Advice for Young Ministers | Christopher Alam

Connect with Evangelist Christopher Alam: www.pentecostalfire.com

Transcript: 

Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And today we have Brother Christopher Alam with us once again. And we are in the nation of Mozambique preaching the gospel together. Amen. And I decided to take this opportunity to ask Brother Alam about what God has revealed to him. And so thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Thank you, brother.

Christopher Alam (00:29):
Thank you, brother.

Evangelist Daniel King (00:30):
Okay. Brother Christopher, you are an evangelist. You have been serving the Lord now for many years, and you have been doing crusades across Africa and around the world for many years. And here in Mozambique, we got to meet Seth de Fin. He’s a 19 year old. His father pastors a great church called Acts Church in South Africa, in Johannesburg. And Seth de Fin, he went to the Christ for All Nations School of Ministry, but he has a calling to be an evangelist. And so you’ve invited him this summer. He’s come with you several times here to Mozambique and you’ve been pouring your wisdom into him. And so I was thinking, what is some of the wisdom that you would give to a young evangelist? What life lessons do you think every young evangelist needs to know?

Christopher Alam (01:36):
Well, while you were talking, the first thing that came to me was how I started. Here I was a young Muslim kid, had never even seen a Bible, nothing. And there was an older brother with the Jesus people and he said, “Come, come with me. Come let’s go out.” And I said, “Do what?” He said, “Hand out tracks.” I said, “Well, okay, I can hand these out, but what will I say to people when they ask me questions?” He said, “Just share with them what Jesus has done for you. You may not know a lot, but you know what Jesus has done for you. You share that. And if they have other questions, just send them to me across the street.” So I said, “Okay.” So that was my first foray into evangelism. So I was out handing out tracks. This is three days after I received Jesus.

(02:25):
So I kept an eye on him, made sure I was parallel to him. He was on the other side of the street. And then I came to a spot on the road and there was no one there. There was no people there and there were a bunch of trees. I remembered the spot. And suddenly I heard an audible voice right behind my head, like someone standing behind me was speaking to me. And I’d never heard an audible voice in my life. And this voice said these exact words in English. And that voice said, “This is what you will do the rest of your life. I will take you all around the world and you will tell people about Jesus.” So at that moment I knew that Jesus was calling me to leave everything and follow him. So I left everything and I began to follow Jesus.

(03:16):
I went full-time. So people ask me, “How long have you been in full-time ministry?” I said, three days after I got saved, I left everything. And

Evangelist Daniel King (03:25):
How many years is that now?

Christopher Alam (03:27):
50 years.

Evangelist Daniel King (03:28):
50 years. Wow.

Christopher Alam (03:29):
50. It’ll be 51 years in December. Wow.

Evangelist Daniel King (03:34):
And how old were you when you got saved?

Christopher Alam (03:36):
I was 21.

Evangelist Daniel King (03:36):
21. So you’re 71 now. I was

Christopher Alam (03:39):
72.

Evangelist Daniel King (03:39):
I’m

Christopher Alam (03:40):
72.

Evangelist Daniel King (03:40):
72. And you’ve been walking with Jesus now for 51

Christopher Alam (03:44):
Years. So that was the beginning of my ministry. And because I didn’t know much, so the first people I went to were hippies and drug addicts and drunks, that’s the kind of people I went to and would win them for Jesus. We would serve them, cook food for them, take care of their medical needs, whatever. That was what we did. We sleep in our sleeping bags on the beach. Sometimes we had no place to go to. So that was my introduction to ministry. It was a passion for souls. I was not looking for a quote unquote ministry or a platform or a pulpit. I didn’t even know that you could be paid for doing this job. We live by faith. I remember the first day when I was really hungry and I stood on the street handing out tracks and my mentors, those Jesus people, they were fanatics.

(04:39):
They said, “If you need anything, just stop and ask Jesus.” So I stopped as a Muslim country and I said, “Jesus, I’m hungry. I’d like something to eat.” And I kept on handing out tracks. Within 10 minutes, a man walked up to me, a Muslim guy. He said, “Are you telling people about Jesus?” I said, “Yes.” He says, “I want to know about Jesus. Can I take you out to lunch while you talk to me?” And I though, wow, this thing worked. And that’s how I learned to believe God. When I was on the streets

(05:11):
Sharing the gospel with souls, with people, that’s how I learned. So all this about organized evangelism and the ministry, the platform, the team, the lights, the equipment, that came years later. So I tell people, don’t look for a ministry, but be driven by a passion to see people come to Jesus. That’s where it starts. It’s not about what we in America call a ministry, an organization. You have your own typewriter and a microphone and a platform. That’s not it. Then we got it all wrong. And that’s why many people fail because they are not driven by a passion for souls. And so I remember when I was in prison and the Muslim, the government told me that unless you go back to Islam, we are going to kill you. And I said, okay, fine. You want to kill me, you can kill me. And I said, if you kill me, I know where I’m going.

