1 877-431-4276Carrie Headington | Evangelism in the Anglican Communion
Today, Daniel King talks to Carrie Headington, an Episcopal evangelist serving the Anglican community in Dallas, Texas. They discuss Carrie’s work equipping churches and everyday believers for evangelism, with a focus on raising up female evangelists. She shares lessons she learned from the late evangelist Michael Green, including the importance of having an “audience of one” in Jesus, persevering through spiritual warfare, and seeing how the Holy Spirit can revive even the most dormant churches when they engage in mission. We highlight the need for more bold, Spirit-filled evangelists, both men and women, to share the good news of Jesus in the world today.
Learn more about Carrie Headington: https://www.goodnewsinitiative.com/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Carrie Headington. So thank you so much for joining me.
Carrie Headington (00:11):
Thank you, Daniel. You have always inspired me as an evangelist, and we met way back, went through Luis Palau and just watching you and seeing the work of God working through you. It’s such an inspiration to me and it’s great to be with you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:32):
So we are here at the Lausanne Congress in South Korea and it was such a delight to run into you and to see you here. I thought let’s take the opportunity to have a conversation. And so you might hear some Korean talking in the background, some singing, but this is so wonderful
Carrie Headington (00:52):
To be, I just ate Korean barbecue.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:54):
Yeah. So you are serving the Lord in Dallas, Texas, and you are with the Episcopal Church and you’re serving the Anglican community as an evangelist. Tell me about that. What is God doing?
Carrie Headington (01:10):
People always say to me, wait, you’re an Episcopal evangelist. And I say, yes, absolutely.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:18):
Thank God for you praise. We need some good Episcopal evangelists.
Carrie Headington (01:21):
We’re an evangelical diocese and we have 65 churches under our bishop. So the way the Anglican communion is formed, the Anglican communion globally is actually the third largest Christian body in the world.
(01:39):
Wow. You have Roman Catholics, Orthodox and the Anglican communion right now, particularly in the global south. The Lord is moving so powerfully and we’re seeing so much fruit, a lot of people coming to the Lord. My context is Dallas, so we have 65 churches in the North Texas region, and my work as an evangelist is one, proclaiming the gospel, two is equipping the churches. The second part of being an evangelist that you and I know from Ephesians four equipping everyday believers and casting that missional vision to say, did you know you’re a missionary? Did you know you’re an ambassador for Christ? Sometimes that’s hard in our context because our ministers wear collars and it’s professionalized. But we say no ministry is for all believers, but the Anglican communion is in part every country in the world. And there were many, many evangelistic movements that came out of starting with Great Britain and truly, literally around the world. Yes, there’s some colonialism part of that, but a lot of it were Christian believers, missionaries who felt a call to go and share the love of Jesus. And so we’ve seen just a rapid spread in our communion and it makes it so rich because one body, we have a prayer book, a book of common prayer that we pray from each country in province often has their own prayer, but they’re similar prayers. And so we worship together, we praise the Lord together and we’re in common mission together.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:46):
Well, I love the Anglican communion in Africa. We often work with Anglicans and their churches are growing by leaps and bounds, and the Holy Spirit is working in such a great way in so much of the body of Christ through the Anglican community. So tell me a little bit about the churches that you work with. What does it look like? How do you activate believers to be involved in evangelism?
Carrie Headington (04:14):
Yes. Well, the first thing we do is to cast that missional vision to say, think of it this way, the great mythologist Leslie Newgen said, and he was a missionary bishop in India, and then he went back to England. He wrote and he said, think of the universal church like the kingdom of God, the embassy for the kingdom of God on earth, the universal church, and every local church is a local kingdom outpost. And he said, who are the ambassadors? The ambassadors are everyday believers. And as we’ve been hearing here at Anne, 99% of believers ambassadors for Jesus Christ are in the workplace or in the homes. They’re not the professional pastors, they are the ambassadors. And so we cast that vision and then we say, okay, you’re an ambassador for Jesus Christ. This is your calling, whether you’re in a workplace environment, whether you’re in the home, wherever God has placed you an unemployment line, whether you’re retired, wherever you are in your stage of life, stay at home mother, you are an ambassador for Jesus Christ.
(05:34):
And then we use the model of Jesus. What I love Daniel, and you know this, that Jesus gave us a template. He said, wait, pray the Holy Spirit will come upon you. That’s crucial. This is God’s mission, not ours, God’s mission. We do it all in the power of the Holy Spirit. But he said, okay. His first commission to us was to think about intentionally, think about our mission field. So he said, go to Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. We have in our congregations, we have everyone think about who’s in your Jerusalem and intentionally to think about who’s around you, who are your friends, your family, your neighbors. Then we think about the Judea, what’s happening in your city, your workplace, your acquaintance, the places where you frequent, and then we go to Samaria, who’s on the margins? If Jesus walked into your community, who would he care for first and then ends of the earth and the ends of the earth can be what I love about the Anglican communion.
(06:45):
It could be connecting with another diocese around the world or God. And you know this living in Tulsa, Oklahoma, God is bringing the nations to one another. So right there in Dallas, Texas, we have one of the highest number of refugees per capita in the world. New immigrants and new refugees get invited into an American home once every 15 years. So we say, make a friend with a refugee or a new immigrant, invite them into your home for a meal or invite them, church host a meal and invite the community around you. So have everyone intentionally look at who God has placed around them. Then the next thing we do, we look at the model of Jesus and we say, we teach three things, prayer, care and share. Pray for the people who God is placed in your mission field. Pray for them. Then you ask God, how can I best share care for them and show the love of Jesus? We’ve talked a lot here about display and declare the glory of God. So we need to show it and we need to tell it words. And then so we do prayer care for people and then share. And we teach people how to share their personal story, how to get in touch with what have you found in your relationship with Jesus Christ.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:19):
One of the things that is very close to your heart is raising up female evangelists. And we need more women that are bold about proclaiming the gospel. When you go to different nations around the world, women often are half or more of the church. Usually the ones in the church that are doing most of the work tend to be the women, but yet some churches have told women to be quiet. But you say, we don’t have to be quiet. We can do something for God.
Carrie Headington (08:55):
Yes. Well, the first evangelists were women. The first evangelists at the empty tomb were women. And they ran and shared the good news.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:06):
And I think that’s so significant because Jesus showed that he trusted them with the message he did.
Carrie Headington (09:15):
He trusted them with the message. And this was in a culture where women’s testimony was not heard in the court of law where women didn’t have any property or women were asked to really not leave the home. There was a Jewish prayer at that time that said, thank you, God, I was not born a woman. It’s in that context that Jesus first revealed himself the risen Jesus Christ to women. And then he says to them, go and tell the others. And so the great commission was first given to women. Go and tell the others. We also see the woman at the well. And of course she encounters the risen Lord goes to the village, she said, come meet the man who told me everything I ever did. The whole village came to know Jesus. So clearly he wants to use us. And I always say, so women, we need to be living in the great commission.
(10:20):
It doesn’t say, go all you men and make disciples. It says, go all of you, all of you. And so half the population are women. And often women can speak to other women’s hearts in a very deep and vulnerable way. And I’m really all for women’s proclamation events. And it can be small or it can be large, but where women are speaking to women because we know the needs of women, women, our vulnerabilities, our brokenness, some of the unique pains that women experience. And to give women space in those contexts to hear the healing, healing word of God and that Jesus has come for them. I’ll never forget being in Paris and we were speaking to women in an area trap in Paris, and these were mothers of radicalized Muslims and their sons and husbands have been radicalized for isis. And it was such an intimate group.
