.org. And they can go onto the website, the email is there and, and they could search jabon ani. So our, our contact details are there so they can contact us and help us and pray together in this time. Because it is not only the, the financially help that we will, you know, give, It is a spiritual help that we want. And the people who wants to do programs, and they have, it’s a open, open heart. I mean, whatever the Lord has, you know, asked them, Let’s work together. Let’s, it is this channel. I feel it’s heart to heart that we know you are. 15 years ago, we had a relation and you had a heart there. Your parents had a heart there. You did.
Jabran Inayat (12:21):
I mean, that’s why I said Brother Daniel King, it’s open, come and do. And because it’s a Buffet TV channel, it’s a 24 hour tv and it’s the on set light. And we are, the Lord is providing, Lord is giving. But we need, I mean, people who, who have, I mean programs or if they have heart to con connect with us, we can send the programs in Pakistan. They will dub I do myself translations and you know, help us to reach many, many people because the gifts that the Lord has given, it’s is the body of Christ. It’s one beats thousand, but two beats, 10,000. That’s my heart. To work in a unity, to work in synergy, to work together for the kingdom of God. And as we are here in Turkey with many different ministries. But the aim is one, the prayer of Jesus in John chapter 17 is to God for his disciples, that they will be one and people will see that they are my disciples.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:19):
Amen. Tell me about how this vision got started. It’s a big vision. You, you have a desire to reach this entire region in the 10 40 window. Yeah. How did, how did that happen when you were young? What did God put in your heart that made you want to reach people who were lost? Yeah.
Jabran Inayat (13:45):
Yeah. When I was 16, 17 year old, and from that time I was finding in my life I was, I got saved. And I was finding in my life, where is my call? What is, because that’s very important. And I fell in my heart that I have evangelistic call in my heart. We start doing campaigns with many, many different evangelists. We start doing, I mean, we seeing things are happening. And then in 2007, we had a TV in Pakistan. It was a very small TV station. God put it on my heart. I was inspired not by any Christian channel, I was inspired by another Muslim channel. I watched the, the name of that channel was a peace channel. And when I watched that, the guy on their channel, he was just interpreting wrong Bible. And it was a Muslim channel. So when I saw that it’s inside of me zeal, I, I felt that if this guy, what, what, He’s not speaking right.
Jabran Inayat (14:48):
He’s not telling right things. If he can, you know, do on tv, why not? We can do that. Vision had started in 2007. We started something and you know, it was hundreds, hundred thousand people we were reaching that time. And then the persecution came, then the vision just diffused and we have to leave the country. And I came in Sweden and then I just felt that, I don’t know if we can do, if we cannot do, But then after I’m, in some years, when I was in Sweden, another channel asked me and called me and they said, Do you want to work together with us? And we want to do, you know, work in Asia and we want to work in Pakistan. That was the time when I just felt that again, that I can see that light. I can see that how we can reach many, many people without knocking doors.
Jabran Inayat (15:34):
We are into their homes. And, and from that years, we have seen incredible move of God. And, but for from two years, we are more focusing in, in especially when the Lord has opened a door for us to start a mission Asia, a settle Christian TV channel. We are, we are actually focusing more now in these areas. We have response from India. It’s not only just Pakistan. We have wonderful response from India. My wife name is Gita. They think that she’s from India. You know, Gita is is a holy Bible holy, holy book for Hindus. And they think she’s from India and I’m from Pakistan. It doesn’t matter for us. We are from Hammond. And you know, that’s, that’s the main thing. People are getting saved in India. People are getting saved. And because of the language, we speak Hindi and Udu.
Jabran Inayat (16:19):
And you know, that’s how the vision started. And my wife together, when we have decided that we have to seven days, we were praying and fasting, me and my wife, we were praying and fasting and everything. When you start something, when it is birth in prayer, when it’s birth in fasting, God is, God is there to help you and, and provide you. And, and it, it cost a lot. It was 150,000 Norwegian Crowns, it is $15,000 or $20,000 you need every month to pay everything. And we said, How could we do it? We didn’t have a single throne, we didn’t have anything, but the Lord has put it in our heart. We had a house, We have sold that house. The Lord has put it us that we could use that money for some of the places, for some of the thing.
Jabran Inayat (17:04):
And then Lord was blessing. Lord was giving us, you know, David, when he gave for the temple, it was his private money also. God has given him favor. He had given his money also. So I believe nothing belongs to us. Everything belongs to him. Our heart, our money, our houses, our shoes, our cars, it’s all belongs to him because it’s his birth in us. It takes one second that we will be died. So if something happened today, my money or my home or my car, it doesn’t, doesn’t help me anything. Only the thing I can take to heaven, it’s my soul and it’s someone that I bring into heaven is that’s I can bring. So that’s how it birthed. God has been so faithful and I believe that people who are hearing it, someone is hearing and you are thinking that how this will happen. Mary said the same thing to Angel, how this could happen, but you know, as the Holy Spirit will come upon you and then you will birth and his name will be Jesus. I believe there’s a vision that is, that is birthing inside of people and God will use you, someone who’s watching be bold and take a step of faith, and God is there to provide because he is the source.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:23):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast. I’m so excited to see the fruit that God is going to bring through Mission Asia. The Lord bless you, and we appreciate you so much.
Jabran Inayat (18:38):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate your time and God bless all the people. Thanks a lot. God bless you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:44):
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 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 (20:03):
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.
Richard Gunning | From Belfast to the Ends of the Earth
Richard Gunning is the founder of ACE – the Association of Campaign Evangelists. This group of on-fire evangelists has conducted hundreds of campaigns by systematically going from town to town until an entire nation hears about Jesus. Today, Richard Gunning tells the story of how God sent him from Belfast to the Ends of the Earth.
Discover ACE – the Association of Campaign Evangelists: http://ace-evangelists.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Richard Gunning is the founder of ace, the Association of Campaign Evangelist. This group of on fire evangelists has conducted hundreds of campaigns by systematically going from town to town until an entire nation hears about Jesus. Today, Richard Gunning tells a story of how God sent him from Belfast to the ends of the earth.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:37):
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 (01:02):
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, Richard Gunning. He is the author of From Belfast two, The Ends of the Earth. He is also the founder of ace, which is the Association of Campaign Evangelists, and they are responsible for doing many different campaigns in many parts of the world. Brother Richard, thank you so much for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Richard Gunning (01:35):
It’s great to be with you today, Daniel, on just sharing some of the things that God is doing around the world.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:41):
So let’s start really at the beginning of your spiritual walk Okay. And how you went to Bible school and in the nation of Norway Yeah. And really got on fire for God. Tell me how that happened.
Richard Gunning (01:56):
Well, it’s quite a long story, but I’ll try to be, to be short. I, I gave my life to Jesus when I was 20. My mother gave me a book by the famous American evangelist Billy Graham. And after reading this book, I, I gave my life to the Lord just in my own room. I suppose it was about one o’clock in the morning in January. And I was 20 years of age at that time. And then shortly after that, I, I finished my training in hotel management at a college in Belfast. And I got the opportunity to go and work in a hotel in Norway. And when I was there some, I got involved in a, in a very good church, which had some really on fire young people in it. And they took me to a convention that was held each year in the south of Norway, which was organized by a very big mission organization with a, a real focus on gospel campaigns, preaching the gospel through radio and literature and national evangelists.
Richard Gunning (03:03):
And I heard then that they had a Bible school there. And I thought, if I ever went to a Bible school, I would love to go to the Bible school that’s based at that mission organization’s headquarters. After some time I came home, but I continued to pray and to seek God. And then I decided I would take a step of faith and I would apply to this Bible school in Norway. And they accepted me and they said, You can come and join us you know, the following academic year. And that put a bit of pressure on me because I could only speak a few words of the Norwegian language and all the teaching was gonna be in Norwegian. So I, I sort of gave up the job that I had. I started reading a Norwegian bible beside my English Bible. And then one day a friend of mine told me, he said that he had a neighbor who was actually an old man from Norway who had been married for many years to a lady from Belfast and who lived quite close to where, where I lived.
Richard Gunning (04:09):
And I went round to, to see this old Norwegian man. And I told him what I was planning to do, and I said, I, I’m going to Norway. I need to learn the language. And he said, Why are you going to Norway? And I said, I’m going to a Bible school. And he said, Well, he said, I am a complete atheist. He said, I don’t believe in any God. And then he said, But I will help you. So I started going to his house, you know, two or three times a week. And he started correcting me and helping me. And together with my own studies, I, I learned the language. And then in 1982, I set off for a year at this Bible school in Norway.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
Now, the Bible School was led by a great Norwegian evangelist who has now gone to heaven. Yeah. Tell me a little bit about him.
Richard Gunning (05:04):
The whole mission was founded by a Norwegian man called Aril Edvardsen. And he lived in this little village in the south of Norway, and he was quite dramatically saved one night, just before his wife gave birth to their first child. And God had spoken to him in a vision and told him to buy a plot of waste grind in the little village down beside a river. And that he was to build a headquarters for world evangelism in this little valley down beside the river in this little village of 3000 people in the south of Norway. And he was obedient to this heavenly vision, and he started to build this headquarters. He started to have a convention each year, and more and more people started to come to his convention and started to support his ministry. And he started supporting many national evangelists, local people in different countries to help them spread the gospel.
Richard Gunning (06:07):
And then he started doing his own gospel campaigns, and then he built the Bible school. He built a printing press. He had a, a book publishing and distribution company. Later on, he got into Christian television, which was something very new in Europe that wasn’t common the way it is in a, in America. And so God used this man in a great way. And he, he was a wonderful servant of God. He was often referred to as Scandinavia as Billy Graham. So he was a great man of God and a great influence on my life and my ministry.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:48):
You do such a wonderful job of telling your story in your new book. It’s really an, an autobiography Yeah. From Belfast to the ends of the earth. Yeah. And so after you graduated from Bible school Yeah. You became a businessman for a while. You worked in hotels. Yeah. Then you started a video. Yeah. Rental store. That’s right. But then there came a point where you decided to go to Kenya Yeah. And become a missionary. Yeah. Tell me about that.
Richard Gunning (07:17):
Again, it came back to this contact with Norway. It’s funny that I come from Northern Ireland, Norway’s a completely different country, but somehow there’s a divine connection there is the way I would like to put it. And I used to get the magazine from the, the, the mission organization every month. And they announced that they were having a trip to Kenya, and you could go with Aril Edvardsen and his team and be involved, you know, really as a spectator in his gospel campaign. My wife and I had never been to Africa. We’d never been to any kind of third world country, but we just both felt, as a recently married couple, we just really felt that God wanted us to join this trip. And we went along on that trip, and on the first night of the gospel campaign we were seated on one side of the platform, and Aril Edvardsen was preaching.
Richard Gunning (08:13):
And there were thousands of Kenyan people in a, a slum area of Nairobi, the capital city, listening to this man preaching. And as he was doing that and ministering, I, I didn’t hear an audible voice, but I could sense the voice of God speaking to my heart and saying over and over again, you can do the same. You can do the same, you can do the same. So to, again, to cut a long story short, we, we, we took a step of faith. I had a, a friend who was a Kenyan, and he invited us to come out and to, to have a big pastor’s conference and to have some meetings. And we,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:53):
It’s your friend Peter, who actually you translated for in the school in Norway. Yes. And then when you went to Kenya, he started to translate for you.
Richard Gunning (09:02):
That’s exactly right. Daniel. the, the, the school took two people from Kenya each year, two pastors. And these guys obviously couldn’t speak the language, but because I could speak it, and obviously English is my mother tongue, I very quickly became their interpreter whenever we went out to have meetings. So when Peter was speaking in a church in Norway, I would interpret what he said into the Norwegian language. And then when I went out to Kenya, obviously I couldn’t speak Swahili, which is the national language. So Peter became my interpreter, and our roles were, were totally reversed. So it, it’s, it’s very strange the way God led somebody from Northern Ireland to learn Norwegian to go to a Bible school in Norway, to meet a man from Kenya, and then to later go down to Kenya and start working with the, the same man. And we’ve been working together now for 32 years down there in Kenya. And also God has opened doors for me into, you know, many other countries to go and preach there as well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:11):
So in Kenya, you started training up pastors and sending them out to very remote village areas, and it, it exploded very quickly. It did. Tell me about that.
Richard Gunning (10:24):
Basically, we just started out the name of the ministry that we felt God gave us was reached the unreached. So we wanted to focus on people in Kenya who had never heard the gospel before. If you go to the big cities in Kenya, you’ll see a lot of churches and it, it things look quite developed. But if you go out into the bush, you meet people who are living a very simple and almost primitive lifestyle. And we find that many of these tribes had never heard the gospel before, and there were no churches. So we started just driving around, just me and my wife and our friend Peter, and preaching in these little villages and sharing the gospel with people and praying for the sick. And very quickly support started to come in. And within about six months, we were supporting over a hundred national Kenyan pastors.
Richard Gunning (11:20):
And we sent them out just as Jesus did, two by two to go to different villages and different tribes and to preach the gospel and to plant churches amongst them. So that was kind of how it took off and started to grow quickly. And then we felt God challenged us about doing gospel campaigns. Reinhard bonk, the famous German evangelist, he came to the time that we were living in, We went to his gospel campaign, and then we thought, let’s start doing our own campaigns, but we’ll go to smaller times where, you know, the big name evangelists aren’t likely to go. And, and we started doing the same thing, but on a smaller scale, a smaller budget, you know, smaller crowds, but still being, you know, very effective in these smaller times where there’d never been a campaign before. And that’s always kind of been my, my vision and my desire is to go where other people don’t go.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:18):
So brother Aril Edvardsen, he invited you to Russia right after the Berlin wall fell, Started working there. Yes. What did you see God do in Russia?
Richard Gunning (12:29):
Yes, Aril Edvardsen here. He knew about the work I was doing in Kenya, and he helped to support us there. And we went to visit him in Norway one time. And then he said to me quite unexpectedly, he said, I’m, I’m going to Russia because the communism has collapsed and, and there’s open doors there, and I’ve been there a couple of times, and I want you to help me. And it was a tremendous experience. We used to have meetings in these big, very old fashioned, but very beautiful theaters in different towns in Russia. And everywhere we went, you know, the places were absolutely packed. You had children sitting on the floor at the front, people standing down the aisles at the side and the back. I remember going to one place and, and the theater manager locked the door, and people were banging on the door and wanted to come in. And the, the, the management wouldn’t let them in because they, they said, you know, the place is is already far too full. There aren’t seats for everybody. You know, it’s not safe to, to let more people in. So we saw a great hunger for the gospel, and many people responded to the, the preaching. And it was just amazing to see, you know, what God was doing in Russia in the, in the 1990s especially.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:49):
Yeah. So you did campaigns on your own, but 20 years ago, God put it on your heart to start raising up other evangelists and training them and empowering them Yeah. To go and do campaigns in many different parts of the world. Yeah. And so you started Ace Yeah. The Association of Campaign evangelists. Kind of tell me how that vision came to pass.
Richard Gunning (14:16):
Well, a few years previous to that, I, I’d been doing a lot of campaigns in Southern India, and I started to realize that we could go a lot quicker if I involved other evangelists. So I had a few friends in different Scandinavian countries who were also evangelists. So I invited them to come and help me. And I saw that this was very effective because then we could do maybe two or even three campaigns in one week in three different places. And that was really where the kind of vision started to take place in my heart. And then eventually I decided to take a step of faith and I booked a conference room and some bedrooms in a hotel in Belfast. And I invited everybody I knew that I thought had an interest in campaign evangelism to come to this conference. And it was a big step of faith because I was very keen that people would come.
Richard Gunning (15:15):
So I told them, We will pay for all your food and your hotel room. All you have to pay is your flight to get here, and everything else will be paid for by us. But I didn’t have the money to, to pay for it. And on the second night of this conference, we had a, a night for our partners and supporters, and many people came because they wanted to see all these preachers who had come from, you know, Africa, Sweden, Norway, different places. And just before that meeting started, a man came to me and gave me a little Brian envelope. I didn’t know this guy, I’d never seen him before. And he said, There’s a gift for your work. And just before the meeting started, I went out to the washroom and I opened this little envelope, and inside was a check for about 10,000 Pines, which was about 15,000 US dollars at that time.
Richard Gunning (16:11):
And that was enough to pay everybody’s hotel room, all the meals, and also even to give some gifts to some of these guys to help them in their next campaign. So that was really a confirmation that this was the right thing to do. And, and we kind of continued onwards from that. And it, it’s been a real blessing to, to work together with different people. And you know, we, we share contacts, we share fellowship, we try to help each other. We try to encourage each other and, and we meet together once a year for a conference like we’ve been doing this week when we’re happy to have you with us, Daniel, along with others, you know, from America, Sweden and Norway, Brazil, Great Britain, it’s, it’s wonderful that different evangelists can come together, keep their own ministry identity, but at the same time have a spirit of, of being willing to share contacts and to discuss how we can work together, how we can help each other, and to open doors for each other. And I, I think that’s the way it should be, and I think it’s good to see that in, in operation and in function.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:24):
Yeah, it’s been really beautiful this morning. We heard reports of what God is doing and Sri Lanka and Bangladesh and Pakistan in Brazil. Yeah. And so all over the world, God is moving and there are great opportunities for evangelism. Yes. I, And by working together, I think we can accomplish something great for God. Yeah. You mentioned how you received this gift for 10,000 pounds. What a tremendous miracle. And in your book, you, you talk a little bit about your, your philosophy of fundraising. You, you typically have not shared your needs with people Yeah. Or put, been aggressive No. In asking people for money. No. You’ve just been trusting God. Yeah. Share with me some of the, the miracles of provision that you’ve seen God do over the years
Richard Gunning (18:15):
That, that’s right, Daniel. I, I haven’t typically asked people for money or, or, or sent out, you know, letters, you know, outlining big needs. I think one of the reasons I’ve done that is that I don’t have very many people on the mailing list. So I know that really I can’t rely on a mailing list. You know, the fact that I have a big number to meet the need. I, I’ve always really had to trust God just to speak to the right person at the right time and send in the money. And we really have seen God meet our needs in some amazing ways. I remember one time we, we needed 10,000 pines. That was about $15,000 for a conference that we were planning in Kenya. And as the date grew closer and closer, we didn’t have the money that we needed. And I just didn’t know what to do because that was a huge amount of money.
Richard Gunning (19:13):
And I knew even if I sent out a letter to people on our mailing list, we probably couldn’t generate that kind of money at that time. And one day, a young man came to our office a couple of weeks ahead of this conference, and he said, I work in a bar not far from here. And he said, on Saturday night, two men came in and they had quite a lot to drink. And he said, As I was sweeping the floor, I find this banker’s check made out to your organization for 10,000 pints. And I thought, this is absolutely amazing. I thought, I wonder, can I trust this? So I took this banker’s check down to my local bank, and because it was a banker’s check, there wasn’t a personal name on it. It was check made out by the bank on behalf of a customer.
Richard Gunning (20:09):
I showed it to the manager and she said, Let me go and check. She made some inquiries. She came back about 10 minutes later and she said, I can confirm that this check is for you. And I said, Can you tell me who it’s from? And she said, No, we can’t tell you who it’s from because that’s private information. But she said, If you write a letter, we’ll pass it on to the person who issued that check. And I did that. And then I think about a week or 10 days later, I was on holiday with my wife on the beach in, in Northern Ireland, and the phone rang and it was a man on the end of the phone. And he said, I’m the man who sent you that check. He said, I sent it in the post, but the bank have told me that it somehow got lost or stolen.
Richard Gunning (20:57):
And I explained to him what had happened, and he said, Well, he said, That’s, that’s great. Obviously God has taken care of it, and it’s find its way to you, which is what I wanted. And he didn’t gimme his name, and he just said, I heard you speak in a meeting and I like what you’re doing. And he said, I’ll, I’ll try to support you again in the future. But that was just one example of many, many such cases of where God has really in quite unexpected ways, you know, met our needs and help us to do what God has called us to do.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:33):
With ACE. You have really challenged evangelists to go to small towns and small villages. Yeah. Where maybe there is not a huge crowd, but to go to places that have never had a crusade before. Yeah. Talk to me a little bit about why you feel that’s important.
Richard Gunning (21:56):
Well, the, the reason I like to go to new places is I’m always mindful of something that my spiritual father, a led edwardson, the Norwegian evangelist said, and he said, Why should some people hear the gospel? Many times when millions have never heard it once? And he used the example of Jesus feeding the 5,000. He didn’t just feed the first few rows and then give more bread to the disciples, and they fed the same rows again and again, because the people at the back would start to shout out, This isn’t fair. We are not getting any bread, and the gospel is the bread of life, and we need to make sure that everybody gets a chance to hear it. So I’ve always had this desire in my heart to go to places where people haven’t heard the gospel before. And I think that they should be the top priority.
Richard Gunning (22:49):
The people who haven’t heard should get a chance to hear, rather than focusing on places where the gospel has been preached many times, there’s many churches, there’s maybe been many gospel campaigns. I want to go to these remote places. And I often find in these places that, that that is where you see a great response to the gospel. And it’s also where you see many great healing miracles and, and wonderful things happening, because it’s like, God wants to show these people that, that this message is true. And, and he confirms the preaching of his word with signs following. So that’s kind of why I, I, I like to focus on unreached places and places that have not had a campaign before, maybe have very few churches or no churches at all. I want to give them the priority.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:39):
And ACE has had tremendous results through these methods. For example, in Burkina Faso, you started to do campaigns. And now over 67 campaigns have been done from village to village, town to town throughout Burkina Faso. Yes.
Richard Gunning (23:59):
Yeah, we started in Burkina Faso in 2006. And different evangelists from Ace also started to get involved and do their own campaign there. But we tried to have a kind of a strategy of trying to cover the whole country with gospel campaigns by going to all the small to medium sized times. And, and as you mentioned, we, since 2006, we’ve managed to do 67 campaigns, and we haven’t reached the whole country by any means. But we, we, we’ve done a good spread, you know, from east to west, from north to south. We, we’ve managed to have a campaign in a lot of the small to medium size times. And that, that strategy is ongoing as, as much as possible to try and reach as many different places and have campaigns in as many different places, and kind of blanket coverage, you know, the whole, the whole state. And that’s the kind of same thing as what we did in Southern India and other a evangelists are doing in, in other countries, you know, trying to saturate the country or the state, you know, with the gospel. By, by doing these pioneer campaigns,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:09):
After successfully leading Ace for several years, you saw the need for a successor for someone to come after you. Yeah. And so now you’ve handed over the organization Yeah. To another, Yeah. Talk to me about that process of finding a successor and why that’s important.