(06:05):
I know I’m going to go to heaven. And I’d lived such a difficult life. I had been to war. I left my home when I was 13, joined the army. I had a very difficult life and I really, honestly, I had a death wish. I wanted to die. Now that I was saved, my sins are forgiven. I’m going to go to heaven. Good. But then that word, that sentence came back to me, came back to me every day. I will take you all around the world and you will tell people about Jesus. So I though, okay, they’re saying they’re going to kill me if I don’t go back to Islam and I’m not going to go back to Islam, but I can’t die. I will live because God has a purpose. And soon I was out in prison. So here I’m sitting today. So my fundamental ethos was to follow Jesus.

(06:51):
That’s the first thing. For the greatest thing I want in my life, all this ministry, all this is gone, I just want to follow Jesus. I want to spend time at the feet of Jesus. And after that, I want to win souls for Jesus because I want others to experience the same joy, the same thing that happened to me when I received Christ. I remember how my darkness was turning to light. I want people to experience that. So that has to be our fundamental ethos. Now, as time grows, if you’re faithful, your ministry will grow. There’ll be people who will see the hand of God on your life and they want to support you. And I’ve experienced that. People want to support us. Now I’m going to say something. I’m not saying it’s wrong, but this is the way it has been for me. Up to today, I have never written to a church asking if they would like to support me, but we just sow seed and every pastor who supports me has told me, we want to support you because the Lord told me to.

(08:00):
And I would rather that it was that way than me soliciting funds because nothing wrong with doing that. If that’s the way God says, then it’s okay. But I always have this thing that if I have to ask somebody to help me, tomorrow they can also drop me because there’s someone better than me where they feel that they would rather sow there and get a better return.

(08:25):
And I said, Lord, at the end of the day, people who get saved in my ministry, they will worship you. They won’t worship me. So if I have a small or a big ministry, it doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that I’m taken care of, my family’s taken care of. We have enough clothes and enough food. We have a roof of our heads because there’s nothing in this world we can take with us. So we have that kind of mentality. Then we also realize that the work of God should be done with a measure of dignity. I’m not talking about being prideful, but see, we evangelists, we are servants of the king. We tell people about the king of kings and the Lord of Lords, and he has promised to take care of us. So there are certain things that are very important, how we raise money.

(09:16):
Firstly, we are not beggars. So when I go to a church and a pastor says, “Brother, we want to support you. How much would your next crusade cost?” Then I tell them and they say, “Okay, we should be able to do half of that or we’ll pay for a whole crusade.” I said, “Thank you.” And so that’s how it works. But I’m very careful that we should be very careful that we don’t lower ourselves by always saying, “Oh, I need $15,000. I need five.” We are not beggars. We are servants of the king. Not only that, but as evangelists who actually face sinners and tell them about Jesus, I’m not saying this in pride, but we are his top shelf servants because we are the ones out there telling people about Jesus more than anyone else does. So we have to understand that God has a great deal of interest in what we are doing and in what he…

(10:15):
So what we are doing is very important. So we always have to be mindful of that and we should carry ourselves with class. So when you’re with a pastor, sometimes when I go and visit a church and I tell the pastor and his wife, let me take you out for dinner, take them to a nice restaurant because I don’t want them to feel, oh, he’s an evangelist. What does he want? So we should always be thinking of what we can put inside the church rather than what we can take out of the church. And when we have that attitude, we’ll find out that God speaks to people and they will step in the gap and help us when we have that kind of attitude. So never be a beggar. We should be careful how we…

Evangelist Daniel King (11:03):
I feel a little bit of conviction because I must admit I have begged a few times and I have written to churches and asked them to support me. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t, but I like what you’re saying. I think it’s true. You have to trust God. God is the one who supplies.

Christopher Alam (11:23):
The only people I ask are people with whom I have a close relationship who have actually said to me, I’ve had friends who have said, “Brother Christopher, I’m not a prophet, so I don’t know when you have a need, but if you have a need, please feel free to tell me. If I have it, I will gladly help you because I believe in you. If I don’t have it, I will tell you I don’t have it with the hope that won’t ruin our relationship.” Now I’ve got a few people, four or five people in my life who have said that, but that being said, I’m very careful not to abuse that relationship. So there are some people like that who have not asked anything for three years, four years, but then there’s others who will say, “Brother Christopher, do we have a need?” I said, “Yeah, I have a need.