(11:39):
I mean, there were about 50 women and we just shared about Jesus. And one woman after another said, would Jesus heal me or would Jesus meet with me? And I think the fact that it was women with women, we created that safe space and women felt safe to open up. And we saw Jesus do amazing, amazing work that day in women’s hearts and women committing their lives to Jesus. So we need women. We need women to be ambassadors, and we need women to say yes to the great commission and we need to equip and encourage women. And that doesn’t mean we don’t respect the structures and women are in all different kinds of different church structures, but whatever structure we’re in, we still have the opportunity to share Jesus. And so we’ve got to do it. And I think my heart is to mobilize. Well, a lot of times women think, well, I’m not a professional pastor, so they think that they’re not evangelists. Women make some of the most extraordinary evangelists and often have an opportunity to meet people in all kinds of different contexts. I mean, I think the average person reaches, meets three new people in a given day. Women are constantly, we’re out, we’re often getting the food, and we’re in the marketplace and we’re caring for children, and we’re meeting with other mothers. That’s an incredible mission field.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:24):
Yeah, I’m thinking about my mother. She was a missionary along with my father in Mexico for 20 years, and then they went to Afghanistan, and three years ago she passed away very suddenly, but we found out that she had cancer. And then for just a couple of months she had left. Lots of friends came to visit her, but I remember just a few days before she went to heaven, she was calling some of the Afghan students that she had been working with in Afghanistan via Zoom. And she was sharing her personal testimony with them because my grandparents worked in Afghanistan and my mother got saved in Afghanistan. She was born there. She got saved there. So she was calling them and giving the testimony of how she got saved at the age of seven in Afghanistan to them and saying, you need to call on Jesus too. So in her last days, she was evangelizing and it was so beautiful.
Carrie Headington (14:27):
Praise the Lord. That’s how we all want to be. And I’ve met people here who were ministering in Afghanistan to women. So carry on. Your mom’s good work
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:40):
There. And my wife is a great evangelist, and she was on the mission field for many years before we met. And so she’s great at preaching, she’s great at leading worship. And my daughter also, she’s 12 years old, she tells me, daddy, I want to be a missionary and is talking about where she wants to go and what her calling is. And so it’s so beautiful.
Carrie Headington (15:05):
And oftentimes, someone was asking me earlier, where do you think women are held back? And I said, often it’s ourselves that we don’t feel worthy. And Daniel, I venture to say that that’s the perfect posture because none of us are worthy and we just open our hands and say, God, I am willing, here I am, use me. But that humble posture, we don’t come with wise and persuasive words. We come in the power of the Holy Spirit. And so that kind of posture just makes so much room for the Holy Spirit to move and work through us. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:48):
Amen.
Carrie Headington (15:49):
It’s really inspiring.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:51):
I’ve got another question for you. You studied under Michael Green. He was from Great Britain and he wrote a great book on evangelism in the early church. And so you studied under him. Yes. If you’re listening, I really encourage you get the book on evangelism in the early church. There’s some really great material. He’s passed away now. But what did you learn from Dr. Michael Green?
Carrie Headington (16:17):
Yes, I’d love to share how we met. He and I were taught my first day in seminary, and he was across from me. I didn’t know who he was, that he was a giant of the faith. And he said, you’re an evangelist. And I said, I laugh. I said, I’m an Episcopalian. He died laughing. He said, my dear, you need to read your Anglican history books. There are many, many, many Anglican evangelists. So we met, but a few days later, he had a heart attack and his wife came up to me and said, my husband would like to talk to you.
(16:57):
He’s in the hospital. We’re not sure if he’s going to make it out. So I’m American student here in England. I go to this hospital and there he is. And he prayed for me and he said, my dear, what are you going to do with your life? I said, I don’t know. He said, whatever you do, share the gospel. And he said, when I was on the cold slab of the theater in the surgical room, he said, I’m more convinced than ever that Jesus Christ is Lord. And then so as I was leaving a deeply moving moment, as I left, a nurse said to me, could I talk to you for a minute? I said, sure. She said, is he a preacher or something? And I said, why do you ask? She said, at night, we can’t keep him in bed. And she said, he goes room to room.
(17:54):
And she goes, I think he’s preaching to people. And she said, we politely. And we say, well, you must get back in your bed, Mr. Green. She said, he’s, he is cooked up to machines. She goes, he gets in bed, but five minutes later he’s up. I went home that night, got on my knees and wept, and I said, Lord, I want to have that passion for the lost when I’m in my eighties. He got well, and the minute he was back at college, I knocked on his door and I said, I want to learn from you
(18:34):
And what I learned from him. So our first outreach together was back at that hospital and there were about 80 people there, people who had come to know the Lord, doctors, nurses, and patients through his time in the hospital. So what did I learn from him? I asked him one time, what is it that keeps you going? He said, I have an audience of one. He said, I have an audience of one. Jesus is my audience, and he has called me to share his good news with every single person I meet. So I learned that from him. Audience of one. The second thing was perseverance. Every time he was going to do an outreach, an evangelistic campaign to a time Daniel, he got sick. He had lung problems, so he was always down. So he would go and get in the hospital, get his infusion, and then inevitably get back up to preach. It never kept him down. He said, expect spiritual warfare. And he said, just say in the name of Jesus, back off old Nick. That’s what he always said, back off old Nick. But he said, just love the Lord. He said, when you’re in love with the Lord, you can’t help but spill the beans.
(20:01):
So he said, stay in love with the Lord. Stay in his words. Stay in prayer. Stay in a posture of worship. Have an audience of one persevere run the race. And I’ll say this on his last thing he taught me, we would go to these village churches in England. They would be dying. We’d get in the car and he’d say, what do you think? When I say dying? I mean like four people and a woman bringing her dog in. He’d say, what do you think? And I’d say, oh, Dr. Green, I think they’re going to shut down this church. And he’s like, you just watch. He said, when a church, when the local church puts its pinky toe in the water of mission, the Holy Spirit moves. Wow,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:54):
Daniel.
Carrie Headington (20:55):
I saw it over and over and over again. And what did we do? We prayed. We prayed for renewal. We prayed for a move of the spirit. We equip the believers saying, did you know you’re an ambassador for Christ? Here’s how you share your story. How’s God wired you? What do you love to do? Well, let’s do it for Jesus. Let’s invite your non-Christian friends. Give a little testimony and invite him to the message. Invite him to hear the message at the outreach or invite him to church over. And again, it was like I was seeing a baby being born, little parish church in every village after village after village come alive. And so thus people always go, oh, you’re in this kind of mainline church. It’s dead. It’s dead. And I said, it’s not dead. The minute it puts its pinky toe in the water and mission and the power of the Holy Spirit, it comes to life. Amen. I love
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:58):
Watching
Carrie Headington (21:59):
Things come to
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:00):
Life. And our God is the God of resurrection. So even if it is dead, he can raise it back up.
Carrie Headington (22:04):
Yes. Yes. And some of our churches are asleep. And what we do as evangelists is to say, wake up. Wake up, get connected in the power of the Holy Spirit and live into God’s mission and churches come alive.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:22):
Wow. That’s amazing. Well, if someone would like to find out more about your ministry or maybe invite you to come speak at their church or their conference, what’s a website or a good way that they can connect with you?
Carrie Headington (22:36):
It’s good news initiative.com.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:40):
Good news initiative.com.
Carrie Headington (22:42):
Good news initiative.com.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:45):
Awesome. Well, Ms. Carrie, I’m so delighted to spend some time with you. Love what you’re doing, and let’s just pray together that God would raise up a multitude of evangelists, both men and women around the world. Would you pray?