Richard Gunning (25:30):
Well, I think it’s, the whole subject of succession is very, very important because I’ve seen churches and ministries that have collapsed because the person who founded it just kept going, you know, too long, became probably too old and a little bit out of touch with how younger people are thinking. And when I became about 60 years of age, I started to think about succession. And if Jesus doesn’t come back, who’s gonna take over? And I was in a shop one day, and I saw one of these little signs that people often have in their kitchen. And this one said, You can’t start the next chapter of your life if you keep rereading the last one. So that kinda really spoke to me, and I felt I need to start looking for people that I can hand things over to who will build on the foundation that I’ve laid.
Richard Gunning (26:27):
I’ve realized in my own life that God uses me primarily as a foundation layer, you know, to lay a foundation to get something started and up and running, and then to hand it over to other people. And as I reflected on my life, life in ministry, that that’s really what I’ve been doing almost since the start, is starting something, getting it going, and then handing it over to somebody else, to, to, to develop what I’ve started. And I felt I needed to do this with Ace. And we had a board meeting, and we took time to pray, and we eventually settled on a younger man who was on the board called Yona Anderson from Sweden. And I’m still on the board, but we handed over the chairmanship of that to him. I’ve done the same thing in other countries that I’m responsible for, like in Burkin Faso and in Kenya. I’m still very much involved in both those countries, but I’ve handed the, the, you know, the main initiative and, and, and leadership of the work over to younger men who, who I feel can drive the work forward and come up with new ideas, new way of thinking and are more in touch with younger people and the younger generation than I am.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:42):
I think you’re very wise in how you’ve done that. If you’re listening and you are excited about evangelism, I want to recommend that you read from Belfast to The Ends of the Earth by Richard Gunning. You can find it on Amazon. I’ll also put a link to where you can buy it on the Evangelism Podcast page for this episode. But Brother Richard, I’m inspired by your ministry. I’m inspired by the fruit that you’ve seen over the years, and thank you for your example and for your faithfulness in leading the loss to Christ for going after the unreached.
Richard Gunning (28:19):
Daniel, it’s been a pleasure to be with you, and it’s great to have you with us in the ACE conferences. We really appreciate it. Thank you. God bless you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:27):
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 (29:46):
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
Mikael Boman | What is Pioneer Missions?
What is pioneer missions and why is it important? Today I talk with Mikael Bowman about his mission training school known as Mission 1:11. We discuss how to prepare adventurous missionaries to go to the hardest to reach parts of the world. We are not talking about going to five star hotels. No! We are talking about hard core missions where you sleep under the stars and eat bugs.
Learn About One Chance for Every Person: https://ocfep.com/
Learn About Mission 1:11: https://www.missiononeeleven.se/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
What is Pioneer missions and why is it important Today? I talk with Mikael Boman about his mission training school, knowing as Mission one 11, we discuss how to prepare adventurous missionaries to go to the hardest to reach parts of the world. We’re not talking about going to five star hotels. No, we’re talking about hardcore missions where you sleep under the stars and eat buds.
The Evangelism Podcast Host (00:37):
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 (01:02):
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, Mikael Boman, Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast with me.
Mikael Boman (01:12):
Thank you so much. It’s a privilege to be here together with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:16):
We have known each other for many years because you knew my wife. You used to work for Pastor Peter Youngrenan evangelist from Canada, and you helped organize crusades for him in many different countries. Tell me about what you learned about doing campaigns, working with Pastor Peter Youngrin.
Mikael Boman (01:38):
I would say what I learned the most is that we we learned to do what was impossible, time after time. And you know, doing the impossible time after time, you know, place after place, going to many of the difficult places created a a sense of nothing is impossible. That’s what I really brought with me. Number one, working with with Pastor Peter.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:04):
What were some of the countries that you worked with back at that time?
Mikael Boman (02:08):
I mean, we worked a lot in India, worked in Pakistan, really difficult at that time. We were in some really difficult parts of Pakistan Indonesia, you know Tanzania, of course, a little, little bit easier, bar, difficult Congo both the Congos we were into. And we did some other parts that was, you know, challenging.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:32):
And Ethiopia
Mikael Boman (02:33):
Of course, also a lot of Ethiopia.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:35):
Yeah. And, and so now you have a tremendous focus on pioneer missions. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, Could you tell me what is Pioneer Missions?
Mikael Boman (02:46):
What pioneer missions for me is to go to those places, those people groups, language groups, tribes are the least reached. Those that I have never had opportunity hear about Jesus. We are really targeting towards those who we are called, they’re called unengaged. They have never heard about Jesus Christ since the death and resurrection of, of Jesus Christ. And there no Bible translations going on. There are no, no missionaries going there. And you know, basically they’re, they’re untouched with the gospel. So that, that’s our, our, our, our aim and our focus. But of course, we also preach to people that are unreached. They might belong to people group. There are believers there, but the church is very weak and very few believers. So that’s especially on their hearts to do something for them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:42):
I think this is such an important focus for the body of Christ to have, because in my town Tulsa, Oklahoma, there’s literally a church on almost every corner. Yeah. I mean, they joke around and say that if you drop, drop a tract on the ground, a church will spring up. It’s so fertile. Wow. But when you go to some places, there’s, there’s no churches. There’s no Christians, and it takes a real special kind of anointing calling from God to go to those places. How do you train people to go to pioneer areas and really pioneer something for Jesus? Mm.
Mikael Boman (04:22):
It’s really not that complicated. I would say. I, I don’t think we should make it more complicated than there is, than it is actually. But it’s challenging. But we, we, we work with something called Mission one 11. It’s like very intense high impact training. Actually. They, they go through eight weeks a boot camp where we, where we give them some, some ba basic teaching. You know, how do you preach and teach the gospel? We, we give them a tool called storytelling. Basically we were entering into places where they had no idea about what is the Bible, you know, who is Jesus who created the heaven and the earth. So we start from the beginning, you know, in the beginning that was God and God created and, you know, so on and so forth. And we work through the whole testament and into the New Testament, you know, to get, to lay a foundation.
Mikael Boman (05:08):
Why did Jesus have to come? So we work with that for, for eight weeks. We do you know, cross culture training. We do physical training, CrossFit twice, twice a week to build up the physique, cuz some, we go to some rough places. So when after eight weeks we ship them out and they’re out in unreached people group for about six weeks in total, if you say from the leave. And, and then they’re back. And then we do the briefing afterwards and after the, the, this time we, we put them through something. We, we give them the opportunity to go to something called the next step so they can be a part of, you know, continue in their missions calling. So, so really the, the first part is it’s not so complicated, it’s just about, you know, doing it. And so it works pretty good.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:00):
So Mission 1:11, you’re in Sweden. Mm-Hmm. <Affirmative>, but there’s also branches of Yes. Mission 1:11 in Canada mm-hmm. <Affirmative> and in the United States. And so the purpose is to raise up people who have a passion for reaching the unreached. Talk to me a little bit more about storytelling, what that looks like. How would someone tell the story of the gospel if they were in a culture that didn’t know anything about Jesus?
Mikael Boman (06:34):
I would say that’s the power of storytelling. That actually storytelling has two pastor is really important. It, it’s number one, the, the, the tool of, of, of telling oral stories about, you know, the creation. You know, how was the world created, you know, the, the the, the follow man sin came into the world and destroyed the world. So we, we work through that and we talk about the prophecies about him that would come and, and you know, laying a foundation. So when we come into, you know, John the Baptist and, and talking about Jesus coming, they, they all see how, how chronologically it fits together. Because if you, if you enter into a people group that have no previous understanding and knowledge of the Bible, you know, knowledge about the living God and knowledge about, you know, who is Jesus Christ, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s trying to contextualize it in such a way, you know, based on the chronological stories of the Bible.
Mikael Boman (07:31):
So they will, they will gain knowledge and revelation from that, from, you know, the Bible scriptures that the, the storytelling is based on. So it’s, it’s really giving them revelation. And of course we believe the Holy Spirit is working through the, through the telling of the stories, cuz it’s basically the scripture that we’re telling them. And you know, that helps them to, to gain knowledge, understanding and revelation about the ways of the living God, you know, how to, why do I need to get saved? You know, what is salvation? You know, what, what, you know, what is the new birth? You know, you know, the Baptists and of the, of the Holy Spirit, you know, all these important things that, that we take for granted as Christians. And, but they have no clue. So in a very short time of, of when they’re out in the, in the, on the mission field for these, you know, five weeks, you know, four or five weeks on site, they don’t have much time. So it’s a very condensed but very efficient, high impact way of, of, you know, sharing the gospel. So it’s because they have no previous understanding, you know, of the God of the Bible,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:43):
What are some parts of the world that you would consider to be in need of pioneer missions?
Mikael Boman (08:50):
I mean, there, there are a lot of, of places, but I i, I would say for my, you know, this our Swedish section, which is part of the mission one 11, of course Mission one 11 was started by, by Carl Haram and Jennifer Haram you know, and a number of years ago. But I’m, I’m heading up the, the Swedish part. And we have our passion is the 10 40 window. And we, we try to, to focus on that part specifically. And I would say like the, the whole of Africa, you have a great need. You have you know, of course the Middle East, but I would say Southeast Asia, where you have the, the tremendous growth of you know, population. But you also have a lot of people groups there. You know, Pakistan, you have India, China, of course Vietnam, Thailand some of the places where people are actually traveling quite often from the western world.
Mikael Boman (09:49):
But there are still people groups that are, you know, in, in areas of these nations where they, they’ve been unreached by the gospel of the gospel and, and where have been, you know, no missionaries going. So we we’re we’re operating with something. We, we have an operation called Operation 326. We’ve done a research to see, you know, where are the remain remaining people groups that have never heard of gospel before. So we are actually sending out expeditionary teams, going out, putting boots on the ground to find out is the test statistics that we, that we reading Joshua project, finish the task and so on. Is it accurate? Because we’ve learned something and, and I know all these organizations, they do the best and they do a great job, but it’s very difficult with statistics. So the only way to figure, find out how is the situation is you need to put boots on the ground.
Mikael Boman (10:40):
You need to, to meet people, you need to interview people, find out, you know, what is going on. So our focus is this summer we’ve had two teams going in Southeast Asia visiting six different unengaged people groups. And we’ve found out out of these six there are two, maybe three of them that, that are actually unengaged. One was in simulated with another people groups and don’t, don’t exist anymore. Two others have been reached, but the statistics says they’re unengaged not reached ever. So that’s a bit of work to do. And, and our passion is for you know, 10 /40 window, especially Southeast Asia. Cuz that’s where the most of the people are.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:22):
So when you send out a team for Mission one 11 and for an immersion six weeks, you’re not going to five star hotels. No. You’re going out into primitive areas and they’ll actually go and live in a village. Yes.
Mikael Boman (11:39):
They’ll, they’ll move on into a village and stay there in a tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag very simple, rough it’s not for everyone, I would say. But we, we find that it’s a lot of, of especially young people that wanna they’re not, I wouldn’t say they’re out after adventure, but it’s like the they feel it’s not fair. How can it be that we have heard gospel being preached over and over again? We get servings of good gospel, good bible teaching. We have prayer meetings, we have cell groups, we have midweek services, we have you know, youth services. We have morning service and Sunday evening service, and we have service and service and service, which is great. We have podcasts like, like this lot of teaching. And there, then there are others who never had their first serving of the gospel.
Mikael Boman (12:32):
So we find that there is the younger generation, they feel that this is not fair, you know something has to be done. And, and you know, some of them are really, they, they feel the calling and they feel the urgency that, you know, I want to be a part of doing something different. I want to be part of helping people that never heard of gospel before. And some, many of those that we, that come to our schools, they have no prior experience at all, are missions, none. So, so it’s it’s a challenge for them, but they’re willing to pay the price. And we are, we’re blessed to work with young and, and also some middle-aged people also coming.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:12):
Tell me some testimonies. What results have you seen in your effort to, to reach these pioneer mission areas?
Mikael Boman (13:21):
Well let’s say we have I can, I can take one from, from Sri Lanka, which is really not an most people wouldn’t say Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka is the most unreached place on the earth, but as a nation. But you have villages up in the, the mountainous areas where they have very little contact with, with the rest of the world. Of course, they, they have television they watch, you know, via satellite and so on. But they have otherwise they live in the village. They work ont states or you know, they’re, they’re cut off from the rest of the world, pretty much. So a couple of years ago we sent a, a team with young people and, and a couple of leaders into village where they have never had any encounter with white people before. It’s not that we are special, but no foreigners have been there, and no one had been there preaching to them.
Mikael Boman (14:20):
The only thing we came into, the only thing they had was a, they had a Hindu temple in the middle of the village you know, several hundred people living there and never heard a gospel. And we, we started to, to share the stories with them and evening after evening and, you know, praying for people that were sick. I mean, a lot of people are sick and they got healed. They started to listen. People got saved. And from being nothing, not a single believer, all of a sudden we had the group of believers, you know, in, in, in a few weeks if, if these young people would’ve gone there, these people in village will never heard of gospel. They’ve never been saved without them. So with simple means, ordinary young people can make a difference where preaching the gospel of Jesus Christ, you know, seeing signs, wonders, and miracles happening and, and, you know, people being born again and, and safe eternity. And I think that is a great impact. And we’ve seen this in village after village, you know, in, in different tribes. And it’s, it’s wonderful to have the privilege to be part of this.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:26):
I think sometimes churches in America and in Europe, forget about these unreached people places often the church spends money building a, a beautiful building, and then they send out missionaries, but a lot of the missionaries get sent to places that are largely reached. I mean, I was a, grew up as a missionary in Mexico, and there were many missionaries there, but Mexico has very good churches. Yes. But the churches forgotten about some of these areas. They’re remote, they’re hard to, to get to. Yeah. So what would you say to those churches who, who want to obey the great commission, they wanna go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. But h how can a church get involved in engaging with an Unre people group?
Mikael Boman (16:16):
Yeah. I would say there are, there are several, several ways of being involved and engaged in pie in their missions. You know, number one there are good, good sites. You know, Joshua Project finished the task where you can read about the, you know, the situation in the world. You know, praying is one good thing. I would say the other thing that we would encourage them, you know, why don’t they contact us at Mission one 11, Mission one eleven.com. If you’re in the States, and you’ll find a lot of information, you know, how you can be involved in reaching down engaged people groups. I would say mainly why people are not involved. It’s not that they don’t want to, it’s because they don’t know. I mean when I, I, I visited, I visited pastors, churches, you know, different, you know, networks and so on.
Mikael Boman (17:02):
And I, and when we start to share about these things, most people think it’s already done. They think that everyone heard, you know, we are basically waiting for the imminent to return out our Lord Jesus. And, and when we start to talk about, you know, there are unengaged groups, groups that have never heard about Jesus before, ever. They’re surprised. And, and the response from many are, How can we help? How can we be involved? I mean, this is not fair. This is not right. Let us do something for these people. So it’s, it’s a lack of knowledge mainly not so much of a heart condition, because when people get to know about this, they say, Okay, let’s do something, you know, let’s be involved somehow. That’s, that’s a lot of the reactions that we get. Then of course, they don’t think, how do we do it? We, we don’t know anything about, we are sending missionaries and, you know, to places that are mostly reached that where have been mission work going on for a number of years. So it has to be a, a shift of focus and that, that might take some time. But, you know, read, listen, you know, a good step is you, you’re listening to this podcast, and now, now when you hear about it, you know, let’s, let’s do something about it and Yeah, sure. Can you one eleven.com?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:19):
Yeah. So, so if you’re listening and, and you’re a young person who wants to go on an, an adventure for Jesus, and you’re not scared, you’re ready to go anywhere that Jesus calls you, I really encourage you to, to pray about going on pioneer missions and, and connect with mission one eleven.com and find out more about how you can go to these, these places that are very hard to reach, but where you can have a, a, a tremendous impact leading people, entire people groups to Jesus. Yes.
Mikael Boman (18:54):
It’s it’s a privilege. I would say that the change that we see in our students’ lives usually when they come, you know, we have, we’ve had people that have been barely saved when they come to us, and we have those that have been saved for, you know, they’ve been believers since as long as they can remember when they go and some up into, to different bible schools, psychologists, you know, prior to ours. Others have no previous experience. So when they work together as a group for these eight weeks during the booth camp, we see a change in the lives. But when we really see the change in the lives is when they are out in the tribe afterwards. When they, when they come back, we hear this over and over again, again, and they say, I didn’t know that God could use me in such a way.
Mikael Boman (19:37):
I didn’t know that I would see miracles in front of my very eyes. I didn’t know, you know, how the situation, you know, among the unreached art, and I’m so happy that I made this step. It, it, it changed their lives, but oh boy, it really changed my life and my heart. So we see transformation in the hearts and in the lives of those going through Mission one 11, as well as in the lives in those that they have shared a gospel with. So it’s win-win situation and the people that you meet will never be the same. And if you go through this, you will never be the same,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:20):
You know, will change your life and it will change the lives of others for, for all of eternity. Absolutely. Well, thank you brother Michael for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I so love your ministry, your passion for, for reaching the lost in very difficult places of the earth. Thank you for standing up for Jesus.
Mikael Boman (20:39):
Yeah, thank you so much, Daniel, for having me. It’s a privilege to be here in this podcast, and, and we were impressed with the work you that you’re doing. You have a great heart for people evangelizing year after year, months after month, and, you know, keep on doing what you’re doing. It’s a great work that you’re doing as an evangelist. God bless you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:59):
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 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.
The Evangelism Podcast Host (22:18):
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
Karl Hargestam | One Chance for Every Person
Karl Hargestam believes every person on earth deserves at least one chance to hear the Gospel. Why should anyone hear the Gospel twice when some have never heard it for the first time? Karl is an innovative missionary who uses helicopters to go where no missionary has ever gone before. He is also leading City Serve which has given away millions of dollars worth of food to the hungry and he is the founder of Joshua Campaign in Ethiopia. On today’s episode you will be inspired by his innovative ideas.
Learn more about City Serve: https://cityserve.us/
Learn About One Chance for Every Person: https://ocfep.com/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Karl Hargestam believes that every person on Earth deserves at least one chance to hear the gospel. Why should anyone hear the gospel twice when some have never heard it for the first time? Karl is an innovative missionary. He uses helicopters to go where no missionary has ever gone before. He’s also leading city serve, which has given away millions of dollars worth of food to the hungry. And he’s the founder of Joshua Campaign in Ethiopia. On today’s episode, you will be inspired by his innovative ideas.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:49):
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 (01:13):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I am with a very special guest, Karl Hargestam. Thank you for joining me today.
Karl Hargestam (01:24):
Well, thank you. It’s good to be here with you, Daniel. We always, It’s good to see you always when we get to, It’s not that often we get to meet, but this is good. It’s good to be with you here today,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:32):
Brother Karl. You have been involved in evangelism and missions for many years. You have a great heart for reaching the unreached people. And my knowledge of you begins when you were a missionary in Ethiopia, going to the unreached there, and you founded Joshua Campaign, which has done many gospel campaigns across Ethiopia for the last, almost 20 years now. And tell me a little bit about how Joshua Campaign got started and your early vision for reaching Ethiopia.
Karl Hargestam (02:07):
Well, you know, the, so the call, the call that got on my life and the, the vision was really when Jesus spoke to me, and he did very clearly was for Matthew 24, in fact, the whole chapters about Jesus return. And I felt this incredible overwhelming urgency of his term. But they spoke to me from Matthew 24 and also Revelation where, where the gospel clearly has been preached. That that, you know, John in seven, nine sees his multitude dressed in white robes from every tribe, language people nation. Five nine says that what his blood has been purchased, men from every tribe, language people, nation. So the final church that Jesus comes back, the bride of Christ is a full of blood washed church from every tribe, language people nation. But what Jesus was speaking to me is that this is not finished.
Karl Hargestam (02:59):
Will you give your life to reach the final reach. Verse 14 says, The gospel of the kingdom will be preached, not should, not, maybe not. Hopefully the gospel prophetically Jesus says, the gospel of the kingdom will be preached as a testimony to the whole world and then, then will come. I felt this overwhelming thought idea that Jesus come back soon and he’s asking me. So he was asking me to preach the gospel towards Unre and finish assignment I didn’t know about unreached. So 30 some plus years ago, that was not a big talk book in mission or churches or anywhere. And and in fact it was embedded in a vision that was literally a movie. And in India was a helicopter. I didn’t understand much of this other than I said, Please see the Lord. And somehow, you know, the Lord answered the miraculously.
Karl Hargestam (03:46):
So I was on my way very quickly to Africa where the helicopters planted churches and unreached. What I did not know is that in that vision was a mass hillside of people coming to faith. It was like flames over sides of people. And within a few years, we start having meetings with a helicopter, 50,000, 40,000 hillside of people. I just kind of didn’t see me being the one preaching and signs and wonders start happening. I didn’t plan on being a massive evangelist or crusade evangelist. There was just kind of were happening within just a few years of that vision. So outta that, Josh Sch campaign was born. In fact, the clarification came when my son was born 97. So I’ve been in Africa a couple years. You know, story is long, lots of water under the bridge here. But really clarification to the vision of how to finish that assignment that I felt law Lord asked me was, which is the gospel for every tribe, nation people.