(12:11):
So what do you need?” “Well, I’m going to feed pastors and I need 10 grand and they’ll give it to me. But here’s the thing. I feel very confident when I beg money for somebody else. So if Pastor Daniel, Brother Daniel is going to feed a thousand pastors, oh, I would rob a bank for him, but I wouldn’t do it for myself. But that’s just me.

(12:33):
So during COVID, the Lord told me to step in and he said, Feed these hungry pastors in Africa. And you know what? I stepped out. God helped us. We sent over $450,000 during COVID

Evangelist Daniel King (12:47):
To

Christopher Alam (12:47):
Feed pastors in Africa. And we had big needs ourselves. And the Lord told me that he who gave me the scripture, “He who refreshes others will be refreshed.” I said, “Lord, we have needs too.” The Lord said, “Listen, if your needs are not met, you will still survive. But these African pastors, if their needs are not met, their kids will starve to death. So I want you to feed them.” I said, “I’m just an evangelist. Nobody tithes to me.” And the Lord said, “You do it.” So I stepped out and people began to write to me. One pastor, he sent me $40,000. He said, “I want to help you do this.” So we did this. We gave out over $450,000. Not only that, the government had a payroll protection thing, remember that?

(13:34):
So we asked the government for $25,000 for payroll protection for our salaries, but we had so much of money that I went to my bank manager. I said, “I want to pay this money back because it came to the government.” He says, “Pastor,” because he was not a Christian. He said, Pastor, you want to give the money back? “I said,” Yeah. “He says,” No, no, it’s your money to keep. The government isn’t… “I said,” No, I want the government to see that God has blessed us because we are his servants. “He said,” I know you’ve been sending out wires with hundreds of thousands of dollars to Africa during COVID. “I said,” Yeah, I know because God has blessed us and so we want to give this money back. “So he find out the procedure and we gave that money back. So I believe we should transcend money and live in it.

(14:28):
You know what I’m saying? I’m not talking about being prideful, but always remind ourselves we are servants of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords. We are ambassadors for Christ. And so whenever things happen, we step up to be a blessing to others.

Evangelist Daniel King (14:48):
Talk to me about integrity. Integrity with your money, integrity with how you report results, and then personal character and integrity in your own life.

Christopher Alam (14:59):
Well, one of the greatest things when it comes to me is my wife. My wife is the kind of person, and I’m sure your wife is like that too. If you ask me when I got saved, when I came out of darkness into light, I will tell you. If you ask Brita, she will say,” I don’t know. I grew up in church. I’ve always loved Jesus from the time I remember.

Evangelist Daniel King (15:28):
But

Christopher Alam (15:28):
What I can tell you, I did get baptized with the Holy Spirit. “So I always joke as if she was born saved because she doesn’t really have a story,” I lived like this and then I got saved. “She was

(15:40):
Always… So because she’s grown up in that, it’s such a part of her blood, her DNA. So she’s very, very particular. So let me give you an example. So sometimes I go somewhere and the Lord speaks to someone. Someone says,” Brother Christopher, here’s $100 for you to buy something. “Great, $100 someone gave to me, not to the ministry. So I come back home, I’ll say to Brita, I said,” Somebody gave me $100. “”Really? Is it to you or to the ministry?” I said, “No, it’s not to the ministry. It’s to me.” She said, “Are you sure?” I said, “Yes, I’m sure.” They said, “Can you face me and look in my eyes?” And I’ll say, “Yes, it is for me.” She said, “Why do you look guilty?” And I said, “Because you make me feel guilty by cross-examine me.” Then she begins to cry. She says, “Honey, God has blessed us so much over the years and we had nothing.

(16:38):
We came to America with a few suitcases. God has blessed us. I don’t want to lose God’s hand on our life.”

(16:46):
I tell guys, young evangelists, very important who you marry. If you marry a woman who likes nice and fancy things, you are sunk because she wouldn’t like you to make sacrifices. She wants that high standard of living. I have decided from the onset, that’s not me. I’m not going to live for those things. When I go to heaven, I’ll walk in streets of gold. I’m happy with that. You got to have integrity because God looks at that. God sees man looks out there outward appearance, but God sees the heart. So we are very, very meticulous and careful with money. Now when it comes to crusades, I’m very careful because years ago, 1989 it was, man, that was like 37

Evangelist Daniel King (17:34):
Years ago. I was nine years old at that

Christopher Alam (17:36):
Time. I was with Pastor Ray McCauley in Joburg sitting in his office and he said… And he liked me. I preached in his church everywhere. We are good friends. He used to call me, “Hey, Pat Boone,” because I used to wear these white patent leather shoes when preaching. He says, “Hey, Pat Boone, let me tell you something.” He says that, “You went to Zomba in Malawi and you said in your newsletter, so many thousands were saved.” I said, “Yeah, I did.” He said, “How do you know that?” I said, “It’s an estimate I make. I could be wrong, but it’s an estimate.” He said, “You shouldn’t do that. Why?” He says, “There’s this woman in another city about one hour away, an English woman.

