Radical Faith and the Prayer of Freedom | Beatty Carmichael

Beatty Carmichael is the author of the book, The Prayer of Freedom. He used to attend a cessationist church that did not believe in the gifts of healing, but when he saw God healing people his theology changed. In his book he describes a four step process (repentance of sin, forgiveness, breaking unholy soul ties, and commanding healing) that leads to supernatural healing. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast, we discuss the link between healing and salvation and how evangelists can use healing to bring people to Jesus.

Learn more about Beatty Carmichael: https://getradicalfaith.org/

Order Beatty Carmichael’s book: www.ThePrayerOfFreedomBook.com

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Beatty Carmichael is the author of the book, the Prayer of Freedom. He used to attend a cessationist church that did not believe in the gifts of healing, but when he saw God healing people, his theology changed. In his book, he describes a four-step process that leads to supernatural healing. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, we discuss the link between healing and salvation and how evangelists can use healing to bring people to Jesus. Jesus said, go

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:45):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:08):
Daniel King. Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest, Beatie Carmichael. Thank you so much for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.

Beatty Carmichael (01:24):
Well, thank you Daniel. I’m excited about being here

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:27):
Now. I really love that you have a passion for healing. Nearly two thirds of adults struggle with relationship conflicts, chronic pain, migraines, anxiety, depression, and people these days are looking for freedom. They’re looking for healing, and you have been given a prayer by God that helps them. And so let’s talk a little bit about healing and about your background. Tell me a little bit about why this is so important to you.

Beatty Carmichael (02:00):
Yeah, well, it’s real interesting. I actually come from a line of seven generations, consecutive generations of medical doctors. So these are guys who are healing through the science of medicine. And I never went into medicine. I actually have a small business. We help real estate agents generate listings. Here in the United States. There’s a little company called agent dominator.com. But about nine years ago, the Lord started to really prick in my heart a desire to start to pray for people and to heal them. I started watching some, you may have seen some of these videos like Father of Lights and the Holy Spirit revisited and things of that sort where people were praying and God was instantly and miraculously healing. I came from a legalistic church and never heard anything about that. It was a cessationist church. And so I was blown away. And over the years as we’ll share maybe a little bit more in the story, the Lord started to move me in that direction first with a gift appealing. And then he took it away and taught me how to lead people into a prayer of basically a prayer of repentance and confession. And the same 90% of the people are getting healed with really dramatic stuff. So that’s a really short nutshell of what’s happening over here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:23):
That’s amazing. And so this prayer that God has given you that helps to lead to healing

Beatty Carmichael (03:30):
Is

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:30):
A four step prayer method. And you just quoted 90% success rate, 87% success rate on your website. Why do you feel that this prayer is having such a tremendous impact on helping people to receive healing?

Beatty Carmichael (03:48):
Because it follows exactly what God said to do. See, a lot of times we read the Bible, but we read it with the paradigm glasses on the paradigm that says, this is what it should be saying. So we pass over everything that doesn’t fit that paradigm. And that’s what happened with me. And then as I started to move this direction, I started to see the Bible that was very clear, is very clear in one basic thing on this that sin creates consequence and if you repent of that sin, the consequence gets removed. And we see it throughout scripture in Deuteronomy as the Israelites were about to move into the promised land. Moses is writing God’s writing through Moses technically, and he says, if you do not serve me, if you do not follow me, in other words, if you sin against me, he says, I’m going to bring all of the diseases of Egypt upon you and all kinds of other diseases you’ve never heard about.

(04:50):
Then you see in, I think it’s Psalm 32 or Psalm 38, Daniel is saying, because I did not confess my sins, my body was wasting away. Then you pass forward into the New Testament and Jesus heal this lame man at the pool and he finds him later in the temple and he says, go and send no more that nothing worse may happen to you. Then in one Corinthians 11, Paul is talking to the believers and he said, when you come together to have a dinner of communion, the Lord’s dinner, he says, some of you are not paying attention to what’s happening. You’re rich. You bring all your food and all your drinks. You have poor people. You have a feast and get drunk and they’re starved. He said, that’s why this is a sin by the way, that’s why some of you are weak, others are sick and others have died.

(05:48):
And then you see in James five where he says, call for the elders if any of you are sick. So he’s talking to believers in the new covenant and he says in James five 16, confess your sins and you shall be healed. So the reason this works is because it’s the pattern that God has presented throughout the Bible in terms of guiding his people to say, obey me. There’s consequences, and if you disobey me, simply confess and those consequences disappear. What was really cool, just to delve in on this just a little bit more, when I had the gift of healing, the Lord gave me a gift of healing. I’ve seen hundreds of people heal instantly. That’s how the gift works, right? Glaucoma and pains and all that type stuff. But then when he took it away, he directed.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:38):
Let’s dive into that a little bit.

Beatty Carmichael (06:40):
Okay.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:40):
Why do you feel God gave it to you and then how do you think God took it away? Talk to me a little bit about that.

Beatty Carmichael (06:46):
Yeah, so lemme give you the bigger picture of the story because it is all part of what I’m doing right now with this process. It’s a book I wrote that outlines this whole process for people called the Prayer of Freedom. But the Lord gave me a gift of healing October, 2016 because I came from a legalist at church, a church that said, Lord, please heal this person if it be your will. I really didn’t know if it was God’s will to heal. And so I spent six months studying the scriptures and came to that obvious conclusion. You’re probably going well, duh. But for me it was a little bit new for me that it was God’s will to heal. So I started to, that’s a

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:28):
Great revelation. There’s so many people that are stuck in churches that are really hesitant to even believe that there is a gift of healing and they say God can heal if he wants to, but we don’t really think He really likes to do it very much today and it might happen, but is very rare and I think God is a healer. He wants to heal people.

Beatty Carmichael (07:53):
Well, you know what I found very simply is so if we look at scripture, scripture says that Jesus was the exact imprint of God the Father and Jesus did nothing that was outside of God’s will. Everything Jesus did was God’s will, which means that Jesus represented God’s will on earth and Jesus refused no one for healing that came to him. He healed every single person that came to him. So that tells me that his heart is to heal and my church is a cessation. At my past church, I was there for 35 years and we did not believe that the supernatural gifts existed. They were only for the time of the apostles and then they disappeared. So that was the conviction I came in with on this. But then just like what happened with Peter, if you remember, Peter goes and preaches at Cornelius’s house for those that are tracking along on this, he sees a vision and the comes down with all these unclean animals and God says, all arise, Peter, kill and eat.

(08:59):
He says, no way. I’ve never eaten unclean food. He says, what the father has cleansed no longer consider unclean. So then he gets an invite to go to a Gentiles home named Cornelius. And as he’s preaching the gospel, before they even say, I want to repent, I want to be baptized, the Holy Spirit comes upon them and they all start speaking in tongues. Then Peter comes back to Jerusalem and all of the legalistic Christian Jews come up to him and say, how dare you should never go to the Gentiles because the gospel is only for the Jews. And then Peter said, well, let me tell you what God did. And they changed their doctrine, their understanding of doctrine by observing with empirical data what God was doing. And that’s what happened with me when God started to heal through me. Then I said, well, I guess I was wrong. God is showing me something new. So I’ve changed my doctrine that supernatural gifts are for today. The horrible part about this, the SAT part, I went back to my church because when I started praying for people one third were instantly healed. One third of everyone, I’m degenerative discs, lupus, arthritis, all kinds of just crazy things, mostly in the realm of pain. And when I went back to my church as a mega church, I went to the senior pastor and told him, he said, well, Satan can heal too. Then I said, well, that doesn’t sound right. I’m sharing the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:30):
Why it didn’t do that.

Beatty Carmichael (10:31):
Yeah, it violated his doctrine. So it had to be Satan. I said, well, it can’t be Satan because I’m sharing the gospel. I’m using this as an opening to then share the gospel with people. So I then went to my next senior pastor and he said the same thing. Well, Satan can heal too. I said, okay, I’ll never learn anything from you guys, and I can’t trust anything I’m learning from you guys either if you’re that blind and if you’re willing to reject what’s clearly something supernatural happening simply because it violates doctrine. So that was the beginning of my gift of healing. I started to press in, I guess if you look backwards in my lineage, medical doctors, back in the time of my dad and the sixth generations behind him, they were scientists and they’re constantly experimenting with things to see what worked because they didn’t really understand the human body.

(11:25):
Well, I carry that same scientific approach in marketing. It’s all about science, all about testing and tracking. So I started to do the same thing with my gift of healing because I realized if only one third of the people were getting healed at Jesus had prayed for them, 100% of them would’ve been healed. So what’s different? And so I started press and realizing that there was still room to grow and I saw it increase incrementally a little bit, and then something happened and I went out one day and 90% of the people were healed with more dramatic things than I’d been seeing before. And all it was was fasting.

(12:07):
I fasted for about 36 hours before going out and praying for people and everything opened up. So I then said, Lord, what happened? He said, you were fasting and you carry more authority when you fast. So fast forward, I would go out to people, go out to Walmart and other places like that and just share the gospel, asked to pray for people and then share the gospel if they were not believers. And then the Lord led me into deliverance, which is casting out of demons, right? So here’s another supernatural thing. My other church didn’t believe in either, but yet you start casting these things out and you realize it is true. Now, I know there are different types of deliverance methods. The method I use is I would have the Holy Spirit bring up the first demon spirit that he wanted me to address, and I would interrogate that spirit and ask him, what gives you the legal right to be there?

(13:06):
Because I understood that he had a legal right. And if you can break that right, then you can get him out. So the legal right was 100% of the time an unrepented sin. I remember one guy, he was just in total despair. Everything he was doing in life was just falling apart. He’s 32 years old. And the first spirit that came up was the gatekeeper. He was actually the first one that entered this guy and said, what gave you the legal right? He said, playing with a Ouija board at seven years old. So I went back to Josh, I said, what he’s talking about, he said, I never played with it. I didn’t want to. He said, my sister was playing with the Ouija board and she communicated to me through it. Well, just that little bit of participation was an open door sin, a legal right.

(13:53):
And so I had Josh repent of that and then we could get that spirit out. And so as I started to do deliverance and started to see people being healed through deliverance, and then I’d go out to Walmart and places and I’d see people being healed simply by commanding healing, the Lord started press on me. That is the same thing. It’s the spirit leaving and that’s why it’s so instantaneous. And then so I’m out there praying and got 90% success rate. And in a period of two weeks, this was about three years ago, I went from 90% success rate in healing down to 10. And it startled me, and I don’t know if you’ve ever had a gift, but it’s sort of like something you love to do because it is really, not only is it fun, but it’s meaningful. It’s changing people’s lives. And then you lose the ability to do that and you really go, oh my gosh, what’s gone on?

(14:49):
And you feel a little sorry in yourself that something happened and I can no longer do what Lord’s called me to do. So I asked the Lord, I said, what happened? He said, I took away your gift of feeling. I said, why did you do that? He said, because now I want you to do it based on authority. And when he said that, I understood exactly what he meant. He meant through repentance. So when I would do deliverance with people, I had about a three minute prayer that I would have them repeat after me. That’s nothing but repenting. I repent of this. I forgive people. I have unforgiveness towards, I repent of this and that and this and that. And all the way down the line, it’s just a general blanket prayer of deep repentance. So I would go out to Walmart now and someone needs prayer for healing.

(15:38):
I said, well, can I lead you in short prayer? I would lead them into repentance and then pray for them. And I saw 90% of them heal. As I started to perfect the process and started to figure out what things were, the triggers behind different issues, the Lord guided me to systematize it. And that’s what led into this book that I wrote called The Prayer Freedom, which is basically in the back a worksheet of listing out different categories or types of sins that people may have done over their lives, 18 different categories. And by going through that, people get to repent on their own. I don’t have to be anywhere involved. And I’m seeing 87 to 90% of the people instantly healed everything from mental illnesses like PTSD and anxiety and depression and panic attacks to chronic pain like arthritis and lupus and just pain everywhere that the doctors can’t figure out.

(16:38):
I’m seeing addictions completely clear up. I’m seeing even acute pain like one lady. So I teach in an addiction recovery center, and these ladies have all kinds of issues because if you’ve ever known anyone in addiction, there’s just a lot of other issues in their life that just get heavier and heavier. And one lady had just come through major shoulder surgery where she had been in a car accident three years earlier, but because she didn’t have insurance, she didn’t have any money to have it set and surgery on it. So they literally just gave her a sling and she held it at a right angle and it healed all broken. So then she goes into this addiction recovery center, they have insurance. So she went to the orthopedic surgeon and he said, this is going to be incredibly invasive. I’m going to have to drill through your bones, break them apart, reset them, wire them together, and then you’re going to have at least 12 weeks of recovery and then a long recovery of physical therapy to get that shoulder moving again.

(17:41):
So she was in one of my classes and I was just leading the class into a very short version of this prayer of freedom. Her name is Jacqueline. I said, well, how does your shoulder feel? It was like on a zero to 10 level, it was a 10 in pain. She starts moving around and she said, I don’t feel any pain. I think all the pain’s gone. And some of her friends who’d been with her through this process, their eyes were kind of bugging out because they were saying, that’s impossible. The surgery was only four weeks earlier. I mean, she still had the scars and everything and said, well, look, move it around. See how much mobility and range of motion you have compared to your other arm. So she starts moving both arms around in the same range of motion, full circles all the way up, all the way down, completely miraculously healed.

(18:33):
She went to the doctor two weeks later for a six week checkup. The doctor was blown away. He’d been a orthopedic surgeon for 20 years. He’s never seen anything like this, but I see this type of result consistently. And you asked earlier, why? Because this is what God’s word said. God promises, if you confess your sins, he will heal you. And all I’ve done is figure it out with God’s guidance. How do you strategically confess your sins? So you consistently get healed of all kinds of things that you wouldn’t believe to actually have a sin root, and it doesn’t have to be something that you did today. I was exercising. I like to exercise a lot and I use free weights, dumbbells and barbells and bench press and stuff. And I was moving some chairs and one of the chairs twisted my hand and pulled all the ligaments in my right thumb on my right hand and just grabbing anything would just be a shooting pain.

(19:32):
And I go, I grab something ow. And I tried to exercise and I couldn’t. And this is one of those disappointment things. You love to do something and now you can’t. And I’m going, dad, come. It’s going to take six weeks before it heals. And after a week of this, I got frustrated and I thought, oh, I just need to use my own medicine. I have what I call a forcep recovery process. Basically you asked the Lord if there’s any sin tied to the root of this issue, bring it to my mind. You repent of it. If it’s tied to anyone, you break unholy soul ties and then you command the pain out. So I did that. And the only thing that came to mind, so I’m in my late fifties now, and the only thing that came to mind was a time when I was about five or seven years old, my grandmother and mom were talking and I was trying to talk to my mom on something and my grandmother snapped at me.

(20:23):
Oh, shut up baby. Just like that. And it hurt me. And as you can tell, I’ve always remembered it. So I said, oh Lord, I forgive my grandmother. I break all unholy soul ties. I release all judgments against her and now ligaments, I command you to be healed. And I checked it out in nothing. But the next day when I woke, I realized everything was healed. I could grip anything as strong as I wanted. No pain at all, totally healed. And all I did was repented of something from early childhood. And this is what I’m finding, this is what’s working.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:02):
A lot of the people who listened to this podcast are excited about evangelism. They’re either missionaries or evangelists or local church pastors that are wanting to reach their communities. How does healing and evangelism work together?

Beatty Carmichael (21:22):
Well, if you actually look in what’s the biblical model of evangelism, we have only one person labeled as the evangelist, and that’s Philip. And if you read and see what he does, it says he goes out and he heals all the people, and then there’s a big crowd that shows up and then he shares the gospel. That’s kind of how I got started with this. I remember when you do this enough, you kind have your favorite experiences. One of my favorite experiences, I was at Walmart. I was just out there, and this is the funny part too, Daniel, I thought God was giving me the gift of healing to share the gospel because that was kind of my heart. I’ve always been always wanting to share the gospel wherever I go. And yet I found that 95% of the people or more of those that I prayed for were already Christians.

(22:20):
And I started to recognize that he was sending me to his children more so than to the open market. But always ask everyone the same question. And I came up at Walmart. There was this kind of a big black guy, dude, and I just walked up with him. And the way I do it is, Hey, I out praying for people. Is there anything I can pray for you about? Because I learned that if they say yes, God’s probably doing something in their life and then they say, no, then God’s not doing anything and I don’t need to worry about it. So I keep on moving. And this guy said yes and said, how can I pray for you? He said, well, I’m a truck driver and just pray for my safety and stuff. I spend a lot of time on the road. So I did that.

(22:57):
And now that gives me a door to, I found that once I pray for someone, then I can ask them a question. We can engage. So I said, Hey, could I ask you a couple of spiritual questions? He said, sure. I said, have you come to the point in your spiritual life where for certain that if you were to die today you’d go to heaven? He said, I think so. I said, well, if you were to die today and God were to ask you, Joe, why should I let you into heaven? What would you tell him? So he started to give me this ho hum and maybe a little bit of works answer. And so you could tell he didn’t really know and he probably wasn’t really a believer. I said, well, can I share what the Bible says about how to know to go to heaven and how you actually get there?

(23:42):
He says, Nope, I don’t want anything about, I don’t want to hear anything about that, just about a complete turnabout on the conversation. I said, well, hold on. What’s going on? Because what’s wrong? He said, my stepdad is a preacher. And he comes home and he drinks and he beats my mama. Then he goes up on the podium at church and tells people Stay away from liquor, and then we catch him in the church office with a church secretary, and I just don’t want anything to do with that. I said, fair enough. I totally get it. Let me ask you a question. And then, because in my mind I’m saying, Lord, how do I get through to this guy? And God prompted me to ask him, let me ask you, do you have any pain or sickness that you would like to get rid of?

(24:30):
He said, yeah, I’ve got this horrible back pain in my back. I’ve had it for three or four months and everything I’ve tried, nothing causes it to go away. I said, well, let me ask you a question. If I were to ask God to heal your back and the pain instantly leaves, would you think that’s a miracle? You say, oh yeah, and if he did that, then would you trust me to be able to tell you what God’s word actually says? And you would believe that it’s true? He said, yeah, if you could do that, absolutely. I said, okay, then get ready. And I said, Lord, I know how much you love Joe. And as you take all that back pain away in Jesus’ name, back, pain be gone. And when I said that, his eyes bugged open, you could what just happened? And he’s kind of looking around like this. I said, what do you mean? He says, all my pain is gone. I mean, he was startled. He was moving around checking that back. And I said, well, I told you God was going to heal it because he wants a relationship with you. Can I now share what his word says about having that relationship? And I led him to Christ. So you can use the process of now that was gift of healing, but this process is very similar. Can I demonstrate with you real quick on this, Daniel?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:51):
Let’s go for it. Yeah.

Beatty Carmichael (25:53):
Let me ask you before I demonstrate, let me first ask you, do you have any pain or any anxiety or depression or glaucoma or anything in your body that’s not working or hurting or anything that you can measure?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:10):
Not particularly right now, but let’s pretend.

Beatty Carmichael (26:14):
Okay? So even though you’re not, you’re some of your listeners, God’s

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:17):
Giving me good health right now. Praise the Lord.

Beatty Carmichael (26:18):
Yeah, I figured coming on this call that you would have nothing. Most of the times when I did these podcasts, the host always has something. You were in Thailand recently on one of your podcasts. Are you in Thailand still?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:35):
Three weeks ago I was in Thailand. Last week I was in Ethiopia. Now I’m back in Tulsa, Oklahoma. So we’ve seen God heal people in all three settings. In fact, last week in Ethiopia, we preached to about 20,000 people in a big crusade service. And I talked about how God heals, and we had one guy who had a tumor the size of a grape on his back here. And as we prayed, the tumor fell off his back and he was completely healed. I love it. And that was one of many different miracles that we saw. God

Beatty Carmichael (27:09):
Do I love it. Well, the reason I was asking on Thailand too, because I had just gotten off a podcast with a host, he’s from New Zealand, but he’s moved to Thailand as a missionary, and the Lord’s called him to be full-time in podcasting too. So I went through the same thing and it blew him away because the pain in his back just instantly left. But as coming on your show, I was thinking, I don’t think Daniel’s going to have anything. He’s probably pretty, pretty locked down in those open doors. So lemme give you the four step process, then I’m going to lead your audience how to do it.