Karl Hargestam (04:45):
And from the first chapter of Joshua you know, Jesus speaks to his people and he reminds Moses, you know, the Lord ruins Joshua and Moses is dead. My sermon is dead. But then he reminds Joshua, the assignment he gave to Moses. And he’s not saying, Here, I have a new assignment for you. You know, a lot of times each generation we think I have a new thought, new idea, a new generation new anointing, double portion. You know, there’s a lot of things that we preach sometimes, but the Lord is telling to Joshua, really same here’s assignment, same assignment. Then he says, as I was with Moses, would be with you. So same anointing, same promise. Josh I used responds by faith in verse 11. And he says, Go through the camp, tell the people already we’re gonna be taking action. We’re gonna finish assignment cross Jordan and conquered at land, meaning not the promise land inheritance by faith in salvation but the gospel assignment that we’re all called to be part of. So that became clear out of that was Joshua campaign born and gospel crusades were launched into it’s really 3m, it was mobilization, massive man mission network. And I can talk about all three. And there are three organizations today that Joshua campaign was initially born from that.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:01):
Yeah. And I’m very thankful for Joshua Campaign. We’ve been, I think, either eight or nine times to do crusades with Joshua campaign in Ethiopia. Yeah. And we have always seen a tremendous harvest. It’s always so beautiful to see what God is doing there. The Bible says that Ethiopia shall quickly stretch out her hands towards God. And we see that over and over again. Now, in your ministry, you have a motto, one chance for every person. Can you explain why that’s important?
Karl Hargestam (06:30):
Wow. That became a very clear, you know, early on the finishing of the assignment, that every person born should have a right to hear the gospel should be birthright. We talk about right to water, right to school, right to healthcare give you all kinds of things that the world debates what’s important. And they’re all important. But the right to hear the gospel of Jesus once not saved, not only the Lord can do, but to hear it as Paul says, anyone who calls on the name of the Lord can’t be saved, shall be saved. But how can they, unless they believe, how can they believe unless they have heard, how can they hear unless someone preaches to them? So the right to hear the gospel should be birthright. So one chance to hear the gospel, only the church of Jesus can give. So the right to hear the gospel’s a birthright for every person and all the church can give it.
Karl Hargestam (07:19):
You have when they unreached challenge tribes that never heard of gospel since the cross. That should be an embarrassment for the church with all the money and resource and people we are. So you have places, tribes that never heard of gospel. You also have today with population growth. More people that have no access to the gospel that was alive when I was born on planet Earth. I mean, that should bother us too. Now obviously that can only be given up by Red Cross United Nation or any other kind of great institution or even Christian organization. Only the church of Jesus would preach the gospel to that. That’s why it’s so important we focus on this. So Joshua campaign, what about a massive evangelism initially one of, one of our initiatives and, and in Ethiopia, you know, we kind of were blessed being part of an early season where we prayed with, we had over 4.2 million decisions kind in a decade span to Christ there. But, and then we expanded into, you know, Pakistan and Indonesia and a couple other India. We, we done meetings in several places. That was not though my primary, even though that’s part of God’s call in my life. It was really about finishing Simon every tribe language people nation. So thus not just massive evangelists, but mobilization and a mission network that mobilized God’s church towards finishing Simon.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:35):
So you’ve been
Karl Hargestam (08:36):
Really three cycles. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:37):
You’ve been very interested in frontier evangelism going where Jesus has never been preached before. And in order to train people to do that, one of your initiatives is Mission one 11 training school to send people out into some of the hardest reach places in the world. Talk to me about
Karl Hargestam (08:58):
That. Yeah, that’s happening. So that’s kind of the second a, which is being in cycles of seven to 10 years. So the first was Joshua campaign. The second has been the second, a Michel 11, same also from the first chapter in Joshua verse chapter one, verse 11. He says, Go through the camp, mobilize the people. Get ready. So the mobilization or pioneers is martial 11 schools in the west. You know, we have worked in the developing countries, charting mission schools that is focused on church planning and national churches and leaders that we still work with. But in the west, us and Europe, we have mission schools that is challenging young people to give their life to a greater call, especially on rich people. So we take young people through training program and, and, and our big focus in tribal people that has never heard of gospel isity. So we bring them into tribes and mission schools and several countries around the world.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:53):
So tell me about how that works. Students go to a mission one 11 school and then you actually send them somewhere.
Karl Hargestam (10:01):
It’s really almost like a boot camp. It’s very catalystic. You know, the challenge for me was even when we started schools you know, in Africa or even Indonesia, but Africa, mostly our big schools would, lots of church planners in evangelists, they come to the city, they get kind of, you know, and I’m mo for higher education. But you know, they get trained and the more they get trained, the less effective they become, which kind of was grieving for a lot of us. I think even though we need you know, high quality leaders this has been true also in the west, US and Europe. So bringing students into a place where they don’t lose the call but actually find it, we knew that a istic experience has to happen. And for us, it used to be mission trips or youth camps. People are baptized in a fire call to a greater cost.
Karl Hargestam (10:49):
But we knew that there’s no greater place to bring people into an other than to an A 29 experience, an apostolic experience. The most unreached places Jesus will show up. It doesn’t matter how pray through they are, how holy they are. If they just choose to say yes, Jesus will do this supernatural through people’s lives. So we train in six weeks. It’s a 12 week course, actually that’s tic where we prepare the students for an experience. We call that preparation, that it’s an immersion experience and that it’s a debriefing experience. What to process the experience, the immersion is to, we fly with helicopters. Sometimes we take the students into an honor tribe where they are coached to share the gospel in chronological storytelling, science and wonders will happen. There’s nothing, The number one issue, the number one question actually asked worldwide is, why am I here?
Karl Hargestam (11:39):
Whether to believers or not for Christians, the number one question is what’s God’s plan for my life? I believe there is nothing more important, especially in the west young people. They will, they feel, and they will say, most often, I’m a spectator in God’s kingdom. I see all these players down here, but I’m into bleachers and don’t know how I can participate. There’s nothing more powerful than when the Lord is using me, affirming of God’s call. So when the Lord’s doing great things in their lives, in those tribal settings, they come back and say, Wow, God maybe has a plan for my life. If we process that and we see Missionary challenge to pathway for God’s assignment,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:18):
And now you’re working with a brand new initiative called City Serve. And with City Serve, you are helping churches all over America to reach out to their communities. Talk to me about what City Serve is doing.
Karl Hargestam (12:32):
Yeah, so, you know, this has been an incredible journey. So this is kind of the third for me mission network because what we’re challenging the church is to for the anti harvest, which I believe Jesus is returning soon. And the anti harvest, the big challenge is the church that is not ready or we have become very production driven. I’m all for great church. We have church, we’re seeing better. But in big parts of the world, the church kind of resorted into just, just being good, having church, singing better, preaching better, and kind of not caring that much about what’s happening around in the neighborhood. And part of that is just caring about people and issues. So we’re talking about mobilizing the church to be the church, not just having church. That shift is about mission from the neighborhood to the nations.
Karl Hargestam (13:22):
And, and we’ve been able to tap into resources to help churches to use, reach out in their neighborhoods very tangibly. One of the big challenges when we see especially the American church across the world, is that you have an average church is say under 80 people, around 80 people, and most of the churches buy vocational pastors in neighborhoods. There’s nothing more underuse. There’s no network in America. And, and we have proven this to be true also in, in Ukraine for example, right now around the world, we’re launching Canada. We’re in several places, but the, the church of Jesus, there’s nothing, no network that know the neighborhood better than the church. But most of the time, by vocational pastors under resourced, they hardly have money to keep their light on, nonetheless, having an outreach budget. So we’ve been able to tap into incredible resources, helping the church to be the church, start just loving their neighbors and reclaiming the right to preach truth.
Karl Hargestam (14:18):
It is only the gospel of Jesus and that truth that say people set people free, lead them on a pathway to some restoration, redemption. But sometimes our society has, we become so isolated, our gospel, even though we preach really loud, people don’t care anymore because we lost that credibility. So city deserve, it’s about empowering the church. We’ve been growing incredibly fast tapping into, we have really the center of the vision of city service based on Isaiah 58 where it says, this is the true fast. This is what the Lord is asking of you. If you spend yourself on behalf of the broken of the poor, then your light will shine in darkness. Then you will be like a well watered garden, then you will be known as the rebuild of cities. What the Lord is saying, this is a qualifier for being blessable. If you do this things, I will bless what you do.
Karl Hargestam (15:06):
We’ve seen the window heaven open over us. So in five years, last year, we moved over $430 million through our, I mean, so we’ve been growing incredibly fast in five years, resourcing churches to be the church. It’s the incredible amount of people saved through the basic idea of just challenging god’s people to lean out into the broken and reclaim what it means to, to just care about your neighborhood. Because of that, the credibility to preach the gospel is just released in a powerful way. So I, seef 58 is centered around 10 initiatives, including unre people, which is, you know, my passion, but it’s everything that Jesus talked about, the prophets. And Jesus match 25, He talks about the poor, the widow of the orphan, you the presser. You know, when you do this, then you do it for me. So in the resources we’re asking the church to focus on those that we have two support pillars for that.
Karl Hargestam (15:57):
One is the supply chain of goods and kind that over production from national retailers like Amazon, Costco, Walmart, and others are donating through supply chain of hubs, pods, points of distribution, which is churches to God’s people, which is heroes, loving their neighbor, sharing faith with somebody. That supply chain helps the church to lean into it. Then we have a grant center helping with resources around those initiatives. And it’s been powerful. But the whole idea is that the church joins with the idea of we’re gonna become missional again. What does it look like for us to reach from the neighborhood to the nations, even unreached people, refugees coming into our cities, across America. We’re, we’re having a hard time reaching another language or cultures downtown that has been there for a hundred years or 50 years or so, The new people coming into our cities we’re not even missional enough to reach over into those cultures in our churches many times. How do we reach a tribe somewhere around the world? So it’s about, it’s about the, it’s about a paradigm shift. How do I see the harvest in my city, from the neighborhood to the nations?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:05):
I love how you bring together compassion and evangelism to help churches, to help neighborhoods and help the churches to, to reach out to people. But then maintaining that evangelistic focus in helping people to, to make sure that they know Jesus and are going to
Karl Hargestam (17:24):
Heaven. Well, I said, I mean, it’s, we are, what we say is the hero for us needs to be, of course, Jesus, but that local church, not about city serve. So, so what we empowered church to be the church you know, we’re not even about our, we’re not about compassion. We’re about compassion, evangelism or sharing compassion in Jesus’s name. You know, the process of reclaiming credibility to preach truth. It’s not that the truth has changed. The gospel of Jesus has not changed. It’s still the gospel of Jesus and the truth. When you as a church, we start losing credibility to preach truth, people don’t pay attention anymore. And we think that compassion is a gateway. No, it’s, it’s Romans to force that the kindness of Lord draws us the repentance. It’s like a superpower. No one can argue with kindness as the church is criticized, that we’re more known for what we’re against.
Karl Hargestam (18:13):
What we’re saying is we’re for a bunch of things, the church of Jesus is for restored marriages. <Laugh> delivered people, people set free from oppression, from addiction, from demonic possession. We’re for all kinds of good things, right? Why don’t we reclaim the message that we’re for people finding hope in Jesus destined, in Jesus, a purpose and a pathway that only the gospel of Jesus can bring. But we’re become so defined and for kind of what we’re against, instead of what we’re for, we’re for people, right? We’re for our neighbors, finding a better way. And it’s only Jesus they can give it. So this has been a way to ask churches to join that mission challenge. So we’re working very wide, it’s big tent. We’re helping churches across the country. In fact, we proved that this network, the church of Jesus is the most underused during farm and a family during the pandemic.
Karl Hargestam (19:04):
You know, this part of that is being white cities have grew so fast. We we were able to prove in fact, you know, many of you know that their pandemic, you know, country shuts down. Half of the American food goes to restaurants. So trucking industry, farming industry is all herding. The president then, at the time, President Trump, he decided a program called Farmer to Family rescuing the trucking industry, the farming industry. The issue was how did we deliver? Now when we suddenly overnight at 50 million Americans struggling with food, they might have a good job, furl, little without pay, have a car payment, a house payment, don’t look poor, but you don’t have money to buy food. So the farmer family was that idea, Take rescue this the industries and help help the people. They’re now at home because of the pandemic. And but how do we deliver it?
Karl Hargestam (19:51):
What we argue is there’s nothing like the local church knowing the neighborhoods the last mile. The church is the best last mile there is for any need anywhere, anytime. And we see this also in Ukraine right now. In fact, we feed in Ukraine over a hundred, 2000 meals, hot meals a day through churches, 1800 churches across Ukraine, seeing amazing number of people coming to faith, finding faith in Jesus. But during farmer to family, we delivered over 600 million pounds of food through churches in every parking lot across America and every city and county. Amazing amount of people served in Jesus name. People prayed with, in fact, s a they were saying in the beginning, you know, normally when we get this kind of a government relief, they’re like, you know, you can’t you gotta, you gotta, you gotta verify that these people need it. We said, Really? What does it mean? Doesn’t mean that we have to turn on the wind. We asked them to turn on the window and say how can we help you? Do you need, do you need <laugh>? Do you have a special need? Do you really need help? Yes. Can we pray for you? Yes. You mean because you’re faith with them? Yes. You know, so across America, we got to have conversations with people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:04):
Yeah, I got to participate in some of the outreaches with Pastor Rod Baker, who is one of your yeah. Distribution points in Oklahoma. We went out with him and people would line up for two hours in order to get food. I mean, some of them had very nice cars and they had obviously been successful. They didn’t look like they would need food. But I think if someone is willing to wait two hours in line to get food, obviously they need it. And we, we prayed with people and God moved in such a, a powerful way. And so that was such a, a tremendous ministry.
Karl Hargestam (21:38):
It proved, it proved that the church is underused in our country and it’s proven the same in Ukraine. There’s no network like Jesus paper. Yeah, knowing their neighborhoods. Let,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:49):
Let’s talk about the last mile because like for the post office, they ship packages from one side of the country to the other side of the country, but it’s that last mile from the post office to going and putting the mail in the mailbox. That is actually the most expensive part of the process. And what you’re saying is that the local church is the most effective at bringing help to the people that need it the most in neighborhoods because they can do the last mile very inexpensively compared to anybody else that you could find a
Karl Hargestam (22:22):
Hundred percent first into donations in goods and kind. There’s no network like it. But also, think about it, when we think about brokenness in some of the most broken neighborhoods across America, you have a local church. The way that we done church for a long time is we sending buses, bring the kids into some great big church somewhere. And that small church that’s struggling is keeping the light on is almost like raising the wide flag, surrendering that neighborhood to the devil. I mean, as an enemy, that’s terrible. How do we resource that church that knows the kids to live on that street, know the issues with the houses down that street to be lighthouse for Jesus again, it is nothing better than empowering that church. In fact, if you’re gonna win in America, we need every church to share Jesus in any way, being resourced, loving their neighbors, and sharing the faith bold in Jesus name.
Karl Hargestam (23:11):
So that’s what we say when we talk about empowering the last mile, not just one church or one group or one network. The church of Jesus just gotta kind of rise to the moment. That’s how we’re gonna reclaim our country. Again, sharing the faith boldly. And that last mile delivery obviously is kind of what we’re able to be affected with when it comes to the goods and kind donations for sure. But there’s also other needs. You know, we will talk about that also in even grants. And I know people are afraid of money that is on the table, but grants are used by somebody and most of the time by things and values we don’t agree with. So it’s gonna go somewhere and it’s our money. We paid the taxes for. So our argument is why don’t god’s people to do last mile there?
Karl Hargestam (23:50):
You talk about prison and reentry. You know, our attrition for people coming outta prison, state of California is 67% returns back to prison. Why is that happening? I mean, we can say our country’s broken, our issues system is bad. Sure, all of that’s true. But the honest answer is they go back to their old community because our society is not able to provide a new community. What’s the community that would change that? The church of Jesus, it’s a community, can change their pathway, their projectory, because the gospel of Jesus changes from within. And that community can wrap around and be that new pathway. Restoration. This is true from homeless reentry, press and reentry, diction, reentry back into society. We need a life disciple people more than just giving a handout on a parking lot. If the church reclaims that place that we’re for people, we have the answer.
Karl Hargestam (24:43):
There’s even funding for it. We will do better job than any institution in our country because we care about it anyhow. We wanna see prisoners restored, redeemed on a pathway back to healthy life. We wanna see the addicted set free and the pathway back to healthy life. So we have really both the conviction we want to do it for us, and especially for me, because my call is about really primarily unre people. If I can’t get people to even see the harvest in their neighborhood, I have a real hard time for them to see the harvest in some unreached tribe somewhere in Africa where I need a helicopter to get to. So this has been a pathway to kind of say from Jerusalem, udia to Samaria and anso the earth. We we’re taking churches again, I think on a journey back to mission, that was the call in the church, preach the gospel to every person, one chance for every person, right? That gotta begin in our neighborhood somehow.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:37):
So just to review, what are the three s? Mobilization,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:40):
Mobilization, evangelism, massive evangelism. Mission network. In mission network. And you have worked in all three about seven to 10 years in each one. And I’ve been inspired just seeing your strategic thinking innovation, Joshua campaign, doing mass evangelism and Ethiopia, the helicopter going to unreached tribal groups where you can’t get there by road. And now city serve, helping to serve all the churches across America and, and really helping people in both America and Ukraine and other parts of the world. So thank you so much for your, your passion for Jesus and your innovation, your your strategic thinking. It really inspires me. And thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast. Yeah,
Karl Hargestam (26:28):
Man, Thank you. Thank you Daniel. Good to be here.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:30):
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 (27:49):
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
Andreas Cucca | Open Heart, Open Home, Open Heaven
Andreas Cucca pastors a small Swedish church and he is a missionary evangelist who reaches out to the nation of Bangladesh. Today he talks about the challenges of pastoring and the joy of evangelism.
Connect on Facebook with Andreas Cucca: https://www.facebook.com/andreascucca
Follow Andreas Cucca: https://www.instagram.com/andreascucca/
Check out the website for Go Out Mission: https://gautmission.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Andreas Cucca pastors a small Swedish church, and he’s a missionary evangelist who reaches out to the nation of Bangladesh. Today. He talks about the challenges of pastoring and the joy of evangelism. Jesus
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.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:52):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus the day I have a very special guest with me, Andreas Cucca. Did I say that right?
Andreas Cucca (01:03):
Yeah. About <laugh> as good as it gets, Andreas Cucca. Yeah.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:07):
All right. So you are a pastor in Sweden, and you also have a great heart for evangelism. Tell me a little bit about all the things that you’re involved in.
Andreas Cucca (01:19):
Well, I’m a local church pastor. And I work with missions among unreached people groups in different countries. But it, my main focus has been Bangladesh for the last 15 years. Besides from pastoring, I’ve been doing different kind of secular jobs, working in church, church planting, and so on. But now I’m a local church pastor since six years and doing missions with my wife and my family several times a year we go out to different mission fields.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:50):
Tell me about the context of the ministry that you’re doing in Sweden. Your, your church is in a small village.
Andreas Cucca (01:59):
Yeah, it’s a small village of 800 people. I mean, 2000 surrounding area where a old Pentecostal church over 100 years old. And I would say when I came, my wife is brought up in that church. I was, I’ve been part of the church for 12, 11, 12 years. I came on board as a pastor six years ago, and I would say we were quite an introverted church and also would say dying church. We didn’t reach people. But little by little we are seeing people coming to the Lord. And we’ve seen a lot of increase in immigrants coming to our church, which is wonderful. So it’s, it’s a small, small village. We win one person at a time. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:44):
Talk to me about the challenges of doing evangelism in Sweden. You’re, you’re gifted as an evangelist, and so as an evangelist, you’re always looking for opportunities to, to lead people to Jesus. But the, the ground in Sweden, sometimes it can be very difficult.
Andreas Cucca (03:01):
Yeah. I mean, it is difficult sometimes, but I, I believe that the gospel has power to change anyone in any situation. So our, I would say our mindset as a church is a bigger obstacle than secularism or whatever you can throw at Sweden. I, I think our mindset, we’ve been stoked in a mindset that Swedish people are secular and so on. But I mean, if you just share the gospel, people are open to listen. And I think it’s changed a co Also, after Covid, we seen an increase in interest in, in spiritual matters also. So some years ago, I would say it was harder. I think it’s easy to, to share the gospel if you do it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:42):
And you have a motto that’s on your hat right now, it says, open home, open heart, open heaven. What does that mean?
Andreas Cucca (03:51):
That means it’s from, from our family actually. We, we, we had, we say we want to live, our house should be an open home, home for people to don’t have any home or, or like rootless open hearts towards God. Of course, they would open to what God is saying, but also open to our society and to the people around us. And we believe that God is opened to heaven 2000 years ago when, when he died in the cross, it says that the veil was broken. So we believe that miracles can happen, that people can be changed through the gospel. And since I came on board as a church pastor, this also become our vision for our church as a church should be a home for people who have no home. An open home will feel with people with open heart towards God and our society, and, and that believe in an open head that everyone can be transformed by the gospel of Jesus. So that’s, that’s the main focus. And I believe it, it correlates if you have an open home, if you’re welcoming, if you’re openness towards people, people can come into you know, the presence of Jesus, and then they can experience the open heaven. So I think it, you have to have all parts.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:01):
In recent years, many immigrants have come to Sweden. Yeah. And it’s a little bit controversial because SW are very proud of their culture, very proud of their country, their language. And, and now all these people are coming, and, and Sweden has been very welcoming to them. Yeah. But it’s also been a challenge. But talk to me about how your church is responding to the challenge of immigrants and, and then what you’re doing to, to reach out to them and, and, and what God is doing. I
Andreas Cucca (05:31):
Mean, one part is, you know, politics is politics aside as a church, we are always, I mean, the Bible says, you know, we should welcome the immigrants regardless of our politics, political stems, the ones that are coming, we need to embrace. And, and we, we’ve said we want to be in a place for all nations, for all peoples. And, and this open home, I think some, some of our new new suites or immigrants, they have experienced that. They’ve actually said to me with some people from, from Congo came some years ago. They, they, they had 70 people from all over the world, Afghanistan, Congo Syria came to our small village. There was 30 apartments being built for people that arrived and have had a citizen like not a citizenship, but that they could stay in Sweden. And that, that was a controversial thing in our village because a lot of people are outright racist and, and some are very hesitant.