Carrie Headington (23:01):
Yes. I will pray. And I praise God, different denominations working together too. Amen. This is a picture of what God longs for. Amen. Amen. Lord, we love you. We praise you. We worship you this day, and we ask, Lord, that you would raise up evangelists for such a time as this raise, raise them up. And Lord, thank you for allowing us that we have the privilege to participate in your work, your work in the world of drawing all people to yourself and spreading your good news and your love throughout the earth. So we pray, Lord, that even now as I’m speaking, that someone hears your call, go and make disciples, go and take the good news to the ends of the earth. Lord, you have called every single person to witness to your good news. Fill us, give us your heart and your spirit for every single person around us. In Jesus’ name,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:15):
Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Carrie Headington (24:20):
Thank you, Daniel. And thank you for the work you do. And keep going, brother.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:24):
Yes, ma’am.
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
Bernie Gillott | Evangelism in Teen Challenge
Teen Challenge is a global ministry that helps young people struggling with addiction and crime. Teen Challenge was started by David Wilkerson in New York City, with a vision to reach troubled youth and help them find transformation through the power of the gospel. Bernie Gillott is the Global Evangelism Coordinator for Teen Challenge. The focus of Teen Challenge is not just rehabilitation, but true transformation through the power of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God. They disciple the men and women in their care to become evangelists themselves. Today on the Evangelism Podcast, we talk about David Wilkerson’s legacy and about what God is doing through Teen Challenge.
Learn more about Bernie Gillott: https://www.bgillott.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, brother Bernie Gillott.
Bernie Gillott (00:10):
I’m the Global Evangelism Coordinator for Teen Challenge. We serve the 1,200 Teen Challenge centers in 132 nations that are not the United States.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:25):
And it is such a delight to meet you. We’re here in Seoul, Korea at the Lausanne Congress on World Evangelization, and last night we were sitting on the bus and I was just so happy to meet you and to hear about what you’re doing for evangelism. Teen Challenge does such a great job of taking people who are dealing with addictions, with problems, with alcohol, with drugs, taking them off the streets and then developing them into disciples of Christ. Tell me a little bit about what Teen Challenge does.
Bernie Gillott (00:58):
Well, while so many people see Teen Challenge as a drug program, it was never David’s Wilkerson’s vision for it to be a drug program. It started as a ministry called Teen Evangelism. He wanted to go to New York City and reach seven boys in the Michael Farmer case that had brutally murdered a handicapped boy. He never got to see them, but when he went into the courtroom, many of you have seen the cross and the switchblade. They threw him out of the courtroom in disgrace. They had his Bible. They said, hold that up, don’t be ashamed. He was on the front page of the Daily News, crazy Bible waving, preacher interrupts trial. He went home in absolute disgrace and he told me, he said, Bernie, I prayed because I knew God had told me to go, and everything went so horribly bad. And he talked to his grandfather and he said, Davy, maybe God didn’t send you for those boys, but boys like those boys.
(01:52):
And so we went back to New York City only this time he didn’t go to a courtroom. He went to the Fort Lee projects. First miracle was he slept in his car overnight and lived when he woke up, they’d stolen the tires off of his car. They were stealing the hood. When he got out of the car, one of the boys grabbed a knife to cut his throat and one of the boys bottle cap said, Hey, aren’t you the preacher from the Egyptian Kings trial? The cops hate you and the cops hate us, so you must be one of us. And God opened the doors to the most violent gangs of the New York City through his disgrace on the front page became his opportunity, and that’s how Teen Challenge was born, began working with gangs. Then in the sixties as we began to see the gangs broken up by heroin addiction and drugs, they began to intervene there. And that’s how we kind of got our reputation. We worked with men and women with life controlling problems with drugs, alcohol, crime, and victims of human trafficking. Now around the world
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:53):
And as the leader of Evangelism for Teen Challenge, tell me about how you get these people that have had so many issues then turning them into evangelists. You told me that last night that you were just recently in Congo, DRC
Bernie Gillott (03:12):
In
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:12):
Lumas. You took a team there from Teen Challenges all over Africa. Tell me about what God did there. Sure. It was
Bernie Gillott (03:21):
In Lu Bai. We had 192,000 people. Over the course of four days, we ministered to over 5,000 in the schools. We had men from Zambia, South Africa, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia, and from the Congo. And what we do is we disciple the men. The key to Teen Challenge is not psychology, it’s not about rehabilitation, it’s about transformation. It’s not about recovery. It’s about resurrection. And we want them to take that power and then apply that. It’s interesting, I have one guy who was praying, prayed for someone that was deaf and they were healed. I looked at him and I said, how long have you been in the program? He said, three months. He said, all I know is I prayed. And they heard. I think sometimes we want people to get so, so good enough to be ready to witness. But if you love Jesus, he’s ready to use you right where you are today. He’s ready to use you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:21):
Amen. So Teen Challenge was started by David Wilkerson. Yes. Great man of God,
Bernie Gillott (04:29):
My team
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:29):
And a prophet, a pastor right in Times Square in New York City and then doing Teen Challenge all over the world. Tell me some of what you learned from David Wilkerson and some of your favorite stories about him.
Bernie Gillott (04:43):
Well, probably one of the things that had the most profound impact on my life was one time we were in South Philly and that was my job to get him from his bus, which was like 10 blocks north down to the outreach and two of my choir guys, and we were trying to get him. But every few feet, somebody would stop him and say, brother Dave, pray for me. Pray for my son, pray for this. And I kind of grabbed him and I said, brother Dave, I said, man, we got to get you to the stage. It’s time for you to minister. You’re going to get me in trouble. And he looked at me, he kind of pushed me. He said, brother, be the stage is where I preach. Ministry is what happens on the way to the stage. And he understood the heart of evangelism. The heart for the lost the heart that it’s not about the big stage that he would have in the thousands, but every individual walking down Broad Street, that was his heart.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:34):
I’m reminded of Matthew chapter eight where it says, as you go preach saying the kingdom of heaven is at hand. It doesn’t say when you get there. And so sometimes I think as evangelists we make the mistake thinking the evangelism is what’s going to happen on the platform, but he was evangelizing everywhere he went. That’s right. Usually the greatest fruit in our ministry happens just as you’re going. As you’re going to someplace to go evangelize. You get to evangelize on the way and impacts people’s lives.
Bernie Gillott (06:08):
That’s right. You can’t get so focused on the destination that you miss the fact that God works in the journey. Jesus was on his way to heal J IRA’s daughter, the woman with the issue of blood. He had time for her. It seemed like most of his most incredible miracles happened on his way to do something else. And God met him there and led him to someone in need. And there’s people all around us. We can’t miss the fact that God’s got an opportunity because you’re a great evangelist. I mean, I was so excited when we met on the bus and you said, listen, we’re going out on the street witnessing on Wednesday. It would take somebody like you to say, at the Lason World Congress on evangelization, we ought to do some evangelization, and we’re so excited to go out with you and to see what God’s going to do here in Seoul, Korea.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:53):
Yeah. That’ll be with Greg Steer from Dare to Share and Desmond Henry from the Global Network of Evangelists. There’s so many different evangelists that have come together here, and we can’t have so many evangelists for a conference without doing some evangelism. That’s right. It’s important. There’s still people here in South Korea that need Jesus. Oh, that’s so
Bernie Gillott (07:12):
True.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:13):
So I think it’s so neat how God uses every different gift that people have to bring people to Jesus. And so one of your gifts is wrapping.
Bernie Gillott (07:25):
That’s right.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:25):
So you can wrap in English, you can wrap in Spanish,
Bernie Gillott (07:30):
Russian, Swahili.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:31):
Okay. Give us just a little bit of rap and give us some English and then give us something in another language. Okay. Word up.