(27:45):
So by the way, this is what I call the simple version, right? It’s just very simple, very strategic. It doesn’t free people of everything, but it frees them of significant things pretty quickly. And the four step process is number one, we’re going to ask God to reveal to us any unrepented sin that we need to repent of that’s tied to whatever my issue is. Then number two, we’re going to repent of that sin. And if that repentance is forgiveness because unforgiveness is a sin, we’re going to forgive that person. Number three, if any of the things we’ve repented of are tied to another person, we’re going to break what’s called an unholy soul ties, basically a spiritual connection between the two and release any judgements for as you judge, so shall you be judged. So that’s another type of scent. And then number four, we’re going to ask God to remove that issue and then we’re going to command that issue to be removed.

(28:47):
And so this gives everyone a simple step that they do on their own. And it has, so far, I’ve not seen anyone that it hasn’t eliminated what’s happened. So let me kind of roleplay you through this. So the first thing I’m going to do, let’s say that you have back pain, okay? Back pain is the most standard type of thing. First thing I’m going to do is I’m going to have you classify it in a level zero to 10, 10 being most, let’s say yours is eight. Okay? So now the process is, and I’ll lead you in this process, and everyone else can just follow along. So once you identify your issues, just follow after me. Lord Jesus,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:35):
Lord Jesus,

Beatty Carmichael (29:36):
I repent of my sins.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:38):
I repent of my sins,

Beatty Carmichael (29:40):
And I want your help to get rid of this back pain.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:43):
And I want your help to get rid of this back pain.

Beatty Carmichael (29:46):
If there’s any sin I need to repent of,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:48):
If there’s any sin I need to repent of

Beatty Carmichael (29:51):
Or any person I need to forgive or

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:52):
Any person I need to forgive,

Beatty Carmichael (29:55):
That’s a root of this pain,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:56):
That’s a root of this pain,

Beatty Carmichael (29:59):
Bring it to my attention right now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:01):
Bring it to my attention right now.

Beatty Carmichael (30:03):
Okay, so now that’s step one. Step two is anything the Lord brings to your mind, repent of or forgive. And here’s the verbiage. It’s very simple. It’s not, oh Lord, I’m so sorry I did this, blah, blah. No, it’s just I repent of blank. And if you did it with someone else, let’s say I repent of stealing money from John, or maybe you stole money with him. I repent of stealing money with John. I repent of sleeping with so-and-so. Whatever it is I repent of. And if you did it with someone else, you’d call out their name. And if you don’t remember the name, just call out the description. I repent of stealing money from the guy in the blue hat because it’s important that you make this connection in your mind with who it is that you did this thing with or to if anyone comes up that you need to forgive. Forgiveness is a choice. It’s not an emotion. It doesn’t matter how deeply they hurt you and wounded you. It doesn’t matter how atrocious it was. Simply say, I forgive John for I forgive four. So that’s number two. Number three is now just a simple statement. It goes like this, and you can repeat after me. And I break all on Holy soul ties with

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:29):
I break all on holy soul ties with

Beatty Carmichael (31:33):
And release all judgments against

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:35):
And release all judgments against

Beatty Carmichael (31:38):
Those people. I have named

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:39):
Those people I’ve named.

Beatty Carmichael (31:41):
Okay? And now we’re moved to step four, which is get it out. And Lord Jesus,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:47):
Lord Jesus,

Beatty Carmichael (31:48):
I ask that you remove my back pain right now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:51):
I ask that you remove the back pain right now.

Beatty Carmichael (31:54):
Take it from an eight to a zero,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:55):
Take it from an eight to a zero.

Beatty Carmichael (31:57):
Okay? So that’s the petition. Now we’re going to declare it in Jesus’ name.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:02):
In Jesus’ name

Beatty Carmichael (32:03):
I speak to you, spirit of back pain.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:05):
I speak to you, spirit of back pain,

Beatty Carmichael (32:08):
And I command you out

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:09):
And I command you out.

Beatty Carmichael (32:10):
Go to Jesus,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:11):
Go to Jesus,

Beatty Carmichael (32:13):
Get out right now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:14):
Get out right now

Beatty Carmichael (32:16):
Back. Go from an eight to a zero

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:18):
Back, go from an eight to a zero,

Beatty Carmichael (32:21):
And that’s it. So now what happens is is you’re going to, in almost every case you’ll see that back pain code from an eight to something. Sometimes it goes to a zero. Frequently it’ll only go to a six. So you check it out and recalibrate it. And if it’s not a zero, you repeat step four again, Lord, I ask that you now take this from a six to a zero in Jesus name, I command you out. Go from a six to a zero, and then it’ll probably go down to a four or two. And I find that usually doing it twice or maybe three times, it takes it all the way to a zero. And if there’s no movement at all, it stays at an eight. Then you go back and say, Lord, bring to my if this is a spiritual route, because more than 90% of everything I’ve seen has been a spiritual route, go back and ask the Lord if I missed anything, would you bring it to my mind right now?

(33:21):
And just give a moment for the Lord to bring anything up to your mind that any other sin or any other person to forgive. And then you repeat that whole process again. By the way, I had this on my app, so if you are interested, I have an app called Get Radical Faith. You can just download it from any your Apple store or your Google Play. And for my audio listeners, I mean the video, this is my app and there’s the second button on it is called The Prayer Freedom. Because what I’ve done is the Prayer Freedom is a book, the first half of my book teaches you and shows you in scripture where all of this is found. And the second half is a in-depth process to go through everything in your life and get rid of all of these open doors that cause torments in your life.

(34:12):
All kinds of frustration and a very thorough process of getting rid of it. Everything from these are what I call activity sense, something I’ve done, but there’s also, I call ’em agreement sense. They’re basically like curses or generational iniquities that you have to handle a different way. And so this handles all that. But in the book, I use my app as additional teaching resources. So once I’m in the Prayer of freedom section on the app, if you slide all the way down to the bottom of that section, you’ll see the simplified prayer. And this is where you can go in and either use it with someone or you can actually pray it on behalf of someone else. You see biblically the authority as priest and as parents to repent on someone else’s behalf. You see this in job, he sacrifices on behalf of his children and God calls him a blameless man.

(35:10):
And that’s why Satan was not able to attack him because there was nothing that Satan could accuse because Satan is the accuser. The only thing he does is he accuses of unrepented sin. Once you repent, he can’t be, you can’t accuse, and that’s why Job had to hedge of protection around him. Then you see priests that come and they bring repentance on behalf of the people. A triesman will come and bring a sacrifice to the Lord for a sin, and the priest takes that sacrifice and presents it before the Lord. So the priest is the mediator between God and man on repentance. You see this? I’ve seen it so many times. It’s real interesting, just as a parent, you can repent on your children’s behalf. Now keep in mind repentance. Let me say, you can confess on your children’s behalf. I use repentance and confess pretty much interchangeably. But because repentance is a legal process in a legal courtroom, then it’s not so much based on emotions. It’s based on the technicality of that legal process. I know, I see. You may want to pause and ask a question. I’m probably going a little too fast or something, I’m not sure.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:27):
Go ahead.

Beatty Carmichael (36:28):
Okay, so let me back up and give you the framework of this. My son, the Lord took him into the heavenly courtroom one time. He said, I want to show you how all this works. So my son goes into heavenly courtroom and up on his right, on the DA says God the Father, and on his left is a demon spirit. And that demon spirit is accusing my son, his name is Beatty, Jr. Is accusing my son of all kinds of sins that Beatty has committed. And I was asking him, are they real sin? Every single one was absolutely correct because that’s the role of Satan, the accuser. He’s basically the chief prosecutor and his whole authority is his ability to prosecute unrepented sin. So then the Lord told my son, plead the blood of Jesus. Alright, so then Jesus, my son says, I plead the blood of Jesus, and instantly the demon spirit disappeared.

(37:28):
Why? Because those sins were wiped away, but they weren’t wiped away until my son appeared in court and defended himself by repenting of it. So this is a legal process in the courtroom, and as you start to dig into, and I go in this in the book, but you start to look through scripture, see, everything’s based on these laws, and there’s a legal structure in the heavenly realm. Usually God is positioned as on the throne, which is a ruling authority. And if you rule there are laws, and you see the tormentors, you see in Matthew 18, you have the parable of the unmerciful servant. Peter comes up to Jesus and says, how many times should I forgive my brother? And Jesus says, 70 times seven. And he tells a story of a king with a servant who owes him a lot of money. The guy can’t pay, so the king’s going to throw him in jail.

(38:24):
He said, no, no, please have mercy on me. I’ll pay, but give me time. So the king said, okay. Then that guy goes to his little servant who only owes him of trifle, and because he couldn’t pay, he throws into prison. So then the big king gets upset, goes to the big servant, says You unm merciful servant, I’m going to throw you into prison to be tortured until you pay back everything that you owe. I love the ESV and the ESV just says to the jailer, but if you look at the footnote, it says to be tortured because jailer in the Greek means one who elicits the truth through use of the rack, which is a torture device. And the root word of jailer is basso, which means to torture. So this whole aspect is about torture. And the importance of this parable is the next statement.

(39:16):
Jesus says, because he’s not talking to the Pharisees, he’s not talking to the crowds that follow him. He’s talking to his closest disciples, Peter and the 12. And he says, so too, will my heavenly Father do to you my closest disciples, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart, in other words, he says, if you have an unrepented sin, my father will turn you over to the tormentors until you repent to that sin. And that’s the basics of all of this. And so just by repenting or repenting on someone else’s behalf, if there’s an authority structure there, then we can free people. And I’ve seen people get freed of all kinds of things.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:04):
That’s

Beatty Carmichael (40:04):
Wonderful. So evangelism, simple process to do in a crowd, people get healed. And then you can say, now, let me tell you about this Jesus that just healed you because now it’s demonstrative.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:15):
Yeah. One of my favorite verses about healing is Psalms 1 0 3, verse three. It says, he’s the God who forgives all of our sins and who heals all of our diseases. So in that verse, you see how forgiveness and healing are intertwined. They work together. I like to say that forgiveness and healing are like two sides of the same coin. And throughout scripture you see this mingling of forgiveness and healing. You’ve mentioned the passage in James that says, confess your sins and the Lord will heal you. And then even the Greek word, so-so which means healing can also mean for salvation. And so when the woman with the issue of blood came and touched Jesus, Jesus says, your faith has healed you. And if you look in different versions about half the version, say your faith has saved you, and half the version say your faith has healed you.

(41:17):
And the reason is that Greek word means both salvation and healing. And so you see how these two concepts are intertwined, and I think this is really valuable for evangelists to understand is that God ministers both forgiveness and healing. They work together. And I like your system of leading people in asking God for forgiveness, confessing their sins, forgiving others who have hurt them, and then to declare their healing and then trust God for the miracle. And it’s amazing what Jesus can do when we come to him in faith, asking for forgiveness and then asking for healing. Well, thank you so much Mr. Carmichael, for sharing about your book. If someone wants to get a copy of your book or if they want to find out more about your ministry, what is a website that has information about you and how can they find your book?

Beatty Carmichael (42:19):
Best place to go is you think that those, so the title of the book is The Prayer of Freedom, and so simply put the word book at the end of it, the Prayer of freedom book.com. And I say that because if you go to Amazon or go to Google and just type in the prayer of freedom, there’s so many things about prayer and freedom, you’ll never find the book. But if you go to the prayer freedom book.com, there’s a link straight to the Amazon, you can get it worldwide regardless of where you are. It’s also on Kindle. You’ll get information about me there. So really that’s the best place to go. There’s also discounts if you want discounts on the book, especially like if you have a ministry or you have a storefront, you want to do something point of sale and just use your store as a ministry opportunity to share freedom for people. We got discounts there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (43:10):
Awesome. Well, thank you so much Mr. Carmichael for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I appreciate it.

Beatty Carmichael (43:16):
Well, thank you, Daniel. I sure have enjoyed it.

Evangelism Podcast Host (43:19):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give antar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:20):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you. For more

Evangelism Podcast Host (45:42):
Information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Eliot Morgan | A Light in the Darkness

Elliot Morgan recently moved his whole family to Thailand because he wants to train the church to evangelize in the unreached nations of Southeast Asia. His journey to Thailand began about 15 years ago after he read Foxes’ Book of Martyrs and felt called to reach the 10/40 window. He has been leading evangelism training camps in Thailand and the surrounding nations, focusing on teaching foundational biblical truths like Jesus as the Light of the world and the preeminence of Christ.

Learn More about Eliot Morgan and Lionface Ministries: https://www.lionfaceministries.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, Elliot Morgan. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

(00:12):
Thank you, Daniel for having me.

(00:14):
And so you are a graduate of the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp, and I was one of the instructors there, and now you’ve been going and blowing and doing big things for Jesus.

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (00:27):
Yeah, yeah. Actually prior to the CFAN Evangelism Bootcamp, believe it or not, I was a pastor for about 10 years. And I like to say it jokingly to my pastor friends that the Lord liberated me and he sent me out to be fully trained as an evangelist. And that’s actually where you and I met for the first time. As you said, you were one of our instructors, which I highly, highly enjoyed your class and your teaching, but it was thereafter it when I began to work with the bootcamp that you would continue to come and I got to have more conversations with you, grab lunch with you, that I really got to hear your heart and know you. So it is an honor for me to be here. Thank you for having me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:06):
Well, we are in the nation of Thailand and God has been speaking to you about Thailand, and tell me the story of how you ended up here and what God is doing.

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (01:16):
Sure. Yeah. I love Thailand. I’m glad to be here with you. We’re currently in Bangkok, but my home is Chiang Mai. It’s in about eight to nine hours north of here, one hour flight. So my journey to Thailand, I would’ve to say without exaggerating, probably began about 15 years ago. I’ve been walking with the Lord, I guess since 2005, and within a year of getting saved, somebody put a book in my hand, the Foxes Book of the Martyrs. And I don’t know if you’ve ever read that, but once you read that book, your life is never the same. When I began to read about people who were paying the ultimate price for the gospel laying down their lives for Jesus, it changed everything about the way I viewed Christianity, the world, and even my own life. And so soon after reading that book, I found out about a ministry called Voice of the Martyrs, which this ministry highlights the families of people that have laid down their lives for Jesus all over the world.

(02:14):
And as I began to read the stories of the martyrs and the persecuted nations of the world, I felt God beginning to tug me in that direction. That started about 15 years ago, and then one day God gave me a vision of the nation of Pakistan, of a great revival that he was going to send to the nation by then evangelist Daniel, I was undone. I was like, Lord, you have me here in this little city in the middle of nowhere pastoring a church, but you’re burdening my heart for these parts of the world. Well, I’ll save you the long story. By the time I ended up going through the Evangelism Bootcamp with CFAN and then coming back to work with them because I believed in the training so much, I wanted to continue to labor with them to raise up more evangelists. It was that time that I was given the invitation to lead what CFAN calls a Fire Camp, which is a one week training for evangelist.

(03:08):
I was able to lead CFAN’s very first Fire Camp in the nation of Thailand in January of 2024. It was during that training that I saw an open vision of the Lord Jesus standing in Southeast Asia, and he held his hand out to me. And it wasn’t a very forceful command, it was a loving invitation. Jesus held his hand out to me and he said, Elliot, would you come here? And that is how I ended up in Thailand because as he showed me the great harvest that is about to take place, not only in Thailand but in the whole of Southeast Asia, and then the Lord began to show me in the future how he would raise up Asian missionaries to send to the Muslim world. How could I deny that invitation? And so that is my journey to getting here. I said yes in January of 2024, and my family arrived in the nation December 28th, 2025, no, sorry, December 28th, 2024. So within the same year we were moved.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:07):
Wow. And so you took a step of faith, packed up your whole family. Now you’re living in Shang Mai, and your heart is to train the church in evangelism, but not just here in Thailand. You have a heart for the unreached nations. This is a very strategic place because there’s a lot of nations around. Tell me, what are you hoping that God does in this region of the world?

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (04:34):
Yeah, so early on, the Lord put the entirety of the 10/40 window on my heart. If people are not familiar with that terminology, 10 and 40 are just coordinates on the map, 10 degrees north, 40 degrees north. And in that span of territory or regions of the world, it encompasses all of North Africa, the Middle East, and all of Asia, most of Southeast Asia, I mean all of Southeast Asia for sure. God began to burden my heart for this place because when you look at it statistically, over 96% of the people in the world that have never heard the gospel, they live in the 10 40 window. So as an evangelist, as a person with a heart for the loss, I used to cry out to Jesus. Every nation needs to be saved. Every person deserves to hear the gospel, but Lord, I want to go to the places that no one’s going or that it’s very hard to go. And so I believe that Thailand is strategic because if you look at it on the map, Thailand sits in the middle of restricted

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:29):
Nations. Yeah, you’ve got Myanmar, you’ve got Laos, you’ve got China, you’ve got Cambodia, Vietnam, Malaysia, all right here in this one region.

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (05:40):
Exactly. Because even though Thailand is unreached itself, it’s less than a 2% Christian nation. It is not restricted. So you can live in Thailand and freely preach the gospel, make disciples, train missionaries and evangelists, but you have easier access to these restricted nations. And what’s beautiful about what we’re finding is yes, we’re here training Thai evangelists, but we’re also working in Lao in Vietnam and Myanmar, and I know this is a further out of the way, but in Pakistan we have realized that even when times get tough or if it’s a bit too dangerous to get into a particular place, we can bring these leaders, pastors, evangelists to be trained in Chiang Mai or in Thailand in general to be sent back to their nations.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:28):
And so when you’re doing evangelism training, what are some of the key truths that you’re sharing?

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (06:36):
That’s a good question. And people would probably think that you dive right into evangelism, but we’ve found that you can’t do that because when we’ve come to Asia, we learned that a lot of people are, they have a real, genuine, authentic fear of Satan, of demons, of the demonic. And there’s no wonder because they’re steeped in centuries of darkness, centuries of deception. And we have found a great need to teach the principle of Jesus the light. And it’s a simple biblical principle that the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. But as simple as that may seem to most people, even in the West, because of our plethora of the availability of Bible studies, resources, programs here, this is a very basic teaching that we’re finding to be quite effective, that we start our evangelism trainings with establishing Jesus is the light of the world and he’s greater than all darkness in the world. And that as the believer, see, Jesus said, I am the light of the world. If you follow me, you will never have to walk in darkness. I will give you the light that leads to life. Then he looks at his disciples and he says, you are the light of the world. And so we teach this in our trainings and we begin to see light bulbs go off in the eyes and we see the people come alive like, wow, I carried the light.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:57):
I really love the verse in John chapter one where it says, the light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it. It cannot overcome. It cannot. And so when the light starts shining, darkness has to flee.

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (08:11):
I mean, that is a simple truth. That is, it seems to be changing the lives of many people here because what they need to understand is the darkness is never more powerful than the light. You can walk into a completely dark room and light a small match. You could take your cell phone flashlight, the smallest light in a large dark room. The light always overcomes the darkness. Another truth that we teach in the beginning of our trainings is Jesus, the first we start with Jesus, the light, but we move on to Jesus the first. And it’s the truth about the preeminence of Christ. We teach the people that Jesus is above all, because Jesus is before all, because of the demonic oppression and the things that they face here, we want show the believers that you do not have to fear darkness. You do not have to fear the enemy, that because of Christ in you, you overcome the world.

(09:03):
And so it’s with those base teachings where we begin and then we eventually move on into what is an evangelist, the call of the evangelist. What is the gospel of Jesus Christ? Give them a simple understanding of the gospel. Then we go into the practical teachings of how to share the gospel with Buddhists for in a Muslim nation, how to share the gospel with Muslims. And then we teach personal responsibility of evangelism that if you’re going to reach a soul with the gospel, that you have to be willing from the onset from the very beginning to take personal responsibility for that new baby that you born, that you helped birth into the kingdom of God. And so we don’t have it all figured out. Obviously we don’t have all the answers, but what we’re beginning to see is that what God is entrusting to us. It’s working.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:50):
That’s so amazing. Well, what is your website? If someone wants to connect with you, support your ministry, how can they find out more about you?