Andreas Cucca (06:31):
So we as a church and, and did a news like the, the local paper in the bigger town in our area did a, like an open home at the posters, you know, and we’re very happy. This is a good thing for our village. And from that, we got some hate mails and so on. But I mean, the people from abroad, they love our church because our church has responded very well. I’m proud of my church members, all church members, younger church members. They’ve embraced the new people coming in. And, and there’s been a change in culture, I would say. So now maybe half of our church is African, and some people come from Afghanistan. Sometimes we’ve seen Muslims come to come to the Lord. We’ve seen secular switch come coming to the Lord and so on. So I’m, I’m, I’m happy to see that there can be life in an old a hundred year old church.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:23):
I think the church needs to recognize the significance of this opportunity that God is giving us before people would have to go to the mission field. Yeah. Now the mission field is coming to us, and we have an opportunity to reach them for Jesus.
Andreas Cucca (07:39):
Yeah. I mean, we did like a big outreach. We handed out like 700 magazines with testimonies, my testimonies as the Don Testimonies about how we met Jesus. And we invited them to a day outside of our church. We had jumping castles for the kids. We had a big kids meeting with about 60 to 80 kids at the most. We about 150 people outside of our church that many of them have never stepped foot in our church. And when we had it out, 200 hamburgers, but most importantly, we shared the gospel testimonies some music known singer, she won like Sweden’s got Talent. She, she is a on fire believers. So she shared her testimony and, and some songs. And then we had a preacher Vanis preached and did Analar call and Free girls from Afghanistan raised their hands and say, We went to Jesus.
Andreas Cucca (08:27):
Their mother got healed in her neck. They’re not, they’re not disciples yet, but they’re leaning in towards, you know, our shared coming sometimes and so on. So, so it was a big, big thing for us. And actually, a Swedish guy just came right into our church from that meeting. He said, Because you were so open, we, I, I want to come because you opened up. You, you, you sent out the magazine, You did it publicly. You, you preached the gospel outside of your church. And during the pandemic, he had read the Bible, and now he’s come to a, a saving faith in Jesus. So every now and then he comes to my office. He works from home. So he comes to my office. Sometimes he has ask questions. And so, so next week we’ll start new course for new believers and, and people that are interested in the gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:15):
This testimony of these three Afghan girls really moves me. My parents lived in Kabul, Afghanistan for the last 12 years. And now we have many Afghan refugees that have come to my hometown in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We have about 900 that are there. And so we’ve been helping them to get drivers license and to find housing and to have food. We’ve been helping them get in English classes. And even some of them have been given scholarships to some of the different colleges. And, and so we’ve been very involved in helping the Afghans that have come. And at Christmastime, we had 11 Afghans come over to our house for Christmas dinner. Wow. And we sang Christmas carols talked about the Chris, the Christmas story from both the, the Bible and from the Quran, cuz the Quran talks about how Issa was conceived by Miriam. And so at least that gives you a starting point to talk about Jesus. And we gave them all Christmas presents and had a wonderful time with them. And so we have a great heart for the Afghans that are the dispo that are, are now scattered all over the world. All right. You mentioned your testimony in the magazine. Tell me a little bit about your testimony. Yeah,
Andreas Cucca (10:32):
Man. I’m, I’m brought up in secular home in Sweden. I have no relationship with church, so on, so, so much. I had Christian friends, but I mean I was in my, th I was 13, 14. We began to go out partying, drinking some of my friends became criminals, you know, or picking cell phones and, you know, robbing peoples on. And I was on the outskirt outskirts of that gang or whatever. And I felt so empty on the inside, and I began to think about my life and is this everything school weekend, partying than job or university? And the job family, we working, we can, there’s there any, is there not nothing more? And I fell into a deep depression, and I began to think, contemplate about taking my life. And one time I was arguing with my mother because there’s no one that gets on my nerve so much as my mother.
Andreas Cucca (11:26):
I love her to death, but she can really drive me crazy. It’s my, my, my wife, my, my and my wife, my mother <laugh>, my, my brother and my eight year old daughter. They really know how to push the bottles. And my mother did it at the time and <laugh>, and she, I’m not sure what she said, but I said, Do you want me to kill myself? And the words that came out of my mouth, it became like, it just came back to me, and it just became like a cover over my heart and over my mind. And it was like a bondage that just happened there. And after that, I just, it was everything that just contemplated in my mind. And at the same time, I had a friend who invited me to church in the same right time. And he invited, invited me to a Lutheran church first.
Andreas Cucca (12:17):
And they had some friends in the Pentecostal church. They had youth meetings. And there I saw something that I didn’t see in my other friends. I saw light in their eyes, I saw joy, I saw peace. And I began to go to this charismatic Pentecostal church where they raised their hands and is saying about Jesus, talked about Jesus. And it’s weird. It was a weird, weird thing because it was so out of my regular life. It was not nothing that I had seen before, but I felt at peace there. So I continued to go there, and I stopped partying. And then I went to a youth camp. And that night I said to my friend, his name is Gusta, I said, Gusta, we need to get saved. I’m not sure if he was born again or not, but if he was not, he came with me and we prayed a prayer for salvation with our, the youth pastor.
Andreas Cucca (13:05):
And during that prayer I didn’t know what to do with my hands, lift my hands, you know, so many things to do in church <laugh> and, and I was really new, but I, I, I, I just did like this with my hands. And I closed my eyes and he prayed, and I repeated a prayer. And as I repeated, I said, Thank you for forgive. He’s forgive my sins. And thank you that you took, took my sins. And he took my darkness and so on. And as I prayed his prayer and I was closing my eyes, it was like, there was two beams from a big, a big truck just hit the flooding. My face was dark in the room. It was like in, in the evening time. And it was a, but still, it was like a big, big light just flashing in my eyes, even when I was closing my eyes.
Andreas Cucca (13:54):
And it was like a piece that came over me. And, and the, the, the lead on my heart and, and the bondage, you know, in my head just run. He just went away. It washed away in one second. And I stood there for 10 minutes, and I just knew it was not just me and the youth pastor there, Someone was there. And I said to you, Pastor, he was here. And he was like, Yeah, yeah, yeah. I cooled down. And I was like, How can you be cool down if God in heaven is in the room? So from that time, I, I just always filled with peace. A couple of weeks later, I always realized, I am, I am not have done a suicidal faults. From that time, I just began to share about Jesus. I actually, when I came home from the camp, I said to my mother, mother, I’m saved now. And she came, she was really, really touched. Five years later, she got baptized. I actually baptized her in our church. So from that time, it’s only been evangelism for me and to share the gospel because Jesus really, he took me from darkness to lights. And I, I believe he can do it for anyone.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:57):
Amen. What a beautiful testimony. Let’s talk about Bangladesh. You’ve been working there about 15 years now. What have you seen God do in that nation?
Andreas Cucca (15:07):
Well, I’ve seen, I mean, from, I’ve seen people getting their lives, lives transformed. I remember one girl, she’s name, her name is Star. She came to our campaign was maybe 6,000 people there. She saw testimonies of healings. You know, one girl had a cancer tumor that was visible in the back, that just shrunk away. And she saw a lot of these kind of things, and she heard the gospel, and she didn’t receive her healing. So for three days, she was in the, in, in the crowd. And on the way back, you know, that, that message hit her because she prayed, Jesus, why am I not heal? And then she has prayed, Jesus, forgive me of my sins. And at that time, she, she gets so a vision of Jesus hanging on the cross, says, I my daughter, I see you, I forgive you, and I healed you.
Andreas Cucca (15:53):
And then she says, I felt so light on the inside. And, and her knee that was broken got healed. And she, she came back and testified. And I mean, and this is one of thousands, tens of thousands of people have received Jesus. And hundreds of churches has been planted during the years in that movement. We’re working with their church planting movement. In the last years we’ve seen several hundred churches about, now it’s 468 churches at the moment, as statistics days, 468. But I mean, it’s a movement of people receiving Jesus and an openness to the gospel, both Hindus and Muslims.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:33):
Talk to me about the strategy of this church planting movement. How does it work?
Andreas Cucca (16:39):
I mean, we have had, we, we, we do campaigns, gospel outreaches, you know, open air campaigns, preaching the gospel, praying for the sake. And, and, and from that, churches are planted. So, for example, if, if they want to plant a church in say, three different places, well, we, we pick a spot in between those places. We do a campaign and we bring people from free different villages or different areas into the campaign. We preach the gospel to them, they see Jesus, and then from then they go back to their villages and they will send out church planters to that places. So every time we do a campaign, we do it in a strategic place. So we can start three to four churches every time. So it’s every time it’s about where do you want to, do they want to start churches and where is it possible to do it? And then we do it. So, so the campaigns is not, it is not, not something we do just for the sake of it. We do it as a, a kickstart for church planting.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:42):
And so, over the years that you and ACE, the Association of Campaign Evangelists have been working in Bangladesh, how many campaigns have you done?
Andreas Cucca (17:52):
Well, I’m not sure. I probably in probably 60 plus at least. But I mean, and
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:00):
So these are not all in the same place or in the big cities, You’re going town to town, village to village, Yeah.
Andreas Cucca (18:05):
I mean, there can be really, really small places. And I mean, we’re in a small town village and there were about 5,000 in the village. And, and at the campaign we had 5,000 people. So everybody came. And I mean, that’s a
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:19):
Good campaign. Yeah. If you get a hundred percent of the population to come, that’s, that’s massive.
Andreas Cucca (18:23):
Yeah. And I mean, in one direction where one moskin, one direction, you want another mo one. So when we came to that village, they said, Are you from Egypt? Because they thought that we were from media people. They been financing mosques there. But a lot of people came to the Lord in that place. It’s called Bury. And there’s other places also we preached outside of Mo quite close to the mosques. And people are happy to receive the gospel. Yeah. But we are both, I mean, mostly in the outskirts, in the in the bush areas, in the, in the, in the smaller villages, not so much in the big cities. It’s first and foremost, it’s harder to do in the bigger towns. And also there are churches in the bigger towns. So we don’t need to do it there. We do it where it’s needed.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:12):
So you have a calling on your life to be an evangelist. You’re also serving as a pastor. How do you balance these two different callings and the needs of both?
Andreas Cucca (19:26):
I don’t <laugh> or I think it flows into a ch because before I was the pastor of our church, we actually we were the church missionaries, me and my wife. And I would say that the things I do because I believe in the local church, I’m sent out by my church as the missionary. So everything that I do, I do out from my local church. But of course, you know, time wise, I have to know plan a little bit. So I don’t, I’m not away too much because I need to tend to my ship at home. But I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s manageable. And I think it’s, to be a local church pastor helps me to be a good missionary and to be out in, out, to be a missionary evangelist helps me to become a good pastor because we, we need both. We need to, to do the outreach. We need to take care of people. And I think when I talk to church leaders in, in Bangladesh, for example, I know their struggles. I know how it is to, you know, help people. And when people come with their problems and, you know so I think it, it’s, it’s good. It’s good to be both pastor and evangelists.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:40):
That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast. I really appreciate it.
Andreas Cucca (20:45):
Thank you very much. It’s an honor. And yeah, just wanted to say to, to the, to the people listening that, I mean, if you have a calling on your life, run with it. There are so many people, Bangladeshis Open, and many pe places are open for the gospel. So if you feel encouraged by this, you know, reach out to Daniel and, and, and he will probably help you in the right direction.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:12):
Amen. I want to go to Bangladesh now, hearing about all the testimonies of, of what God has done there. It’s, it’s so wonderful. Thank you so much. God
Andreas Cucca (21:20):
Bless you. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:22):
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 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 (22:41):
For more information about how to share your faith, or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
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
Daniel Bäckrud | What to Do When God Shows You a Vision
Daniel Bäckrud is young but he has already visited many countries to preach the Gospel. God gave him a vision of an island in Indonesia and he found an unreached people group on that island. Today we talk about his plans to reach out to this unreached people group.
Connect with Daniel Backrud on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/daniel.d.johansson.1
Learn about Go Out Missions: https://gautmission.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Daniel Bäckrud is young, but he has already visited many countries to preach the gospel. God gave him a vision of an island in Indonesia, and he found an unreached people group on that island. Today we talk about his plans to reach out to this unreached people group.
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 (00:57):
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, Daniel Bäckrud. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.
Daniel Bäckrud (01:08):
Thank you for having me. I’m so glad to be with you today.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:11):
So we are together in the nation of Turkey in Istanbul, and we have both come here for a conference with ace, the Association of Campaign Evangelists. And so this is an organization that is dedicated to preaching the gospel through gospel campaigns in, in many different parts of the world. And they are identifying evangelists, they are encouraging evangelists and giving evangelists opportunities to go to different nations. And so you actually got connected to them when you were very young. Tell me the story of what happened.
Daniel Bäckrud (01:52):
Yeah, so when I was in Bible school at, in my early twenties, I was picked up. There was one of the evangelists in the network who saw the gift in me and he welcomed me to, to this network and gave me the training I needed. And one of the organizations inside the network was training me as a trainee for, for first one year. And then I was sent out as an evangelist inside this network. And, you know, all the different evangelists and their experience and the teaching I’ve got and the access to different fields, what I have been able to travel and preach. It has been so valuable for my, my own ministry and my own journey and the work I’ve been doing for God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:36):
So you had a period of training first. Can you tell me what that looked like and what were some of the things that you learned?
Daniel Bäckrud (02:42):
Yeah, so I was traveling on, on campaigns first as just to watch. And then I started to doing warmups to, to pre preaching on other campaigns. And then I got at my third campaign, I got the one of the nights on my own to preach. And, and my fourth campaign, I had the whole campaign myself. So it has been a, a progress of training where, where I learned how to, how to preach, how to do an call, how to pray for the sick, how to show the testimonies to to be clear and, and to, to be so that people can, can really sense that the, the testimonies.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:23):
What was the first country that you went to and how did you feel when you first stepped out on a campaign grounds and saw all the people?
Daniel Bäckrud (03:33):
Yeah, so the first campaign I was, and I’ve been on other mission trip before, but the first campaign was was in Pakistan. And I I had a warm up there and I felt that this is the thing I would do for the rest of my life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:49):
And then where was the campaign where you got to preach for the first time and then where did you go, where you did the whole campaign on your fourth one?
Daniel Bäckrud (04:00):
Yeah, so both of those was in India where the organization I’ve been serving has been, been serving in the northeast of India. And we have had lots of campaigns there and I have been also having many campaigns there afterwards. So, so yeah, it was in, it was in India.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:20):
And tell me where you have been going since then. What, what doors have God opened and what are some of the countries that you’ve really enjoyed visiting?
Daniel Bäckrud (04:31):
Yeah, so, so through the organization, I am serving as an evangelist in Go Out Mission and the network of Ace, I have been able to, to do campaigns in, in India, in Sri Lanka, in Pakistan, in not campaign, but missions in, in Thailand campaigns in Western Africa, Guinea and Togo, and also Madagascar. So there are quite, quite many countries that I have been traveling the past five years. So
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
You’ve been to a lot of countries. We’ve gone to many of those countries. I love Madagascar. We did five campaigns there in Madagascar over the years, and it’s such a beautiful country. All right. So recently I heard you share a testimony of a quite impactful thing that God did in your life. You were on a zoom call and someone began to speak in tongues and, and prophetically God spoke to you through this te tell me what happened.
Daniel Bäckrud (05:28):
Yeah, so we had this ACE (Association of Campaign Evangelists) conference online,last year, September. And,there was one of the evangelists who spoke in tongues. And as she opened her mouth, I started to shake and my sight became blurry and I started to cry and I started to, to uto, to sweat. And,I saw a vision in front of my eyes where there was a map of Indonesia. And you have to, to, to, to understand that I did not know anything about Indonesia before this. I could not describe the map. I didn’t know the names of the islands, and I didn’t know so many of the islands. I know the, the, the big one to the left and the, the big one to the right and the two in the middle. But I didn’t know anything but that. But I saw a red spot, God, God showed me a red spot in the sea between one of the biggest islands, two of the biggest islands.
Daniel Bäckrud (06:20):
And I went to the Google Maps searching for, for what is on this red spot. And I found out that there were two islands on this, this red spot that I did not know of before. And I felt God speaking to me, you must go here. And I went to, to Joshua Project and other databases over unreached people groups. And I found out that there are two groups that are considered unreached on those islands. So we reached out to one of our friends that are working in Indonesia, other parts of Indonesia, a woman called Susan Hoover, a wonderful woman of God who have done tremendously work. And you have been working with her as well?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:59):
Yeah. So Susan Hoover, a great woman of God from the nation of Canada. Yeah. She originally went to Indonesia as a missionary from Peter Youngin’s ministry. And God gave her a gift for languages. And so she very quickly learned how to speak Indonesian and now speaks it fluently with the accent of the people. And people are always surprised to see her. She’s as white as can be, but yet she speaks perfect Indonesian. And so she has a bible school in Madan, been doing many campaigns in different parts of Indonesia, and, and she’s a, a, a dear friend of my wife and, and our family. And so she’s doing great work there in Indonesia. So you knew that she was there working in Indonesia. You called her What happened?
Daniel Bäckrud (07:51):
Yeah, so we had a sue meeting with her. It was, this was during the pandemic, so, so the, the, the borders was close. The immigration policy of Indonesia was very strict, so we couldn’t travel there. It was impossible to get any visa. So we were, we, we were reaching out and planning this and said, as soon as the country opens up, we want to come. And she promised to, to provide interpreter for us in send one of her staff to, to interpret for me. And I was refreshing the, the immigration policy on the, the websites like every week since. And suddenly in in the spring this year, 2022 the, the, the, the country opened up for, for, for some countries in Sweden. What is included? Well, one of the first ones. So I booked the ticket one week after the, the country opened up, and a few months later I went there and yeah, Susan provided an interpreter that traveled a long way with me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:53):
And so you took your interpreter, you went out to these islands that are just dots on the map in the place where God gave you a vision, and you went and looked at some of the databases like Joshua Project that gives information about unreached and unengaged people, groups people groups that don’t have any church or any believers that are reproducing in their society. And it gave you some information about those islands and some of the people that were supposed to be there. And, and so you just went to investigate? Yeah,
Daniel Bäckrud (09:34):
Yeah. It was you know, investigating trip and we, we went there to do some research to, to finding some way to, to reach those people. And my first goal was to, to find those people groups that was in the database. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:49):
So what were the names in the database of the people groups
Daniel Bäckrud (09:53):
There, there to its Banca and it’s Beletu,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:55):
Okay. And so tell me that process. You’re, you’re there on the island and you’re looking for these unreached people groups. How did that go?
Daniel Bäckrud (10:03):
Yeah, so we wanted to, to like have a local foundation to, to put our feets on the ground. So we went with a motorbike,me and my interpreter, he was driving it and I was sitting on the back and we went, looked at Google Maps because we had no connections. So we went look at Google Maps and we find some churches and we went there, we knocked the door and we asked for the pastor and we talked to the pastor, interviewing them and, and asking, Do you know about these people? And, and,where do we find them?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:33):
Okay. And and what’d they say?
Daniel Bäckrud (10:36):
Yeah. So the problem was that we, we went from door to door speaking with 10 15 pastors, and no one ever heard about those groups.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:46):
Okay. So you’ve, you, the database says that there’s on reach people groups there, and you go and are looking for the banca people. Yeah. And people are saying, I don’t know where they are. Yeah. So, so then what happened? You, you, you said that you had like a recording of the language. Yeah,
Daniel Bäckrud (11:05):
Yeah. So we, I was staying in, in a home of Su Susan had a student that was originally from this area. So we were invited to sleep in the house of, of his grand, her grandparents. And they were, they were Muslims original from Malaysia. And we, we really blessed to, to, to stay in their home. And you know, as we, as we were traveling around asking for, for this group that was called Banca in the database, I, I had the recording in my phone that I got from, from Wcl, that is translating Bible and, and giving resources. And I played it because we, we never find the people groups. So I, I, I tried to play this and I asked, What language is this? And it turns out that that was Hacka, which is a Chinese language. And it turns out that all the pastors that we were met were from that tribe.
Daniel Bäckrud (12:04):
And then I asked, What, what about all these other people that are Muslims? What, what are they? And they said, they are the malai, they are from, from Malaysia, and they, they live total separate life from the Chinese. And it turns out that this Malai people, they have developed their own dialect of Malaysia, Malaysia language Malai. And it has, that language is called Banca. So the tribe that was in the database called Banca is locally called the Malai because they are originally from Malaysia. And so I’ve been traveling all over the island searching for a people group, and at the end of the day, it, it, it’s turns out that every night I came home eating dinner, sleeping in the bed, talking with people who was the people group banca.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:01):
Wow. So you, you finally found them. I did. You you went searching. Yeah. You’re on a treasure hunt. Yeah. And you found this people who God loves very much. And, and, and God led you there. God gave you a vision that that led you to this place. Yeah. And, and so that was just the beginning. You, you, you didn’t know anyone at first. You just had an interpreter go with you. You met some people and now you’re, you’re planning to go back and you, you’re actually putting together a plan that’s going to take several years to complete to, to actually reach these people. Yeah. And so it hasn’t happened yet, but you’re in process, so you’re about to go back. And can you kind of explain what you’re doing on, on the second trip and then what you hope will happen in the future?
Daniel Bäckrud (13:49):
Yeah. So at the first trip at the end of the week, we met with one pastor who is a very, very much a man of peace. He’s a very honorable man. He’s an ex-marine and he’s a pastor who has built up lots of churches among the Chinese tribe. And he’s a wonderful man of God who has done tremendously work the past 30 years. And we, we had a hard connection with him and we have been communicating with him both when I was there the last time, but also with, with phones and zooms meetings since then. So this time I’m invited to, to his church, have a couple of conferences to speak to both leaders and youths and their congregation. And you know, right now I’m building more relationship with him so that we find trust in each other to, to, you know, pull out a vision how to, how to reach those people because there are one, 1.5 million people unreached on those islands that have no access to the gospel. Right now, there are no Bible in the language. There are no churches, there are no pastors, there are no worship songs. There are nothing in their context. So it’s a lot of work that has to be done.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:10):
Indonesia has a unique situation because many of the Christians in Indonesia come from a Chinese background. And since they’re Chinese, they are good in business. And so when they come into the church, the, they give money to the church. The church is, is well off. But then you also have lots of groups that are Muslim and they tend to be poor. And so in many countries that you go to, the Christians are very poor, and then the, the, the other people are rich. But in Indonesia, it’s kind of flipped. The Christians are rich, but they don’t always know how to reach people. I think in talking to them every Indonesian Christian I’ve talked to wants to reach people, but sometimes it’s difficult to work cross culturally cuz even though they’re in the same country, they often speak the same language. They, they have a different culture. It’s Chinese versus Muslim, and there’s lots of differences in culture and, and that type of thing. And, and so part of reaching the Unre people is giving a vision to the churches that come from a different culture, how they can develop missionaries that will go from their culture into another culture. Yeah.