Bernie Gillott (07:38):
All this is my story. It’s not about me. I got to give that the glory. I was lost. I was bound in sin boxing it down. I took it straight in the chin in Swahili it Mabo VP in Spanish. It’s, you know what? I’m a as slick as the peel of a ripe banana, and I got more juice than crop. Can I come on the scene? I could turn it out. I even brought the president out the White House to listen to me, de Mayor Heavy. Be a rap for Jesus because he set me free and he’ll set you free too.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:21):
Let’s talk a little bit more about Teen Challenge. What are some of the elements of the program of Teen Challenge that really help people?
Bernie Gillott (08:30):
Well, the key to Teen Challenge is the word of God going in their lives, in their hearts. They memorize 125 verses in the first three months at Teen Challenge, and it gets it down into their minds and begins to work healing over. I had a guy one time, he was getting ready to graduate because the program’s 12 months, and he said So many of those verses I learned at the beginning, I can’t remember anymore, and said, I remember the verse, but I don’t remember the numbers. And I said, yeah, but you know what? Psychologists tell us that 90% of what we do come, the 10% that we do comes from the 90% in our subconscious. The more of scripture we can get in their subconscious, even if they don’t remember it, it’s working Just like all those bad memories. The teacher that said, you’ll never amount to anything.
(09:21):
I mean, my dad told me every day of my life, you were a loser. You’re born a loser. You live the loser and you’ll die a loser. Well, I may have been born a loser, but hallelujah. I was born again a winner and I’m not built. And the power of the Holy Spirit, the baptism, and the Holy Spirit is, I mean, teen Challenge is not just an evangelical ministry. It’s an evangelical ministry with a Pentecostal distinctive because these guys need the baptism in the Holy Spirit and a prayer language to overcome those temptations as they face them.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:53):
Amen. Well, that’s the only way I can wrap is with my prayer language. Amen.
Bernie Gillott (10:05):
It was just three months before Brother Wilkerson went home to be with the Lord in the car accident. I was with him in Dominican Republic and he laid his hands on my head and he said, brother Bernie, don’t let the flame of evangelism go out in Teen Challenge. Keep the fire of the Holy Ghost burning. Amen. And that’s what keeps my wife and I going over a hundred thousand miles every year on five continents, training teen challenged men, those that were once hopeless to be givers of hope in the name of Jesus Christ. That’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:43):
Evangelism. For someone who’s listening, who’s a young evangelist, what advice would you give them? You’ve done evangelism for many years. What advice would you give to those called to be evangelists?
Bernie Gillott (10:57):
Don’t trust your own strength. Recognize that when you can’t, he can’t and when you don’t want to. He wants to. He’ll open doors if you’ll just watch for him. Number two, trust the word of God. It’s really challenging. I remember back in the seventies when we’d be on the street with David Wilkerson, the most important thing was knowing your scriptures. Nowadays, when you’re ministering on the street, if you share scripture, people just want to argue on whether scripture’s real because they don’t really believe the word. And for that reason, some people don’t use scripture on the street. I still do because I believe the word of God is the only thing that guarantees it will bring a harvest. So even though it may not seem like they receive it, the word of God has power in its own right to bring forth the seed because he never sends on his word without bringing forth the harvest. And number three, obey the Holy Spirit. Believe God, this is an hour evangelists where we need the power of Jesus Christ. We need the gifts of the prophetic word of knowledge and word of faith, because that’s just going to change this world.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:03):
Amen. Well, it’s such a delight to meet you. Thank you for sharing with us, and I pray that God gives teen challenge even greater fruit in the years to come. If someone wants to find out more about Teen Challenge, what’s a good website for them to go to?
Bernie Gillott (12:19):
You can go to my website, which is B gilot. That’s G-I-L-L-O-T-T-B gilot.org. I’ve got evangelism training. I’ve got music videos, rap videos, or you can go to global tc.org, global tc.org. That’ll tell you about Teen Challenges, work around the world, or teen challenge usa.org. If you need someone to get in the program that’s here in the United States, those are all available resources.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:48):
Well, I encourage you to go to my brother’s website, support him in his ministry. I’m sure you need help as you go around the world preaching the gospel.
Bernie Gillott (12:56):
But the thing we need most is prayer. And I am so blessed that I got to meet you, Daniel. Man, you have made this conference for
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:01):
Me. Hallelujah. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, and God bless you.
Bernie Gillott (13:05):
Amen. God bless you, man of God. Lord, we thank you that you are raising up a voice of hope. Amen to the hopeless Lord, that even a teen challenge you just take the hopeless and make them givers of hope. Lord, those that are struggling, you’ll feel your strength to say that next word, that next step because you called them God and you’ll enable them. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:28):
Amen.
Bernie Gillott (13:28):
Thanks Daniel.
Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Apple iTunes
Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Spotify
Subscribe to The Evangelism Podcast on Google Podcasts
Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Amazon Audible
The Evangelism Podcast is also available on iHeartRadio
Zambia
Missions From A-Z – From America to Zambia
Jesus is the Alpha and the Omega. Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet and Omega is the last letter. Jesus is the beginning and the end. He loves every nation on earth, from A to Z. I have ministered in many countries, but Zambia is the first nation I have ministered in that begins with the letter Z. To me, going from America to Zambia was symbolic of our desire to follow the command of Jesus to “Go into all the world.”
Our outreach to the city of Ndola was led by the Global Network of Evangelists, a ministry of Luis Palau. The goal of this outreach was to reach out to every level of society in the city. The outreach was a great success. Over the course of a week, we ministered face-to-face to over 141,373+ people in Ndola during the Love Zambia Festival with 24,474 people giving their lives to Christ, including 271 recommitments. I am thankful for Desmond Henry and the staff of the Global Network of Evangelists for organizing all the ministry.
Outreach to the Government
When I arrived, we had the privilege of meeting the Provincial Minister of the Copperbelt region. He reports directly to the President of Zambia. The main export of Zambia is copper. Half of the world’s copper comes from the mines in this area.
I shared a story about the great evangelist George Whitefield who once ministered to the coal miners of England. He stood outside the mines and preached and as the coal miners got saved their tears made white tracks down their cheeks. So many miners got saved that the donkeys who worked in the mines were confused about whether they should stop or go because so many of the miners stopped cussing. I told the Provincial Minister that we would pray that God would send the same revival to the miners of the Copperbelt region of Zambia.
The Provincial Minister welcomed us to preach the Gospel in Ndola. He told us that the President of Zambia has declared that Zambia is a Christian nation! He asked us to pray for the economic growth of the region, but he said that the greatest battle that needs to be won is the spiritual battle. He lifted his Bible in the air and said that everyone in his region needs to read and obey the Word of God.
Outreach on the Streets
A pickup truck with a small sound system and a generator is all you need to attract a couple hundred kids for a mini-Gospel festival. We sent these Gospel trucks out to many locations around the city each day.
At one street meeting, when I gave an altar call a woman named Mika Chanda came forward. She fell to her knees, lifted her hands in the air, and cried out to God. Tears streamed down her face as she repented for her sins. God touched her and by the time we left she was smiling.
My goal is to lead a million people to Jesus every year. A million is a big number. But you have to remember that every number represents a face, a name, an individual. Heaven is celebrating that Mika Chanda had an opportunity to hear about Jesus and respond to His love.
Outreach to the Young People in the Schools
Zambia is full of young people. Zambia has more than 4.8 million young people aged 15-35. They represent 36.7% of Zambia’s population. That’s why we visited schools to proclaim the Gospel to children and teenagers. Our school outreach was led by Kubamba, a team of young adults from Kenya. They lived in Zambia for four months and ministered at over one hundred schools.