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (09:58):
Yeah, so our ministry is called Lion Face Ministries International, and the website is lion face ministries.com. And if you go there, there’s limited, we post limited things because of the nature of where we work and what we do. We can’t publicize much. But it gives you the vision of the ministry and how you can connect with us. You can subscribe to the email newsletters and if God should move upon anyone’s heart to sow into what we’re doing, there are ways to give listed on the homepage.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:25):
That’s awesome. We’re in the nation of Thailand this week, and we’re launching the everyone Thailand vision. And the goal is to reach everyone in Thailand with the gospel of Jesus Christ, that every single person in this nation, they have the right to hear the gospel at least once in their lifetime. And it’s a massive nation. 70 million people, only one or 2% Christian, about 97% Buddhist, but such a beautiful people, such a wonderful people. What do you see God doing here in Thailand, especially among, give me some testimonies from that first fire camp that you helped lead. I saw the pictures of it, and it’s just so beautiful. So many young people that were so excited about evangelism. Share with me some of the testimonies that have come out of that first fire

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (11:18):
Camp. In our evangelism trainings, one strong push, we always teach about the baptism and the Holy Spirit and the baptism of fire because we understand, if you look at the New Testament, when the Holy Spirit came upon people, they became a new person, a different person. The same Peter who denied Jesus Christ three times. When he received the power of the Holy Spirit, he preached boldly in front of 3000. And so with that illustration, we see these Thai people, even the Burmese people were at our training, they come in and quite naturally, they’re quiet people. They’re some timid, some just they’re very honoring culture. So they come and then here we come and we teach them the boldness of the Holy Spirit and the power that the gospel carries. We watch these students come in one way, and then when we train them on how to preach the simple gospel, the perfect life of Jesus, his death, burial on resurrection, and we show them that all of heaven will back the words that they say.

(12:18):
When they preach the truth, we take them into the streets. And these sometimes very small people, timid, quiet, become as bold as lions. Now, the Bible says, the righteous are as bold as lion. And the greatest testimony I can give you is I watch them come in one way. They leave the training another, they go out and they preach the gospel with power, seeing signs, wonders, and miracles, and they’re bold and they’re not afraid of the enemy. And to me, that’s the greatest testimony of what God is doing because he really changes them and he shows them that you can be effective if you’d be willing to go out and be obedient.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:55):
Wow. Well, I so admire your faith, especially moving your family here. What has that experience been like for your family?

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (13:04):
Yeah, I would like to say that it was very easy with no problems, but let’s face it, anyone, if you grow up in a particular nation your whole life, and that’s all your culture’s, all your family’s there, you’re comfortable, things are convenient. The Bible gives a call to leave all of those things. And I’ve preached it for years, honestly meaning it in my heart. But it became another thing when we had to live it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:30):
It’s

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (13:31):
Almost like Jesus was saying, you’ve been preaching this. You’ve been provoking others to follow me radically. Now, Elliot, will you do it? So when we did it, I have to say that we learned a lot more about the cost of following Christ. I learned a lot more about faith because I had to leave a lot of things behind and I had to trust Jesus for finances in levels or amounts that I never had to trust in before. But I can tell you now that we’re here, I look back and we’ve lacked nothing. Everything that we needed to happen, the Lord worked it out. I mean, moving to another nation, sometimes we romanticize the ministry, but we forget the very practical things. You’re leaving your home country. You have to get a visa to live in another nation for four people, me, my wife, and my two daughters, and Thailand is one of the hardest places to get a visa, and none of us have the same type of visa.

(14:20):
So we had to figure that out. We moved to a country where we do not speak the language, and we don’t even know the city. We had to find a house, but the Lord provided a home. We had to find an international school for our daughters to attend. The Lord did that. How do you buy a vehicle in another country? How do you learn to drive on the opposite side of the road? Where do you grocery shop? So I’m sharing these things. There are people that may hear this interview that have a call to relocate to another nation, and it’s okay to have those questions, and it’s okay to face the reality that it’s not to be easy, but I want to encourage people that if God is calling you to do it, God really will provide. Now, here we are, we have only arrived a little more than a month ago, but we have a home.

(15:04):
We have all of our visas. When I arrived back in Chang May on Monday, I’m purchasing my first vehicle in another country. All of our needs are taken care of. So I can say we learned faith like never before. We learned to trust Jesus like never before. But we also learned of the great support that the church gives. We have many friends in the states that support what we’re doing. We have many churches that support us, and we’ve really seen the body of Christ rally around us to lift us up. And that now more than ever before in my nearly 20 years of walking with Jesus, more than 15 years of ministry, I’ve learned the importance of community and that you can’t do this alone.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:44):
That’s awesome. Well, let’s finish by praying for this entire region of Asia. Let’s agree together that there would be a revival fire that would come and sweep across Southeast Asia.

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (15:58):
Absolutely. Well, heavenly Father, we come to you and we just want to thank you for what you’re doing here, not only in Thailand, but in the entirety of Southeast Asia. Jesus, this is the one thing that we know that when you set your eyes on a people or on a nation, that you will fulfill your purposes. Lord, we’re so grateful that you’re allowing us to be a part of what you’re doing here. Jesus. We know that without unity, without being in one heart, with one mind, in one accord and in one spirit, the work will be difficult. But Jesus, I see that you’re raising up a mighty army to link arms and walk together from the west and from the east, different ministries, different tribes, different tongues, different people are coming together in one heart to see you save this region. Father, we pray in Jesus’ name that you would continue to build unity amongst the brethren and that you would continue to give the Thai people, the Thai pastors and leaders, and those that belong to the body of Christ in this nation, give them boldness, give them favor, provide all that they need as they continue to push forth in this nation.

(17:02):
And Lord, we pray that the revival that breaks forth in this nation will spill over into the nation’s bordering to Thailand, bordering Thailand, and even to the ends of the earth. Lord, we love you and we thank you, and we know that this will be done in Jesus’ name.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:16):
Amen.

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (17:17):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:17):
Thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast.

Evangelist Eliot Morgan (17:19):
Thank you, brother. What an honor.

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Simon Chen | Revival in Asia

Simon Chen has a heart to train evangelists in Asia. He lives in Taiwan and leads Asia Revival Ministry, which aims to train and equip Chinese evangelists to prepare for a “great harvest” in China and other Chinese-speaking nations. Today on the Evangelism Podcast we discuss what God did on one of his recent outreaches in Japan. We talk about the cultural differences in Asia compared to other regions of the world . In Asia people are more reserved and shy about evangelism and it is important to train them and to restore their identity in Christ.

Learn more about Simon Chen: https://asiarevival.org/

Transcript:

Evangelist Simon Chen (00:12):
Thank you, Daniel. It is an honor to be here today.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:14):
So you are a graduate of the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp, and I was one of the instructors there, and you have a heart for Asia. Tell me a little bit about your background and what you’re doing for Jesus here in Asia.

Evangelist Simon Chen (00:29):
Amen. I am Simon Chen. I’m from Taiwan, and our ministry is called Asia Revival Ministry. About four years ago I was in bootcamp and you were my instructor. I was really blessed by your coaching and your teaching, and then it was such a great anointing on me. We were in Tanzania, as I remember the last week of the training in Africa. God spoke to me about there’s going to be a revival in Asia. So he didn’t want me to stay in Africa. He told me, son, bring back this fire evangelist, fire back to Asia. Asia needs evangelist because people might not know, usually in the Christian circle in Asia, like in the church we have apostle prophet, lots of teachers, lots of pastors, but we don’t have evangelists.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:31):
Yeah, I’m a student of evangelism and I’ve studied what God has done in many different parts of the world. And if you look at American history, there’s been great evangelists. There are great evangelists that God has raised up in Africa from Europe, has great evangelists. And I started to look who are the great evangelists here are in Asia. And David Young Cho, who pastored the largest church of the world in South Korea. He was also a good evangelist. He did lots of evangelism. But I haven’t found many names of evangelists. And I think it’s time for God to raise the gift of the evangelist here in Asia.

Evangelist Simon Chen (02:11):
Amen. Because God spoke to me about the end time revival is going to take place in Asia and then it’s going to connect it to the soul harvest. But in order to have a soul harvest of soul, we need evangelists. We can’t have, it is impossible to have a harvest without evangelists. So our mission in Taiwan, we are based in Taiwan, but we are focused in Chinese speaking nations, and our mission is to train Chinese evangelists, prepare for the great harvest in China.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:46):
That’s awesome. Well, I have a great love for the Chinese people. My wife is full ethnic Chinese, and so both my kids are half Caucasian, half Chinese, and so we love Chinese. God has a great plan for the people of China that are all over Asia here. So tell me some of what you’ve been doing in Taiwan in Japan recently, and now we’re in Thailand right now. What have you seen God do?

Evangelist Simon Chen (03:17):
Yeah, over the past four years, God has been taking us to different countries across Asia. And our ministry mainly is to have a purpose, to do the training for evangelists. We also have a school, we have a gathering.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:41):
It’s so beautiful what you’re doing. I so love what God is doing through you, through your ministry. It’s so beautiful. You were sharing yesterday in the session upstairs about Japan and you went out on the streets of Japan and trained Japanese believers to go out

Evangelist Simon Chen (04:01):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:02):
Saw God do great miracles. What did you see happen?

Evangelist Simon Chen (04:06):
Yeah, it was amazing because when God spoke to me about a nation, what I do is I start praying about the nation

(04:15):
And then the door will open. So for example, in Japan, I’ve been praying for Japan for two months, three months. And then there will be a guy come up to me, Simon, do you have a heart for Japan? I’m like, I’ve been praying for Japan for three months. Of course. He say, would you like to go to Japan with me, a minister? I said, definitely. So I went to Japan with him, and then he connected with me, a local Japanese church with me. And then praise God, I get to minister in one session. And one of the blind eyes, women, her eye got open. She was completely healed. And then people was amazed by what Jesus has done to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:59):
Her.

Evangelist Simon Chen (04:59):
And the message was sending out to the Japanese churches. So the last two days when we host the revival conference, surprisingly not in the beginning, we thought mostly will be Chinese people show up. But instead, two thirds of the crowd are Japanese people. And it was amazing because people, they were hungry for Jesus. They’re hungry for the power of the Holy Spirit, but they don’t have access to it. And then of course, I know it is God’s will and it’s time for Japan. So we just happen to be in the right moment. Be there. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:40):
Amen. What is your website, if someone wants to find out more about your ministry, what God is doing here in Asia, how can they find out more information about you? Maybe someone will want to support you and help you to train evangelists.

Evangelist Simon Chen (05:56):
Right. Thank you very much. My website is

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:05):
Asia revival.org. And you’re also on Facebook?

Evangelist Simon Chen (06:08):
Yeah, Facebook if you want to on Facebook, you can look up Asia Revival Ministry and also YouTube as well. Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:17):
Wow. Okay. Share with me some testimonies of what you’ve seen happen as you’ve taken Asian believers out to witness. Because I think Asia is very different from Africa, like in Africa and some nations, there’s great boldness to speak and that’s not hard for them. But here in Asia there’s a different culture. And so talk to me about Asian culture and what it means to be an Asian and to witness.

Evangelist Simon Chen (06:49):
Yeah. I think the culture, there’s a big difference. Asian people are more reserved, they’re more shy. So just in order to encourage them to step out of the war of the church, to share gospel, it feels like to them it’s impossible. But so in our course, we mainly, first thing we have to do is to restore their identity in Christ. They didn’t know it’s not about us. It’s about Jesus and didn’t know sharing Jesus. There’s not shame about gospel. There’s nothing to be shared about gospel. And as long as you can bully, proclaim gospel, proclaim Jesus, the Holy Spirit will take place. You’ll see the miracle. So we train our student in that way. When they start in the beginning, they test it, they try, but they see the results. So they become, after years of training, they become really bold for proclaimed gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:55):
How did you become bold to proclaim the gospel?

Evangelist Simon Chen (07:58):
I’m still shy, but God is, his strengths manifest in our weakness. To be honest, I’m not a really good English speaking person. Oh, your English is very, but I’m trying because I know I’m doing this for Jesus, and I believe that we are in one spirit. As long as we show our sincerity and our for Jesus, people can sense it. Again, it’s not about me, it’s about our king.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:34):
Amen. Yeah. Well, you are doing such a great job. I love your heart, and I believe that God wants to do something amazing here in Asia. There is such a huge harvest field. Jesus said, behold, the fields are ready for harvest. And then he told us, he said, pray that the Lord would send forth laborers into the harvest field. And I believe that God will raise up laborers to come work in the harvest fields of Asia.

Evangelist Simon Chen (09:01):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:02):
And I believe that we are going to see the greatest harvest of souls in history over the next few years. And it will come from here in Asia. It must That’s where all the population

Evangelist Simon Chen (09:11):
Is. Hallelujah. Yes, we have in Asia, we have more than three billions unsafe souls. And there are 70% of population in Asia haven’t heard of gospel. People might be amazed in Western people, they might think about, it’s impossible. How can you have not heard of N Jesus?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:32):
But

Evangelist Simon Chen (09:32):
It’s real. If you go into Middle East, if you go inside of China, some deep place in China, people have never heard of Jesus before. So when we go to those place, we share Jesus. They are touched. It’s like in the Book of Acts, Paul has called to share the gospel to the unreached people, and that’s our calling as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:57):
Amen. Well, let’s finish by praying for Asia.

Evangelist Simon Chen (10:00):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:01):
Would you pray that God would pour out his spirit upon this entire region of Asia?

Evangelist Simon Chen (10:07):
Amen. Father God, we just thank you for this podcast meeting. Lord, we just ask you in this special moment, we know the revival is coming to Asia. Lord, we just ask you, pull out your Holy Spirit, your spirit among old flesh. Lord I, we declare it is time to raise up the army for Jesus. Lord, it’s time for people to awakening. It’s time for people to hear your name and give your life to you. Lord, we just want to honor you, and we pray that Jesus, your name will be lifted high and you’ll be glorified. In Jesus’ name we pray.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:47):
Amen.

Evangelist Simon Chen (10:47):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:48):
Praise the Lord. Thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast.

Evangelist Simon Chen (10:51):
Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah.

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Evangelism in France | Leave the Shore | Timothée Paton

Timothée Paton is an evangelist passionate about reaching France with the Gospel. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, we discusses the current spiritual state of France, noting that while churches have grown in size, the presentation of the gospel message has often been lacking. Timothée shares his vision to bring the clear, simple gospel presentation back to the forefront of church services. Timothée also talks about using short gospel stories and radio spots to effectively communicate the good news. He challenges believers to leave their comfort zones and take the gospel to the “deep end” – the unreached areas of France and the Francophone world. He expresses optimism about the opportunities to reach the French, particularly through the influx of believers from Africa, and calls for more missionaries to minister in the rural, traditionally Catholic regions of the country.

Buy the Book: Leave the Shore: https://amzn.to/3WGhpko

Learn more about Timothée Paton: https://timotheepaton.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. And today I have a very special guest all the way from France, Timothée Paton, thank you for joining me today.

Timothée Paton (00:16):
Thank you Daniel. It, it’s a joy to be with you. We met once that’s back in Amsterdam, 2023 if I remember. Well,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:27):
Yeah, that was at the everyone conference there with Dr. Billy Wilson. God gave Dr. Wilson from Oral Roberts University a vision to reach everyone on Earth with the gospel before 2033, the 2000 year anniversary of the first day of Pentecost. And so I believe that’s a vision that comes from God. It goes right in line with the Great Commission. And the Great Commission is something that you are very excited about. Tell me a little bit about what God is doing in France right now.

Timothée Paton (01:04):
Well, I got excited probably because my parents got excited about serving in France 60 years ago. I mean, my mom and dad are very similar to yours. They left the comfort of a wealthy or Christian nation and they came to a place where the gospel was not very known. So my parents came, my dad from Glasgow, Scotland, my mom from Birmingham, England, I have none of their accent. And I was born as an MK right here in the central of France where it was tough back in 1964, I was told. And in 2025, it’s still a tough place, but as you know, France like Western Europe is wide open. We can tell people about Jesus anywhere, anytime. So I’m excited. I guess I got excited when I saw that mom and dad found the best thing to do in the world was to tell people in France about Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:07):
And what are you seeing God do in France through your ministry right now?

Timothée Paton (02:14):
Well, when we got married about three and a half years ago, after many years in Southeast Asia, I realized that I left France in 1999, came back in 2019, and then I realized maybe by going overseas, when you come back, you see what you couldn’t see so well because you were part of the picture. So when you leave the picture and come back into the picture, I realized that churches in France had great services. Churches were bigger than 20 years before almost mega churches in Paris and a few other places. But now realize the worship is good. The church building is top-notch. You could be in California and the service is so good, people are very welcoming. But something interesting had changed from in the nineties, the preaching of the gospel, which used to be in the Assemblies of God, where I was brought up on Sunday afternoon.

(03:24):
Jesus saved only at 3:30 PM on Sunday afternoon. And we prayed for the sick when the service came to the end. But since that gospel meeting has been taken away, we took away the gospel meeting, but we took away the gospel and the meeting. So the preaching of the gospel, the A, B, C, as Bonky used to say the A, B, C was dropped out of the Sunday morning service. So I realized it was time to bring the gospel back. It doesn’t have to be on Sunday afternoon, but it has to be back at the heart of the church. So my wife and I realized that the best thing we can do is to ask pastors in France who invite us to speak. What about if we had a gospel service on Sunday morning? And for some pastors, the two don’t go together Sunday morning gospel service.

(04:24):
And we said, Jesus can save on Sunday morning. And many of them would say, Hey, I mean they wouldn’t say so plainly, but I could read between the lines Sunday morning is a service for God’s people. And I said, well, you’d be surprised if we have a gospel service on Sunday morning. How many people in your church will actually respond when the call is given publicly to turn to Jesus? And we’ve had these gospel services on Sunday. I preach the gospel, people respond, and I love the look on the pastor’s face. And he says, wow, this lady’s been in my church for 20 years. She’s been worshiping where he thinks she’s been worshiping. She’s been singing, now she’s going to worship because she’s born again.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:19):
Amen. And one of the things I really like on your website is you talk about having gospel talk and not making it boring, but making it interesting using stories. Give us some examples of what you would recommend to a pastor to include in a gospel talk on Sunday morning. How do we take it from being just a boring, sometimes condemning presentation of facts to making it dynamic and interesting, using stories in a way that communicate the truth of the good news?

Timothée Paton (06:04):
Well, I think stories are the best way to captivate any audience. And we sometimes think stories are for kids in Sunday school so they can hear another Bible story. But everyone is made, it’s in our DNA, people respond. You can see the body language of the congregation actually rise when the preacher says back in 1924, there was the famous Russian clown that would go around the country and people suddenly the body language will change. And I realized that there’s nothing more powerful than a story. I think our sermons are like bonkers, bonkers are in the Second World War. You had these very tight buildings with soldiers, with hide, no windows

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:03):
Made out of concrete, very

Timothée Paton (07:04):
Hard concrete. So it’s good to have the doctrine. It is good to have sound teaching, but if you don’t have windows in your house, you’ll suffocate. And we have too many suffocating sermons from the pulpit. So we need windows to get the light through. But you can’t build a sermon on windows alone. You need some windows. I think Billy Graham had a window, a story every seven or eight minutes to keep the audience captivated, but also to bring the light on the word. So one of the keys of gospel talk, we’ve given it another name since I’m back in France, it’s called Luter. It’s like a circle of people who are together to proclaim the gospel and one of the keys to captivate your audience anywhere in the world. I’ve seen it from Colombia to New Zealand to Finland and France. Wherever you go, whether you have very wealthy people or your stick somewhere in the bush of Africa, everyone responds to a story.

(08:16):
So one of the keys that I teach in these gospel talk sessions is I plead pastors and preachers and missionaries bring stories. I have here myself, hundreds of stories that I’ve cut out of newspapers, magazines, Christian calendars, and I use them. I use maybe two or three in a sermon, and I know that will really bang the nail. So then the truth, and also teach one truth at a time. There’s a Russian proverb that says if try to run after two rabbits, you would lose both of them. So run after one rabbit catch it. And that’s enough for a sermon.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:07):
Yeah, sometimes it’s hard to be disciplined to stick with just one idea. Can you share with us one of your favorite stories? You have hundreds. Give me one or two of your favorite gospel stories that you use.

Timothée Paton (09:23):
Yeah, there’s one I’ve used in many places, this little girl probably in France many years ago when trains were not very common and she heard about trains, she’d never seen a train, maybe a picture of a train. So she said to her, dad, dad, please take me some time to the train station. I know there are trains passing through every day. Please bring me there. So the dad took the little girl, she’s maybe nine years old, and took her to the train station and she was fascinated. She’d never seen a train before. Suddenly a train comes into the station and this very rough looking man surrounded by two policemen, handcuffed, comes out of the train and he’s about to be taken away by a police car. The little girl who’s a believer, she leaves, her dad runs to this man she’s never seen, of course, very terrifying face.