Daniel Bäckrud (16:37):
Yeah. Everything you see is, is absolutely correct. This is cross-cultural missionary we’re looking for inside the nation. And yeah, we, I i, if we do this again next day’s conference, maybe I have more, more answers because we are, we are in the process and we are in the beginning of the beginning of this journey in this province bunk be. So yeah, this is this is the challenge we have in ahead of us, but we believe in God’s grace, in God’s miracles and God’s favor. And we just pray that the Holy Spirit will lead people into the heart of a missionary Yeah. On those islands.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:18):
Well, I, I really admire your boldness in going, you don’t have a contact, you just have a, a vision from God, and it takes great faith to, to go to just start knocking on doors of churches that you find on Google until you find the the right man of peace. Who can you explain kind of what a man of peace is? What, what is that?
Daniel Bäckrud (17:44):
Yeah, that probably, there are many definitions, but to me, a man of peace is, you know, the local person who has access to both other churches and also the society and has keys to reach into different, both churches, but also among the, the people that we are about to reach and who has the heart for, for missions, who has the heart to reach people, who has the burden of souls in the heart and is also open to cooperate with, with, you know, the, the person we need to accomplish what God has put in our hearts that the matter. Peace.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:21):
Another thing I think you’re being really smart with is developing relationships, going in, starting to, to talk to people, develop relationships, asking a lot of questions. I think sometimes foreigners come and they feel like they have all the answers and they know this is how you reach people. Yeah. But you have to work with the people that are there, the in work within their culture and how they, they do things. And so, so you’re, you’re doing this step by step. This is not something you want to accomplish immediately. This is something that you want to make a commitment to for, for years to come. Yeah.
Daniel Bäckrud (19:01):
Yeah. You know, this, this job includes so many things. We are starting to, to train people during this upcoming week. I’m hoping that we can have a, a group that are committing to cross culture missionary and that we can train them for, for several months, and that we can send them to, to, to this tribes. And that we can follow up on that by doing evangelistic events or festivals or campaigns or crusade or whatever name you wanna put on it. But, but reaching people in, in masses in those, those villages that’s what we want to do long term and, and checking villages by villages to, to to really have an impact in this, in this people group.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:46):
Well, I really think that your story can inspire people who are listening, who are wondering, you know, where should I go? God, you know, maybe they have the desire to go, but they don’t know where to go. Well get a vision from God. Go find an island that needs Jesus and, and just go, You may not have context. You may not know what to do. Just go, you know, Jesus said in Mark 1615, Go into all the world Yeah. And preach the gospel. And so two thirds of God’s name is go and <laugh>. And so you have to be like God, and, and, and go. And if you’ll just go, then you’ll begin to see miracles happen. And I know that you will see miracles happen. I know that you will see people in this tribal group come to Jesus, You’ll see churches established. And, and so I think we should make an appointment to talk again in two or three years to share the testimony of how you can reach a whole island for Jesus
Daniel Bäckrud (20:45):
<Laugh>. That is wonderful. Thank you for your faith and your encouragement. Just to add something about to, to what you said of course we don’t need like a clear vision of a place to go, just to go. We don’t have to, to wait on the, the fire scripture on the wall. It Bible is very clear. Go into all the earth, lot of places included in that challenge,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:09):
<Laugh>. Yeah. So if you go somewhere on the earth, you are in God’s will He told you to go. You can expect him to go with you.
Daniel Bäckrud (21:16):
Exactly. Exactly. So, you know, I have been traveling as an evangelist for, for five years before I got this vision, having tremendous success in many places, seeing so many miracles and people say to God. And yeah. You know I, I never had anyone telling me what country to go to before that. I just went with wherever it was possible. And yeah. Suddenly I got this vision and I, I have to be faithful with that because not many people get that clear vision.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:49):
Amen. Well, let’s finish by saying a word of prayer. Yeah. For these people, obviously they’re on God’s heart. God gave you a vision, and, and so let’s just pray for them.
Daniel Bäckrud (22:01):
Yes. So, Heavenly Father, we just place this people group banca and the people group of Bella tomb before your heart. Thank you that you have created them. Thank you that you love them with your heart. Thank you that you are their father. And let me be the tool to realize, let them realize who their father is. Lord, thank you that you love them so much, and I pray that you will put your love for this people in my heart. Let me feel what you feel. Let me see what you see. And we just pray for those churches that exist among other groups. We just pray that you will send your fire, that you will send your, your, your strength and your power and your will and your, your, your, your eager to reach those people for these churches. Lord, we just pray that upon them. We thank you for all the work that has been done. We honor everything that has been been happening in the past, and we just thank you for all the tremendous work that those pastors has been doing. But we pray that you will give them visions further to reach new tribes, new places where your gospel has not been preached before. Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:06):
Amen. Well, thank you, Daniel for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Daniel Bäckrud (23:09):
Thank you for having me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:11):
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 (24:29):
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
Jonas Andersson | The Association of Campaign Evangelists
Jonas Andersson lead Go Out Missions and ACE: The Association of Campaign Evangelists. On today’s podcast he shares his personal testimony and about the amazing work God is doing around the world.
Learn more about Go Out Missions: https://gautmission.org/
Discover the Association of Campaign Evangelists: http://ace-evangelists.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Jonas Andersson Leads Go Out Missions and ACE, the Association of Campaign Evangelists. On today’s podcast, he shares his personal testimony and about the amazing work God is doing around the world.
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.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:51):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus The day I have a very special guest with me, Jonas Andersson. He is the leader of ACE, the Association of Campaign Evangelists, and we are together in the nation of Turkey. We have come here for a conference. There’s about 22 of us all passionate about evangelism. Yes. And it’s so wonderful to be together. Brother Jonas, thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Jonas Andersson (01:24):
Thank you. It’s an honor. It’s great, great privilege.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:27):
So let’s talk about ACE and what ACE does. It was originally founded by Richard Gunning, who I’ve interviewed just a couple of episodes ago. And he launched ace, but now you have taken the leadership. And tell me what is Ace and what’s the purpose of it?
Jonas Andersson (01:50):
Well, as the name says, we are an Association of Campaign Evangelists. I stress this every time I, I talk about it. We’re not an organization, we’re a network. We’re an association. It’s it’s rather an umbrella with a number of ministries, evangelists doing the same thing. I’d say we all do we use multiple tools in, in bringing the gospel to the nations, but we’ve all come together around this one tool that we, we favor if you, so, like, and we know is very effective in reaching the masses campaigns. So we meet together annually at the conference where we are now, not this year we’re in Istan. And trying to find ways where we can cooperate better, where we can sharpen each other’s tools, where we can pull resources, where we can. Sometimes someone has an open door and we can maybe send more people there.
Jonas Andersson (02:50):
We can do collaboration. Sometimes someone has money and is looking for a field to sew, and someone has maybe people that are ready to go. So we’re trying to find ways where we can strategize together, where we can have a deeper and, and longer lasting impact in, in cities in in, in in states and in, in whole nations. So this is what we’ve been doing. But the second part is also we wanna see a next generation being raised up. So we, we very much believe in mentorship and in bringing people out into the field and training them and equipping them and giving them opportunities on the platform, sharing and on as we go, kind of train them and, and send them. So that has been big part of what we’ve been doing in Ace the last couple of years.
Jonas Andersson (03:41):
We have kind of opened up, we started as a very you say Northern European or Scandinavian network. It just so happened because of Richard gunning relations with a lot of Scandinavian evangelists and myself coming from Sweden. I have a lot of connections to that part of the world, but we’ve seen the last few years we have opened up and, and relations has formed with evangelists in other parts of the world like yourself. And, and I really like that. And I, I believe that we are gonna see more of this in the, in the days to come. Because the calling to run the race as an evangelist and do the work of evangelism from a platform that’s, that’s something the spirit of God obviously is doing all over the world. So I’d say the next phase in where we are right now, where we’re kind of open and seeking God and seeking his direction for, for the next step, how we can level this and, and see more both senior and seasoned evangelists who are eager to find apprentices, to find people they can invest in to, to mentor and and to, to, to give to the next generation.
Jonas Andersson (04:53):
But also the young ones who may ask, God, I I feel you, you have called me. I want to go, But who, who can I connect with? Where are, where are the open doors? Where are the opportunities? Is it at all possible for me? I mean, that’s where I started. And by the grace of God, someone came along and, and showed me, Yeah, we, we’d invest in you. We believe in you and, and opened the door for me. So that’s what we, that’s what we like to do. That’s, that’s a big part of, of, of the network of ACE. The second thing I’d say is for evangelists running our race. I mean, everyone at this conference and every evangelist pretty much that I’ve ever met in my life, we are passionate. We are, we are vision driven, but very much evangelist can be very alone.
Jonas Andersson (05:45):
We run a race and we, we, we live in a, in a backpack or in a suitcase big part of, of, of the year. And we move from, from place to place and country to country. And, and by doing so, forming lasting relations is, is kind of hard. And it can be a struggle for many. And also for local churches to, to relate to the office of an evangelist and, and understand where we are coming from and, and what we carry. Sometimes that makes it hard to form that kind of relations that that actually will be kind of a safety net when, when the li when life gets rough and hard. And that’s been a big part and is very essential to the network of ace, to, to build strong and last to relations between evangelists. Because in this in this setting, we, we understand each other. We know where we come from. And there is, I’d say we are not just focus and event driven, but we’re, we, we’re also very relational in the network. It’s a big part of it forming lasting relations where we can really share life both ups and downs and, and cheer each other on.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:07):
Yeah. And it’s so wonderful being at this conference. There are evangelists here from Pakistan, from Sweden, from Norway, from Great Britain, from Brazil, and even I have come from America and other evangelists from, from other parts of the world. And so it’s, it’s wonderful just the fellowship and our hearts beat together. This morning at breakfast, I was talking with some that they were working with Afghan refugees that have come to Sweden. And in Tulsa we have Afghan refugees that have come and, and we are working to, to reach out to them as well. And so we were sharing stories and, and saying, Oh, it’s so neat to see what God is doing. And, and, and we, we found that we were praying the same prayers together for these people to come to, to know Jesus. And so that’s such a, a wonderful blessing to, to be a part of evangelists coming together.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:04):
And I think it’s so needed, because you’re right, so many evangelists do feel alone Yeah. And misunderstood by the church. They, they see thousands of people get saved, and then they come back to share the testimonies and people don’t really understand. Yeah. But fellow evangelists can celebrate with them the wins and, and commiserate with them on the, the challenges that, that they’ve faced. So Ace has been very involved in many different countries, and I really like some of the strategies that Ace is using to reach nations, because the, the idea is not just to go over and over again to one big city, but to develop a strategy to go from town to town, village to village, and map out an entire region. So over a period of time, the entire region can be reached. And it’s not just one evangelist doing it, but you’re sending one ace evangelist one month, and then another ace evangelist the next month, and then another one. And over time, like in Berino Faso, I think you’ve done over 60 crusades now, or campaigns Yeah, yeah. In different parts of Berino fso and had a, a significant impact. So, so talk to me a little bit about that strategy and why you’re using that strategy and, and some of the nations that you’ve seen that type of strategy work.
Jonas Andersson (09:29):
Well, I mean Jesus said, going to all the world, and, and when I came into ministry a big part of of, you know, the fire that that kind of started inside of me was the, the unfairness in, in, when I realized at that time it was like two point 5 billion people within the people groups that where they were growing up, they would never even have a chance hear about Jesus. Today. That number is even some said at this conference. Now, it might even be up to 4 billion people. I mean the, the, the population growth is, is insane. But this really, this, this sense of this is not fair. This is not right. That was really what, what got me going, trying to, to, to look for, So what, what, what are we missing here? Why are there places still today on this planet where there has never since the cross been a church that cannot be right?
Jonas Andersson (10:30):
I mean and I, you know, you started question why, how could that pos, I mean, 2000 years of church history how is that even possible? I mean, can’t be that every believer in, in church history has been very bad at geography, <laugh>. I mean, it’s not as simple as that. It has to be something else. And, and of course, some places are harder to travel to that some places there’s gonna be you know, a bigger sacrifice to go. And as an evangelist, of course, we, we wanna reach as many people as possible at the same time. So there is always gonna be I, I, I hesitate to use the word temptation because I still believe in, you know, we should do you know, mass campaigns in, in big cities. I’m not saying we shouldn’t, but when there is a BC and d town in the same nation with maybe not as many people, but still together as many people that no one has gone to since the cross, then, you know, in me, that’s where I want to go.
Jonas Andersson (11:35):
And that has been, I, I think the main reason and, and the main strategy we’ve been working with in Ace, we see that in the capitals and sometimes maybe the second largest city in man nations, there has been campaigns, there has been the opportunities. So we’ve tried to define it also kind of pushed the limit for, and, and the border of the kingdom economy you wish, and going to, and I think that’s been, not everyone, but quite a number of the ministries involved in Ace. That’s what we’ve been doing. This is what we’ve been kind of driven by sowing the NA nations, where we’ve been starting this kind of work where we’ve brought money in, that has been the, the aim and goal to go into regions and states where we see the, the church weak, or there’s hardly any new church planted.
Jonas Andersson (12:21):
And then we move in with, with national movements and denominations who have church planters ready. And, and we set up the campaigns. And so far, I mean, we’ve been working in, in India in different states in a pradesh. We started with Richard Gunning and, and several others did multiple campaigns at the same time. Simultaneously. We did that for a number of years. We’ve been working in India and in Asam, Northeast India, Pakistan, we did for, for a number of years, from 2000 and, and three to 2009, I’d say we had around 70 campaigns with different days evangelists, sometimes up to two campaigns a month. I mean, it was a machine we were doing. It was crazy. I just spoke to, to the son of the coordinator. He’s actually now with us in ACE. I’m so happy about that. He actually was the translator on my very first campaign. I preached my first message and
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:19):
Yeah, Jabron Inayat Yeah. Yeah. Just last week I was in Pakistan with his brother. Yeah. Tamran Inayat the whole Inayat family caught the vision to reach Pakistan Yeah. With the gospel. And it’s just so wonderful to see what God is doing there. Yeah. And, and, and like you said, so many crusades from village to village have had such a big impact
Jonas Andersson (13:42):
That impact in, in, in, I mean, we saw that church movement had around 70 churches when we started. And after those 70 campaigns, they had more than 400 churches, 450 plus or something. He just told me. Now, the other day, I thought it was around 300 something. And he corrected me. He said, No, we planted more churches as a direct result of the campaigns. But, and that’s, I mean, that’s the, that’s the greatest thing. But you now, even still, after so many years, you know, you receive contacts. People are calling me, People are inviting us to come back to Pakistan. Where you realize these people who are ministry leaders now who are pastors in local churches, who running their own campaigns, they’re actually a fruit of the campaigns that Ace held 2004 to 2009 in Pakistan. Now they’re running, they got saved. Lebron actually shared the other night.
Jonas Andersson (14:36):
He said, You know, there are two guys that go save. Do you remember this place, Saja? Do you remember? They came, they’re drunk. They, you know, they were just, you know, Jesus saved them. And now he’s running this big ministry and he has his own church. And, you know, I just met them down there. So we’ve seen this in, in, in many, many countries in Bina Faso. We’ve seen so many churches planted. I remember one of the campaigns I had there three months after the campaign they had to close down bars. There was hardly any people in the jails in the day. Jails. They had a different system. They closed down. And, and the, the chief of the police and even some religious leaders from the other, other religions represented there they were all amazed at the power of God that kind of shook the city.
Jonas Andersson (15:28):
And this was not one of the bigger cities, but it had an impact in the entire area like village to village to village. And this is how we’ve seen the gospel spread in the interior of the nations and, and have deep and, and significant impact. And, and doing this together, knowing I’m going today in a few weeks time, one of my friends, one of my colleagues from another nation, they’re going to this city, and then someone else is coming to this city. And then maybe a few months, you’re going back again. And you can visit one of the places where your colleagues had a campaign, and there’s already churches, and you can go there, you can teach new believers, you can encourage them, and then you move on, You have the next campaign, and you kind of, you know, go like this. We have seen, you know, the, the, the, the, the profound impact, the long lasting fruit where we can, we can know for sure that the fruit remains. So, so we really believe in this.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:29):
You actually have two full-time jobs. Not only are you leading Ace, but you are also leading another ministry called Go Out Missions. Yeah. Tell me about what Go Out Missions does.
Jonas Andersson (16:42):
Well, <laugh>, in a way, we’re doing a bit of the same. I mean all my evangelists go out Mission. They’re involved in Ace. So when we’re doing the campaigns, we’re involved in, in, in what, what Ace is doing. But we are based in Sweden, and we’re training and equipping people. We’re equipping the local church we work with, with most denominations. So we’re Pentecostal in, in, in, in theology. We work with everyone that loves Jesus and wants more of him. And we plant churches in Sweden. There are no go out mission churches, but we work with the, the, pretty much every denomination in Sweden that wants to work with us we pull resources and we send people so we’re, we’re planting churches in Sweden, because this is important for us. When we try train young people and, and we, we have someone that says, I have a calling on my life and I want to go to the unreached for us it’s important that if you wanna reach the people there, you start reaching people at home.
Jonas Andersson (17:48):
It says in X one eight that when the Holy Spirit comes upon, you’ll see power to be a witness in Jerusalem. It doesn’t say, or Judea, it says, and Judea and Sumaria and to the end of the earth. So this is what we emphasize a lot. This is what we teach. So in what mission, my church planters, they go regularly on missions to the unreached, though they are based and, and planting churches in Sweden. And it, the opposite goes for the ones going on campaigns regularly. They live maybe in a place where they also help planting a local church. We travel regularly into church plants and help them and evangelizing the streets and, you know, preach to the neighbors and that kind of work. Then we run a few training operations. We have both to training schools, both where we train, train young people for church planting and for pioneer missions, and really racing up and training campaign evangelists.
Jonas Andersson (18:53):
And the second year is more of a, of a tailored, you know leadership year. Internship year, you could say where you can receive scholarship to go. And and we’re doing I mean, what we felt when we traveled in churches and the conferences, we met a lot of people and fire for God. And we met a lot of young people. What we saw, a lot of the young people, our standard response would be, Wait until you’re 18, you know, when it’s possible for you to travel, make your own decisions. And but we saw the fire God upon really young people, and we felt, we need to do something about this. Now. We, we shouldn’t just tell them, Wait we need to open some opportunity for them already now, because obviously God is already there doing things in their lives.
Jonas Andersson (19:41):
So, so we started the trading program that we call Young Missionaries, where we train people from, from 15 or 14 years old even. And really to do the work of an evangelist. We bring them with us, maybe not to Pakistan, but you know, we are closer in, in, in Europe. And we let them preach, we train them, we equip them, and we’ll, we’ll stand behind them, but they’re doing the preaching. We train them how to cast out demons and pray for the sick and, and do an al call. And then they come back home to Sweden. They’re changed <laugh>. They do the same home back in Sweden. And it’s, it’s really that’s actually one of the fastest growing parts of the ministry right now. And I’m, I’m super proud of, of, of the young people that we have in the organization, really running with fire and passion and, and soon gonna pass us <laugh>.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:29):
Tell me about your testimony. How did you get on fire for God, and how did you discover the assignment that God has for your life?
Jonas Andersson (20:38):
Well, I can see in respective, I, I I started praying to God at a very young age. I grew up in a Christian family. My father was a pastor. So for me, God was not something that I really thought of. Does he exist? That was not really the, the question when I was five years old, four years old. Even every single night I would pray for, for those in leadership, you know, I would pray for the government, I would pray for, No one ever taught me this, but my parents told me, actually, I would not go to sleep until I prayed for, for, for our Prime Minister, you know, for, for the, for the, for the Chief of Police. And, you know, it was quite funny for me, the existence of God, that was not the question. I grew up, we, we, we moved as God called my father to different places.
Jonas Andersson (21:29):
And my first year I didn’t really have any Christian friends. And I had to pay a bit of a price for my faith. I was, you know, attacked for my faith and almost bullied. But God kind of turned that around when both, both my class and the parallel class they both attended a volunteer Bible class with my father for a year in our church. And I was like, Yes. But something, something I think was built inside of me where I realized I could be assault and a light for me. It was never, you know, does God exist? Should I do this? Should I be believer? It was more like, I feel so sorry for the, for the rest of them. They don’t understand. When I was 13, I, I gave my life to Jesus. I, you know, I I I always had, you know, my personal faith.
Jonas Andersson (22:29):
But when I was 13, I decided I need to get baptized. And my father said, yes, You know, he baptized me when I was 16 I was in a youth meeting. I was standing there worshiping God, and all of a sudden I hear from my mouth, I’m no longer singing the song. And I got baptized in the Holy Spirit. My, my youth pastor had, you know, I didn’t even know what was going on. He laid his hand on me, and we prayed and, and, and I started speaking new times. And I can see from that day, everything started changing. We had then moved to a place where I’d never met as many young believers in, in my entire life. To that date, I thought that I’d come to heaven. And there was 60 young people in my age in church every weekend.
Jonas Andersson (23:16):
And I didn’t even know. There weren’t that many believers in my age in Sweden, <laugh> at that time. I’d never seen that many. So at first I thought, you know, wow, I’ve come to heaven. But then, because how I grew up, I, I was always around non-Christian people. And what I could see, the difference between me and my friends in the church was, it was enough for them. They, we were 60 people. They had a good time. They didn’t need the others. And for me, I was not content. I, I did not like this. I got, you know, <laugh>, we, we need to bring more people. We need to be out there. I had classmates that never been to church, and I realized, you know, we need to do something about this. And when I got baptized in the Holy Spirit, I started doing stuff.