At each school, they encourage the young people to make the right choices in life. They use music from a live DJ to get the kids excited. Then they do a drama about how Jesus can set people free from every kind of vice and addiction. The drama begins with a young man who is being called by Jesus. But soon he is distracted by a girl who encourages him to listen to secular music and to promote himself on social media. Then he is tempted by a man who offers him money. Next comes drinking alcohol and addiction to drugs. He gives into the temptation of pornography and sexual promiscuity. A witch does witchcraft over his life and he is attacked by thoughts of depression and suicide. The entire time an actor playing the part of Jesus is calling him. Finally demons come to torment the man. Jesus steps in and fights the demons and overcomes the devil. Jesus takes all the man’s sins and places them on Himself and gives the man a sign that says, “Saved.” When the school kids see the drama their hearts are open to give their lives to Jesus.
Outreach to Business Leaders
We asked the local churches to invite business leaders and young professionals from across the city to a lunch meeting on Friday. They gathered in the ball room of the hotel we stayed at and we fed them lunch. Since young professionals consider appointments and schedules to be of great importance, I preached to them a message I originally heard from Evangelist Daniel Kolenda about the importance of the calendar. Here’s what I said to them:
Did you know that God has a calendar for your life? Who wants to know what is on God’s calendar for your life? In Ecclesiastes 3:2, it says, “there is a time to be born.” So God knows the day of your birth. Your birthday is written on God’s calendar.
Hebrews 9:27 says, “It is appointed onto man once to die.” This means that death is not an accident. Death is an appointment. The day and the time of your death is written on God’s calendar.
There is another day written on God’s calendar for your life. It is the day of salvation. Would you like to know which day is written in God’s calendar for your salvation? If you could peek over God’s shoulder and look at his calendar for your life it would say, “Today is the day of your salvation.”
In 2 Corinthians 6:2 the Bible says, “now is the day of salvation.” It does not even say, “TODAY is the day of salvation.” It is more urgent than that. It says, “NOW is the day of salvation.”
If a man is drowning in the river, he does not need to be saved sometime today. He needs to be saved NOW. This is how important salvation is to God. He says, “NOW, not just today.”
How can you tell if you are hearing God’s voice? God always says, “NOW.” The devil always says, “Tomorrow” because the Devi knows a secret. Tomorrow does not exist. Tomorrow is just an idea. You do not have tomorrow and you may not ever have tomorrow. All you have is this moment. Right now.
There are people in hell right now, not because they said, “no” to Jesus, but because the devil convinced them they could say “yes” to Jesus tomorrow. But tomorrow never came.
Today is your day of salvation. Now is the time for you to be saved. When I gave the altar call, many of the business leaders gave their lives to Jesus.
Outreach at the Love Zambia Festival
Jesus made His disciples “fishers of men.” As evangelists we are fishing for souls. Every fisherman knows that in order to catch fish you have to use the right bait. In order to reach young people we used soccer, bike tricks, juggling, music, and bouncy houses to get people to come hear the Gospel. As everyone partied, we preached the Good News about Jesus.
Thousands of people responded to the message and gave their hearts to God. After the people prayed for salvation, they were met by councilors who helped them to fill out a decision card and gave them a copy of the Gospel of John.
One elder lady broke into tears when she received the Gospel of John. Holding it close to her heart, she exclaimed, “Surely God has not forgotten us.” There is nothing better than bringing hope to those in desperate need of it.
CAN YOU HELP US REACH PEOPLE FOR JESUS?
Evangelist Daniel King is on a mission to lead people to Jesus. But he cannot do it without your help. Can you give a financial gift today to help us “plunder hell to populate heaven?” To support King Ministries in our quest for souls, click here!
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism
Paulo Lopes is the Emerging Leaders Director for World Methodist Evangelism. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast we talk about the rich tradition of evangelism in Wesleyan Methodist movements going all the back to John Wesley and Francis Asbury. The goal of World Methodist Evangelism is to be a connection point for the worldwide Wesleyan Methodist family offering training, gathering opportunities, and resources that empower Christ followers to share their faith in the context of today’s realities. We talk about the importance of evangelism and the need for revival in the church. Paulo Lopes shares his observations on the current state of the church and the signs of awakening and hunger for God that he has seen around the world.
Learn more about World Methodist Evangelism: https://worldmethodist.org/
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Paulo Lopez. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (00:09):
It’s a pleasure to be here, Daniel. Yeah, thanks for having me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:12):
Now you are with World Methodist Evangelism. Tell me a little bit about what you do.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (00:20):
Well, World Methodist evangelism started in the 1970s as the Methodist movement around the world realized that we had lost steam in evangelism and mission. And so this ministry was sort of commissioned out of the World Methodist Council. Today, 50 years later, we’re an autonomous organization. We serve the whole Wesleyan Methodist movement around the world. And so there are over 80 denominations and just over 85 million people around the world that would claim a Methodist or Wesleyan heritage. And so our work is to come alongside leaders to help them build faith sharing movements in their context, whatever that might be.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:14):
Yeah, I think it’s so wonderful that you’re doing that because the Methodist Wesleyan tradition has such a rich history of evangelism. I mean, going all the way back to John Wesley, he had a great heart for evangelism. And then in America we had Francis Asbury, who was a circuit writer, who traveled all over the United States, the Eastern United States at that time, planting churches and really evangelizing
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (01:44):
Countless others. I live in Virginia. My wife and I are from Brazil. We’ve lived in the US now for 17 years, but I get to live in Virginia. And Virginia was one of the first states to have circuit riders in them. And they were so prolific in fact that if you go to Virginia today, you’ll find many towns where all these churches are very close to one another for modern day. It doesn’t make that much sense to have so many churches close by. But when you imagine people horseback riding to church, having a church five miles, it’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:22):
A little bit
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (02:22):
Farther. That’s right. Having a, when you’re on a horseback, five miles, 10 miles down the road, made sense in a way that it doesn’t make sense anymore. But these folks, they would often only return to a congregation after two months, six to eight weeks by the time they got to come back. And so they relied heavily on lay leaders and preachers and evangelists and the pastors or the circuit writers were sort of apostolic ministers. So they were going out and starting new works. Really incredible.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:00):
I was reading John Wesley’s journal and he actually was introduced to the idea of preaching outdoors with George Whitfield. That’s right. And so George Whitfield, he kind of got kicked out of the Anglican church. Some of the leaders didn’t like him, so he went out and was preaching outdoors and seeing great results. And he told John Wesley, you got to try it. John Wesley said, I didn’t even think God could work outside the doors of the church, but he tried it and lots of people were touched by God. And then over the next year he says, I preached over 300 times and only once or twice was inside a church. And so now we’re actually here in Zambia together doing a mass outdoor gospel event, really kind of in the tradition of what John Wesley kicked off all those years ago. And
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (03:57):
In many ways, Daniel, we’ve kind of lost that in many parts of the world. The guy on the corner of the street with the bullhorn is what comes to mind. And in the West, it’s not how you do ministry anymore. We’ve kind of lost touch with meaningful ways of doing ministry. At one point in one of his journals, John Wesley says, in response to seeing how people are responding to Whitfield, he goes, I submit to be more vile to him, it was like this crazy thing that Whitfield was doing going out preach
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:39):
To preach outdoors.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (04:40):
But then I got to go to Bristol in the UK a couple of years ago and visited at the new room, which was kind of John Wesley’s home base for ministry where he was training preachers. And there’s a little museum there, and there’s this story of him going down to the port where all these mine workers and port workers would come, some of the hardest men that you could think of. And he would preach to these folks and their stories of their faces being all darkened by dust and
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:20):
From working in the minds, from
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (05:21):
Working in the minds. And then after preaching, you would see streaks of white in their faces because these hardened men had been having an encounter with Jesus through preaching outdoors like that. So yeah, there’s a lot of similarities between what we’re
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:38):
Doing here. We got to go out on the street today here in Zambia and preach, and we had a bike rider who was doing some tricks. That’s right. And gathered a crowd and it was pretty amazing. I mean 50 a hundred at one place, I think we had almost 150 children and adults who gathered around to watch the bike tricks. And then we preached to them, and I saw a picture of you. You were doing the
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (06:00):
Same. What’d you see God do today out the streets? We were in the back of the truck. I tend to find this to be real here in Zambia and other places around the world. I think there’s a caricature of being out in missions somewhere remote and seeing the kinds of things that we see all these people gathering and the hunger. I think people are hungry everywhere in the world. It’s being able to discern the hunger and then respond to it. And I think the way that the Paal Association g and e, and the way we’re doing this outrage here is just appropriate for this place and the moment. But I’ll tell you what the thing that I really like about what we’re doing, if what we were doing was simply coming out and doing rallies and doing a festival, it would be a bit of a turnoff for me because I’m a Wesleyan.