(10:36):
And she looks at him and she says, I’ve got something to tell you. And this man looks to the little girl and says, what do you have to say? And she says, Jesus loves you. She runs back to her dad. The dad is a bit surprised. The man gets into the police car and ends up in jail. And the words of that 9-year-old girl is like a broken record in his mind. Jesus loves you. Jesus loves you. She didn’t give a long sermon, but she brought the whole gospel in those few words, Jesus loves you. A few months later, he’s on his knees, in his cell, in his prison cell, and he cries out to God and he says, God, I need that love that I don’t have in my life. And he became a believer, the power of telling the truth in three words. Jesus loves you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:38):
That’s a beautiful story. Let me tell you about what I’ve been doing with my stories. I’m like you, I like to collect stories. And so recently I’ve been recording some of my stories as 62nd YouTube short videos, and we’ve been putting them up on YouTube in order to build momentum with the algorithm on YouTube, we’re posting three videos every single day. And so each one is only 60 seconds, but each one is one story with one idea. And then at the end of it, I say, if you want to know more about Jesus, watch the video. I pin down below and I point like this on the video. And right there, there’s a place on YouTube where you can pin a video and it will take them to a longer session on how they can properly be saved. And so we’ve just been doing that the last two months and just this month we’ve had over 30,000 people watch these little stories.

(12:44):
And I think that’s just the very tip of the iceberg of what is possible because I have some friends on YouTube and they get a million views on one video. So you can imagine if you take a gospel story, 60 seconds, just share the story and then give people a quick opportunity to have something that impacts their lives. Just something simple like your story there. Jesus loves you and it can change their life. And so I think that you should go into your cupboard of hundreds of stories that you got there and record some of them so that they can impact more lives. Do them in both French and Spanish. French and English. And English. Yeah. I think there is not many things like that in French. So you will very quickly get a big following.

Timothée Paton (13:43):
Actually, I’ve given a second live to those illustration at a Christian radio called Far

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:51):
And

Timothée Paton (13:51):
Far Fem is in the francophone world.

(13:54):
It’s actually the fastest growing Christian radio in the world outside of the US I was told by the director, and it’s an amazing tool. There’s 16 people working full-time in the town of Ulus in France. And one day I said, look, I’ve got these stories. As you say, lying in those envelopes is hundreds of cuttings by theme Easter forgiveness mission, the cross give your life to Christ, which I’ve used for sermons. But I’ve said I will have to leave 400 years preaching those anecdotes and I don’t have 400 years, so I want to give him a second life. So every day, three times a day, they are broadcast. And as you say, it’s very short. It’s 75 seconds, one minute, 15 seconds. And it’s one idea, one story no more with a punchline, inviting people who are listening to the radio to actually respond to the love of Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:01):
Wow. I wonder how many radio spots have you produced? I

Timothée Paton (15:08):
We’ve done 139.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:11):
Wow.

Timothée Paton (15:12):
And they are aired on this Christian radio, which can be heard anywhere in France, but also on the internet. And actually the Christian radio I find, which started 35 years ago as probably a gospel, Christian radio has become very a lot of teaching as if everyone in France was already a believer, it’s oh 0.5%. I’m like, when everyone is a believer, maybe we can put so much Christian content on the airwaves. But since France is mainly resistant to the gospel, they don’t know anything about the plan of salvation. I don’t want to broadcast anything else but the A, B, and C, I won’t even go into D and F. I just want to stick to those three letters. And I’m very happy that they take those one minute, 15 second Christian messages. And sometimes it seems to be like it’s a bit the odd and the odd one in the Christian radio, but actually it should be the other way. We should just be preaching the A, B, C till everyone gets the message.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:31):
Yeah, you are the evangelist. We need more good evangelists on Christian radio. And you actually have a book that you have written. The name of it is Leave the Shore’s. Tell us a little bit about why you chose that title and what someone can find in the book.

Timothée Paton (16:53):
Good. If you hold on, I’ll get you a copy. It’s right there on the shelf.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:04):
Yeah, I found the book on Amazon. And so when I post this podcast, I’m going to put a link to where someone can get a copy of the book. And is that one in French, the one you just showed me?

Timothée Paton (17:21):
Yeah, that’s the latest one in French.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:23):
And then I saw you also have it in English.

Timothée Paton (17:26):
It’s in English. Leave the shore. It’s seen about 20 languages. Some are not fully printed yet, and we just look for new languages and the publisher can keep all the money. The whole idea is to get it out, no copyright, no royalties. Our passion is to get people out of the shore into the deep end.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:51):
Wow. Alright. Well tell us a little bit about the book and the main message.

Timothée Paton (17:59):
Yeah, the book is a challenge to get believers away from the shore. Remember when Jesus met Peter for the first time, he was cleaning his nets. He was discouraged, the two men had never met, but Jesus tells him from Peter’s boat, get back into the boat, bring your nets and let’s cast the nets in the deep end. The deep end is anywhere in the world where people are still waiting to hear the gospel message. For the first time, two thirds of the world have had some knowledge of Christianity. But one third, that’s 2 billion people, not 2 million. It’s not an M, it’s a B. 2 billion people are waiting for the message of the gospel. What gets me sometime is that we translate the Bible in a new English version in a new French, in a new Spanish version with a better cover, with a nicer design.

(19:06):
I was just praying with my wife yesterday for the people of Maldive in the Indian Ocean, a place where people go on holiday. After 2000 years, only 25 books of the Bible have been translated 25 books out of 66 up to 2000 years. For me, it’s a disgrace, it’s an injustice. And maldive is the deep end and we are called to help those who are translating join the Wcl Bible translators who are in the deep end. They’ve left the shore of the us, Australia, maybe a nice place, and they’ve gone to the deep end to translate the Bible for those people who are still waiting for the complete old and New Testament. So for me, the deep end are those places in the world where people are still waiting and you can stay on the shore for the rest of your life going from one conference to another, enjoying Christian music the whole day, just casting your net on the shore, don’t cast your net on the shore, you’ll catch some shelves, maybe some dead fish.

(20:24):
No one is called to stay on the shore. We are called to get into the boat. And I want to speak to people who might have one foot in the boat and one foot on the shore get both feet in the boat. Jesus is not coming on the beach to meet you. He’s waiting for you to meet him in the boat and bring your nets. Everyone has a net. Everyone has gifts and talents. I speak on radio, but I wouldn’t know how to build the walls of an orphanage. In Africa, we have different nets. Use your nets. Don’t compare your net with someone else. Bring your nets, your gift, your talents. Don’t spend your life cleaning your nets. Some people say, when my life is better, when I’ve read the whole Bible, when I’ve been two years to Bible school, when my nets are just right, then I can join Jesus in the deep end of mission. Well, that’s not the way it works. Come with your weakness, with your struggles, with your past, with your difficulties. But by all means, bring your net. Don’t leave your net on the shore. Bring it with Jesus in the deep end.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:44):
Amen. That’s powerful. Let’s talk about the challenges and opportunities of ministering in France. Some people have said that Europe is now a post-Christian nation. I like to say no, it is a pre-Christian nation. It is wide open and ready for a new move of God. And I was watching the news just recently and it was so beautiful to see the ceremony where they reopened the Notre Dame Cathedral

Timothée Paton (22:22):
Because

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:22):
For hundreds of years, Notre Dame has been the symbol of Christianity in France. And it was so tragic when it burned down, but now they have restored it. And the Bible says that God makes all things new. And in some ways I see it as a prophetic picture that in the past Christianity was very strong in France and now not so much, but Satan has tried to destroy it. Satan comes to steal, kill and destroy. But Jesus says, I have come to give life and life more abundantly. And in the same way that Notre Dame has been rebuilt, I believe that God wants to rebuild the Church of France to be strong, to be full of the fire of the Holy Spirit, to see miracles once again to send out missionaries around the world. Once again, what do you see working on the ground? What are the great challenges? And then what do you see are the great opportunities that God has for not just France, but all of the Francophone countries, francophone Africa and other places around the world that have been so influenced by French culture?

Timothée Paton (23:46):
Well, interesting you mentioned Francophone Africa. I mean almost half of Africa speaks French.

(23:55):
I think the Africans coming from the Congo, from KaVo, from Cameroon, from Togo, Binna, Congo, they’re coming over to France 60 years after the independence. And most of them are strong believers in Jesus. So the churches in France have been shaken. I’m talking about many the Protestant, evangelical Pentecostal churches everywhere across the country are being blessed by very strong. They know what they believe. Sometimes the French Christians have only Christian as a name, but they don’t really know what they believe. They don’t really read the Bible. But those Africans, they know what they believe and they won’t give in and they won’t be afraid to stand up publicly for Jesus. And what’s very good, because in France there’s no way you can say anything about someone with dark skin that’s against the law. So the best thing is when you have thousands of Africans who’ve come to France and they go for the march for Jesus, which is once a year in Paris, Mar Ur, 90% of the crowd is made up of Africans who live in France and no one dares to say anything.

(25:20):
Being black in France is the best thing because you can have a black gospel choir singing the gospel, gospel music, black gospel music. It’s probably the best tool to reach French people. They might not believe in God, but they have a lot of respect for the Martin Luther King and the civil rights back in America. So when you have a gospel choir singing, it’s probably one of the best ways to reach French people. So I’m telling if you have a black gospel choir, whether you’re from Chicago, LA or Detroit, come over to France with your choir, you’ll be invited everywhere you will go where it’s difficult for me as a white man born in France to go. So there are great ways to reach the French people in rural France. It’s still very, very dark. I mean, yesterday my wife and I went back to where I was born, exactly to the day 52 years ago.

(26:34):
We went, it’s bang in the middle of France. It’s a little place called Ghana. You’ve got Ghana in West Africa and you’ve got Ghana as a little town right in the central of France. That’s where my parents started the ministry back in the early sixties. I was born there, but I was born again at the age of four in Ghana. So I went back memory lane yesterday with my wife and she’s very nice. She goes where I love to go back to, and she was born in Hong Kong, I was born in Ghana, but she comes to my world and I hope one day I can go to her world over there on the other side of Asia. But we went to this church, an old Catholic church a few miles away from Ghana. And I realized that not much has changed in a thousand years.

(27:30):
And I saw those leaflets on the way out, how to pray for the dead with the dead, how to have a better relationship with the Virgin Mary. And I said to myself, those rural places in France, which is a large section of the country, is still untouched with the message of the gospel. So I ran from my car, picked up a few gospels of John, slipped him in that church because we saw no Bible, no gospel. And that’s the way it is. In a lot of villages in France, people have a religion, but they don’t yet know the gospel. They’ve never read. Most French people have never opened the Bible. So we see great things. We see big churches. A new evangelical church is birthed every 10 days in France,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:29):
But

Timothée Paton (28:30):
France is big. France is almost 70 million people. It’s the largest country alongside Germany, the largest country in Europe. So it’s good news, a new church every 10 days. We don’t tell you those who close. But in rural France where we live, my wife and I since early January this year, we realized not much has changed. So if you want to leave the shore of America, bring your nets to places like Central France where people have a religion. There’s a Catholic church in every single village, but most people have no knowledge of the gospel. People are very suspicious. We went for a restaurant for my birthday yesterday. I always have a gospel in my pocket and I don’t just give it like that. I bring the price. I want people to realize the price of the booklet I’m giving them, and I gave it to the waiter on the way out when we paid.

(29:36):
We do pay missionaries, pay for the mill. And I said to her, this book is the oldest book in print. It’s almost 2000 years. In about 20 years time, this book will be 2000 years old. So that raises a little bit of interest. I say this is the most translated book in the whole world. People will do anything to get this book in some countries. And this book is part of a large book that my wife and I read every single day. We start the day with this book. So I don’t just give it as a gospel tract too quick,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:19):
You the value.

Timothée Paton (30:21):
I elevate the value. I want people to realize how precious this book is. But I could see on that woman’s face, there’s something on the faces of most French people when you give the gospel is very cautious. Don’t get me into your thing. Very, very aware of cults. I think the French people are more afraid of a cult and they think we belong to one of those than they are of the atomic bomb. So you can sit on their faces. So we need to pray for France and we need missionaries to come to those rural areas that have had Christianity, but not really the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:14):
Amen. Well, let’s take a moment right now to pray for France. Would you pray and let’s pray together and agree together for God to send missionaries and for France to come to Jesus.

Timothée Paton (31:29):
Yeah. Father, we thank you that you love this nation, A nation that has known revivals in the past. But we know that people like John Calvin, Jean Calva was born in France and others who brought the Bible back at the center of society. And we know that France centuries ago went through a genocide when the Protestants were either slotted by the millions in France or escaped to places like Switzerland, Holland, South Africa. Though we pray that the gospel would come back. People have had religion. People have seen a church in their village their whole life. Even when they walk through the doors of a church, they don’t always hear the salvation message. Lord, I pray that you will bring new workers to France. This nation is waiting to hear the true message that changes lives. Lord, the country is open. It’s easy to get in. And I pray that you’ll bring gospel choirs from America to tour across this nation singing the gospel. And I preferred missionaries to come in to learn the language and to love the French culture and to become French to win the French. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:14):
Amen. Powerful. Well, brother, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast. If someone is listening and they have a heart for France and they want to find out more about your ministry or maybe find your book or maybe support your ministry, I’m sure you need more support. What is your website? What is a good way for someone to find out more about you?

Timothée Paton (33:45):
Yeah, well my name, so www dot t mo Payton in one word, forget the accent. The English people will be happy about that. Timothy Peyton,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:59):
Can you spell it for those who are listening?

Timothée Paton (34:02):
Yeah. So Timothy OTE is T-I-M-O-T-H-E-E, Peyton, PATO n.com. And you can find the book and you can write. And if you do come to France, if you leave the shore with your net to France, you will never, never be out of a job. People are waiting and people want to hear the gospel, but they want to see a demonstration as well. They want to see signs and wonders. And I have a feeling, and I just finished, I was just telling my wife when I saw the look on the face of the waitress yesterday, I said to myself, what about if I had given her a word of knowledge, personal word from God? And that’s what we need. We need signs and wonders. We need the gifts of the spirit to shake the unbelief of the French people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:03):
Amen. Well, may it be so I pray that God would raise up mighty missionaries and ministers and people who are filled with the Holy Spirit have all the gifts of the Holy Spirit, words of knowledge, miracles, signs, and wonders. In Jesus’ name.

Timothée Paton (35:19):
Amen. Amen. Thank you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:22):
Well, thank you brother so much for speaking with me on the Evangelism podcast. It is so wonderful. I love your heart. I love what you’re doing. It’s so beautiful to see and how you’re continuing on the mission that God gave your parents and now you and your wife are doing it. It’s so beautiful to see. Thank

Timothée Paton (35:42):
You. Thank you. See you soon. See you in France.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:46):
Yes sir.

Timothée Paton (35:46):
Anytime.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:49):
Bye-Bye.

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Jeremy Gall & the Gall Family | Supernatural Faith for Evangelism

On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, Evangelist Daniel King interviews the Gall family, Jeremy and Joscelyne and their son Coen. Listen as they share stories on how God has given them supernatural faith for evangelism. Today you will learn your provision won’t come until you take a step of Faith. There’s no better time to step out into your ministry than now!

The Gall family has been involved in full-time evangelism for over 20 years, traveling to 28 states and 9 countries, with a focus on Russia.
Jeremy Gall felt called to be an evangelist from a young age, and the family embraced this calling together. Their children have been immersed in ministry from a young age.
The Gall family shared testimonies of miraculous healings and provision that have sustained their ministry over the years, including a deaf man’s hearing being restored.
They emphasized the importance of mentorship, stepping out in faith, and relying on God’s provision rather than natural circumstances when pursuing a calling in evangelism.

Learn more about Jeremy Gall: https://www.jeremygallministries.com/

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:03):
Hallelujah. Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have some very special guests with me, the gall family. Thank you for being with me today.

Jeremy Gall (00:16):
Oh man, we’re so excited to be here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:17):
So we have Jeremy and Joscelyne and Coen, and you all are involved in evangelism, the whole family. So tell me a little bit about how you got started serving Jesus.

Jeremy Gall (00:33):
Yeah, so where do we start? So we’ve been 20, 22 years. We’ve been traveling full time and before that I worked with another evangelist. I’m sure we’ll get into the details of that later. And yeah, 28 states. I think it’s been in nine countries so far. Most of our overseas time has been in Russia, made a lot of trips and just excited to, wouldn’t trade places with anybody in the world. Love what God has called us to.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:58):
How did your family first know that you had a calling for evangelism?

Jeremy Gall (01:03):
Yeah, that’s good. We’ll, probably all I know myself, I was maybe eight, nine years old and my grandmother, Roman Catholic grandmother, we were going to bed at her house. I was staying over her house for the night and she said, what do you want to be when you grow up? And she gave me the classic choices, fireman, policeman, doctor, lawyer, a little bit of white collar, a little bit of blue collar. I said, I want to be an evangelist. And she’s like I said, Roman Catholic. She thought it was Roman Catholic. She thought I said Los Angeles. She said, you can’t be a city. She said, then I started to explain as much as younger, that’s not white collar or blue collar. That’s clergy collar. Right, right. A whole different collar. Exactly. She said, I was actually younger than that. I was probably closer to four or five.

(01:51):
She said, oh my God, this is in the eighties. I’m 50. So she said, you mean those guys on tv? You don’t want to do that? She said she was horrified. She was horrified. And here we are all these years later. But it was funny. That just came out of my spirit. I never thought it, I didn’t go around talking about it. And it wasn’t until I was in college that I was like, oh yeah, this is God’s plan. And it was when I was in college that I started leading. I went to secular school, I went to art school actually before ministry. We both did. We met in art school and I was doing a Bible study and God led me, I actually did, the first time I ever preached was an evangelistic campaign on the campus ever preached. And besides the Bible study,

Joscelyne Gall (02:35):
He threw his own party.

Jeremy Gall (02:36):
Yeah, threw my own party. And it was right in that season that I was like, oh yeah, this was God’s plan all along. So that’s when I realized I was about 19 years old and yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:46):
Wow. So Ms. Jocelyn, how long have you been married now and what is it like being called together in ministry?

Joscelyne Gall (02:55):
Let’s see. So we have been married.

(02:59):
We have been married. Is it 20?

Jeremy Gall (03:02):
It’ll be 27

Joscelyne Gall (03:04):
This year. Seven this year.

Jeremy Gall (03:04):
Yeah.

Joscelyne Gall (03:04):
26 now. 26 right now. 26 years. You asked me the wrong question. I am the one that’s worse with numbers. I feel like I am always like, how old am I? I just feel like I’m still, I don’t know, maybe 22, something like that. It just stopped right around that time and I’m like, I dunno. But yeah. So what was it, so how long been

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:25):
Married? So how have you been married and then what is it like being in ministry together as a family?

Joscelyne Gall (03:31):
Yeah. No, it’s wonderful. It, there is nothing that I could possibly suggest hire, if you’re called to it, you will not be fulfilled in any other role. I mean that’s really how it works. No matter what you try, no matter what the world has to offer, if you are called to the ministry, if you are called to be an evangelist, there is nothing that will possibly satisfy you. So you might as well just surrender and say, okay, I’m doing it because everything else will be miserable. But we love it. It was definitely a, it’s different raising kids on the road. It’s different. We had to do a little things differently than some families. We end up, I think Cohen, he was potty trained literally in our van driving from place to place. How

Jeremy Gall (04:27):
Old was he in Jamaica?

Joscelyne Gall (04:28):
He was four months old. Four for his. He was dedicated into America.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:33):
That’s the way to be raised, right? Part of the family is to be part of the ministry. Absolutely.

Joscelyne Gall (04:38):
We had him laying hands on the six since they were tiny. I think he was like three the first time he prayed over me and I saw a change. I came home from a Mother’s Day service and we just always believe you teach everybody, everybody is called to lay hands on the sick and see them recover. So I’m from the time they’re little, the simplest prayer is boo boo go in Jesus’ name. And so that’s what they knew. And I came back from a church service and I’d been standing commanding this headache to go. It just kind of came over me, but it was really serious. It was almost a migraine kind of headache. And I was laying on the couch and he just comes over and sees that I’m not looking normal and he puts his hand on me and says, boob boo, go in Jesus’ name. And instantly the headache left and that was it. And I was like, oh, so if God can use a three-year-old, he can use all of us.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:35):
He was immersed in it. Yeah,

Joscelyne Gall (05:37):
Immersed in it from the beginning. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:39):
Alright, hand the microphone to your son. Tell me what are you doing for Jesus right now?