Jonas Andersson (24:00):
I, I, you know, I, I, I, and also because, I mean, I was a teenager and, you know, I got frustrated with my Christian friends, and I thought they were too religious, and they didn’t want to go for the lost. So I started spending more time with my non-Christian friends, and I had a bit of a struggle. You know, you, you were at parties and maybe we were in all making the right decisions, but when the Holy Spirit came and the conviction was there, and there was power to be a, a witness, I started youth groups. You know, I didn’t even know this was happening. I, I see this now, looking back, it just started happening. I started youth groups soon, that group bigger than the original youth group. But the big difference was most, most of the guys in this group was non-Christian. And then I realized I need to do something about it, you know?
Jonas Andersson (24:51):
So we started at prayer, and I started give small teachings, and I started preaching, and it was very frustrated. They didn’t understand. And, you know, so I was seeking God. And, and then you know, I, I had a dream. I had a dream to be an ambassador, to be an ambassador for Sweden. You know, I, I, I took I studied social science with an international perspective. I studied everything in English, actually most of it, preparing for this. And I added extra languages. And I, I had everything mapped out. I, I thought I’m gonna be an ambassador for, for Sweden. And then one day, I can’t say exactly when it happened, but it was after I received the baptism in the Holy Spirit, one day, it just dawned upon me. I came home, I flung the door open, I ran into my dad’s home office, and I said, It’s insane.
Jonas Andersson (25:49):
It’s crazy. You have the best job in the world. This is amazing. Do you realize that you get paid to, to be with Jesus? Do you read the Bible and pray to preach? This is amazing. And you know, I mean, I grew up with this, and I never realized how amazing this was. And at the same time, I knew I’ll probably never be a pastor in a local church. Actually, I have been <laugh>, but, but I thought, this is this. That’s, that’s not for me. But what I realized is God has a plan for my life, and I need to make that my top priority from this day, you know, school. Yeah. But it’s not, I’m not gonna be an ambassador. Yeah. For Sweden God has a plan for my life. For, So I went to Bible school, I prayed for a year.
Jonas Andersson (26:38):
I actually had received some scriptures that really marked me, but I couldn’t understand it because it said that I should go out into the world and preach in other nations. And I, I, I could not see that happen. I was 20 years old who would send me, I had no experience. I’d never read the Bible in English. I mean, where, where should I go? Who would send me? So I went to Bible school, and my one prayer for one year was, Lord, where should I go? How should I start? The only testimonies I’d ever heard was, you know, those spectacular stories, People receiving a nation in the most crazy way, you know, seeing, you know, fire on the wall and riding on the wall, or an angel or appearing, or, or even crazy stories like they found birthmark on the body that held, you know, the exact shape of the country, then the map, you know, And they knew that’s the nation you’re buying.
Jonas Andersson (27:32):
I was, I was, I went to the extreme. I’m telling you, I even heard a story, someone prayed, and in the morning, the serial form that wrote the name of it, I prayed over, I probably went through like 15 different types of cereal. I prayed over porridge, <laugh>, I did everything. I was desperate. The, the last few weeks of the Bible school, I screamed. I was crying out to God. I said, Give me an Asian Lord, give me an Asian. And then I had an epiphany. For me, it was, I mean, this is really silly, but, but for me that’s actually something that, that became, you know, profoundly spiritual for me. I realized I live in a nation Sweden as a nation, Sweden as a part of the world. This is amazing. I can start now. I don’t have to wait anymore. And as silly as it, it, it sounds, that’s where it started for me.
Jonas Andersson (28:23):
And I realized I’m not wired like maybe everyone else. I, I can’t, I don’t, I love the church <laugh>. I love crush Christian people, but I don’t wanna be here. I need to go where, where there are no Christian people. I need to find the really bad place. I need to find some where, where, where they have never had the chance, where they had not had the privilege that I have had to be raised and actually know God. So that took me into church planting. So I moved to, to the second largest island in Sweden. That’s where I, it was launched into full-time ministry. Really. I moved there. I didn’t know anything. And we started youth work and that grew rapidly. We had like 6,000 people coming every weekend. And, you know, they had knew nothing. That’s where it started for me.
Jonas Andersson (29:15):
And I spent a few years there. Then I got in contact with Co-op Mission. I was sharing and preaching on the same conference as their, their founder. And they just kind of threw out to me, You know, you should come with us. You should come with us out into the mission field. There was something in my heart that said, Yeah, you should. And at the same time, in my natural, my er mind, I was like, Why should I do that? I have no experience. It would just be a waste of money and resources to have me there. They’re doing a great job, but something on the inside told me, Just go there. So I prepared, you know, I thought, I’ll be there. I’ll carry, you know their bags. I’ll, I’ll be praying for them, you know, support them. And then the voice inside of me started saying, and it kept repeating, actually for a few months.
Jonas Andersson (30:08):
Take everything you get, take everything you get. I ended up going to Pakistan. I’m making a very long story, try to make it short. <Laugh>, the founder of, of Go Mission calls me. I actually calls to Team leader, but he passes me the phone and he says he has something he wants to say. I take the phone and he says, Those words take everything you get. And then he hangs up. And I just knew, okay, God has something in store. I just bought my first English Bible. I was struggling through this, but in my spirit, I was prepared. You know, something’s gonna happen. After the first night and after the first pastor’s meeting we’ve had, and I had been just sharing some testimonies and some short of him praying, the leader of this team came to me and he said, We believe that, that you should be preaching one of the big campaign meetings.
Jonas Andersson (31:06):
And I hear myself more than I reflected. I hear myself say, Yes, I’ll do that, <laugh>. And then I turned around. I went into my room, I closed very slowly, and then I fell down on my niece. And I said, What have you done? What have you done? How, what is wrong with you? <Laugh>? And at the same time, the the voice inside take everything you get. And I felt peace, but I said to God, I know what I’ve seen. I refuse to leave this room without knowing the same things are gonna happen. I’m not leaving until I know. And God started tering to me. God started speaking to me and activated me in, in giftings words of knowledge. I’d never seen this in my life before, but I started receiving words. And, and I started preaching there. Brown was my interpreter. It was the first time he interpreted.
Jonas Andersson (31:58):
And it happened. We, we saw a multitude of people giving their lives to Jesus. I saw miracles that to that day I’d never seen before. Lame started walking, people taking off those you know, they threw crutches and started walking, jumped off the beds. Blind people receive their sight and was like, I heard of always saying, This is something you’ll be doing for the rest of your life. And when I came home, I, I continued working with the church plant, and but I still, I realized God has something more in store for me. So that’s where it started. And since then I’ve been going <laugh>.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:44):
That’s wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sharing your story. You know, I’m so amazed at what God is doing through you, Jonas, and very honored to call you a friend. And I think it’s amazing what God is going to do through you in the years to come. The world is a big place. There’s a lot of people that need Jesus. And so God is raising up leaders like you that have a passion for going and preaching the gospel, and, and even more than that, raising up others. So thank you for your heart and thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast.
Jonas Andersson (33:21):
Thank you, Daniel. My privilege. Thank you so much. I love what you’re doing. I love this tool that you’re using as well to spread the fire and inspire others. There’s a great need for evangelism, and there’s is great need for evangelists sharpen each other and giving tools. So God bless you, God bless you. Listen to this. And let’s go with the gospel to the end of the earth.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:44):
Amen. 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 (35:04):
For more information about how to share your faith, or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.
Daniel King is often called The Evangelism Coach. Please subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast for inspiration about sharing your faith.
Evan & Madeleine Threlkeld | Is a Gospel Awakening Coming?
Evan Threlkeld is a missionary-evangelist and a youth pastor. He is married to Madeleine and together they have a burning desire to carry the gospel of Jesus Christ to the lost across the earth through the power of the Holy Spirit. They fell in love on the mission field in Africa. On today episode of The Evangelism Podcast, you will hear the story of their romance and about the ministry God is calling them to. We also talk about doing neighborhood outreaches in the United States and about reaching Buddhists in Thailand.
Donate to Evan Threlkeld: https://www.modernday.org/field-workers/evanthrelkeld/
Connect with Evan Threlkeld on Facebook:https://www.facebook.com/evan.charles.94064
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:03):
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. Evan & his wife, Madeleine Threlkeld. Welcome to The Evangelism Podcast. Did I say that right?
Evan Threlkeld (00:23):
Pretty close. Yeah, thro. K it’s it’s a tough one because it’s, it’s old Norwegian last name. So <laugh> you did good.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:30):
Well, wonderful. We met at the Christ for All Nations (CFAN) Evangelism Bootcamp. You were one of the evangelism students there, and now you’re a graduate and you are excited about evangelism all over the world. Tell me a little bit about how you ended up at the Evangelism Bootcamp.
Evan Threlkeld (00:54):
Yes, it’s, it’s an interesting story. So I, I interned with evangelist Chris Overstreet at Bethel in 20, 20, 19, and shortly after I went to the school of evangelism, the SOE where you were training, and actually that was evangelist Reinhardt Bonnke’s last school that he taught at. So had the privilege to see him speak. And there was a there’s an opportunity to go to Africa and preach on gospel trucks and do kids crusades. And so I at the time was with Chris, but I said I would be, I would love to go. And I was one of 12 evangelists at the school that was selected. So for five weeks I went to Nigeria, saw thousands, tens of thousands of, of Nigerians give their lives to Jesus. They’re just so hungry over Nigeria. And then at the end of the five weeks Evangel Kada did a crusade and I Ave ACUTA Nigeria and that changed my life. It was a four day crusade. I got to just see so many people get touched by God. And the last the second to last day, Ben was going to ask me to pray for the sick and we just saw incredible miracles. So from there I applied for the bootcamp and that was also life changing experience. So yeah, that’s, that’s how I ended up at bootcamp.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:28):
So first you were interning with, with Chris over street. Chris is a great friend. I was just with him last month, got to spend a whole afternoon with him and, and see the, the powerful impact of his ministry. I really love the, the huge truck that Chris over Street’s ministry has. It turns into a platform it’s got screens on either side and he’s using it to, to preach the gospel. And, and now he’s going into neighborhoods using a, a smaller like sidewalk Sunday school size truck, and preaching in the, in the neighborhoods. And you’ve been involved in, in helping with that to kind of tell me what you’ve been seeing.
Evan Threlkeld (03:14):
Yes, that’s been amazing. So I’ve been a part of nearly every gospel truck event that Chris had, the small gospel truck event that he’s done. Earlier this year, he got the small gospel truck and which has been amazing, cuz he is been able to go into neighborhoods, apartment complexes tight spaces that a bigger truck couldn’t get into and reach entire apartment complexes for Jesus. And it’s been amazing seeing families come out and give their lives to Jesus. And then Chris and their compassion action team started a youth basically kids school for kids where their discipling and pouring into the kids. And you know, if you reach the heart of a kid, you reach the heart of the family. And so it’s been really, really beautiful to see. And I’ve been DJing at I’m a DJ as well. So I’ve been like coming in, just DJing at these events, which is a creative way to, to draw people out. So that’s been really fun.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:16):
Okay. Kinda walk me through one of these apartment outreaches. What does it look like? How do you, how do you, and, and Chris’s team attract people to come to the, the event and, and then what does the ministry look like? And, and then what have, are some of the results that, that you’ve seen?
Evan Threlkeld (04:39):
Yeah. So what we, what, what they do is they, they start by going to different apartment complexes and talking to the apartment managers which I actually did in Orlando as well when I was serving at, at CFA for, for a season go in, talk to apartment managers, get permission from them, which which is pretty, it’s pretty easy. If you find someone that, you know, you, you really basically pitch it to them is this is gonna be really good for your community. Really good for retention of of your, of your residents. And you tell them the benefits of what you’re gonna be doing. Like they give away free raffle prizes. They give away cotton candy, snow cones, popcorn, you know, all of that. And so it’s something that apartment managers love to hear. So once you get some apartments, then they come with the gospel truck.
Evan Threlkeld (05:38):
But we flyer the apartments for, for a few days beforehand and let the people know we’re coming and what it’s about. And then we show up and, and families come, we start to share the music, maybe go around and let people know one more time that we’re there. And it’s so fun. See all the kids that come, I mean, really the kids are the ones that are so excited about the event they come and they get their popcorn and they’re dancing, they’re doing, we’re doing raffles. So it’s a really fun event it’s. And then in that, you know, in that timeframe, we preach the gospel. We take 15 minute moments to preach the gospel and people, you know, after you’ve blessed them after you’ve loved on them, their hearts are so wide open. And I remember we went down to one of the worst neighborhoods, easily, the worst neighborhood in Portland. Just like two days before we got there, someone was shot and killed in the apartment complex next to where we were. And we had a very diverse crowd. And if you know anything about Portland you know, it’s not really known for being receptive to the gospel per se.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:51):
Portland is always in the news for the wrong reasons.
Evan Threlkeld (06:54):
<Laugh> exactly. Yeah. It’s one of the most unreached areas of America and the most unchurched I should say. And so we did this gospel event and I actually had the privilege to preach just a 15 minute gospel message. I really used a lot of evangelist, Columbus stories and kind of how he trained us at bootcamp and like 17 people got born again, like 15 people raised their hands to get born again. And this was in a church parking lot. So we were able to have the pastor come up, introduce himself, connect with the people and they get plugged into their church there. So,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:32):
Wow. What a great report. All right. Let’s talk about romance. Normally I ask people, what’s the number one thing that you got from the evangelism bootcamp? Well, I think the number one thing you probably got was a wife. So tell me kind of how that happened and how the, this romance between you and your wife sparked and, and then what that’s like for two evangelists to marry each other.
Evan Threlkeld (07:58):
Absolutely, absolutely. Well, you know, <laugh>, we I love to, I love to tell this whenever I preach and I introduced my wife, but I remember evangelist bonky would always say, he’d call himself a hot evangelist. And I said, Lord, I need me one of those. And so God answered my prayers <laugh> but yeah, I, I actually went to the first bootcamp in 2020 and then served in the next bootcamp for a season. And I just felt to my heart that my wife is a part of this bootcamp. I just had that strong feeling and sure enough, you know, I, I I met Madeline and we she was actually one of my interns. So we would go to the streets and, you know, evangelize and we’d even go to some of the nightclubs and love on the people in the parking lots with the team and the way that she loved people.
Evan Threlkeld (08:58):
And the way that she evangelized just really touched my heart. She was weeping over these girls. Seeing them get saved and her compassion and love for people really blew me away. So after, after we finished boot camp, I asked her out and then we went on the mission field to Tanzania. And on the way there, I got to talk with her on the plane and in the, in the airport. And I just fell in love. I knew she is the one for me. I just instantly knew in my heart. And so we actually came back to Orlando. We dated for it for a month and confirmation after confirmation came. And in fact, I even wrote in a journal, the Lord really spoke to me and people ask me dating advice all the time, because it was just so successful. I have single guys that ask me all the time that are evangelists. Like, how did you, you know, and I said, well, one thing I encourage you to do is to write a list. And the holy spirit spoke to me to write a list of things that I wanted in a wife. And even one of the things I wrote was maybe somebody that’s Australian and sure enough, she’s Australian. So God really answered that list. And so we, we, I proposed her a month after boot camp after our dating. And then we got married another month after that. So,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:23):
And how long have you been married now?
Evan Threlkeld (10:25):
We’ve been married just over a year. August 1st was our actually yes, it was our anniversary.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:33):
Wow. You know, I, I think some people really have a tough time as an evangelist to maybe find someone that their, their calling would be compatible with the calling of an evangelist because it, it’s not easily being an evangelist. There’s, there’s a lot of travel you’re away from home a lot. I found my wife on the border of Rwanda in Congo, and she was a missionary for, for 10 years before we met. And at the time when we met, she was actually a crusade director. So I was a crusade evangelist. She was a crusade director. It felt like a, a match made in heaven, but it it’s so neat to see that the, the two of you got together. I know that God’s calling is not just on an individual. His calling is upon the couple. And, and so both of you are, are called together and will be a mighty team.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:29):
One will put a thousand to flight. Two will put 10,000 to flight. Yes. And so I think like as maybe some of our listeners, they’re looking for the right wife or the right husband, and I think if you’re just pursue God as fast as you possibly can just go in the direction that God has given you to go, you know, and you’re running after God. And if you turn your head and look, and there’s someone who’s running along with you yes. And running in the same direction, that might be the person that, that God’s called you to be with.
Evan Threlkeld (12:05):
Yes,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:06):
Absolutely. So, so this last year you’ve been serving as a youth pastor. What’s that like having a, a calling as an evangelist, but being in this position where you are, are serving as a youth pastor?
Evan Threlkeld (12:21):
Yes. Well, that’s great. I, I got saved in middle school and I’ve always had a heart for youth. And even when I was at the boot camp, it was, it was a desire in my heart to really reach the young generation. And I have had countless prophetic words about it and so forth. So my, my wife and I, when we got married, we, we really felt the desire to reach youth. And so actually right when we got married, we were traveling to different youth groups in Florida and, and the west coast. And yeah, there’s a compelling story of, I, I always made it a gold preach in youth groups. And just a powerful story that I still used to preach today was that I went to a youth group in Michigan and I had just come off the mission field in, in Tanzania.
Evan Threlkeld (13:11):
And the pastor said we only have 12 youth in our group, but would you come? And I said, I’ll come for one. And so I came, preached the gospel one girl came forward, gave her life rededicated her life to Jesus. And three weeks later, she was in an accident where she passed away. She was only 16 years old. And so the, the, the pastor and the the grandmother came up to me and said, thank you at the funeral. I went to said, thank you so much for preaching the gospel to my granddaughter, because now I know she’s in heaven. And so this young generation, there’s an urgency. So my wife and I, we came out to Vancouver, Washington at Bethesda church and been youth pastoring for about the last year pouring into the youth learning like their culture, their language.
Evan Threlkeld (14:06):
And there’s so much that could be said. But when we first came in, we noticed that a lot of their a lot of them were hungry, but they came from broken backgrounds or families. And so we really began to encourage them disciple them build them up in their identity, just the foundation of who they were were. And then we began to really teach them about how to pour out. Once we saw that maturity growing in their hearts and their lives, how to pour out in their community, in their family. And so now we, we have students that have been sharing the gospel with their own families and seeing family members get, get touched by God. We’ve seen we had one student he’s been faithfully doing a club in his school for the last three years in his high school. And his high school is very hostile in gospel. He’s just been made, he’s been like the, like the laughing stock of the school, but he’s continued to faithfully preach. He’s in downtown Portland. And so we did an evangelism training with him and Scott McNamara that we went to, and that week he went back to school and preached the gospel and 50 kids gave, raise their hands, give their life to Jesus. And so yeah, it’s just been phenomenal. Being able to pour, pour into them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:32):
You’re about to enter a new season of ministry. God has put it on your heart to, to launch your own ministry. What, what are you gonna call your ministry?
Evan Threlkeld (15:44):
Yeah. So we’ve been really praying into this and the holy spirit has spoken to us gospel awakening because we want to bring clarity and the power of, of the gospel to the nations.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:58):
And talk to me a little bit about your vision and, and what you see God doing through your ministry over the next few years.
Evan Threlkeld (16:07):
Yes. Well, we really want to keep things simple. We want to preach the simple gospel disciple people, plug them into local communities where they’re gonna be discipled. And we have a really strong heart for Asia for Africa. We really want to partner with some other ministries that are in Asia. We have so my wife, you know, she’s from Australia and she, her parents are pastors just north of Sydney. And so what we’re, what we’re really planning to do is have our base in Australia and America as well. <Laugh> but we want to go to Asia from Australia, and we have plans to partner with friends that are doing crusades throughout Thailand. Indonesia is on our hearts as well as some of the Oceania like islands, Vanuatu Fiji, some of these different regions PNG, Papa, Papa, new Guinea. And so right now we, we really feel that soon we’re gonna be doing partnering with a, a friend that’s doing crusades in Thailand and reaching some of the literally most unreached people groups in Thailand who’ve people that have never even heard the name of Jesus. And so, so far they’ve had thousands of people coming to their gospel truck events, preaching the simple gospel and plugging them into local churches. So that’s where we we’re plan to start.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:46):
Well, I think that’s so brilliant to, to base your ministry there in Australia, because you’ll be so much closer to, to many of these places. It it’s a, a good 18 hour plane ride from the United States, but from Australia, you can get there much easier and much cheaper. And all of those countries that you mentioned have such a tremendous need for a, a gospel awakening, especially Thailand. It’s a nation that is mostly Buddhist. My wife went to Thailand one time and she told me she was on the, the Metro in, in the capital. And she was talking to someone about Jesus. And this person said, oh, Jesus is that an American music star and had no idea that Jesus was a historical figure that lived 2000 years ago. And, and so there’s so many villages in Thailand that you can go to and they, they literally have not heard any of the gospel story.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:54):
I mean, here in the United States, generally, people kind of have an idea of the story of the Bible that in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth and, and then Adam and Eve sin, and then Jesus came and died on the cross to save us from our sins. I mean, that basic gospel outline, even for people that maybe don’t go to church or aren’t living for God, they kind of know that general basic outline. But when you go to a, a Buddhist station like Thailand, you really have to start with just the very basic that there is a God who created the universe. And let’s talk about who that God is. And so I, I think God will give you tremendous fruit as you go there.