(06:59):
The innovation that John Wesley had that Whitfield later said, I regret not doing that, is that John Wesley, he would preach, but then he would stay in that place until people that were receiving Christ would be put into small groups called class meetings back in the day. And so what I’ve been impressed with what we’re doing here is the fact that there has been some groundwork prior to the festival for months as church leaders have come together. So the church in Ndola has kind of unified around the purpose of evangelism, and there are strategies for how to receive people that are now making decisions for Christ in those local churches. So what are the next steps? How do they connect with a local church? All of that has been figured out. So it’s not kind of a one and done and you come in and there’s impact and then people are left like lost sheep waiting for a pastor to care for them.
(08:04):
No, they’re being connected to local churches in the area. And I think that’s the way to do it. There’s a bad rap in evangelism, and I think we often disconnect the notion of sharing our faith with others from discipleship. When I stop to think of it, particularly when I see the pattern of Jesus and the 12 disciples is that Jesus calls them to follow him. But we don’t know. I always ask the question, when was Peter’s conversion? Was it when Jesus called him and he started following him? Jesus says, who do you say I am? Or was it later on after the resurrection when Jesus says, do you love me, Peter? I don’t know for certain when my guess is, do you love me, Peter? That’s the conversion moment. But by then Peter had followed, Jesus had been a disciple for three years, and so we
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:02):
And been rebuked by Jesus.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (09:04):
And so he had walked with Jesus, had seen stuff with Jesus. And so we can’t control conversion, but we can invite people to walk alongside us. We can’t control how many people are going to raise their hands and receive Christ, but we can encourage them to find a local church and to follow in Christian community. And I think when those two things are married, then what we see is great fruit that lasts generations. I think unfortunately a lot of what we’ve done for many years is just write down the number of people that have said yes, and then we leave and we celebrate it. Right. And the donors are really happy because their numbers are good, but we haven’t really done anything about it.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:49):
So let’s talk. We talked about the historical impact of John Wesley and Francis Asbury. How do we bring their passion for evangelism and for reaching people into this modern time? What are you doing to inspire Methodist evangelists and just inspire the entire Wesleyan tradition to keep evangelism as part of their passion and focus? Sure.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (10:19):
Our mission is to help leaders build faith sharing movements. And what we are realizing is that there are two separate realities right now might be an oversimplification, but generally speaking, there are two separate realities in the world. There’s the part of the world that is wide open and very hungry for the gospel. Generally speaking, the global south kind of fits into that
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:51):
Category,
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (10:51):
Which you’re from the global south, you’re from Brazil, I’m from Brazil.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:54):
So you’re kind of a missionary to the United States.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (10:57):
I feel that way. Yeah. Actually, technically I am a missionary from the Brazilian Methodist Church to world Methodist evangelism. So that’s my Well, thank you. We need
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:10):
Some of the fire from the south to come north again.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (11:14):
That’s right. But see though it’s true that people are on fire in the south. What I often find is that people in the global south struggle to be mobilized outside. It’s almost like in salvation, in finding Christian community that becomes kind of a bubble. And so they go from Sunday to Sunday from discipleship meeting to discipleship, meeting from conference or revival to revival. And it’s something that stays, it’s almost like a subculture in the global south. The church becomes like a subculture that’s almost removed from everything else. And the biggest challenge for me in the global south is helping leaders figure out ways to mobilize their people to look outside of the church and into the field. And so we don’t see a lot of that. We don’t see as large as the church movement is in the global south, we don’t see nearly as much in the way of mission workers coming out of the global south. And there should be way more.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:28):
Yeah. Several years ago, God spoke to me. He said, Daniel, the mission field shall become a mission force. And I think that we’re on the cusp of seeing that in the global south where we will see more and more passion for mission because really in many churches in the global south, they have become very mature. They’re mature theologically. They have a lot of passion. And so now I think that if they will catch the vision of the Great Commission, we will evangelize many parts of the world that used to be Christian and now need a new witness of
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (13:08):
Christ. Yeah, I think you’re completely on track, and I think it makes sense in the greater context of what we’re seeing all over the place. I think that’s the big challenge for the global south. It’s getting people to get out. I think part of that challenge is maybe because the global South has been accustomed to receiving in the way of investment and funding and all that sort of thing. So having a leadership mindset that says, in order for the great commission to continue, we need to take the lead and do this. That’s a big deal. But we were with a bunch of young adult leaders in Cape Town in March, and many of them raised money to get there by telling people that they would be investing in missions. And so my word to them was, coming to this training in this conference is not the mission if you don’t leave here and get involved in the mission and this wouldn’t have been worth a thing.
(14:25):
So we conflate often being a part of conversations about mission with the mission itself. And that happens a lot in the global south, in the west and in the north it’s a different picture. You have a cooling down, if you will, of the church movement. You have a loss of steam in evangelism and mission. Churches are generally decreasing in size. Denominations in particular losing many people. You can point to Europe, but in the US this is true as well. And so the kind of work that we do than in the West has more to do with awakening people to their faith and their calling.
(15:14):
We want the same results wherever we are in the world, but we realize the challenge in the west and the north is different than the challenge in the South. And so we try to respond accordingly to that. So one of our guys that we bring with us, and a lot of what we do does these talks on the Holy Spirit, DNA in the Wesleyan movement. And so you have people that have been Methodists or Wesleyans for their whole lives and never understood how rich a theology of the Holy Spirit we have. And so then you get to minister the Holy Spirit over pastors that have been pastoring for years and never been baptized in the Holy Spirit. And so you go from that to, okay, now this is what evangelism could look like. And there’s sort of an awakening the mission versus mobilizing the mission in the south.
(16:11):
And we do that primarily with pastors, younger pastors, usually under 35 through a ministry called Ordered of the Flame. So we gather pastors in this community, invest in them in the area of mission and evangelism, and then invite them into cohorts afterwards where there can be some accountability around what they’re doing. And then we do have a ministry called Metanoia, and that’s with young adult leaders. We’re getting ready to launch a separate ministry out of metanoia that’s with marketplace leaders. What does it look like to be involved in mission and ministry and in faith sharing ministry in the marketplace, in your business, your career in the public square? What does that look like for people who aren’t professional ministry people? So that’s something that we’re involved in as well. And so we do these wherever we are invited churches, people in these different parts of the world will invite us to come and we partner with them in ways that make sense for continuity of the ministry afterwards. And then we offer a way for them to connect online through an online community platform that we’ve developed called We four 19. And people can join in over there, find resources, webinars, and all kinds of things. So that’s how we spend a lot of our time.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:44):
Amen. Is there hope for the Methodist church in America? In my hometown in Tulsa, Oklahoma, there’s just a couple miles from my house. There’s Asbury Methodist Church, which is extremely evangelistic. They have done amazing work in our city, identifying different areas that need help in going and offering the love of Christ and leading people to Jesus. And they’re really significant. And then down the street the other way, there’s a much more liberal Methodist church. And it seems like sometimes there’s issues that are very far from what you would see in the Bible. What do you think the solution is? Is that a fair question?