Coen Gall (05:44):
Yeah, so recently, well I’ve been going to Rama, I’m on my second year there. And while I was there I was working at the NRC and I met somebody there who, him and his wife pastor or used to pastor a church in China and they’re both from there and it was all underground and now they’re just here going to Rama and training. And he invited me to this church that he was going to on Sunday nights and his wife was teaching Mandarin there. So I would go early and I’d do that with them. And I had been doing that for a while and they came to me and asked if I wanted to help teach their church back in China, English over Zoom. And so I was like, sure, of course. But the goal of it was to use it for ministry.

Jeremy Gall (06:41):
Evangelism.

Coen Gall (06:42):
Evangelism in particular. And I was like, sure, let’s do it. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:47):
So you’re teaching a church in China English and using it to share Jesus.

Coen Gall (06:54):
Exactly, yeah. So what we’ve been doing is we’ve been teaching it through and there’s a couple of us doing it. There’s descent, Hagen is one of ’em who’s doing it with me and we’ve been doing this for coming up on now over a year, right? Well, a little less than that maybe. I think we started a few months after I started going to the church, so

(07:17):
Probably half a year, maybe something like that. But it’s just been really great. And what we do is we are going through the Bible and we’re reading it with them and then we teach ’em English through whatever we’re reading and then I’ll preach on whatever it is that we’re reading out of. And then our goal is to have them invite people to hear the gospel and maybe it’ll kind of be teaching ’em English, but that at the same time, the real goal is to get the word to ’em and get them saved. So it’s been really great. I’ve really enjoyed it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:50):
That’s awesome. Well you guys went to Rama and then you traveled with David Horton for a

Jeremy Gall (07:56):
While

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:57):
And then you went over to Russia and taught for Rick Renner great ministry there in the Slavic nations. Amen. Yeah. And so tell me a little bit, what has God taught you through this whole process of being at Rama and then with Brother David Horton, a great evangelist and then with Rick Renner?

Jeremy Gall (08:19):
Yeah. What do we got? Six hours. Alright, let’s do it. So

(08:25):
Right, so we come out to Rama. I was in art school and it was in art school. We met and then that was when I was like I said, I realized this is God’s plan for my life. He’s called me to be an evangelist, come to Rama, went to the evangelist group, graduated second year, so I’m getting close to the end of second year and we’re scheduled to go home. I was preaching a little bit before I went to Bible school, so I’m itching to get started talking about learning things and I’m itching to get started and my dad had vacation time to come help us move home. This is like I said, 2000 and I worked downtown at the One Oak Building downtown Tulsa, and I was a security guard. So I’m watching monitors, had a lot of time to walk around and pray and I’m looking at these monitors and God spoke to me and said, fellowship with evangelist and mentoring, just these random words.

(09:12):
Wasn’t even a sentence, wasn’t even an idea. What do I do with that? Right Fellowship with evangelist and mentoring. I was still in school about to graduate, go back to school and another student named Charlie Elliot comes up to me and he says, you ought to check out this David Horton guy. He’s starting a fellowship with evangelist and he’s big on mentoring. I’d never heard of David. He wasn’t at the school anymore, it was 2000. He had his own ministry. I’d never heard of him. I’d heard of his dad, but he wasn’t teaching there anymore. I didn’t know who he was, but he says, you ought to check out this David Horton guy. He is starting a fellowship with evangelist and he’s big on mentoring, so of course I’m like, yeah, I better check him out. We went, he had a school at the time called Priority one out on Skelly Drive here in Tulsa.

(09:54):
I think there was, I don’t know, seven or eight of us in the class, and several of us have gone on to full-time evangelism and we were just in tears as Jerry O’Dell would come and teach there and Stephen Steinle and David would teach of course. And it was just a great time of, it was something I really needed and learning. It was something like, I know you’re doing some mentoring and it was that finishing step that I didn’t realize I was ready to just launch out and do it. But working with another evangelist, closely interning, if you will, with another evangelist, it was essential.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:30):
What were some of the things that you learned?

Jeremy Gall (10:32):
The spirit of faith, you know, it could learn the concepts of it. You could understand that you could check the boxes, but just being around it and watching it work, just seeing somebody do it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:48):
Yeah. There is something special about the faith of an evangelist.

Jeremy Gall (10:51):
Yeah, yeah. And to see somebody operate in the gift that you’re called to operate in, I think it’s essential. You get around it and it’s already in you, right? But you’re like, yeah, that’s it. That’s right, that’s right. Yeah. Yeah.

Joscelyne Gall (11:04):
There’s nothing like it. We sat in the first class, we had never met him. We had never seen him preach. We just knew from

Jeremy Gall (11:10):
That word. First time we heard him preach was in his school and we were in his school.

Joscelyne Gall (11:14):
We were like, we have to be there. So we just sat in that first class and we heard him start speaking and we just sat there with tears just pouring down our face, just tears

Jeremy Gall (11:23):
Said, this is right.

Joscelyne Gall (11:24):
This is where we’re supposed to be. This is we’re supposed to be, this is what we’re supposed to be doing. It was just so supernatural and so much of it’s like the practical, how toss do you, yeah, that sounds all good and nice. You feel called to do something and then you go out and you preach to everybody and it’s like, but how do you go from step A to that? There’s so many parts to fill in there and I just think that can look so big and so daunting to people and they’re like, I’m just praying in my little room and I’m supposed to go preach to millions. It’s like how do you get from there to there? I think that really helped

Jeremy Gall (12:02):
Us fill

Joscelyne Gall (12:03):
In those details and go from step to step to step.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:07):
What do you think are some of those steps that someone who’s listening who feels called to be an evangelist has that vision to reach millions and they’re starting to say, okay, what are some of the steps I need to go? What are some of the things you’ve learned over the years?

Jeremy Gall (12:22):
Yeah, I think that working with an how it is, there’s always going to be some exception. There’s going to be some person that God raises up on to make a hard, fast rule. But I think mentoring, we see it with Jesus. We see it with Paul and Timothy, and I just think that working with somebody for a while who’s called to do what you do, I know I needed it. And to grow up a little bit in that, see how it operates before you launch out. I think that’s a great step. And then just principles of just determine what God’s called you to do. And then Oral Roberts used to say, seek no more the confirmation of the flesh. Just confer, no, I forget his exact wording. Confer not again with flesh and blood. Something to that effect. And once you’re called to do it, just

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:11):
Basically don’t let anyone talk you out of what God told you to do.

Jeremy Gall (13:14):
Right. Once you’re called to do it, come hell or high water, do it

Joscelyne Gall (13:18):
Because they will. They’ll try.

Jeremy Gall (13:20):
Yeah. And trust God as your source for all of it. For finances, for open doors, for guidance, for connection, learn to leave heavy on God. Evangelism is miracle work. Every aspect of it. Conversion is miracle work. It’s not like teaching in a school like in an academy teaching somebody math. It’s conversion is miracle work. Evangelism is miracle work. Every aspect of it is miracles from open doors to not just the signs and wonders, not just the signs that confirm the word, but a lost person getting saved. That’s miracle work. So just get comfortable walking on water.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:59):
So you’ve been traveling around the United States here and you’ve seen God do some tremendous miracles. Share with me some of the miracles that you’ve seen.

Jeremy Gall (14:09):
Something with evangelism, and I always try to really make this an important point. I grew up here and I grew up in the church like you and I grew up here. Well, miracles really happen on the mission field. You want to see miracles, go to the mission field. I just always had a problem with that. I thought, well, if miracles happen on the mission field, then sick people in the western world, we better buy ’em plane tickets. If you need a miracle, you better get to India or Africa or Pakistan. Why are we even praying for people here? Let’s get ’em to wear miracles happen. The other thing is, where is the mission field? Can you show me on a map? Is there a border that once you cross, you’re there? So we always make it a point that miracles don’t just happen on the mission.

(14:51):
Miracles happen where Jesus said, whosoever believeth in me the works that I do what they do also. And where you believe in Jesus. And I think this is important now that Jesus said to a man in the Bible, he said, you people will not believe unless you see signs and wonders. And we need to turn things around in our nation. We need in the western world in general. And there is no other model than preaching the word with signs following. That’s not a developing nation model. That’s the model. So anyways, we’re preaching to the choir here. I know with your evangelist group. But so some things we’ve seen, I haven’t seen anything. And we’ve ministered in Vietnam and Honduras and Jamaica, a lot in Russia and haven’t seen anything in another nation that out was greater than things we’ve seen here. Once we were ministering up in years ago, ministering up in New England, conservative staunch New England.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:43):
It’s a mission field up there,

Jeremy Gall (15:44):
Right? Yeah. Rhode Island. We’re in Providence, Rhode Island, and a woman got out of a wheelchair who hadn’t walked in 43 years, pushed her own wheelchair in Rhode Island and we were ministering in Des Moines, Iowa. A woman was there who had had a stroke. Her name was candy. And we prayed for her on a Sunday night and she walked in and she shuffled. She shuffled in. She couldn’t see very well. She had had the stroke four years earlier. Somebody was guiding her up to the front. She’s just shuffling all the mental things that come with stroke damage. She had short memory problems and things like that. She shuffles up to the front and we pray for her and command in Jesus’ name. And she says, yeah, I feel a little better. She says, I feel like I could move a little better. She’s picking out people on the front row.

(16:29):
I could see people on the front row and she’s naming people she could see. I said, God’s working in your body. Can you come back tomorrow night? This was a Sunday night. Can you come back tomorrow night? She says, well, I can’t drive. Well, who would give her a ride? Somebody raises her hand, bring her tomorrow night. She shuffles out and they’re helping her. She walks in the next night, 100% whole. Her vision is whole. She’s walking. She had seen her doctor. It was perfect timing for a doctor’s visit. We prayed for a Sunday night. Monday, she had a doctor’s appointment. He tested her. She went from 95% nerve damage to 0.001% nerve damage. And his name was Dr. Palmer. He was so shocked that he called her pastor. The doctor called her pastor and said, this is a miracle that took place. So she walks in whole normal. Well, Jesus is the same here as he is in Pakistan or India. Praise God. One that one more. We share one more. Go for it. One that I love to share just because of the dramatic of it and it just kind of illustrates how we need it right now in this country, is we were ministering down in Augusta, Georgia where we had actually seen Matt and Susie Judge Church in Augusta, Georgia, a good news church. And we’d actually seen a revival breakout there. We went down for a week and ended up staying two months. Wow. And it’s interesting. Preaching

Joscelyne Gall (17:51):
Every night.

Jeremy Gall (17:51):
Preaching every night. The church was started out of a David Horton tent meeting, and Susie Judd, her maiden name’s Kennedy, Ralph and Martha were on Brother Hagen’s board. So they got a lot of history, this church down there and in Augusta. So we went down to do a week of meetings. It ended up being two months. We came back the next summer and did two months, and this might’ve been our third year down there with them, that this story happened third

Joscelyne Gall (18:13):
Or fourth year.

Jeremy Gall (18:14):
And it was an amazing thing. There was people going out on the streets and there was just as many miracles happening on the streets as in the services. There was a woman who got a 14-year-old girl, got a guy out of a wheelchair on the street. It went out in street teams, but

Joscelyne Gall (18:30):
Deaf ears opening on the street,

Jeremy Gall (18:31):
On the streets. In Augusta. In Augusta, Georgia. So one of the stories that happened though, I think it was the third year we were down with him, that pastor’s daughter had invited, a pastor’s daughter, had invited this young guy, 21-year-old guy to go jet skiing with him and come on, he’s living in Charleston. Come into town for the weekend, go jet skiing. So they drag him to church on Sunday morning. They wake up, he came in Saturday night, they wake up Sunday morning to go to church. He’s like, I don’t do that. He’s an atheist. I’m agnostic maybe. And he says, I don’t do that church thing. That’s your thing. They said, no, you’re going to church. They drag him to church. Almost literally. You’re going to church. He comes Sunday morning. I wasn’t speaking Sunday morning. They were doing a conference. It was another guy, a friend of mine, Greg Barber. He was pastoring in Colorado at the time. He talked about how he got filled with the Holy Ghost and this made an impression on this. The guy’s name was Vinny, this 21-year-old guy who came, made an impression on him. He’s like, my god, these people really believe this and

Joscelyne Gall (19:30):
You guys are crazy.

Jeremy Gall (19:31):
Yeah, you guys are kind of crazy. Believe in speaking in tongues. And he was really disappointed that he didn’t get to hear somebody do it, praying the Holy Ghost

Joscelyne Gall (19:42):
Because they ushered everyone out to do it in a back room. Yeah, just

Jeremy Gall (19:46):
Property.

Joscelyne Gall (19:48):
And he’s like,

Jeremy Gall (19:48):
What? Get he disappointed?

Joscelyne Gall (19:50):
See it? What is this speaking in tongues thing? What’s it sound like?

Jeremy Gall (19:53):
And then they announce a miracle service for Sunday night. So he gets dragged Sunday morning, he asks to come Sunday night. So he comes Sunday night, 21 years old, cool guy about 10 years ago, right? And so he is sitting there and we’re praying for people and people are bending over doing things they couldn’t do before. And he’s seeing things happening. I preached on, what did you come for that night? They came to Jesus to hear him be healed. So what did Vinny come for? He came, he wanted to hear somebody speak in tongues and he wanted to see what these crazy people actually believed. They really believe this stuff. So we’re praying for people and we hear later, he tells us this story. He’s thinking in his own mind, he says, it seems like these people are sincere, but it’s not enough to change what I believe is his private conversation.

(20:43):
In his mind, if God’s really speaking to this, he’d know I was here and he’d know what was wrong with me. He said, and what he was thinking of specifically that was wrong with him was he was deaf in his left ear. Doctors had removed a tumor when he was 15 years old. It left him deaf. They knew it would leave him deaf in his left ear, and he had no feeling it was numb to the touch because of nerve damage. So he says, if God’s really speaking to this guy, he’d know I was here and he’d know what was wrong with me. Now at that moment, of course, not knowing any of this, I said, wait, I forgot to minister to ears. Now this will help you got a lot of ministers listening. I’m telling you, it was not like thus sayeth the Lord. I’m just thinking, oh, it’s like, oh, I forgot to turn off the oven or something. That’s just how it came to me. It seemed very natural at the time.

Joscelyne Gall (21:28):
Well, and you were in the middle of a closing prayer,

Jeremy Gall (21:31):
Literal. I was wrapping up the

Joscelyne Gall (21:32):
Service. You literally were saying, Lord bless ’em as they get home that there’s just keep ’em safe driving. That’s the kind of prayer he was praying. And then he is like, wait a minute.

Jeremy Gall (21:41):
Wait. I forgot to minister to ears. Got to kind of dealt with me about ears earlier during the day. And I said, oh man, I forgot to do that. And it just came to my memory, seemed very natural, very normal. But then I started, well no, there’s somebody here and there’s another aspect of it. There’s somebody here and there’s something blocking your right ear. I said, now Vinny, like he said, it was his left ear. I probably said right ear like three or four times and just how perfect God is. I don’t know what happened between me saying right ear and the skeptic who is deaf in his left ear. He’s not the guy who’s there saying, oh, I hope it’s me. He’s a skeptic. He’s basically kind of like, well prove it. If it’s real, you

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:16):
Got the wrong ear.

Jeremy Gall (22:17):
Right, right, right. And he did not think, well, this guy’s not me. He’s got the wrong no. He’s like, yeah, he’s talking to me. He’s talking to me. Right. And so I said, well, I’m just going to command in Jesus’ name, and those ears will be open. And didn’t ask anybody to come up, just prayed commanded in the name of Jesus’ ears, be open. And he said later we heard the story. He said at that moment it was like static on a radio coming in. And he just heard a little bit of static in his ear and he said, pop, his ear popped open. He said he was chewing gum. He was so shocked that he swallowed his gum. He was so blown away by what happened. And I give an invitation for people to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. He got born again. He didn’t come forward. He just did it in his seat and he prayed. He’s terrified. He doesn’t say anything to anybody. Not to the people who bring him to the meeting or anything. We go,

Joscelyne Gall (23:05):
Did you say what he heard?

Jeremy Gall (23:06):
Oh, the first thing he hears when the hearing came in, he said, was the woman sitting next to him praying in the Holy Ghost out of his ear that was formally deaf

Joscelyne Gall (23:14):
When he came.

Jeremy Gall (23:15):
That’s a Pentecostal story right there, man. He wanted to know what it sounded like. First thing he heard when his deaf ear opens was so he’s terrified. And I go back to the pastor’s office, the pastor Matt’s office, Jo, he finds Jocelyn finally. He’s like, I got to tell you what happened. And he tells this story. She comes and gets me. She says, you got to hear this.

Joscelyne Gall (23:36):
I’m like, pause, please.

Jeremy Gall (23:37):
He’s

Joscelyne Gall (23:37):
Going to want to hear this.

Jeremy Gall (23:38):
You got to hear this. She comes and gets me from the office. I come out, I said, Vinny, that’s incredible. He tells me this story. I, God opened his deaf. I said, can I pray for you? And I don’t mean just can I pray just about for God’s doing something in your life? He said, no, no, no. He holds out his hand. It’s like this. He’s shaken like a leaf. He’s terrified. He said, this is a lot for me. I said, yeah, I guess you woke up that morning an atheist and went to bed with your deaf ear opened up. That’ll shake up your

Joscelyne Gall (24:07):
Worldview. That’s a lot.

Jeremy Gall (24:09):
Yeah. Well, he went on with God did get filled with the Holy Ghost himself. But yeah, that was in Augusta. That wasn’t in Pakistan or Moscow or Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:19):
Well God works the same no matter where he is.

Jeremy Gall (24:21):
Same Jesus. Same Jesus. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:24):
Alright, I got another question for Cohen here. It’s been said that God does not have any grandchildren. He only has children. And so when you’re young, you serve God because your parents drag you to church. And a lot of people have drug problems. They got drug to church a lot.

Jeremy Gall (24:44):
That’s good.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:46):
But then at some point you have to make a decision to choose to follow God. And so where were you in your life, where you made that decision that you’re going to serve God? Not just because your parents are but for yourself?

Coen Gall (25:02):
Honestly, that’s a great question. Honestly though, for me it was really early. I really believe that they did a great job making it so that we had a relationship with God ourselves. Like they said, they made us a part of everything with ministry and things like that. And because of that, I believe it really made it not even be that drastic of a thing. Like, oh, I’m choosing to follow God. It was very much like I had a relationship with God very early on. And with because of that, even feeling called was very, very early on and all that sort of stuff. And I believe that that’s really the key to it, is making sure that they have a relationship with God themselves by having them involved. And I think that was something that was with me. I was always involved. And so I don’t really know if I really have a specific point where I’m like, oh, this was when it happened. Talk

Joscelyne Gall (25:58):
To me. When did you get saved though?

Coen Gall (26:00):
Well, I got saved when I was like

Joscelyne Gall (26:02):
Three.

Coen Gall (26:02):
Three. And I got filled with the spirit when I was like four.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:07):
That’s a great testimony. I’m very similar. I’ve got saved at three. I was filled with the Holy Spirit when I was four.

Jeremy Gall (26:13):
Praise

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:14):
God. Called into the ministry at five, preached my first sermon at six, became a missionary with my parents at 10. I wrote my first book at 14 What? And then started doing Crusades when I was about 20. And so I love it. It’s great. I love because I got a headstart on everybody else. That’s good. Alright, so talk to me a little bit about what you feel God is doing among generation Z and then the younger generation, the generation alpha. It seems like there’s been a shift where like Gen X, which I’m probably Gen X, there was a lot of skepticism towards the things of God, but it seems that with Gen Z, there is genuine hunger for real spirituality. Not necessarily what we find in the church, but people are hungry for something. What do you feel God wants to do among your generation?

Coen Gall (27:15):
I really believe that, that people are getting excited. Just like you said. I think that people there, they’re done with just plain old empty religion and they’re ready for something real and going to Rama meeting like-minded people. I’ve really seen that. And I’ve met a lot of people that are just ready to step out into ministry and do what God’s called them to do and really be real with it, not just some empty religion. And I really believe God’s doing something. I really believe that everyone’s been saying we’re getting close to something big with God. And I believe that people are starting to feel that. And God’s starting to place people into the positions they need to be. And I believe that’s starting to happen with this generation and even the generation after. And honestly, I mean people are as excited, like you say. I could just tell. And I’ve got friends who are also feeling called to be evangelists and stuff. And I’m hearing this and I’m like, this is great. Other people who want to see miracles and the loss saved. And I’m like, that’s awesome. That is awesome.