(18:19):
She wrote to me, Christopher Alam says he had so many people say, but it’s not true.” I said, “Really? Why would she do that?” Because he said, “Well, she has this thing. She has a little church of 70 people, but she wants everyone to feel she’s the biggest thing going. She calls herself apostle and she’s the biggest thing going in Malawi, and anyone comes to something that she thinks is bigger than hers, then she will put that down.” And so I said, “She wasn’t even there.” He said, “I know, but that’s her.” She wrote to people and said, “Christopher Alam is not telling the truth.” He says, “You know what? When you give out figures like that numbers, you become a target because there’ll be people who will say that they had more people than you, and there’ll be others who say,” Well, he didn’t have as many people as he claims he did.

(19:13):
“So I said,” So what should I do? “He said,” Well, what you do is this, just put a photo of your crowd and just write about the crusade and let people make their own assessment. If the thing is a million people or 500 people, that’s on them, not on you. “So since 1989, I have never put numbers. He said,” Don’t play the numbers game. “So I have never put numbers. So many people came or so many people were there because only the Lord knows the numbers.

(19:49):
Brother Reinard used to say, he said to me,” The only true bookkeeping of souls is in heaven. “So if people ask me personally, like we are sitting, how many people do you think were there? I can give them an estimate, but again, my guess is anybody’s guess. But what we do look at is what happens in the churches after we are gone. Six months later, what do the pastors say? That’s what speaks to us. So that’s why I think I mentioned to you when it comes to decision cards, so people ask me how many decision cards do you have? I’m afraid to tell them. So whereas others will say,” Oh, we have 50,000 cards. “I’ll probably say we have 1500 cards because we don’t take everyone’s cards. So I’m very quiet with numbers. Even the assemblies of God ask me,” What are your

Evangelist Daniel King (20:37):
Results? “Everyone wants to know numbers. Yeah.

Christopher Alam (20:39):
I don’t give

Evangelist Daniel King (20:39):
Them any

Christopher Alam (20:40):
Numbers because we just count differently. Yeah.

Evangelist Daniel King (20:43):
I think it’s a result of a business mindset. Everyone wants return on investment, ROI. If we put money into it, what is coming out of it? But I think the business mindset is different than a kingdom mindset. We’re building a kingdom, the kingdom of God. And

Christopher Alam (21:01):
It’s not for us. It’s for the glory of

Evangelist Daniel King (21:02):
Jesus.

Christopher Alam (21:05):
But when it comes to finances, I tell people, build relationships who will support you even if your ministry is small or big, but they support you because God tells you to. I would rather somebody say, rather, the Lord told me to support you. How can I help you? And because such people will stay with me, even if I have a small crusade or a big crusade, it wouldn’t make them because they know me, they know my heart. If you’re an evangelist, people want to know you and they want to know your heart. And if they know your heart, they know you, then they will never leave you. They will support you.

Evangelist Daniel King (21:41):
Talk to me about the importance of developing personal character, because you’ve known some very big ministries that ended up falling, that have had issues. Talk to me about how you stay in the game over the course of a long lifetime.

Christopher Alam (22:01):
My ethos has been, especially people might say this is not right coming from a word of faith person where every confession is about how grand was and how big it is. But I’ve always said, I said, Lord, keep me low. Keep me small. Keep me at your feet because that’s where I feel the safest.That’s where I feel nobody’s judging me by my numbers or how big my ministry is because when I’m with the Father, I’m always loved because of my obedience. So I always say, Lord, keep me… And before every service, I’ve said this for years. I said, Lord, hide me behind the cross and let the people see no man but Jesus only. And I’ve done this for years and the Lord has said to me years ago, years ago before I moved to the US, he said, I’m going to use you if you will share the things that I do in your ministry only to bring glory to Jesus and to encourage others.