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (18:33):
Totally
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:35):
Tough to deal with on a podcast.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (18:38):
I have a bit of an outsider view of it, which I think is an advantage not being from the us but having enough time living in the US to kind of understand what’s going on and the way I feel about, and I would say not just the Methodist church in the US but the more established, established historical denominations in general, mainline denominations and so on. I think what we’re going through right now is not a whole lot different than the scene that John Wesley found himself in England in the 17 hundreds, which was a church with all the trappings and the lookings of church, but without the spirit and a lukewarm faith, a socially acceptable faith. I think it’s Alan Hirsch that once said that Methodists lost their steam when they decided to become respectable. And I
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:48):
Think there’s something about being an evangelist that you have to leave your respectability at the door. You have to leave it because to go out and you have William Booth, he would send people out in uniforms, they’d make music on the street corners. That’s not really respectable, but it’s what you have to do to get an audience to preach to them about
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (20:07):
Jesus. So to me, that’s exactly right. And so to me, John Wesley, one, he realized mentally and with reason that there’s something wrong. Stuff I’m reading here doesn’t match what I see in practice of the church. And so he, he’s seeking and trying, but there’s a humility about him in that he’s traveling back from Georgia where he was a failed missionary traveling back from Georgia, and he’s on a boat and there’s this big storm and
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:49):
Meets the Moravians.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (20:50):
He meets the Moravians and instead of a pride of I know how to do things, he couldn’t help but be curious about why is it that these folks are not afraid to die right now and I’m afraid to die? And we’re both Christians. There’s something about them that I want. And so he has an awakening experience at Aldersgate, which is the heart strangely warmed experience. But what few people know is he actually went and visited with the Moravians Count Zinzendorf and learned from them. So in the Methodist discipleship system, bands were like the smaller group of people three to five that would ask each other tough questions about their sin and about how they’re dealing with their family and how their soul and how they’re serving and how they’re giving and all that sort of thing. And their prayer life. And he learned to do bands with the Moravians shamelessly, copies it and starts using it in the Methodist
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:55):
Movement very effectively in the method very
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (21:56):
Effectively. And so there was a humility there where he’s not afraid to pick up stuff that seemed to be working with other people. And I think in the world today, I think Methodists could learn a great deal from the charismatic movement and the Pentecostals around the world who have no trouble with evangelism, and they’re very bold and rediscover the power of the Holy Spirit.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:30):
I mean, that really was why the Holy Spirit was given. I mean, acts one, eight, you’ll receive power after the Holy Spirit comes upon you to be my witnesses. That’s right. And so the whole encounter with the Holy Spirit is what gives the believer the power, the ability to go out and be bold and witness. And we see that on the day of Pentecost where Peter we talked about earlier, he denied Christ went out and preached, and 3000 people were saved that day because he had been filled with the
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (22:58):
Power of Holy Spirit. It wasn’t because he was a skilled preacher, right? It was entirely the work of the Holy Spirit. So to me, that’s it. If there’s hope for the church, it lies in leaders willing to humble themselves to realize, one, we have a problem, two, we don’t. While in our heritage, there are solutions within our heritage. Right now we’re not living within solutions. And so who is it around us that seems to be alive and what can we learn from them? And then you apply your theology and your way of thinking and you innovate and you do all kinds of things. But I think where Methodists and Anglicans and Presbyterians have been learning from others and not afraid to innovate, I’ve seen a lot of promise. Many churches, just like the Asbury Methodist Church in Tulsa, I could point to a number of churches just doing really great ministry. I would say their exception, not the rule right now, but I don’t think it’s a Methodist thing. I think it’s a church in general thing. But in particular, mainline denominations have struggled to recover their identity.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:21):
I’ve made an observation as I’ve traveled around the world. You have different types of countries around the world. So you have the countries that were colonies of Great Britain, so places like the United States, like Australia, like Canada, even. You had an influence of Great Britain here in Africa where in Zambia at one time,
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (24:48):
They still drive on the left side, they still drive, which is
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:50):
So weird, Kenya. Okay, so that’s one type of country. Then you have another type of country that was really strongly influenced by Roman Catholicism. So Brazil would be an example of that. Like Dominican Republic, a lot of central and South America had a strong Roman Catholic presence. And then you have the Francophone countries that were colonized by the French. And I was just in Congo a couple weeks ago, and it was colonized by Belgium and really mistreated in many ways. And so you have these three different types of countries, the Francophone, you have the Roman Catholic, and then you have the Anglican, the people that were colonized by Great Britain. And you see the difference in how the countries are like the Francophone countries often are very poor. And I think it goes back to the French Revolution where they went into the churches and they turned them into cathedrals of human reason instead of worshiping God.
(26:10):
And that spread as France spread its colonies around the world, and where you see it really vividly is like Dominican Republic in Haiti. Haiti was settled by the French, Dominican Republic was more Roman Catholic, and when you look at it on a map, the Haitian side is brown because they’ve burned all the trees. The Dominican side is lush and green. And so there was a blessing I think that came from God during the Methodist. What John Wesley did changed the course of history, and as it spread, you really saw the blessing of God come on many nations because of what impact Wesley had on spreading the gospel. And you see in Roman Catholic countries, you see they’re not as bad off as some of the francophone countries, but I think you can really trace in some ways what God has done through the ministry of John Wesley. What do you think about that theory? It is kind of interesting looking at how different countries are.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (27:38):
Yes, and I would say you can easily point that to the, it’s been studied, the Protestant work ethic and what that did in terms of economic development countries that took on the Protestant work ethic. I don’t know how much to do with John Wesley. That part had, right. England was a Protestant country before John Wesley. I say the revival I think is by the mid 18 hundreds, I believe one out of every three Americans was a Methodist, which is absolutely bonkers. Right?
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:25):
When Francis Asbury came to America, I think there was something like 200 Methodists in the whole country, and by the time he died, it was like half a million
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (28:33):
And there were a hundred thousand in England. When
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:38):
John Wesley, I mean, when you have the stories of Francis Asbury going out on the frontier, the frontier men in America were extremely rough. I mean, they were drinking, they were out there just on the edge of, and the circuit writers would come in and start preaching to them and really turn sinners into saints. And that had to have an impact on the spread of America. Yeah,
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (29:07):
Absolutely. So I think you can say, well, definitely religious movements had a lot to do with that. The type of colonization had a lot to do with that. Africa and a lot of South America were what you would call exploitation colonies. And so even today, there are signs of that, like the railroad system in Brazil, most railroads go west to east. Very few of them go north to south. Why? Because they were moving goods to the ocean, to the port, to ship to Portugal, and then Portugal was using that as currency to purchase industrial goods from England and from other places. The same with Spanish colonization. Colonization in North America was different. It wasn’t colonization out of exploitation. It was people looking for a different kind of life. And so your attitude towards development and building things is just different when it comes to that.
(30:23):
But the effect of mission, sort of the missional evangelistic mindset, the Methodist movement, and a few others, I would say have definitely marked what society looks like in the US and certainly in Great Britain. Man, you said the change of in history and in Great Britain, there was a huge issue with drunkenness. A lot of mine working was one of the main things, and there were no labor laws back then. You can trace many of the early labor laws to Methodists, vowing for or fighting for better, for human dignity, for human dignity. John Wesley wrote a book, an entire book on health, a book of medicine, and a lot of the things that he wrote are still things that we utilize today because it was a gospel for the whole person. It wasn’t we’re going to just save your soul. You’re going to save your soul, but your life is going to be different.