Joscelyne Gall (28:27):
What about the lost? The Lost? Have you

Coen Gall (28:30):
Noticed that among the Lost?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:31):
What about the Lost?

Coen Gall (28:32):
Yeah. No, I mean I feel like it’s the same as every generation that when it comes down to it, some people are going to resist it. But when it comes down to it, miracles are what always cut through. And I think miracles work, they always have. They worked in all those healing revivals and they’ll work today. And I believe that this younger generation, it’s not going to be some new thing that’s going to reach them, but it’s going to be being the Bible kind of believer and being the Bible kind of evangelist pastor, et cetera, et cetera, which is bringing miracles, which is bringing healing, which is bringing what God wants us to do. I mean, we see the great commission, we see go into all the world and preach the gospel. And then what do we see? We see the plan for how we should carry that out. And that’s miracles. That’s miracles. And then we see the disciples acting out on the Great Commission. It says that signs and Warners confirmed the word Jesus was with them, with signs and Warners confirming the word. And I believe that that’s what’s going to reach this generation. And I believe that’s what springs up that hunger for them. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:41):
Alright, give the microphone to your mom. You mentioned miracles and one of the things that every evangelist needs is miracles of provision. It always takes a lot of resources in order to be in ministry, to do ministry. What are some of the divine miracles of provision that your family has seen?

Joscelyne Gall (30:01):
Well, I’m going to start with when we first stepped out into ministry. So I had my daughter. My daughter was a 1-year-old, and Jeremy was working night shift and he was interning with or working with David. David, but it was like a volunteer position. And so he would go out here and there and do a weekend with him somewhere and then come back or teach in a conference all the morning sessions or something. And so anyways, David came to him. So we’re working with him, we’re doing all of that. And David comes to him and he says, I’ve got a specific meeting that I’m going to,

Jeremy Gall (30:52):
This is April, 2003.

Joscelyne Gall (30:55):
And he says, I would love for you to come, but it’s just not in the budget to get you there and all that. He’s like, but if you can get there, if you can fund your own way, you can preach in all the sessions and everything.

Jeremy Gall (31:08):
We were in Tulsa and the meeting was in Roanoke, Virginia.

Joscelyne Gall (31:13):
And at this time when Eden was about one, I started seeing, it’s getting to be close. We’re getting to be about at the time, just sensing it, sensing it, just sensing it. That in prayer and everything that we’re going to be stepping out full-time pretty soon. And so just every time he would leave for work, I would just claim and I would say, thank you, Lord, that we are in full-time ministry. Because you could start seeing the grace starting to lift. You know what I mean?

Jeremy Gall (31:43):
Which is important for an evangelist, easier to have, be bivocational as a pastor, a little more difficult when you got to leave for large amounts of time. But

Joscelyne Gall (31:53):
Yeah, yeah. So he invited us to go, you get back from that meeting with him and you come and tell me, and you are sitting at the couch, maybe kneeling at the couch, praying, laying

Jeremy Gall (32:04):
Something, laying on the couch. Yeah, I remember.

Joscelyne Gall (32:06):
And I’m like, what is he doing? So yeah, tell that part,

Jeremy Gall (32:09):
Just how that, so we were invited to go do this meeting, and at the time if I had stayed home and worked, we probably still needed God to really help us to have enough miracle to pay all the bills and without leaving and adding this trip across the country. This is 2003 where Yeah, new baby and were, so he asked me, he said, you could go, like she said, but you’ll have to pay. So it’s just not in our budget to cover it. Excuse me, travel expenses. So she sat out and praying on the couch, and you came out and said, what am I praying about?

Joscelyne Gall (32:42):
And he told me, and I was like, is it just money? Is money the only thing that you’re like, why haven’t you said yes to this? And he was like, well, yeah. And I’m like, no, money’s never a good reason to not do ministry. And it’s still the case, right? I mean, it’s never a good reason. I mean, if the God of all of the universe, the God that created the stars, we see the mountains. We see if he really is God and he is telling you to go do something, money should not be the thing to get in the way of that. I mean, that’s ridiculous. So we were just like, right. And so he’s like, okay, I’m going to call him. I’m going to tell him

Jeremy Gall (33:21):
She inspired,

Joscelyne Gall (33:21):
We’re going. And so yeah, you called to tell him. And then we went out and found our tires. Were flat.

Jeremy Gall (33:30):
It is just a funny thing. So she inspired me and I

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:33):
Said, you’re right. That was the devil. That was the devil. So then I go to work trying to deflate all the air out of your tires, deflate your spirit, tell you it’s true. Man, that’s a very real problem.

Jeremy Gall (33:46):
That Flat Tire was a real illustration of the devil’s attack, and I had to drive that car across the country. So yeah, she inspired me though. I’m

Joscelyne Gall (33:55):
Sorry it into one tire specifically, but yeah.

Jeremy Gall (33:57):
And that was that thing. She’s like, yeah, money’s not a good reason not to do ministry. I’m like, bless God. You’re right. We’re going. So I call him, I said, put me on the schedule. I’ll be there. We’re going then the flat tire. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:10):
A lot of people have that excuse. I’m too tired to be in ministry.

Jeremy Gall (34:14):
Yeah, yeah. No, it’s God or he is not. And my God, it’s a lifetime journey to realize how big he is and how much he’s able to do. And so the tire’s flat. I take it to a tire shop in town. They’re like, it’s fixed. Alright, great. Praise God. Then next night I go to work, I wake up in the morning, it’s flat again. Take it to another tire shop. They say it’s fixed. Same scenario, two times, two different tire shops. Two times my tires flat. I said, my Lord, not only have we committed to go across the country, I need new tires now. So we’re believing God for

Joscelyne Gall (34:47):
It to

Jeremy Gall (34:47):
Get us across the country to get us to this meeting. So we’re just praying. And my mom calls me, thank God my mom’s a believer and out of nowhere, and she says, what’s going on with your tires? Just that’s all. She says to me, what’s going on with your tires? I said, why do you ask? I’m, you’re not just taking a survey here. Why do you ask?

Joscelyne Gall (35:06):
We’re careful not to tip our hand around. I’ve just been

Jeremy Gall (35:08):
Praying for you in your tires. I’ve been thinking about your tires all week. And I said, well, mom, here’s what’s going on. And she said, well, I’ll get back to you. She called my grandmother, who was alive at the time and calls me back and says, well, we want to buy you a new set of tires. And I said, well, praise God. So then I saw, well, God’s in this. He’s helping us. It was a great encouragement to me, far greater than the value of just the tires. It was just the knowing that God is with this, he’s in this.

Joscelyne Gall (35:33):
Yeah, God was working. He was making things prepared for us. Do the trip.

Jeremy Gall (35:38):
Yeah. So we went out, drove out, packed up Eden and went out with David Horton and did this campaign with him. Yeah,

Joscelyne Gall (35:44):
Yeah.

Jeremy Gall (35:46):
Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah, yeah. But then we went out there and did the meetings and it was hard getting out there, but it was good meetings. And then it was after we finished on a Sunday night, I preached a couple day sessions, helped minister to the sick and the Knights, and then we preached. The last meeting was on a Sunday night. Then we went out to a Pizza hut in Bradford, Virginia or Radford, Virginia, near Roanoke. And we’re sitting there at the table having pizza. It was David and Joseph, bro is crusade director at the time. Jocelyn and I were there and our daughter Eden and Cohen wasn’t born yet. And he says, well, how was your trip out here? And I start talking to him, well, it was pretty rough and this and that. And then he interrupts me while I’m answering his question. He interrupts me and he says, wait, I want to talk to you about your ministry. And just by the spirit, just by the posture and the intensity, I knew he was by the spirit. He said, I want to talk to you about your ministry. What are you waiting for? Why don’t you step out and see what God will do? And he exhorted us for an hour and a half. And we knew at that minute that we were supposed to step out into full-time ministry. He

Joscelyne Gall (36:48):
Said a few key things that were very, very pivotal for us. It was, what’s holding you back? You’re at this place now. He’s like, if it’s your couch getting in the way, you have a couch payment. Take your couch out in the backyard and burn it out. Burn it. He was just meaning, don’t let anything get in the way of what God has for you.

Jeremy Gall (37:08):
Yeah. He said a couple things just in that supernatural time of exploitation that I think would help any evangelists. One, you only need one meeting at a time. He said, you kind of think, well, I need a hundred or what I need. And he said, you only need one at a time. And then he said, there’s never a perfect time to step out. There’s never a perfect time. And he says, you guys, you’re young. You don’t have some kind of career. It’s easier for you than a lot of people. What do you got to lose if anything went wrong? You just go back and get another job. He is like, there’s never a perfect time to do it.

Joscelyne Gall (37:38):
And the step of faith always comes before the provision.

Jeremy Gall (37:40):
The step of faith always comes before the provision. And he just exhorted us for about an hour and a half. And I said, all right. I said, this is it. Jocelyn and I were both in a hundred period. We sat in the car, remember we were walked out. The crusade director, Joseph bro, gave us a Pentecostal handshake as we call it, a handshake with I think $20 in it, right?

Joscelyne Gall (37:59):
I don’t remember.

Jeremy Gall (38:00):
50 maybe.

Joscelyne Gall (38:01):
Yeah, maybe.

Jeremy Gall (38:01):
And that was the first offering to Jeremy Gall Ministries. And

Joscelyne Gall (38:06):
He hadn’t even talked about it yet.

Jeremy Gall (38:07):
Hadn’t even talked about it yet. He just felt led to do it. And so we sat in the car and I said, well, are we doing this? We’re sitting in the car and Yeah, I’m going back to Tulsa. I’m putting in my two weeks.

Joscelyne Gall (38:19):
And I said, that’s exactly what I was going to say.

Jeremy Gall (38:20):
Yeah. So we go back to Tulsa from this meeting, put in two weeks. And those, yeah, I still live by those phrases. Step of faith always comes to, before the provision, there’s never a perfect time to do what God tells you to do. And so we go back, I put in two weeks. I’ll never forget, my boss, my manager at the time, he said, will this decision be financially advantageous to you? I said, absolutely. Absolutely. I quit my job, put in that two week notice without one meeting on paper, not one. I didn’t have family in ministry. I didn’t know anybody in ministry. I mean, I knew people in ministry, but I mean some network that I could rely upon,

Joscelyne Gall (38:58):
There was no one close. You could be like, Hey, would you do me a favor? I

Jeremy Gall (39:00):
Knew David. And in fact, so I put in those two weeks, I get a week into that two week notice, and I’m starting, fear is trying to get you put in your two week notice. I’m one week into two. I’m still at zero meetings one week into two. And I remember I was sitting at work at that desk working security, and I started to write down the names of the three pastors I knew, and I wrote ’em down. And in my mind, human reasoning is so ridiculous. I’m thinking, how many times would I have to preach for these three guys to be in full-time ministry? And so I write down these three guys names, and as I do, the Lord spoke to me distinctly, one of the strongest ways he ever has. And he said, I mean these words, I did not call you to make a decision based on natural circumstances.

(39:52):
I called you to take a step of faith to activate a miracle. And I was like, okay, A miracle’s different. You can’t figure it out. You can’t reason it out. It’s a miracle. So I said, all right. This is a miracle. I’m not going to write down and try to reason it out. This is a miracle. So we’re in miracle territory here. I said, all right. I made the adjustment in my heart, in my mind. A couple days later, a guy calls me. He went to Rama with me, and I told him that I was stepping out into ministry, but I didn’t tell him that I, I talked to anybody about it or anything. I just said, Hey, we’re stepping out. We made the decision. We’re excited. He was a real close friend of mine.

Joscelyne Gall (40:30):
He was in the evangelist

Jeremy Gall (40:31):
Us, Jeremy Kna. He was in the evangelist group with us. So I had told him, he calls me a couple of days after the Lord spoke to me when I was writing down, trying to reason out the miracle. And he calls me and he says, Hey, I talked to my pastor. He’ll have you in Never ask him. He was working at a church in Elkins, West Virginia, church of God. And he said, my pastor said, I’ll have yin. He said, what do you have open? I said,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:54):
Well, let me check my calendar. Exactly. Right, right, right, right, right. How’s next weekend?

Jeremy Gall (40:59):
That’s exactly what I said. That’s exactly what I said. And I approached it exactly like you did. Well, let me look, brother and see, I think I could squeeze you in. So he says, what do you have open? I’ll never forget that. What do you have open? I have nothing, but I only have open at this time. It’s only open.

Joscelyne Gall (41:18):
The rest of my life is open.

Jeremy Gall (41:21):
It’s all open. And I said exactly what you said. How about next weekend? He said, I’ll ask him. Yeah, yeah. Come on out. So that was it. I finished my two weeks. We left with one Sunday morning, Sunday night meeting. You worked all night meeting on paper

Joscelyne Gall (41:34):
Before we left.

Jeremy Gall (41:35):
Yeah. Yeah. And just drove out

Joscelyne Gall (41:37):
All night. And then instantly we had to drive right out right afterwards. And

Jeremy Gall (41:42):
That was it.

Joscelyne Gall (41:42):
It was a bit crazy. I mean, we didn’t even stop till we changed Eden’s diaper in the car. We did everything in the car on the, to just get to that first meeting,

Jeremy Gall (41:52):
Flying. Yeah. And so we get there Sunday morning, Sunday night. There was some things that, it was funny. First thing that happened, I had a little bit of detail. We’re praying for the sick. I gave an invitation the morning. It was a decent 70, 75 people in rural West Virginia. My point being that there was definitely somebody there that needed healing, gave an invitation for people to come forward. Nobody comes forward. I talked to the pastor between services, and I’m like, well, nobody came. Nobody wanted ministry. I’m like, everybody’s fixed up. I said, praise God. I said, that’s good. I said, I am laughing with them, trying to get a feel for what’s going on. He says, well, my people are backwards. Nobody wants to be first. So I’m praying in the afternoon before the night service, and I’m thinking of TL Osborne Prayer and Mass. I’m like, well, I’ll just pray for ’em in their seats.

(42:39):
Nobody wants to come forward. We’ll do that. So night service comes, and again, who wants to be ministered to? Nobody moves, nobody comes forward. I said, alright, plan B, we’re going to pray a mass. I’m going to pray for you right in your seats, right where you’re at. And we ministered to people and testimonies. Then, oh man, I was in a car accident five years ago or whatever, and I couldn’t move. I could move my neck. And then now, who would like to have hands? Like now people are coming down, we’re praying for people. And pastor. Then after towards the close of the service, he said, old school who would come back tomorrow night, we’re only scheduled for Sunday morning, Sunday night. He says, who would come back tomorrow? People raise their hands. So now we got a Monday night meeting. And so we preached that Monday night meeting, and this is before we had a cell phone. Some people did, but we didn’t have a cell phone yet in oh three. And we get back from that Sunday night service or Monday night service, the one he added. And we get these calls from these pastors that we had never heard of, that we never, Hey, when could you come and preach for me? And it was somehow through my friend and his family and that word, this

Joscelyne Gall (43:44):
Family that knew other people, that knew other people. I mean, we still don’t know the exact line of how it all happened.

Jeremy Gall (43:51):
When can you come and preach for me? How about next Sunday? Sure. How about another pastor? How about Sunday after next? Yeah, that was Mother’s Day, I remember. And it was a miracle. It was God say, I didn’t call you to make a decision based on natural circumstances. Take a step of faith to activate a miracle. And that would be to share. This isn’t just for us. This isn’t, oh, how special the galls are, but God backs whoever he calls and whoever’s listening today,

Joscelyne Gall (44:15):
He’ll

Jeremy Gall (44:16):
Back you up. If he’s called you to do something, he’ll help you. And don’t figure out your own resources or what you could do. Me writing down the names of those three pastors, it’s like, well, how much money do I have to do what God’s called me to do? How much connections do I have? How much ability do I have? We can’t depend on our own ability. I can’t do what’s required of an evangelist and myself that’s not in the physical makeup of Jeremy Gall. That’s from God. And if he’s called you to do something, he’ll provide. He’ll open the doors, he’ll make the way. He’ll back you up. And I could testify. He’s faithful to those he calls. Amen. Praise God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:53):
Amen. Well, if someone’s listening and they want to invite you to come to their church or maybe support your ministry, how can they find out more information about you? What’s your website?

Jeremy Gall (45:05):
We’ve got jeremy gall ministries.com. Right? Is it.com? Yeah. I should know better than that. And Facebook’s great. We’re on Facebook. Jeremy Gall Ministries is on Facebook, and we could keep on contact with that. No problem.

Joscelyne Gall (45:17):
Instagram.

Jeremy Gall (45:18):
Instagram. All of the above.

Joscelyne Gall (45:20):
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (45:21):
Awesome. Well, let’s finish by praying for those who are listening. Yes. Would you just pray that God would give those listening, the spirit of faith to be an evangelist, praise God, and to trust God for provision, to trust God for miracles and to just have that spirit of faith that it takes to stay in the ministry?

Jeremy Gall (45:43):
Yes. Let’s pray. And thank you so much for having us today. This has just been an honor and a blessing to be with you. Yeah. Father, we just thank you that you are faithful. God, you are such a faithful, faithful, father Lord. You are still calling people into the ministry today. You’ve not stopped and you’ve not stopped calling Evangelist. I’m sure there’s young and old men and women from all different races and nations out there listening today and whenever they’re listening to this, that Father, you’ve called them, you’ve called them, and you’ve got a plan for them. And Lord, we ask you to rise up big inside of them by your Holy Spirit and Father to help them, empower them to believe you for great and mighty things. Father, we ask you to be seen in their life in a mighty way. Lead and guide them.

(46:33):
Father, encourage them, Lord, in the call that you’ve called them to do. Father, I thank you that you don’t have a plan for destruction or embarrassment or just failure. But Father, you’ve got to plan for their success. You’ve got to plan for them to be fruitful, and you’ve got to plan for them to be fulfilled. And Lord, I thank you that they can trust you because you’re trustworthy. They can rely upon you because you’re reliable, and they could depend on you because more than anything in this world, more than any natural framework, father, they can count on you. And Lord, we thank you that those listening today, that feel, yeah, I’ve got a call. I know God’s called me to do something. I know God’s called me to evangelism, specifically, Lord, we thank you that you’re able to bring it to pass just like Abraham.

(47:20):
It may seem impossible for them today. They may be looking at the circumstances of their life and they look like Sarah’s womb and they look like Abraham’s age. And it looks like there’s no way that what God has spoken to my heart could come to pass. But we count you faithful today, father, we say you’re well able to do that what you promised you would do. And Father, we just come on. And Father, we just know on behalf of the loss that we need every one of us to be in position doing what we’re called to do. We need to fulfill our part to the lost and dying of this generation. And Lord, we thank you that you’re able to bring it to pass in our lives in Jesus name.

Joscelyne Gall (47:58):
Lord, I just ask you, father, that you would just deal with these people right now. Just give ’em the steps, the next step that’s right in front of ’em. They might not see just the whole entire staircase yet. They just might see maybe that next step that they have to take, whether it’s, I’m going to volunteer with this ministry. I’m going to hook up with this church. I’m going to join this prayer team here. I’m going to start going out and evangelizing just on my own on the street, whatever that might look like. Lord, give them the steps. Just cause them to see what’s next. In Jesus’ name. I thank you, father, as they continue to obey, as you keep giving them specifics, that next step, they’ll get the next one and they’ll get the next one, and they’ll get the next one, and they’ll get the next one. And they’ll look back 20 some years down the road and they’ll be like, wow, look where I am now. Look how God did this. Look how God put us in the ministry. I thank you, father for just supernatural

Coen Gall (49:01):
Grace.

Joscelyne Gall (49:02):
Hallelujah. On those called to be evangelists. I pray Father, for grace on families in Jesus’ name. Family is so often the reason that people don’t step out and do evangelism. And I just pray for a supernatural dose of grace, supernatural ability, Lord, to come that just all of a sudden things are just lining up. All of a sudden people’s thoughts are changing and oh, maybe I would like to travel more often. Maybe I could teach, maybe homeschool the kids if necessary. Whatever needs to happen, Lord, to get them there, I pray, God, you do what needs to be done. Hallelujah. You prepare every family member, because every family member is perfectly placed in that family. They will each be grazed for what you have called them to. And I ask you, father, for just, I thank you, Lord. They will be safest in the path of your will, Lord,

Jeremy Gall (49:51):
Thank you Jesus.