(23:04):
Don’t tell stories and testimonies to raise funds or to draw attention to ourselves, but that’s a heart matter. So we always have to recalibrate ourselves and make sure we stay in that. Stay humble. One of the things I forgot to tell you, asking about Brother Hagen, the greatest thing about him, people ask me, “What’s the greatest thing about him?” I have never met a man so small in his own eyes. And he said that to me. He says, “Christopher, remember…” No Christopher, he used to call me Doc for whatever reason. He used to say, “Doc, always stay small in your own eyes. If you stay small in your own eyes, God will always use you.” So I’ve always wanted to stay small in my own eyes. And I’ve seen others who want to be big in the eyes of people. I’ve seen them come. I’ve seen them go.

(23:54):
So stay small in your own eyes. And now I’m 72. I always say my prayer has changed a little bit. I said, “Lord, you’ve carried me so far. A few years I have left, please don’t let me mess it up.”

Evangelist Daniel King (24:09):
If you could just make it a few more years, Joe. Yeah.

Christopher Alam (24:11):
A few more years. Let me not mess it up. And let me not be proud that I have made it so far because humility is like a little wisp. Just when you think you have it, you have already lost it. But it’s good to stay humble and stay small in your own side and say, “We are doing this for Jesus.” And at the same time, have audacious faith, believe God for miracles, believe God for souls. We must do that. When we say that, “Lord, keep me low, keep me humble,” that doesn’t mean we believe God less for souls and for miracles. When it comes to believing God for souls, believing God for miracles and deliverance, we should be out there believing God. That has nothing to do with pride because that tells people who Jesus is. But what tells people who I am is how I conduct myself when I get off the platform and I’m with others, big people.

Evangelist Daniel King (25:08):
What other advice would you give to young ministers?

Christopher Alam (25:11):
Yeah, I would just say stay humble, stay teachable. That’s an important thing. And stay submitted to your pastor. Be part of a local church. At the worship center in Lancaster County where I believe my pastor, Sam Smucker, every opportunity I get, I spend time with him, do a breakfast with him. When I moved to the church, I told pastor years ago, I said, “Pastor, you are my pastor.” When we came from Sweden, I said, “It is your job description to watch over me. So if you see anything wrong in my doctrine or in how I treat my wife and my kids, or even things, if you see one of my kids dating the wrong kind of person, you have to tell me.” He said, “Well, Americans don’t do that.” I said, “I know that. You got this big God called personal space.” I said, “I don’t have a personal space.

(26:05):
You are my pastor and it is your job.

(26:09):
And if I mess up, it’s your fault because you didn’t warn me.” I said, “You have to warn me. You have to speak to me.” I said, “And I promise you, I will not get mad at you because you corrected me, so feel free to correct me.” I think it’s good to have that kind of relationship with your pastor and tell him that you really mean it, because that’s your first line of defense. Anyone can say, “Oh, I listen to God, but who knows whether you do?” But listen, be submitted to your pastor, meet him as often as you can. Secondly, be submitted to your peers. The Bible tells about how we should submit to one another. So you have peers, you have friends. I have peers, friends. My closest friend in the ministry in the US is a guy called John Nuzo, Pittsburgh, and John and I are close, and if I do something, he’ll tell me.

(27:02):
He’ll tell me. And so that’s very important to have that kind of relationship with your peers in ministry, your friends, so they’re not afraid to tell you because that is a… I’ve seen great men of God with great ministries fall because they had friends who were afraid to tell them because they were afraid of the, how do you say, the kickback or the

Evangelist Daniel King (27:27):
Pushback

Christopher Alam (27:27):
They would receive.

Evangelist Daniel King (27:28):
Yeah. Well, that is tremendous advice. Brother Christopher, if someone wants to know more about your ministry or maybe support your crusades, what is your website where they can find more information? The

Christopher Alam (27:43):
Website is www.pentecostalfire.com. Pentecostal Fire is one word. There’s no dash, there’s no dot there. Pentecostalfire.com, not. Org or. Net, but pentecostalfire.com. And I can be reached on WhatsApp, and I don’t mind if this is for evangelist giving my number.

Evangelist Daniel King (28:08):
It will be public, so… Oh,

Christopher Alam (28:09):
That’s good. It’s okay. I’m not… Well, you can call my office if

Evangelist Daniel King (28:14):
You want. Go to the website, you can find him.

Christopher Alam (28:15):
Yeah, you can go to the website and you can write to my office. And if you want me to talk to me on the phone, you tell my office your number and I will call you back.

Evangelist Daniel King (28:28):
Wonderful.

Christopher Alam (28:29):
We’ll do that.

Evangelist Daniel King (28:29):
Thank you, evangelist alum for being on the Evangelism podcast.

Christopher Alam (28:34):
Thank you, Brother Daniel. It was a privilege and honor.