Evan Threlkeld (19:42):
Amen. And I, I know you’ve done a lot of ministry and crusades in Asia as well, Indonesia and Burma. And it’s just amazing to hear about the testimonies that have come out of that as well.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:56):
Yeah, God is moving. I love ministering to, to Buddhist people. Let, let’s talk a little bit about ministering to, to Buddhist, you know, in Christianity, the, the main issue that Christianity deals with is, is guilt. We, we talk about sin and being guilty of sin but in Buddhism, the main issue that that Buddha was trying to deal with was suffering. And so the story is that that Buddha was a prince who lived a very rich isolated life. And then one day he was in a, a, a little thing that he was being carried by his servants, and he was going down the street and the, the curtain open. And he saw sitting beside the road, a leper who was in horrible suffering. And seeing this leper shook him to his very core because he saw suffering for the first time.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:08):
And Buddha started to look for ways to deal with suffering. And he came up with four great noble truths of Buddism that helped people to get free from suffering. And so the first truth is that life is, is suffering. Now all of life is suffering. And then he decided that the, the second truth is that this suffering is caused by our desire. And then his third great truth is that the way to get rid of suffering is to get rid of desire in our life. And so he said that when desire is eliminated, then suffering can be eliminated. And then his fourth truth revealed an eightfold path for getting rid of desire in our ministry. And this was all a response to him seeing this Lepar. And so he came up with this, this very complicated plan for getting rid of suffering in our life.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:11):
And I always like to compare Buddha’s response to Jesus’s response because in the gospels, we find a similar story where Jesus encounters a leper. And again, this leper is in horrible suffering. No one is touching him. And what is Jesus? Does. He reaches out his hand, he touches the man that the man says, Jesus, are you willing to heal me? And Jesus says, yes, I am willing be healed. And immediately the leper was cured of his suffering. And so the very problem that Buddha was looking to solve Jesus solved. Wow. And I think it’s so beautiful that here Buddha is looking for enlightenment and Jesus actually said, I am the light of the world. And, and so Jesus offers hope to Buddhist, to hinders to Muslims, to people of every single religion. Jesus actually offers the very thing that they’re looking for. So, so I think that will be wonderful.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:25):
As you go to Thailand and in other nations in Asia God is going to open up great doors for you to minister and, and for you to, to have a, a tremendous impact. If you’re listening today and you want to support Evan and his ministry, I’m going to put a link on our website that would link to where you can go and to support him. And, and to, to find out more information a, about his ministry. But Evan, there’s a lot of young people who maybe feel called to be evangelist. What would you say to those who, who maybe have a heart for evangelism, but don’t know where to get started? What would you say to them?
Evan Threlkeld (24:15):
I would say that you have what it takes. You have Jesus in you. He is the desire of the nations, and there’s no junior holy spirit. And in fact, I’ve seen some of the young people have the most faith for miracle signs and wonders. And even in our church, when the young people come forward to pray for people, the miracles are astounding and in our youth group. And so I want to encourage every young person that might be listening to this, that you have, what it takes and that Jesus lives on the inside of you. And he’s the one that qualifies you, not your experience. You know, Paul told Timothy don’t let anyone despise your youth. And so you have what it takes. And secondly, I would encourage any young person to really plug themselves into an non-fire church to surround themselves with Onfi, believers mentors and fathers in their life, as well as peers that can encourage them run with them. This generation because of social media is a very isolated generation. And so I would encourage every young person to really run with a tribe of on fire P men and women of God that can encourage you. And so I, I, I would, I would just really love to pray for any young person as well for your school, for your neighborhood, for your family. There is hope.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:40):
Absolutely. Please let’s pray.
Evan Threlkeld (25:42):
Yes, father, we thank you for every young person. God, we thank you for every youth worker, Lord that may be listening to this today, father, we pray that your power Lord, that your love that your fire would fall in their lives. Jesus father, we thank you that the holy spirit is the best evangelist. He is the one that leads us, that guides us, that convicts people of their sin and reveals Jesus to their hearts. And so father, I ask for a fresh baptism of your fire. Lord, I thank you for boldness Lord to preach the simple gospel, the death, burial, and resurrection of our king Jesus Christ that others may hear and be saved. I pray for their schools. I pray for their families. Lord my family, my parents got divorced when I was seven and they through a miracle, got remarried when I after 18 years of being divorced. And so father, any families that are broken, I pray that I pray that you would restore families. God restore marriages in Jesus mighty name. Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:51):
Amen. Well, Evan, thank you so much for being a guest on the evangelism podcast. I’m excited about what God is doing through you and through your ministry. And I know that God is going to give you a tremendous harvest and I agree with you for a gospel awakening all over the world in Jesus name.
Evan Threlkeld (27:09):
It’s been an incredible honor. Thank you so much, Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:12):
Bless you.
Evangelism Podcast Host (27:15):
Daniel King is on a mission to save 1 million souls a year, but he can’t do it alone. Would you consider sewing a financial seed today to give, please visit www.kingministries.com.
Tamran Inayat | Gospel Vision for Pakistan
Tamran Inayat has organized over one hundred crusades in the nation of Pakistan which is the fifth largest nation in the world with the world’s second largest Muslim population. He lives in North Carolina and he is helping American churches to reach out to the international community. You will learn how your church can reach refugees and immigrants who come to your city.
Learn About Mission Asia: https://missionasia.org/
Connect with Tamran Inayat on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tamran.inayat.77
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Tamran Inayat has organized more than 100 crusades in the nation of Pakistan. Today, we talk about what God is doing in this nation, which is the fifth largest nation in the world. The second largest Islamic country in the world. Tamran also lives in North Carolina and he is helping American churches to reach out to the international community. And so we’re going to talk about how to evangelize among the international community in the United States.
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:48):
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. They’re 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 (01:12):
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, Tamran Inayat from the nation of Pakistan. Thank you for being on “The Evangelism Podcast.”
Tamran Inayat (01:27):
Praise the Lord it’s honor and privilege to have here in this program. I’m so thankful. Reverend Dr. Daniel King to inviting me here
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:39):
Now, brother Anaya. And I have been very good friends for almost 15 years now. We came many years ago to Pakistan, had some wonderful crusades. But last time I was here my wife was pregnant with my son. He was the size of an apple and her stomach, and now he’s born. He is 12 years old. And so now God has brought us back to Pakistan and the ni Nia family has been such a wonderful blessing. Your father is in California. I went to his house and visited him. There. You are living now in North Carolina and your other brother, LeBron is living in, in Norway. And so I’ve visited him there in Norway. And so you have been a very dear friend to our family for many years,
Tamran Inayat (02:31):
Praise the Lord it’s honor for our, this friendship. And we are so thankful how God connects us and how God connect the dots and make the picture. And that’s true. The youngest evangelist we have in our home for mission field for the crusade field. And that was your son, Caleb, when he was in the size of apple. And we shared this story to many, many places that brother Daniel King and his wife, Jessica, when she was pregnant and they came here and that’s the love of Christ and passion for people to coming and preaching in this situation. And we are so thankful that your parents, they also came here in Pakistan with us and we stayed together. We did work together. It is always joy, joy, joy to work together, to see together. I’m so thankful
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:34):
Now your family has done many crusades in the nation of Pakistan. When you and your brother were younger, you used to climb the telephone poles to put up banners. You would go and work and organizing a crusade, and you would even sleep on the platform in the, the place where the crusade was taking place. And, and so what do you see that God is doing here in the nation of Pakistan?
Tamran Inayat (04:03):
Well, God’s hand is on Pakistan. God loves Pakistan, and we have never, ever seen that kind of revival in Pakistan, what God is doing. You know, crusades are such a wonderful tool to work in Pakistan because Pakistan is as a fifth largest country, biggest country in the world. Second largest country as a Islamic world. And crusade is the one of the best way to share gospel. And we’d done more than hundred crusades hundred crusade and missionaries. They were coming from all over the world with us here to do the crusade. And we remember that we were very young and we call that we raise up in crusade grounds sometime we sleep on crusade stage and we did everything from our by own hands to advertisement and to put the posters on the streets and knock the door and in white people for the crusades nights and preaching and translation and all that stuff.
Tamran Inayat (05:18):
And we feel that through that. So many people, they came to Christ from the crusade ground. And I can say that in our city festival Bard, which is the third biggest city of Pakistan, the majority ministries in Fest Labbad they came from that crusade grounds. What a joy, when you see that 15 years before you’ve done crusade in one area and one person after 15 years, and he come to you in your hotel room are serving there. And he said that I accept Lord Jesus Christ as am my savior on that crusade 15 years before. And now I am doing my own small crusades in the villages. Wow, that’s the joy.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:11):
Even here in this hotel that we are staying in the other night, we were eating dinner together and there was a little band. They were playing music. And afterwards the, the drummer came over to us and said, I went to one of the crusades. He says, I recognize you many for many, many years ago. And we began to pray for him. And then he went and got to one of the hotel workers and the hotel worker also came and said, oh, I also went to one of the crusades and I prayed to Jesus at the crusade. And so it’s just so wonderful to see the fruit that God has given you. Now this week, we have been having a wonderful time of ministry. We did a youth conference, we had a one crusade meeting. Then we did another crusade meeting, which you gave to me as a gift.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:05):
Then we also had a leadership conference. We’ve also been going to some of the house churches and, and ministering to the house churches. We, we also had the opportunity to spend some time with some, some widows in orphans. You know, the, the Bible says that pure on adultery, religion is when you go to the widows in orphans and, and spend time with them to encourage them. And so we were able to encourage them it. And so all this ministry this week, what impact do you think it will have on lives here in Pakistan?
Tamran Inayat (07:42):
You know, that’s important to do the crusade. And it was wonderful crusade. We have a, a very good successful crusade. And with that this time I was very excited for the youth conference. When I see hundreds and hundred youth, they are taking step and they, we can see that they are as a future missionary. They, I believe that they are going from Feba Pakistan to all over the world and bringing good news to America. How America was sending missionary right here in Pakistan. I believe that we need to be raised missionary from Pakistan. They can go also in Pakistan and I can see big impact with the through widows also. And then youth conference and leadership conference crusades, we can see in these days how God’s hand, we can see that salvation. We can see families are getting change and becoming close to God, churches, revival, and leaders. They are with the tears and broken hearts and humbling their self to the Lord. I can see this is revival. This is God’s move. I can see that God is bringing us back to as a, a first church hall. We can see as a first church, what the church was United and God’s hand was there. I believe that this time God is doing same hair.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:21):
Now, many years ago, when your family was here, working very hard in Pakistan, there were some threats against you. I remember when I came for one crusade actually someone took a rifle and, and shot at us. And, and so because of that your family had to, to flee and you have come to North Carolina in the United States, and it’s really wonderful that God has brought you there because now you are a missionary from Pakistan <laugh> to the United States. And, and God has given you a great ministry, a, a wonderful ministry in the United States, your brother, LeBron, he went to Sweden and God has given him a wonderful ministry in Scandinavia. Now he’s in Norway and God has just given him so much favor there. Even your father in California, he is preaching. I introduced him to one of my friends, Alvin Armstrong, and he goes to the church and ministers to the people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:27):
They love him. He just, pastor Alvin Armstrong just texted me. And he says, oh my Dr. And I had said, his son is also in Pakistan. You should talk to him. I said, oh, I talk to him every day. <Laugh> he is translating for me, you know? And, and so God’s given you a wonderful ministry. And you’re, you’re still ministry here in Pakistan, but God has given you a great ministry in North Carolina, especially going to churches in the United States, in helping them to minister to the immigrants. The people that have come from many different nations as refugees, or, or come to, to get jobs in America and even helping to challenge the churches of America, to reach out to the mission field that is right beside them. So talk to me about what you do to help the churches in America, minister to people.
Tamran Inayat (11:28):
Well, when we move from here to America, actually the place where we born and raise, we never want to leave this place, but there’s only option that we have to move from here to leave this country, go anywhere. God bring us in America. And when we were in America, we were desperately praying that God, why, why you bring us here? Why we are here? And then with a lot of prayer and tea, as we understand that there is purpose, although we don’t want to leave Pakistan, but we understand there is purpose behind that. And we become to know that in America, there is international community. There is a refugee community. There is so many people, they are coming in America from all over the world. And in, in our neighbors also where we live North Carolina in high point, we have seen that thousand and thousand internationals are there. And they are living here in America now in our neighbors, more than 10 year, 20 year, 30 years, maybe more than that. But we become to know that they never ever heard gospel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:41):
Now that’s a big surprise because North Carolina, there are churches on every street corner. It’s the state of Billy Graham. Yes. And you say that in North Carolina, there are people that have been there for 30 years and no one has ever shared the gospel with them.
Tamran Inayat (12:59):
Yes. In the Bible belt area, where we have churches on every corner, they never heard gospel. And we it breaks our heart. And we understand that’s the reason God bring us here, that we can share the love of Christ to them. Also, we feel that what’s the reason they never heard the gospel. We figure out that there is reason there is huge gap between believers and then that international community. There is huge gap. We feel our role is that we need to bring both community to gather because we are having as a Pakistani experience also. And now we are in America and we are having American experience also. And we need to bring both community to gather. And if we can bring both community to gather, we can better way understand to each other, that who they are, why they are here, how we can share gospel with them. For that. I love to share that there is several things. There is some ideas or some things that, which we are doing to bringing the both community togethers.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:08):
And so if you go into an American church and you start to encourage them to reach out to this international community, that that God has brought the mission field to us in America, what would you tell the church to help them to minister to these people?
Tamran Inayat (14:27):
Well being as a church, what’s the greatest command for, for us, the love God, and love your neighbor. That’s the big thing we can see. And as a church, we don’t have to see that our neighbors, they are not looks like us, or they don’t speak like us. And that’s why that’s not our target area. No, when they are our neighbor, God send us, God send them to our neighbor. The only reason they are internationals are here in America. The only reason is this, that we can share the love of Christ to them. But there’s several reason how we can engage with them. I believe that ministry begins with a smile, go in your neighbors, whether they’re not looks like you go and give them smile. Ministry will begins from you from there. Go and shake hand, introduce yourself, know who they are. You can talk about sports. You can talk about culture. You can talk about food. You can make friendship with them. And then you will see who God will give you opportunity to, to share gospel with them. Once you start to loving them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:45):
You know, my parents have worked for many years in the nation of Afghanistan. And now that everything in Afghanistan has fallen apart, many Afghans have come to the United States as refugees. And my father has been working very hard to help many of the Afghans that have come to Tulsa over 900 Afghans now live in the state of Oklahoma. And so we have been encouraging churches to reach out to them and to help them and even help them in practical ways, like getting a driver’s license, helping them to find a house, helping them to find language lessons, helping their children to do well in school. And even there is one girl she was pregnant. And so every week my wife was taking her to the hospital for her checkup. And then once the baby was born taking the baby to the hospital. So there’s so many ways that churches in the United States can really reach out to the international community and help them and show the love of Jesus to people. You know, someone living on this side of the world in south Asia, it might be very hard to reach them with the gospel. You know, it takes a lot of work and, but the United States, if God brings them there, they’re living right next door to you. Exactly. And it is like, God has brought them to you so that you have the opportunity to help tell them about Jesus.
Tamran Inayat (17:19):
Exactly. Yeah. You know, that’s why, what we encourage to the local church, haha. And difficulties going from America to Afghanistan or Pakistan or Bangladesh, any other third, one countries, dangerous countries. You need passport, you need ticket, you need visa and travel and learn that culture. How God make things easy for us and bringing that people in our neighbors engage with them, talk with them. We sometimes love to do the Easter ag hunt and inviting international community. And then talk with them, share gospel with them. Christmas gathering, it can be happen. It can be backpack, school, whatever we do in our churches in local churches, in America, as a mission, things in our streets are giving water bottle. All these things can work for the international community because they are also waiting that someone can come to us and show the love and love is the biggest bridge. So many time people, they may think that this language barriers, I believe that there is no language barriers, language, maybe it’s bridge. Maybe you don’t know other people, their language and they don’t know your language. But love language is the biggest language.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:45):
The love language is the biggest language. I love that you also reach out to people through Facebook every Tuesday night, you have a Bible study on Facebook and at first you thought it would just be a few people from North Carolina that would watch. But now people from all over the world are watching. Tell me about the, the ministry that you are doing through Facebook.
Tamran Inayat (19:14):
You know, when we were in North Carolina and reaching the small group of people in North Carolina pandemic had said, we were just stuck in home and we were thinking that what we can do in this situation, we have to do. And that’s the most needy time when we need to do something, we cannot stay in home. Me and my wife, Farra we are having two kids, Samuel and a Manville in our home. We decide that that’s the time when we need to be really engaged with people. And we are just in home. We were, we were thinking that we have four P letter P and what’s that one is that we have a heart of prayer and preaching and then we have a place and then we have some people also, and then fourth piece, we have fun.
Tamran Inayat (20:06):
Let’s connect all these things together and we can do as online services, Facebook let’s use your face Facebook. And we start the online services from right there. And, you know, internet is internet. I was thinking that few people from North Carolina, they will watch our online services. We did very first event and there was like a, probably close to thousand people they watch. And many of the majority of them, they were from Pakistan because internet is everywhere and they watch and we feel that it works. And then we decide that we need to go the next week again. And then next week again. And then next week, again, from that time, till now every week, more than 5,000 people that join our Facebook live service.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:04):
Wow. What a tremendous ministry. And you’re reaching 5,000 people every week. How much does it cost you to do that?
Tamran Inayat (21:12):
$0
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:13):
<Laugh>. So what a great blessing, what a great way to reach out to people. And maybe you’re listening and you have a heart for evangelism. You’re wondering, how can I get started? Maybe you don’t even have any money to do anything. Well, here God is, is using Tamran for $0 every week to reach 5,000 people. What a great blessing that is,
Tamran Inayat (21:37):
Praise the Lord. You know, that’s encouragement for us are for many other ministries that God can do everything and nothing is hard for him. And we have seen here in Pakistan, we have seen in America, we have seen in our lives, in our ministry that when we see that might be, we have less resources or maybe no resources, but when we are willing to do anything, to serve him, to work with him, and that is time of obedience to trust on him, to obey on him and lean yourself in the crusade night, you were preaching about trusting and about believing and how the example you was giving about, or the chair that when we sit on the chair, we need to lean ourself there that it can hold us and God will hold our future. Our ministry’s future, our family’s future, whatever burden we feel we need to put in God’s hand because he cares us.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:54):
Amen. Well brother Tamran and N your family is very good friends with my family. We love you very much. And we are so encouraged by what God is doing through your ministry, both in North Carolina, thank you for coming as a missionary to the United States. The United States needs you because we need revival. There are so many people in the United States that need Jesus. And I’m also just so excited about what God is doing through your ministry here in Pakistan. God is continuing to move. Many people are coming to Jesus. And so you are a great man of God. Thank you for being on the evangelism podcast.
Tamran Inayat (23:34):
Very, very, thank you to having me here and it’s honor and privilege, and thank you for this friendship. And thank you for your obedience to be here in Pakistan. I’m so thankful for you. So thankful for Jessica and for your son and daughter and whole family. It’s what a friendship and what a ministry to gather. And I’m so thankful that you came here in Pakistan to do the work of the Lord. Jesus Christ. Thank you for your heart, for Pakistan to winning the soul for the Lord. Jesus Christ, because his last word should be our prosperity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:13):
Amen. Amen. 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 (25:35):
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.
Morgan Hill | The Merging of Business and Ministry
Morgan Hill is a successful businessman and a successful minister. On today’s podcast he is going to talk about merging business and ministry. You will learn what God can do through a businessman who has decided to use his wealth for building God’s kingdom.
Build Your Retirement with Morgan Hill: https://hillandhillfinancial.com/
Check Out Morgan Hill’s Website: https://www.morgandhill.com/
Read “Go Therefore and Make Disciples:
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Morgan Hill is a successful businessman and a successful minister on today’s podcast. He’s going to talk about merging business and ministry, and you’re going to learn what God can do through a businessman. Let’s listen, as he shares about what God has been doing around the world,
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 with me, Morgan hill. He has served on the board of king ministries, been a good friend for many years, and we are together in Pakistan. Morgan, thank you for being with me on the evangelism podcast, Daniel,
Morgan Hill (01:20):
It’s always a pleasure to be with you and to actually be with you serving the Lord. So thank you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:25):
Now you are both a businessman and a, a minister. You have been very successful in both arenas. Talk to me a little bit about how that functions in your life.
Morgan Hill (01:40):
Well, you know, Daniel, I ran away from God for many years because I thought, excuse me, it was in either or I was either going to be in business or I was perhaps gonna go to Bible college and serve as a pastor. And as I ran away, I realized that first of all, I was trying to, you know, get away from God being Lord of Jesus being Lord of my life. But then he began to UN UN unveil to me, if you will, that it’s not an either or we’re all called to serve. If there was one message from this podcast that I would love for your listeners to hear is that we are all called to serve this notion of there are professional ministry people. And then the rest of us is a construct that really isn’t based in scripture. And so when God really opened my eyes to that, he began to show me ways in which I could not only operate in my business, but also use the profits from the business as a means to further the gospel, which is the reason it says in Deuteronomy that the Lord God is the one who gives us the ability to earn wealth. And my passionate belief is that wealth should be used to to further the, the kingdom of God.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:49):
So let’s talk about some of the ministries that you have been involved in over the years. You’ve had a, an impact in a variety of different nations and a variety of different types of organizations. Talk to me about the, the ministries that you’ve been involved
Morgan Hill (03:06):
In. I, as I get ready to share this, I appreciate the question. I’m always a bit hesitant because it can sound very self-serving and I want to emphasize that the Lord I’m, I’m not only grateful for the grace, the amazing grace of Jesus, but as we have talked, I never cease to be just completely just breath. My breath is taken away that Jesus chooses us as his primary instrument of sharing the gospel and spreading the good news. And so when I look at acts chapter one, what God has led me to do is very much in line with that. My wife and I, my wife, Holly are very actively involved in ministry, but personally I do a lot locally. For years I have served in my local church teaching to just various classes, just doing things locally.
Morgan Hill (03:56):
I am involved actively with discipleship. There are about a half a dozen young men that I have walked monthly in their lives for up to 20 years now in counting just to pour my life into my, the Timothys of the world. I’ve had a chance to actually be a part of starting ministries. There’s an organization called growing leaders with Dr. Tim Elmore. That is now I think, gosh, we’re 20 years at 20th anniversary that we do leadership development around the world to to young leaders. There’s an organization that God led me to called heart for Lebanon where after the civil war broke out in 2006 in Lebanon Dr. Camille Milky and gentleman named Tom Adam, and I had a chance to come together and form heart for Lebanon, working with refugees and humanitarian relief. Not only for the people of Lebanon, but also the Iraqi refugees and now the Syrian refugees.