Joscelyne Gall (49:52):
They will be safest in the path of your will, Lord, get them to where they are supposed to go. Give them boldness to preach your word as they ought to preach. Lord, stretch forth your hand to heal. And Lord cause signs and wonders to be done by your holy child, Jesus, in their life, in their ministry. In Jesus name,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (50:11):
Amen. Amen. Amen. Well, thank you guys for being on the Evangelism podcast. Thank you. Thank you so

Joscelyne Gall (50:18):
Much. Thank you so much. This was a joy.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (50:20):
Thank you very much. All right.

John Wentz | Alpha Groups Impact the World

John Wentz leads Alpha USA. Alpha is in over 150 countries and in the past thirty years about 35 million people have participated in Alpha groups. Last year over two million people went through their program. Alpha works in a prison cell, a refugee camp, a bar, a school, a neighborhood home, or a church. The secret to their evangelism success is asking questions and caring for people. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast you will hear some amazing testimonies about what God has done through Alpha.

Learn more about Alpha: https://alphausa.org/

Alpha is a global ministry that has reached over 35 million people in 150 countries over the past 30 years. The program creates a safe, non-judgmental space for people to explore the Christian faith through meals, short talks, and open discussion. Alpha has been effective at reaching people outside the church by genuinely listening to their questions and struggles. Testimonies show how the welcoming community and focus on relationship rather than doctrinal correction can lead to life-transforming encounters with Jesus, even among the most resistant participants. Alpha’s approach of empowering ordinary believers to invite friends and create this kind of environment has enabled its rapid global expansion and lasting impact.

Questions we talk about:

What is Alpha?
What are some of the hard questions that people talk about in Alpha groups?
What are some testimonies of how people are being reached through Alpha and perhaps you could share some statistics about the impact Alpha is having?
What is your testimony? How did you come to know the Lord? How did you get involved with Alpha?
Describe the philosophy behind how Alpha functions. How did Nicky Gumbel change Alpha from a course for new believers into a course for people outside the church?
What is it about our culture today that makes Alpha’s approach so effective?
If someone wants to start an Alpha group or support your ministry, what would be the best way for them to get connected with you?

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
John Wentz leads Alpha USA Alpha is in over 150 countries. And in the past 30 years, about 35 million people have participated in alpha groups. Last year, over 2 million people went through their program. Alpha works in a prison cell of refugee camp, a bar, a school, a neighborhood home, or in a church. The secret to their evangelism success is asking questions in genuinely caring for people. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, you’ll hear some amazing testimonies about what God has done through alpha.

Evangelism Podcast Host (01:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:22):
Daniel King. Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus the day I have a very special guest with me, John Wentz from Alpha. Thank you so much for joining me today.

John Wentz (01:38):
Happy to be here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:40):
Hey, it is so wonderful to get to spend some time with you. Alpha is having an amazing impact around the world. Could you tell us a little bit about Alpha and what God has called the ministry to do?

John Wentz (01:55):
Yeah, absolutely. Thanks so much for having this podcast too, because I think it’s so important that people feel like they are equipped to share the good news about Jesus. He makes all the difference in the world. Alpha started in London 30 years ago in the heart of London at a small Anglican church. And at the time the church was really struggling and they had a beginner’s course for just how to explore Christianity. And a few people came, they had another course that was called Agnostics Anonymous or something like that. And even fewer people came to that. And at the Alpha, a guy named Nikki Gumbel took over. And the first time that he did it, there was, they had a meal, there would be some short talk on some element of Christianity. And he sat in a small group and noticed that almost all the people in that small group that were invited to come had really no background with faith at all.

(03:00):
And so they just asked some questions, they listened, they were fascinated. And because they were listened to and fed well, I think they came back, they said, this is great. We’ve never had a chance to talk about spirituality before. And almost every single person in that group came to faith. And Nikki had this realization that maybe there was a way to do this Alpha Basics course, repost it and aim it towards people outside the church. And so they began just inviting people from the community to come and have a meal, hear a short talk, and then it was open discussion and anything was fair game and they wouldn’t be corrected, they wouldn’t be judged, they’d just be listened to. And that grew and it exploded. And all over London, the Church of England began running this. People started coming to Faith, and then it went global.

(04:00):
And in the mid nineties, early to mid nineties, alpha began to spread all over the world. It just caught, and I think so many people saw it as a way to equip ordinary people who maybe don’t have a gift of evangelism and give them a simple way to invite their friends to dinner and create a safe place for them to explore faith. That now has spread to where we see alpha in over 150 countries. We estimate about 35 million people have gone through Alpha. And just in this past year and 2024, we had about 2 million people over 2 million people go through Alpha globally. And so it’s something that works in every context all over the globe, from a prison cell to a refugee camp, to a bar, a school, a neighborhood home, a church, wherever it may be. So that’s a brief snapshot of what Alf is.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:03):
That’s absolutely amazing what tremendous fruit God has given you. And I think one of the secrets to the success of Alpha are the questions that people come and ask. What are some samples of some of the hard questions that people are asking these days?

John Wentz (05:24):
Yeah. Well, two nights ago I was in Alpha on the first week of Alpha. So Alpha goes over multiple weeks. And the first week we posed the question, if it turned out there was a God and you could ask anything, what would you ask? And it’s always amazing to hear what people ask. Some people come with really intellectual head focused questions, mind oriented, they want to make sense of certain things and what’s our transition to the afterlife going to be like? And then there’s these heart level questions that you can’t explain for people. I remember this one guy right across the group from me. He’s like, I want to know why God took my 18-year-old cousin who was perfectly healthy and nothing wrong with him. Why did he have to die when he did? He was my closest friend, and he’s tapping into this place of grief and there are deep whole life heart level questions that people bring to these groups.

(06:29):
Another person had had 10 miscarriages and she wanted to know why. Another person was a police officer in that group the other night, and he served for 25 years. He said, I’ve seen the most evil things you can imagine. He’s like, I don’t even know if I have questions. I’m just angry that God would allow stuff like that to happen. Why doesn’t he step in and stop it? And people in this group feel so comfortable on week one, we had a meal, they heard this talk, and then they’re just opening up and really sharing. To me, it’s not the intellectual questions about theology. Those tend to come from Christians. It’s the heart level questions, the real life lived experiences from people that are wanting to know how in the world does faith intersect what I’m going through? Those are the toughest questions. And that’s where an approach like Alpha says, look, you just come back next week. Let’s eat together. I want to hear more. And we go on the journey with them. And in the process we pray like crazy behind the scenes. And God, through his spirit is able to open up their heart. And as he’s able to open up their heart, he moves in and does incredible things and people come to faith left and right when they feel loved and heard and seen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:53):
Those are not easy questions to talk about. What did you say to these people that begin to open up and share these very deep, painful questions that they have?

John Wentz (08:06):
Well, I think the first thing is they just need to be validated. Their question is as important. I mean, everybody carries a question. Everybody carries things that we wonder about. And it’s a really vulnerable thing to reveal what that is. And so when somebody is brave enough to be vulnerable and share something that is on their heart that most people never see, I think you just have to encourage them and say, you have to respond in an emotionally appropriate way. So if somebody is like, I want to know why God took my cousin, you’re not like, okay, great, let’s go on to the next person. You have to feel it. You have to absorb that. You have to sit in that grief for a moment. And on Alpha, we don’t give answers. So we’re off the hook for having to answer their question. They don’t need my answer to their question.

(09:08):
What they need is space to find their answer to their question. And when we can love them and create that safe place, maybe they hear some other people’s perspectives and experiences. It’s like a baby learning to crawl, and then they pull themselves up and then they start to take a few steps on their own and they’re encouraged. Once they’re given space and encouragement to do that, then they’ll walk. And so I think that’s the most important thing is just to hear their question, honor it and say, what do you think? Let’s process that together and help give them the handrails to find their own answers. And what you’re doing is strengthening their ability to walk spiritually. They don’t know that’s happening, but if you do the work for them, they’re never going to learn to walk. And they may never take it anyway, because what they want is they want to walk, they want to know how this works.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:05):
I think often there’s temptation to want to give people the correct answer, but someone said that people don’t care how much until they know how much you care. And so just by listening to people, you show that you care for them, and that has a tremendous impact on their lives. And so you’ve had millions of people go through the course. What are some testimonies of lives that have been impacted?

John Wentz (10:33):
Yeah. Well, I think of the very first course I was on. She’s now a friend of mine, her name’s Victoria. And I remember she was very hesitant to even come to church. She met her husband on a dating website and they fell in love with each other. They got married and she found out her now husband was a Christian and wanted to go to church. And so she’s like, well, I don’t want to be a bad wife, so I’ll at least come along on Sunday mornings. She would hang out in the lobby, didn’t want to have anything to do with the church service. So I struck up a conversation with her and I was like, well, let’s grab lunch after church, you and Marco, I’d love to hear your story. So we went out to lunch and she began to share all the pain full experiences that she’d had with church growing up, just a few experiences, but really deeply marked her.

(11:26):
And I said, well, we’re doing this thing called Alpha where people can explore faith, share their perspectives. You would be really fun to have in a group because you’ve got great experience to share and just really unique perspectives. And she’s like, no thanks. And I was like, all right, well cool. You ever interested? Lemme know. Well, I saw later that night, she had signed up. I got an email notification and I was like, okay, sweet. So Victoria comes week one, and we do a meal from six 30 to 7, 6 30 rolls around. I’m looking down the hallway. She coming? Nope, she’s not there. 6 45, no show. Seven o’clock we’re wrapping up all the food. And she walks in and people are like, oh, you want some food? And she’s like, no, no, no. And she just stands in the back of the room. So we turn on the video, we do all the opening comments, turn on the video.

(12:18):
She just stands back there. And then we usually take a small little break for some dessert before we move into the discussion groups. She doesn’t want to have any of it. But then finally we get into a small group, she comes over, I was like, Hey, it’s great to see you. And she’s like, thanks. And she’s not friendly. She’s clearly agitated, super anxious, which can happen. I mean, it takes a lot of courage to show up to something like this. And anyway, we get through the groups, how and why did you come on Alpha? And she’s like, look, I think this is all BS just so you all know. And she’s like, I’m not eating the food. I know you guys are putting something in the food. You’re trying to brainwash everybody. And everyone’s like, wow, she’s a live wire. And anyway, she was semi offensive that first week and she came back week two and week two she was full on offensive and people were sharing the topic was Who is Jesus?

(13:17):
And people would share. And she was like, that’s stupid. And she was pretty offensive to some of the people in the group, and I had to talk to her afterwards. I’m like, Victoria, this is fine. I’m super excited you’re here, but you got to cool it and be nice to people. Share your perspective. Well, she came back week after week and she was so abrasive. And then we get to week seven, and at week seven there’s this day away experience where we get out of the ordinary routine and we have some time to just relax, play some games. There’s a couple sessions on who’s the Holy Spirit, how can I be filled with the Holy Spirit? There’s a chance to be prayed for actually in a very simple, low key way. And so we get to the end of this talk and it’s like, Hey, Victoria, would you like to be prayed for?

(14:07):
She’s like, Nope. And she just walked out of the room and we’re like, oh my goodness. She is a hard nut to crack. But I knew God was at work. She kept coming back every week. Well, then three hours later, literally she vanished. I thought she had left, didn’t know where she went. We were all playing a game in the little common area. And she opens the door and she starts coming in and just her presence, she was like Godzilla in the room. Everyone had been abused over the last several weeks by her. And she walks up to the group, we stopped playing a game and she’s like, look, I’ve been coming here for the last seven weeks and I every week have tried to make every single one of you not like me. And then all of a sudden, a tear rolled down her cheek.

(14:56):
And she said, but the truth is I don’t have anyone like you in my life, and every week you put up with me. And she started to cry a little bit more. She said, I need this and I need all of you. And then she just started to cry and we’re like, oh my gosh. She’s human, her heart. It has flesh to it. And there was another guy in the group who then Shely said, well, Victoria, can we pray for you now? And she said, yeah, I need Jesus. And we prayed for her, and the dam just broke. I mean, she just opened her heart, opened her life. And I have rarely ever seen a moment where someone physically changes in front of you, like her whole countenance. It was like just this rough exterior was stripped off and she was smiling and joyful and fun loving and just hung out.

(16:03):
And everyone was so relieved. And so she gave her life to Christ that day. And then the next week we prayed for her a bit more. She actually had shared that her and her husband Marco were trying to have kids and they were having some difficulty, and she just really wanted to have a child. And so we prayed for her and we get to the end of the course. I think we had four more weeks to go. So a month later at the end of the course, we were recapping the significance of Alpha. And she said, you guys are never going to believe this, but I’m pregnant. And everyone was like, what? We were all celebrating with her. And through those last four weeks, she was a totally different person. And I was like, Victoria, you got to come back and help us on the next alpha.

(16:53):
And she did. So a few months later, I think it was three, we got through the summer and then the fall came and we’re doing our training. And she came up to me, she said, John, you’re never going to believe this. She said, I’m pregnant with twins. And we’re like, whoa, double bonus. This is awesome. So she wound up coming on this next alpha. She brought a few friends who basically filled an entire small group, 12 people. She came back another alpha after that, she invited and she came to Alpha, came to Faith on Alpha, and then her ex-wife family started. Victoria, just started inviting all kinds of people. Then it was basically three years after that initial Alpha, she started in a group. She was just helping inviting people. Then she was hosting a group. Pretty soon, three years later, she was in charge of Alpha at our church.

(17:56):
And she wound up running Alpha for many years. Good, four or five years, three times a year. She helped so many people discover a relationship with Jesus. It was amazing. And I just go back to that moment where that first week she was so hardhearted and kind of semi offensive. People could have just been like, eh, move on. But we embraced her. We ate with her, we listened, and because of that, it was the sense of community that she needed. Jesus was able to show his love, and she wound up helping so many people was a part of a church plant. I mean, it was incredible story.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:39):
Wow. That is a great story. Actually, the story of how I met you is a cool story. I was at the Uzon Conference in South Korea with Desmond Henry and Greg Steer. They organized a group of evangelists, the real hardcore missionary evangelists that were there to go out witnessing on the street in South Korea around the conference center. So we were out there, and so Greg steer from, he’s got a great ministry, dare to share. We were in the park, and he looked over there and was like, Hey, look at that guy. He looks like he needs Jesus. Let’s go share. And we went over there and it was you and you’re out there preparing. I think you were doing a session that day, and so that was a cool way to meet you. But you’ve been involved in Alpha in Asia for quite a few years, and now God’s promoted you and you’ve taken over leading and serving worldwide. But tell me some about your testimony and what brought you to this place. How did you come to know Jesus and what’s been the process that’s brought you to where you are now?

John Wentz (19:50):
Oh, well, I definitely need Jesus. So maybe he led you to me in that perk for a reason.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:56):
Yeah. Greg was like, man, that’s one of the, look, I got him saved and now he’s leading this huge ministry.

John Wentz (20:03):
Wow. Quick turnaround. I

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:05):
Know it’s grapefruit.

John Wentz (20:07):
Well, my journey began, I grew up in the carnival in central Illinois. My family, we sold food funnel cakes in the carnival, and we traveled around week to week all summer long and did not have a faith background. We never went to church. And my senior year of high school, I was filling out a scholarship application for college, and there was a section for religious activities, and I had no religious activities. And I was wondering, what are we going to do? The closest thing I could ascribe to is Zen Buddhism, because I’d read a few books and meditated and fasted, but I’m like, there’s no zen temples. I lived, so there was a French foreign exchange student in my Spanish class who invited me to go on a Catholic retreat. And I was like, huh, a religious activity, this would be perfect. So I actually went on that Catholic retreat simply because I needed a religious activity to go to college.

(21:09):
They gave me a New Testament. I’d never heard any of the stories of Jesus. I couldn’t have told you five details about Jesus. And at this Catholic retreat center, they listened to me. There was a moment the first night was Confess your sins to a priest night. And I was like, no way. This is ridiculous and it’s brainwashing and I want to have nothing to do with it. So I was getting ready to leave this little chapel, and my small group leader stopped me in the lobby and tiny lobby, 10 by 10, I mean super small. And we sat down and he’s like, Hey, where are you going? And I was like, I think I’m leaving. This is a cult. I don’t want to have anything to do with it. It’s weird. And he’s like, and I just began to gush all these things that I didn’t like about this particular religious experience.

(22:01):
And he just asked me a question that changed the course of my life. He said, I’m just curious. What issues do you have with Jesus? And I was stumped. I had had loads of Christians tell me I was going to hell. And that ticked me off. I didn’t want to have anything to do with them. Nobody had ever asked me a question, and I didn’t know. He gave me space to think about it. He was patient. I very quickly realized I didn’t know Jesus. I didn’t know anything about him. And then he challenged me. He’s like, well, I just you to have an open heart, open mind. And at the end of that retreat, somebody was sharing from upfront and they said, yeah, I know there’s some people here who don’t believe in God, and I just hope that one day if God reveals himself to you, you’d have an open heart and an open mind.

(22:56):
And I looked out the window and central Illinois, there’s these just flat cornfields as far as the eye can see, and the sun was going down, and there was this beautiful sunset. And I remember thinking the light bulb went on. It was literally this epiphany moment where I thought, the thought in my mind was, how do I have the ability to recognize beauty? What is beauty and how is beauty universally recognized by all people? Nobody’s going to look at the sunset and say, oh, that’s ugly. So in my mind, I was like, there has to be a creator to hardwire this idea of beauty into us. And I turned to my small group leader and I said, I think I get it. There has to be a God. And he got all excited. I was like, no, I’m not saying he’s Jesus or anything so cool, but

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:49):
There’s got to be something out there.

John Wentz (23:53):
This created world is too good. There’s too much to it. It has to be created. It can’t just be chance. And they said, well, why don’t you come back on the next retreat we’re going to do? And I’m like, no, you don’t want me. I don’t even believe in this stuff. They’re like, no, come back. So in the preparation for that next retreat, you had to go weekly meetings and stuff, and they taught me how to pray. They shared a rosary with me, and they started reading my Bible, and it was this community that I could explore spiritually. Well, I got to the place where I wanted to go deeper. They had a sign on the wall that said, let go and let God. And I knew one girl who was a born again Christian who I’d met at a carnival. And we were writing letters back and forth to each other.

(24:42):
And I reached out to her and I said, Hey, I’ve been doing some spiritual exploration. I know you’re a Christian. Could you meet me at this park? We walk around, I want to know how to let go and let God. And she’s like, oh my gosh. So she met me at this park. We walked around and I said, yeah, I feel like I want to let go of something, but I don’t even know what it is inside of me. And she said, well, let’s figure it out. And I said, well, one day I hope I can. And she said, one day, why not today? And I said, because I don’t know what it is I would. And I changed the subject. And we kept walking through the park. Well, we got back to the lodge starved rock State Park, and she’s like, I’m going to go use the bathroom.

(25:28):
I said, cool. So she went into the bathroom and I’m sitting on a little bench outside the women’s bathroom, thinking to myself later today, I have to drive into Chicago for work. It’s about an hour drive. If I get in a car accident and I die, literally, this is the thought in my head. If I die, I’m going to be so ticked that I couldn’t figure out what I could let go of and let God, she comes out of the bathroom and I tell her, I’m like, Jackie, today’s the day I’ll do whatever it takes to figure out what I need to let go of. Well, I come to find out she was in the bathroom, not because she had to go to the bathroom. She went in there to pray for me, and she was praying for me when I had this spiritual awakening moment.

(26:14):
So we went to Hardee’s and got some peach cobbler, and she walked me through some verses in Romans, which made absolutely no sense to me. And I remember going home later that night, I bought a brand new Bible. I bought some candles. I lit the candles, and I read through Romans six, seven, and eight, she told me to do. And it was like staring at a wall. The words would bounce off me. It didn’t make any sense. And I just remember crying out to God saying, God, I don’t know what it inside of me that I need to let go of, but I want you to take it. And all I knew at that moment was I needed to feel really emotional, somehow feel guilty for all the things I’d done wrong. I didn’t feel anything. I just yelled at God, went to bed frustrated.

(26:59):
And the next morning I woke up and I went to my community college. And as I was driving there, I drove the speed limit. There was this sense of peace over me. And I came back later that night and I felt different. I called Jackie up and I said, Hey, I feel I can feel something. There’s this peace. And she said, well, you know what happened to you, don’t you? And I said, no, what? She said, you’ve been born again. And I was like, oh, no. I didn’t want to sign up for that. I just wanted to let go and let God. She said, well, welcome to the family. You’re a born in Christian now. And I looked back at that journey and that a year after that, God put on my heart to give my life to helping people come to know him. I was at a cornerstone music festival and talking with some people from YAM, they gave me a little book entitled One Way God’s Way.