(31:48):
You’re going to become healthier. You’re going to stop drinking, and therefore you won’t beat your wife anymore and therefore your kids will grow up to be healthy people. It is just all these things, which to me is the definition of revival. Revival is something that gets stirred up in the hearts of Christians. It has an impact on the entire society, and it starts in the church, but then it affects society in general. And when you see societies changing, then you go, yeah, that’s revival right there. So I mean, that was in the west. In the West, I would say probably the last great revival. You have the great awakenings in the us, but nothing that was like society shifting in the way that the Wesleyan movement is now. You see signs of that in other places in the world underground church in China, what that’s doing in that culture in society. You see the church growth in India and what’s happening there. There’s many places in the world that are just experiencing social change because of revival in the church. And
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:06):
So yeah, last summer I got to preach at a little tiny town up in the Nebraska area, and I was invited by a female Methodist pastor from India.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (33:23):
Oh, that’s
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:23):
Cool. And so she had come
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (33:26):
How unusual, right
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:27):
From India, I think one of the Methodist schools had given her a scholarship. She’s come over and studied, and then they put her in this little tiny town and made her the pastor of the church. And there were like 10 people in the church, which is a little tiny church. And the first thing she did when she got there is she went to all the other pastors in the city. There were seven different denominations. And so she went to the Baptist pastor, the Lutheran pastor, and she says, in India, we get together and pray. And so she said, we need to start praying for our city. And so she gathered these pastors and she was a fireball, and she gathered them together and they started to pray every week together. Then after several months of praying, she says, you know what we did back in India is we would have a revival where all the churches would work together. We need to have a revival in our city. So she challenged the churches, let’s have a revival. And they called me in as their revival evangelist, and some of the churches were like, I’m not sure who this guy is, and we’re a little hesitant, but we saw revival in that city and it was because this Indian Methodist pastor female was just on fire and brought a fire to the entire city.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (34:58):
Yeah, that’s amazing. It’s really cool. Yeah. What’s great about that is that as a female minister, I mean just saying that an Indian female minister is already a big deal because it’s culturally not something that would be typical. So what an incredible story.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:22):
And so I’m just really excited. I think in talking about the different movements, I think it just shows the need for a new move of God in our time.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (35:33):
Yeah, you see signs of it though. I feel, man,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:39):
God is
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (35:39):
Moving. Yeah. I’ve been talking about this with some friends, especially since I had been thinking some of this, but it didn’t become a theme of conversations with others until the outpouring at Asbury University in 23, so last year, early last year, and
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:08):
Did you get to go to that?
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (36:09):
No. See, I was heading out to uba. I didn’t get
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:12):
A chance to go, but I mean, it was so neat to see so many young people there. It
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (36:16):
Was just
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:16):
Worshiping the Lord.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (36:17):
Well, what doesn’t make the headlines is the fact that that sort of thing is happening in all kinds of places around the world right now. There’s just a fresh something going on. Daniel, wherever we’ve been in the last three years or so, we have seen signs of awakening, particularly with young leaders, pastors, and lay folks, just humility about them, a hunger about them, and a lot of repentance and realization their sins. So what I realized is in the places where we go, where we’ve had these events, we are not the ones causing anything. Neither is it a move of the spirit that is primarily through us, but we’re kind of riding a wave of something that God’s already doing there, and we can’t quite put a finger on it, but it just feels different, I would say over the last three years. It just feels different, and I keep hearing that from people that are not a part of our movement at all, who are saying, I was in this place and I was like, man, it just feels different. There’s just something going on. So I guess we’ll have to shoot another one of these in 10 years to talk about it and say, did something actually happen or not? But I don’t know. I have a feeling that there’s something fresh going on, and it’s transnational. It is not in one country and
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:10):
It doesn’t seem to have any identifiable leader.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (38:13):
No, no.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:14):
There’s no one who’s leading it. It’s a divine move of the Holy Spirit.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (38:19):
Absolutely. Absolutely.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:22):
It’s something that’s kind of happening under,
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (38:25):
And what a beautiful thing that is. We’re in an age of celebrity where anybody with a phone and a camera can become a celebrity of sorts, an influencer or something. How cool is it that God would choose to move in a season like this in the world in a way that’s sort of faceless, go to places, and it’s just neat to see God doing stuff and nobody claims it. Everybody’s just happy to be a part of it. Amen. And that’s cool. That’s better than all the division we’re used to, isn’t it? Amen. Yeah. Well,
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:05):
Let’s finish up today by just praying together.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (39:07):
Yeah, that’d be awesome.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:08):
Would you just pray that God would raise up more great evangelists around the world? Yes,
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (39:16):
Absolutely.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:16):
That we would see God pour out his spirit upon all the different movements around the world.
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (39:21):
Yeah. Let’s pray and I invite those that are watching, even though it’s not live to pray this prayer with us. I think as we humble ourselves, whether it’s on listening to the podcast or watching it on YouTube, we can invite people to join us in prayer as well. Yeah. Let’s pray. God, we are humbled that a God like you would invite people, even us to be a part of your mission in this world. And God, we’re just in awe of who you are and what you’re all about. God, we thank you for your reconciling work around the world where person by person, heart by heart, community by community, nation by nation, you are in the mission of bringing people back to you and reconciling them to yourself through your son Jesus, through so God. We know that right now there’s a rising hunger for something more in this world, and God, you say this in your word, that the fields are just full of fruit and there’s nobody to pick it up.
(40:43):
The laborers are few. And so God, we pray right now that you would raise a new generation of laborers, of workers, of passionate followers of Jesus that would go out into the world boldly, humbly in ways that reach to the heart of each community that they go to God. We pray right now that you would call people who you are preparing that they would awaken to your mission in this world. God, we pray that you would lift up leaders not just here in Africa and not just in North America, but all over the world, God, that your mission would be accomplished from people from all over the world going to all over the world, and God, that the world may know who we are because of our unity God, because of the common spirit that we share with one another and God because of the humility that we come into this mission.
(41:47):
God, it is your mission. It’s your church. It’s your spirit. We just get to be a part of it. God, so would you do that? Awaken us, God, revive our hearts even as you do this with those that are still yet to be called, and God allow us to be a part of this beautiful movement that you’re beginning in the world right now. We want to be a part of this fresh outpouring of your Holy Spirit, so do it in our hearts. Do it in the hearts of those that are watching or listening to this and in their communities and in their families. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (42:26):
Paulo, Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I just have one more question. Someone’s listening and they’re from one of the Wesleyan traditions. They have a heart for evangelism, and they want to get to know you to connect with some of the resources that you guys have. What’s your website? What’s the best way for them to get
Paulo Lopes | World Methodist Evangelism (42:43):
Connected? You can find us online@worldmethodist.org or you can follow our handle on Instagram at World Methodist, which is our handle for most of our social media, and if you really want to get into it, I invite you to go to your app store and look for we W four nine, we four 19, and that is our online community platform. We hold live events, webinars. I need to get you to do a webinar for us on evangelism. That would be amazing. I’d love to. We’ll have to set that up. We do monthly webinars, book clubs. We’re putting out videos, podcasts and all sorts of things, and then leaders get to connect with one another on the app as well. People from all over the world. I think we’re up to 26 countries right now on the app, and we launched just a few months ago, so we’re excited about that. But yeah, those were the ways to connect with us. If you want to reach out to me, you can email me at paulo@worldmethodist.org and I’d love to connect. Daniel. Thank you so much for having me, man. Been a joy.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (43:53):
Well, thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.