Morgan Hill (04:50):
And God then led me into prison ministry where I’m still very active sharing the gospel and discipleship with a, a young man that I came alongside. His name is Tim France, wonderful young man of God. Who’s God led to start this ministry. And I came along. So at the end of the day, it’s acts chapter one, it’s Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, uttermost parts of the earth. And God has really led me Daniel. And you understand this to kind of go where most people don’t want to go. I’ve had a chance to minister around the world. I continue to be in places like Pakistan with you, the middle east going behind prison bars to share the gospel. And I’m just grateful that God allows me to do that. And and I just encourage those that may be listening to be open, because if you had told me 20 some years ago, not only that I would be serving the Lord and be in business, but I would be going and doing what I’m I’m currently doing. Wouldn’t have believed you, but God had a plan that was way, way better than any of my limited thinking.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:54):
Well, king ministries is very grateful for your involvement with us over the years, we actually first met absolutely in Mexico. My parents were missionaries down there and you came on a trip down to Mexico and, and God connected us. Mm-Hmm <affirmative>, it’s just been, been wonderful to have you part of our lives. You were a very successful CEO. Mm-Hmm <affirmative> of a major corporation here in America, and you were pursuing success and fame and wealth, but you weren’t serving the Lord and now everything has, has completely changed in your life. Jesus really has changed you. Talk to me about your testimony in how Jesus got ahold of
Morgan Hill (06:41):
You. Oh, absolutely. It was first of all, my parents broke up and it’s the true of many families. Unfortunately, my parents broke up and I remember December 31st, 1974, packing up our belongings, my mom, my brother and I, and our little dog Sasha and went off to Florida. And we began this journey that was kind of a dissent, a dissent materially into nothing, but God had a plan. And so we ended up moving Daniel in my, I was 14, almost 15, gosh, over the, the last years of high school, we were in three different states, five different schools, four years. And really my focus was just to make sure every place we went, I could get a job to make sure that there was enough money. I loved my father. My father became a believer and wonderful man. I learned so much from him, but let’s just say that was a season in which I had to become the man of the house.
Morgan Hill (07:33):
And my worries in high school were about rent and food and homelessness. And so I built up, but I became a believer. My mom took us to church sometimes against my wishes, kicking and screaming, but I accepted Jesus, my Lord and savior at the age of 16 at Cal assembly of God in Orlando. And I was on fire. Oh my gosh, I would go to camp meetings. If there was a service, I was there. I would, I, I had a stack of index cards, easily, an inch plus thick where it was scripture. And I would be memorizing. I remember one time disobeying my mother. She said, you need to get your rest. And I would get up. And she caught me to study the Bible. And I sometimes justified, well, I’m getting up to, to pray and be with Jesus.
Morgan Hill (08:16):
She said, but you’re being disobeyed in your mother. You need to get back to bed. And so, but I was on fire, but this, the passage that Jesus talks about in Matthew, where it says the seed my, the seed that fell, it, it fell among the thorns and the cares in the affairs of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choked the seed and it became UNF, fruitful, Daniel. I was just tired of being poor. I was tired of the struggle. I thought when I was living in Tulsa at this moment of our, our beat up apartment was right behind all Roberts university. And I could look out and see the maybe center. I thought I was gonna maybe go to Bible college. Maybe I’ll be a professional evangelist like yourself, or maybe I’m gonna go be a pastor. And again, just the cares and the affairs choked it.
Morgan Hill (09:00):
And I just began to run. And I told Jesus, I said, I won’t deny you, cuz I was smart enough with the Bible. I didn’t wanna burn for eternity, but I said, well, you know, you kind of be there. I’ll check in with you a few times a year, perhaps official holidays, but I’m gonna live my life for me. And the bottom line is, is I got what the world says you should get. Was enormously successful, became a CEO of a pretty good sized corporation, had to close the cars to cash the house on the golf course, all the stuff that you would imagine. But I was spiritually bankrupt. My relationships with my family were fractured. I had burned through two marriages. But it was all okay. As long as I got the clothes, the cars, the cash I had become.
Morgan Hill (09:46):
So bereft of any moral compass. And there was a day in August of 2000 where I gave my board of directors in ultimatum thinking that I was so I was so into myself that surely they would, <laugh> take an ultimatum from a petant, you know, 39, 40 year old. And it was a Wednesday where I gave that ultimatum to say, you need to do this, this, this, and this, and to follow my direction. And we’re gonna March on to new Heights. And then I remember eight o’clock, August 18th, 2000 burned in my mind where I’m walking in thinking I’m gonna have the board of directors there just falling over my wisdom. And it was basically a couple of folks, including the CEO of the quote, the, of the, the, the head of the board. He was the chairman and they basically said, you know what we’ve decided to go in a different direction and it doesn’t involve you <laugh>.
Morgan Hill (10:38):
And so I found myself in my car at 8 0 5 staring at my clock in a parking lot of a Starbucks going, what do I do? I’ve sacrificed everything on the altar of me and it’s all gone. And so I found myself, Daniel in my home having this moment where I realized that I could die. And I say this literally, and there were no relation, no one called days would go by where I had no interaction. And I said to my, I had this moment of reflection where I go, this is the life that I’ve built. This is the life where me is the, where, where Morgan is the Lord of my life. And God began to wake me up in the night and I just never forget. I’ve got the little post-it notes where he began to share with me passive scripture that I hadn’t read for years.
Morgan Hill (11:28):
Because at the end of the day, I never quite fit into church. And people were standing I’m kneeling. If people were clapping, I’m singing. If people were leaving, I’m coming. I, I just never quite connected even when I was in the midst of it. And I thought I was not the right kind of person to be a Christian. I’m very Peter esque in my Peter did some wonderful things for the gospel and for, for Jesus. But boy, there were some times where he, you know, kind of messed up and, and I found myself like that. And I said, Lord, you didn’t make me to be a Christian because I’m maybe a little more of a bull at a China shop. And he shared with me, Jeremiah won. He woke me up in the night and he said, son, before you were formed in your mother’s room, I knew you, but left to you being Lord without my spirit.
Morgan Hill (12:14):
This is what happens. And I not only want to redeem you, but I want to teach you. And as I moved forward, he says, I, the business is fine, son. I want you to use it under my Lordship as a holy thing, and then be willing to go where I lead you and the duality of this I never saw coming in, but I’m so grateful. And part of my message to maybe your listening audience is the business folks out there. Please don’t think that it’s a, this or that. It’s either I’m in business or I’m in a career or ministry it’s this and that. And if you’re open, as I have now been educated, God can do miraculous things, miraculous things. And I’m so eternal grateful that he not only saved me, but he lets me help him. And that’s why I’m honored to be with you and serve with a number of ministries. And I count king ministries to be top among them for the work that God’s doing through you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:08):
Let’s talk about what God has done here this week. We’re in the nation of Pakistan and God has, has moved. We’ve done crusade. You came and spoke at our, our leadership conference. Kind of tell the audience what you’ve seen just in the, the couple of days that you’ve been here. It’s really a miracle you even made it.
Morgan Hill (13:28):
Oh yeah. Based on all the visa and everything. It is a miracle. One of the things that I really notice first of all, is I’m, I’m always honored to be with people who truly sacrifice for the gospel. You know, it always reminds me that the comfort that we enjoy, especially in the United States coming over here when people really put it on the line for Jesus. What I saw was just an energy and enthusiasm for the gospel. And you know, I think sometimes the creature comforts of the us I often have wondered this is not an indictment, but if we turn the air conditioning off and every church in America what would attendance do? Versus as we’ve been here to say that it’s been warm is an understatement. Yet people are packed into small rooms, excited to worship and pray, and no one’s looking at a clock.
Morgan Hill (14:19):
No one’s looking at well. It’s about time for me to leave. So I’ve been impressed with just the commitment of the people of Pakistan. And also just seeing what God’s doing how God is, is just moving through the lives of people who are coming to know him as coming to know Jesus’ Lord and savior. So I’ve enjoyed that. And then the hospitality and the graciousness, no matter what they have, they give freely and generously and you and I have joked, I’ve gotten more. First of all, I’ve not gotten bouquets of flowers as a normal course of my life. I have as I sit here right now, there’s seven bouquets of flowers and I think I’ve missed one, absolutely beautiful. We’ve been showered with the hospitality of not only food and tea and, and warmth in people’s homes, but also just being showered with rose petals as we come in and minister. And there’s just this eagerness to not only just continue to, to, to grow personally, but this passion and as I’ve listened to you preach this passion among the people of Pakistan to further the gospel and to risk it, all that others might come to know Jesus, and I’ve just been honored to be in their presence.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:27):
Let’s talk about one ministry that you’re very passionate about, and that is prison ministry. You go to prison for Jesus all the time. And, and so what does that look like? All over America, there, there are, are prisons and maybe people listening might be interested in getting involved in a, a prison ministry. What does that look like ministering to, to prisoners?
Morgan Hill (15:50):
Yeah. again, as I, as people have often asked me, it’s like, Morgan, how did you get involved in all the things that you’re involved in? I said, listen, this is not false, you know, humility. I’m not this smart. If you graft it out, it’s just like, wow. I went here and I met here, how you and I met is just a miracle years ago. But prison ministry, I was actually coming back from a mission trip. I was in Miami, Florida, and I’m waiting for my bag and standing beside me as this young man, his name is Tim France. And we just ended up striking up a conversation, waiting for luggage, and we exchanged phone numbers. Hey, let’s kind of keep in touch. And we started this discipleship relationship and he shared that he had been led to start a ministry called break loose, and they do sports ministry, basketball and softball, depending on the the season of the year.
Morgan Hill (16:37):
And he does work all throughout what would be considered perhaps the Midwest, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan is where they’re based. And he’s just doing this wonderful work. And I, at this point in our conversation one day, I said, well, Tim, can I help you? I’d love to walk along with you and I’d love to be involved with the ministry. And he said, would you, I said, I’d be honored. Excuse me. And so I began this process where I’m not only involved as an advisory board member in the budgets and numbers and those kinds of things, but I’m passionate about wherever the money goes, my feet follow along. And so I said, well, I, I’m not good at basketball or softball, but I love Jesus. And I’m happy to carry the balls and the bats and do whatever. And so I began that very thing.
Morgan Hill (17:21):
And so I crammed into a, usually a, of, one of those eco line vans with about a dozen other young guys way too many guys for the space that we got, but we got the van that we’ve got and we travel all over in various states. And as we go behind prison bars, first of all, I’m a, as I sit here right now, I’ve been doing it probably eight or nine years. I don’t have a rap sheet. I don’t have a tattoo. And I’m a, middle-aged now probably more than middle-aged Anglo man Caucasian, I’m around a lot of folks, Daniel that are not like me in any way, shape or form, but here’s, what’s been interesting is we’ll, you know, play softball and whatnot. And then I’m find myself standing on a Bleacher I’m in the middle of the pitcher’s Mount, or I might be in center court, just raising my voice to anyone that will hear to share the gospel.
Morgan Hill (18:08):
But one of the things that has just resonated with me as I began to share the gospel is what the apostle Paul talks about in his letter to the church at Rome, we’ve all sinned and fallen short of the glory of God, Romans 3 23. And as I began to share with these inmates, I said, you know, we’re all different, really different, but one way that we’re all the same is that we’ve all sinned. We’ve all fallen short and we all are in desperate need of a savior. And I’ve been just just blessed at how God has used this moment of maybe somebody like me and them, this awkwardness of this two disparate groups of people, but it comes together because the holy spirit moves us to say, you know what, we’re more alike than we’re not alike. And I’ve been privileged to be able to, you know, share the gospel and also help with discipleship.
Morgan Hill (18:57):
We’ve got resources and materials. And Tim France is just this unbelievable young man who just took a risk. And he doesn’t have all the credentials and all the things that you would think, but he just felt led based on his own journey to say, I just need to get behind prison bars and minister the gospel. And I, we encourage folks to come along. Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of takers because people are like, oh, you’re going into maximum security prison. I watch all these television shows, but kind of like coming to Pakistan. I’m blessed so abundantly when I go. But I encourage others to think, think about going where most folks want to walk away. I think there’s a desperate need across the world to go where others don’t want to go going to Pakistan, going to parts of the middle east, going behind prison bars. It’s, it’s not a calling necessarily for everyone, but boy, I encourage because I’m the least likely guy, the least likely guy. And when I find myself in Pakistan with you ministering, when I find myself doing work in the middle east, and I find myself behind prison bars, only Jesus only Jesus would know that plan. So I encourage your listeners, be open to a plan that may be completely different than what we may have imagined and watched God just do a tremendous work.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:16):
Speaking of going where no one else goes, mm-hmm <affirmative>, you have done a lot of work in Beirut Lebanon, right in the middle east. There’s not a lot of people that I know of that are doing effective ministry there, but your beautiful wife, Holly, you just celebrated 20 year anniversary and, and she comes from a, a Lebanese background. And so God has really connected your heart with that part of the world. Talk to me about the, the ministry that you’ve been able
Morgan Hill (20:46):
To be involved in there in Lebanon. Yeah. You know hopefully this is for those who are listening, who are probably more like me, I would like to say that this was my, my work in Lebanon started with some fasting and praying and some really good spiritual work <laugh> I met a gentleman named Dr. John Maxwell who has done just wonderful leadership work. And there was an org thing that he was doing called million leader mandate. And I got invited to be a part and we’d go out two by two, all over the world. And I came into his office and there was this huge map of the world. And they said, Morgan, you’re one of the first people that we’ve talked to. Where would you like to go? And I looked Daniel, I went, ah, Bayroot Lebanon sounds kind of cool.
Morgan Hill (21:31):
<Laugh> literally, that was the thought that I had. There wasn’t any overtly spiritual there probably should have been, but I just said, that sounds kind of cool. Went home to tell my wife, Hey, I’m going to Bayroot Lebanon. And she said, what? I said, yeah, that sounds like kind of a cool place to go. Don’t you think? And let’s just say in our early marriage, Daniel, she was less than pleased with my, my choices, but, you know, I think God sometimes looked after fools as well as children. And I was just, oh, okay, Lord. Yeah, I’m gonna go. But God’s hand was all over it. He’s just kind of led me just so graciously, but I flew over there and began to work for three years, every six months with a gentleman named Tom, Tom Adamma. Tom was Billy Grahams radio ministry president.
Morgan Hill (22:13):
He served with Dr. John Maxwell, just this unbelievable man of God. Well, Tom and I were doing the leadership training and we worked with a gentleman gentleman named Dr. Camille Milky, Dr. Milky was the head of the Bible Institute over in Beirut. And so we’re doing the leadership and everything’s wonderful bringing people from that region of the world. And then in 2006, the war broke out and as Dr. Milky will tell the story he just had a heart for Lebanon, hence, hence the name. And as a Bible college leader, he was trying to encourage people. Oh, you know, now’s the time for us to put into action? What we’ve been teaching. They’re the people who have a need, let’s go. And he will share the story that unfortunately he didn’t have nearly as many takers. And so he said, I, I just feel my wife and I feel led to start heart for Lebanon, Camille and Hoda, Milky are their names.
Morgan Hill (23:06):
And he came to Tom and I and he said, would you come alongside and help <laugh>. And what that looked like is, you know, we just came together with like an envelope with paperclips and receipts for budget and you know, what do we do? And it, it, it was a ministry of leadership development humanitarian relief. And it all started with helping the people of Lebanon when the war broke out. It did led to the Iraqi refugees. It then led to the Syrian refugee crisis. And they’re doing not only humanitarian, et cetera building schools building facilities, we’re now we’re seeing a huge revival take place among the Muslim community where people are after the civil war, they’re coming over and saying, we just need to hear about Jesus. And we see families being baptized. And and as I had a chance to help launch heart heart for Lebanon my role now having served, and I was a chairman of the board and actively bringing, you know, we’ve, we’d pack up food, you know, grain and soap and oil, and we’d be on the back of a truck in the camps, you know, unloading sharing tea in the tents with the people.
Morgan Hill (24:14):
My role now is really helping teach teachers. We do a lot of work with youth and schools. And so now it’s equipping the teachers to teach these young, especially refugee children to follow Jesus versus perhaps Hamas or heah to really give their life to the Lord. And so I’m just, again, honored to walk alongside some amazing people, amazing people.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:39):
You have served on the board of king ministries and you’ve come here to Pakistan. You’ve, you’ve seen what we do. And you’re a, a businessman. You’re a numbers guy. Yeah. You understand ROI return on investment. And if you were to sit down with another businessman and the businessman said, Morgan, should I support king ministry? Should I support Daniel King? What would you honestly say to them about how we use the money that God has given us? Yeah.
Morgan Hill (25:13):
I’m so glad you asked this question, Daniel. I, I wanna shade this, share this as lovingly as, as I can. First of all, everything that that I, as I sit here today, I, I would be lost and a total totally gone if it weren’t for the love and the graciousness of the Lord and, and his provision and his oversight as a businessman there are times, and I say this as lovingly as I can as I, you know, will earn the dollar to then go and, you know, provide and, and do whatever. The Lord certainly uses my skills and abilities, but it’s hard to earn a dollar. And I think there’s times where, as I’ve been involved with business and ministry have started ministries have come alongside to support. There are times where people who are perhaps again, full-time ministry, if you wanna use that terminology that forget maybe how a dollar is earned, not how a dollar is asked for, but how a dollar is earned.
Morgan Hill (26:15):
And and there have been ministries that I’ve been around that I said, you know, I, I’m not saying that you can’t have a, a nice this or go a nice place wherever or travel, but I’m back in coach on, you know, 18 hour flights with the, the thing the, the, the backrest in my nose. And sometimes, well, you know, the, the minister needs to be in business class or this, and I, and I’m not trying to say that maybe you don’t, but God is leading me to work hard to earn the money. And I said, you gotta be respectful of how it’s asked for and how it’s spent. And I think sometimes we may lose sight of that. One of the reasons that I love not only what God’s doing through you, I’ve known you now for 20 years. It’s not only the purity of sharing the gospel and raising up disciples, but you go where others don’t necessarily want to go.
Morgan Hill (27:08):
But I, we shared this the other day. You’re great with the dollar and Tim France. My dear friend is good with the dollar. Dr. Tim Elmore is good with the dollar, the ministries that I’m involved with, I want to be a good steward and a Stu good steward is not just giving it, in my opinion, a good steward is making sure it goes where it’s good soil and where the seed is planted. It will be nurtured and will produce a crop, you know, a hundred fold. And as you and I were talking, one of the things that I think is is not amazing, it’s the wrong word, but I think it’s being a good steward for every dollar that someone gives to king ministry. Someone comes to know Jesus and spend eternity with him. That is amazing. I’ve seen ministries where that ratio is not nearly as good.
Morgan Hill (27:54):
And so when you think about, well, I’m gonna SP you know, invest a dollar. To me, unfortunately, I see too much goes to infrastructure. I’ll see buildings that are being built, and there’s nothing wrong with the building, but it’s like, okay, how much is it being used? How much are we spending on sometimes salaries, nothing wrong with salaries. I’m a businessman, but I’m going, what’s the ratio of what’s actually going to sharing the gospel that someone comes to know Jesus outreach. I’m, I’ve been on, served on as an L dry serve on the church, you know, committees and whatnot. And I go, I love everybody, but how much of this money that’s coming in is actually going to bringing people to Jesus and raising them up in a, a relationship based on Matthew 28, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you to walk in the footsteps.
Morgan Hill (28:41):
That’s what discipleship actually means. I’m gonna walk kinda like if we’re in the snow, I’m gonna follow the footprints of my dad because he’s paving the way, that’s what it is to follow Jesus and to become like him. And I just don’t see a lot of that financial responsibility. And I do think that one, as your listeners, a dollar bring someone to Jesus, which is awesome. And I do think I wanna be very clear that I don’t think that all the business principles be, oh, you need to run your church like a business or your business, like a business. I said, no, I think they’re businesses that need to be run in a more holy way. So I think the duality of this, I think businesses, we can say, Lord, you’re in charge. We wanna make it a holy moment.
Morgan Hill (29:25):
And then on the other side with ministry, maybe we are a little bit more detailed with the pencil and paper. But it’s specifically about king ministries. The reason that I’m here, the reason I care about you and your wife, Jessica, and the reason we’ve kind of reconnected after some years to do ministry is that, that this season of my life, I want every dollar that God allows me to earn my wife and I, that we then say, this is for ministry. I want it to be for eternal purposes, that every time a dollar goes out, I can know with confidence that king ministries is doing that to bring people to Jesus. And the simplicity of the gospel is pretty clear. Jesus wants everyone to have a relationship with him, and it’s been eternity with him. And I love how king ministries is. Not only doing it economically, but just your heart about how you use the, the resources is very respectful. You understand the holiness of giving and how that should be used for kingdom purposes. And I appreciate that so much about you, and that’s why I’ll go to the ends of the earth with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:26):
Thank you so much for your kind words, Mr. Morgan. And if you’re a businessman you’re listening right now, and you are looking for a place to invest in evangelism, absolutely. I would encourage you to become a partner with king ministries. We need your help. We cannot do what we do without the help of, of businessmen and people like you, Morgan. You know, I think that God has anointed you in the business realm for, for earning dollars and you invest that into the kingdom and you’re looking for investments and you want that investment to, to produce eternal results. Yeah. And, and that’s what we’re all about is, is eternal results. And so I think that the reward for those who send will be just as great as the reward for those who go. Yeah, because it is a special anointing to be able to invest in what God is doing. And so Mr. Morgan, thank you for being on the evangelism podcast, it is a wonderful delight to have you here in Pakistan with us. The Lord bless you.
Morgan Hill (31:32):
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Daniel. And for all those listening, God bless you. And I just encourage you to perhaps give Daniel a call king ministries and wherever God leads. You just know that he has a plan and be open to where God may take you, that you never thought might happen, but just to see how God’s at work, because when it’s all done, we want him to get the glory first and foremost. So again, thanks for letting me be a part of the podcast. Daniel.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:03):
Wonderful. 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 (33:24):
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.