(27:59):
And it talked about how people all over the world die with no opportunity to hear about Jesus. And that literally broke my heart. It felt like God was just pinning me down. I could feel the weight of him on my chest saying, you’re going to spend the rest of your life helping people come to know me. And I gave him six weeks to convince me, prayed every hour I bought an Iron Man watch that would beep every hour to remind me to pray. And he made it so clear that this is what my life needed to be oriented around. And then the story. So I went to college, seminary, got a degree in evangelism and church planting and church history, and did campus ministry finally found my way to Alpha in 2015. And it’s been an incredible ride ever since. And now I’ve seen God’s faithfulness to that call that he put on my life to help people all over the world have the opportunity to explore and discover a relationship with Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:01):
I think the little known witnessing tip there is you got to have candles. If you light the candles while you read Romans, it gives you that extra little bit of peace.

John Wentz (29:14):
I don’t know what happened, man. Nothing seemed to happen that night,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:18):
But maybe. So. What is it about our culture today that makes Alpha’s approach so effective at reaching people?

John Wentz (29:28):
Well, I mean, you said it earlier, people don’t care what you know until they know how much you care. I really do feel that our culture, and we’ve done studies with Barna and others globally, that all the data comes back. Young people, old people, what they want. They do want to explore spiritual things, but they want to do so in a way that doesn’t put them in a corner. They don’t want to be cornered. They don’t want to be judged. They want to be loved. They want to be heard. They want to be seen. And that requires that we take a posture of listening, and it means, I think culture. Think about the pandemic globally. Everyone went through this collective trauma and was so isolated, and there was a sense of an epidemic of loneliness. The rise of TikTok comes about because young people are longing to be seen, right?

(30:36):
And they want to be expressive. And that’s nothing new. I mean, young people have wanted to do that for years, but the cultural shift has taken place where if we could just listen to people, I think we had a real opportunity coming out of the pandemic for churches to really shift our posture, to embrace people, to listen to people still sharing the good news, never, never, ever letting go of that. But it’s the good news in a good way, in a way that feels good to the person who’s exploring. So it’s less about sharing our faith with others. It’s more about how can we create the space for them to come and explore. So it puts the ball in their court, it empowers them, it gives them a sense of agency, as some people would say, and they’re in the driver’s seat. Of course, we can help.

(31:34):
We become guides. We become helpful. And I think what our culture is looking for, I mean, they’re so hungry. I talk to people almost every day. They are open to having spiritual conversations if you’ll listen to them. But if it’s all about you, it’s a very self-centered approach. It can feel very self-centered. And people have grown increasingly intolerant of selfish. They can smell that there’s an agenda they can smell. You’re trying to pin them down or get them in a corner. But if you’re really there to serve them, to love them, to listen to them, they’ll open right up. And I think there’s just a wave of genuineness that is sweeping across culture, and that’s what all the data shows. They’re happy to go on a spiritual journey. The Gen Z labeled the open generation, they’ll totally have the conversation if they feel like you’re willing to listen to them. And that’s where I think, man, what we’re doing on Alpha is perfectly designed to meet people right in that.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:39):
That’s awesome. Well, if someone’s listening and they’re interested in starting an Alpha group, what would be a good way for them to find out more information about what you do and get connected with you?

John Wentz (32:54):
Yeah. Well, alpha usa.org, if you’re in the United States, you can go to alpha.org if you’re international, and I know you’ve got a massive global audience, Daniel, but if you go to our website, alpha USA, we’ve got a whole team of specialists. We’ve got about 70 people on our team here in the US and a whole network of churches and coaches, hundreds of volunteers all over the country. And we serve about 8,000 churches across the country, all denominations. So it doesn’t matter what denominational background you are, if you call yourself a Christ follower, you want to share Jesus, we can help and our team can help you. We’ve got all of our resources for free. So you come to our website, sign up, people have seen the impact that Alpha has. They want to pay that forward and make that available to others. So all of our resources are available at no cost. All the training material is on there. And if you have any questions, just click on the little chat window on our website or reach out to one of our specialists and we will assist you. Our whole mission is to equip you in your mission to help people discover and develop a relationship with Jesus. So we’re happy to help.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:08):
Well, John, thank you so much for what you do. You’re having such a tremendous impact for the Kingdom of God listening to people, one conversation at a time, making a difference for Jesus Christ. So thank you and thank you for what Alpha is doing, and thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast today. I really appreciate it.

John Wentz (34:32):
Absolutely. God bless this podcast. And may we see a movement of people all over the world carrying the good news in a good way.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:41):
Amen. God bless you.

John Wentz (34:43):
Bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (34:44):
Is there evidence for God’s existence? How do we really know Jesus was raised from the dead? Can we trust the Bible? Do miracles happen? Does God care about me as an individual? In Dr. Daniel King’s book, proof God is real. You’ll find the answers to these three vital questions and more Is God there? Does God care? And do I dare to follow him? In his powerful, easy to read book, Daniel provides seven convincing proofs of God’s existence. You’ll learn about the evidence of cause. Design, logic, morality, scripture, miracles, and religious experience with proof God is real. You’ll read about topics like, was Jesus the son of God or just a crazy preacher? If God does exist, is he interested in your life? If God is there, why do bad things happen to good people? In proof, God is real. Daniel King shows you, God is there and he cares for you. Plus, how to take a leap of faith and start a relationship with a God who deeply loves you. Order proof God is real today by calling 1-877-431-FOUR 2 7 6 or find the book on Amazon.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (35:47):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review By giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries? Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today, I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (37:08):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Mark Clements | The Joys and Challenges of Church Planting

On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast Pastor Mark Clements and Evangelist Daniel King talk about the challenges and joys of church planting. This episode covers how to to hear God’s voice and how to encounter Him as you reach out to your community.

Read The Poet and the King by Mark Clements: https://amzn.to/4fFIjja

Continue reading →

Jordan Chanin | Share Word Global Trains Local Churches in Evangelism

Jordan Chanin works for Share Word Global, the Canadian version of Gideons International. For many years they have been known for putting Bibles in the night stand in hotels around the world. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast, Jordan tells us about how ShareWord Global is training local churches in evangelism. We discuss the four core skills that will help you with your outreach conversations.

Learn more about Share Word Global: https://sharewordglobal.com/ca/

Information about training local churches in evangelism: https://events.sharewordglobal.com/ca/ignite-evangelism

Summary:

Jordan Chanin works for ShareWord Global, the Canadian version of Gideons International, which has been putting Bibles in hotel rooms for over 100 years. ShareWord Global is now training local churches in evangelism, focusing on four core skills:

Connect with people by being intentional, finding common ground, and looking for ways to serve and bless them.
Tell your personal faith story, sharing the “before, how, and after” of how Jesus changed your life.
Share the story of Jesus – his personal life, relationships, credentials, and the key events of his life, death, and resurrection.
Give people God’s word, using resources like the Hope and Spark magazines, digital content, and the New Life Bible app.

ShareWord Global offers these evangelism training events for free to local churches to help equip and mobilize believers to share their faith.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Jordan Chanin works for Share Word Global, the Canadian version of Gideon’s International. For many years they’ve been known for putting Bibles in the nightstand in hotels around the world. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, Jordan tells us about how Share Word Global is training local churches in evangelism. We discussed the four core skills that will help you with your outreach conversations.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:43):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:05):
Daniel King. 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, a Jordan Chanin from Share Word Global. Thank you for being with me.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (01:20):
Yes indeed, Daniel. It is a huge privilege to be here. Thanks for having me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:23):
Well, let’s start by looking at Share Word global. If you have ever traveled anywhere around the world and seeing a Bible in the nightstand next to your bed in the hotel, it was probably put there by a ministry called Gideons. And so Gideons has been for over a hundred years, been giving away Bibles and share Word Global has its start as the Canadian branch of Gideons.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (01:54):
Yeah, that is a perfect history lesson. That’s exactly it. We are a ministry that has had the name Sherwood Global for 13 years, but we actually carry with us an over 111 year, or actually maybe even more so by now. But anyways, over well over a hundred years of ministry experience.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:11):
That is absolutely amazing. And I love the passion that Gideon’s has for sharing Bibles all over the world. And so now the Canadian ministry has changed and rebranded to be share word global. So it sounds like you still have that same basic passion for sharing God’s word.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (02:32):
Yeah, 100%. I mean, it’s in our blood, it’s in our DNA as a ministry. We believe that the word of God will speak to the nations, that God has given us this word for all people. And so we want to do whatever we can to get the word of God into people’s hands so they can ultimately encounter Christ and receive salvation.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:51):
I saw that you have taken God’s word and put it into a really beautiful package as a magazine. And so I have it in my hand here, spark Magazine.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (03:04):
Yes. And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:05):
Just tell us what is in Spark Magazine.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (03:07):
Yeah, so the Spark Magazine is actually our magazine for young people. We created it for the age group of around nine to 12 years old, although we do give it to children younger than that as well. And to be honest, a lot of adults that we give it to as well almost prefer it to the Hope Magazine, which is our other one. But

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:26):
So Hope Magazine is more for the adult,

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (03:28):
Correct? Yes. Teenagers, adults, and plus they’re very similar magazines. The main difference is the first half. So the Spark Magazine targeted towards younger people primarily the first half contains 12 truths about God. So it starts with God created you, God loves you, you have value, but you were broken. And so we made it in a way that really speaks to children. We have little games and pictures and things that can engage a child’s imagination and also keep their attention.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:02):
Wow, that’s amazing, Jordan. So how did you get hooked up with share word global?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (04:08):
Yeah, it’s actually a really crazy story how it all worked out. So I was actually serving as an itinerant preacher in Brazil for a few years. And so God essentially led me to various churches around the country just to preach, encourage them, and it was always my heart to mobilize the church to do the work of evangelism and fulfill the great commission. That’s kind of all my sermons. Were coming back to these key themes of repentance. Of course, I believe, and I know many others, share the conviction that without repentance there will never be revival. We got to become full before the Lord and beyond that that we need to do the work that he’s called us to the Great commission. So I was doing that for a few years and it was amazing the things that God was showing me and allowing me to be a part of, but I knew that it was also quite limited and I really wanted to do something deeper and something more sustainable with the long-term.

(05:09):
And so in this process of me traveling around the country preaching at all these random churches, interdenominational Evangelical, Sherwood Global was just launching their Brazil project to open up in that country about six months after me. And so the funny thing is, of the many tens of thousands of churches in Brazil, they just so happened to visit churches that I had previously preached at being a Canadian organization. Naturally, when they went there to share about who they were and to preach at their services and people heard they’re from Canada, they said, Hey, do you know Pastor Jordan from Vancouver? And our director, he’s a Brazilian man, but he lives in Toronto, in the Toronto area right now. He said, no, I’ve never heard of Pastor Jordan Canada’s big country. I don’t know anyone from Vancouver, I’m sorry. And it happened about four times in four different states.

(06:03):
And so eventually he was like, who is this Pastor Jordan from Vancouver that everyone knows and I’ve never heard of? I need to meet this guy. Well, sure enough, one of my main partner churches in the south of Brazil, I was a preacher there, but I was also doing a men’s ministry there. They happened to Sherwood Global, planned a visit to that church the same day that I was there. And during that time, the director, his meeting got canceled with the lead pastor. He had nothing to do now for the afternoon and he was a little disappointed and he said, I guess I’ll go meet with some other people and connect at this church. And then a pastor said, Hey, if you’re available right now, I have a friend from Canada who I want to introduce you to. His name is Pastor Jordan from Vancouver.

(06:46):
I think it’d be great for you, get to know him. And he said, that must be why I came here. So we met, he was surprised to find out I was a young single guy. He was expecting some old retired, married guy traveling around the world, living his days out. And so we grabbed dinner, we talked, he shared about the ministry, what they do. I said, man, that’s literally what I’m doing just without the resources and the backing that you guys have. And he said, well, let’s pray about it and maybe in the future we can work together. After eight months of talking and praying and seeing where our ministries were going, the timing worked out perfectly. And I started with Share Word Global at the beginning of 2024.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:26):
Outstanding. And one of the things that Share Word Global does is ignite evangelism training events in local churches.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (07:36):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:36):
And so let’s talk about that a little bit. What happens at one of these Ignite Evangelism training events?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (07:44):
These are some of the most exciting things that we get to be a part of because we love to serve the local church. We exist to equip and mobilize the local church to evangelize. And so we host these training events. They’re training in relational evangelism or a conversational evangelism. We call them our Ignite events because we want to gather not only a local church specifically, but also other churches in the area, anyone who wants to come and grow in their ability to share the gospel, we invite them. And so we partner with a local church, they host it, we get the word out there, the people come and we begin to go through a three hour interactive seminar about relational evangelism. And so yeah, we have some of our materials here with us today just to show what our workbook is actually that we go through to accomplish what we would consider the basics of sharing the gospel in your personal relationships.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:40):
So if there’s a pastor of a local church that would be interested in having evangelism training, what would be a good way for them to find out more information?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (08:52):
Yeah, well definitely go on our website. It’s www.sharewordglobal.com, and you can be directed to whatever area of interest you have that our ministry offers. And I would also say get in touch with me because I work in Canada and United States, but also we work in 48 countries around the world and we’re actively serving churches, thousands of churches every year in those countries. And my email isJordan@sharewordglobal.com. And just to clarify it’s word and not world, I know a lot of people think Share World global, but it’s actually share word as in the word of God, global.com.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:34):
That’s wonderful. Alright, so let’s look at this literature, the training worksheet that you would give out at one of your evangelism training things. And so you start out by looking at different levels of conversation, four different levels. Talk us through what those levels are and how that would apply to witnessing.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (09:58):
So that’s the model that we work with. It’s ultimately, we know a lot of people don’t feel called to preach on the streets or whenever someone brings up the word evangelism,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:08):
Get a bullhorn and go out in the street and

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (10:10):
Shout at people. That’s only for the advanced lessons. No, just kidding, just kidding. But a lot of people have that

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:16):
Fear, that approach kind of turns people off often. Exactly. They think of evangelism and they think of someone who’s obnoxious, who’s out on the street yelling at people and they’re like, I could never confront people like that.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (10:30):
Totally. And a lot of people discount their ability to evangelize because of that. They have that picture in their mind or the extremely extroverted person who goes out and they can strike up conversation with anyone and fearlessly talk about Jesus. They say, that’s not me. That’s okay. That’s not most people. Most people feel shy or maybe even insecure sometimes about their ability to share their faith. And so we want to make it really simple and we use this relational conversational model. We acknowledge that there’s four main levels of a conversation within a relationship. So it usually starts with small talk, very superficial, how’s the weather today? What about those gas prices? Just establishing a point of contact. You might talk about things like scores on a Super Bowl game or something like that. Things that aren’t too controversial, not too personal, just kind of keeping the conversation going. And that’s really where all relationships start. It’s just that point of contact and having an interaction with a fellow human being. Next up, we want to go to the personal talk. So this is when you take the small talk and you make it a bit more about the individual, their feelings, their desires, what’s going on in their life. And that’s really when the relationship begins to take root and there’s a more meaningful something.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:56):
So an example of small talk would be, how’s the weather? Or how are the Edmonton Oilers doing something like that where you’re talking about weather or sports. And then personal talk would be Tell me about your family.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (12:10):
Yeah, yeah, totally. It could be that. And you can also connect the personal talk to the small talk. How about the weather? It’s really hot today and the person says, oh yeah, no, I hate that. It’s so hot out today. Oh, okay, well that could open the door to a personal question then. Oh, what’s your favorite type of weather? What makes you like that more than that? And then you can go from there to where would you like to live if you could live anywhere. And you start to know them on a more personal level. So we’re trying to find where’s the point of contact and what doors is God opening for us to go deeper in the relationship?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:47):
Alright, what’s the next level?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (12:48):
Next level is spiritual. And this is often a step of faith. This is when you generally have some level of personal connection with the individual. There’s a degree of trust that’s been established. And then we want to talk about things that pertain to those bigger questions in life. Spiritual matters. It could be what do you believe, what faith background do you come from? Even if it’s no faith at all, or what they would say is no faith. Or it could be things like what gives you hope in life? What gets you excited about your future and what do you think life is about? The things that go beyond the day-to-day and kind of touch on the meta level of life and sort of reveal what people’s core convictions actually are.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:36):
Then you listen to them talk about where they are spiritually and that what you hear them say will probably help you in going into the fourth stage of talk. Yeah,

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (13:49):
Exactly. Which

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:50):
Is

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (13:51):
Gospel. We ultimately are going in the direction of the good news of Jesus Christ, and we want to get there at the pace of the relationship. So it’s really easy to jump right there and confront people with the gospel and give them an ultimatum more or less. But we know that many cases that doesn’t work in our favor. So if you can do it in five minutes, great. If you can do it in 50 years, that might just be the pace of that person’s heart being open to Christ in you. But the gospel conversation is where we make the full explicit presentation of what it means to know Jesus and to receive him as your savior.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:35):
So having conversations with people is a very biblical strategy. We find many different conversations that Jesus had with people. What are some of the principles that you pull out of the different conversations that Jesus had with people?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (14:50):
Yeah. Well, I think the main one is what you just touched on, different conversations. He related to everyone at their level. He didn’t have a prepackaged one size fits all, gospel summary, but he got to know the person and even through the revelation of the Holy Spirit to have a deeper insight into what that person’s needs were. And so one example I love of course is the woman at the well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:18):
Yeah, from John chapter four.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (15:19):
Yeah. Just a famous example of the compassion of Jesus, the boldness of Jesus, but also his willingness to engage with this woman, with what she understood. And being a Samaritan woman and having their own religious system and the huge tension and division with the Jews, Jesus was willing to go there and to not only hear what she said, but also to guide her in the ways that she was misunderstanding and point her towards himself, but the true Messiah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:50):
And then Jesus really went through these different stages of talk. He started

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (15:55):
With

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:56):
Small talk. He said, Hey, would you give me a drink? He’s sitting by a well, so what would be more natural? Then say, give me a drink. And then he goes into personal talk and says, go call your husband. And then he has this word of knowledge. You have no husband, the man you’re with is not your husband. And then he takes them into spiritual talk, talking about living water. And she says, where can I find this living water? And then she says, I’ve heard that Messiah is coming, and he reveals himself to her, says I who speak to you, am he?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (16:26):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:27):
And so he takes it to the gospel.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (16:31):
That’s exactly it. That’s perfect. And we’re really not reinventing the wheel by setting things up the way they are. We’re just using the example of Jesus and the way that God has created us as humans, how to truly get to someone’s heart in the timeframe that we don’t know how long it will take, but we trust that God as we’re seeking him, will lead us there and show us which steps to take along the way.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:55):
And so how did Jesus differ in some of his other conversations? What did he do differently?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (17:01):
Yeah. Well, again, back to the point that every person’s coming from a different place. And so we think about the religious leaders who should have been the people who would recognize him first. This is the Messiah we’ve been waiting for who was spoken enough in the scriptures, but they didn’t. They were perhaps the hardest in heart. And Jesus was confronting their hardness. And you can imagine a modern example of that would be people in the church who have grown up in the church, they can recite Bible verses and you’re not convinced that they actually know who Jesus is. There’s no fruit. There’s no passion to live for Christ’s glory. But there’s resistance, perhaps hostility. Sometimes we have to confront those things with the truth. And we don’t always flip tables or whip people with cords as Jesus did, but we do have to know this conversation’s going to start at a different point. Whereas the Samaritan woman, she’s coming from another place, Nathaniel a guy who is a doubter, and Jesus just makes an open invitation for him to follow. But he also speaks to something that’s true in Nathaniel that other people weren’t picking up on. Jesus knew that this is a man in whom there is no deceit. And Jesus had some revelation from the Spirit, of course, to show him things about Nathaniel that he was like, how do you know this? That’s crazy. But yeah, there’s a bunch of different examples.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:34):
How do you know this? I’ve been telling everyone I never lie.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (18:37):
I know and here they are doubting me. No. But yeah, Jesus was patient. I think he took the time to know the people and meet them where they were. He was never rushing through a gospel presentation, but he was very clear in that he wanted to get there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:54):
And then you have the example of the sinner in the sycamore tree. Zach,

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (18:59):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:00):
Who’s up in the tree. Jesus looks at him and calls him by name and just says, Zacchaeus, I’m coming to your house today.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (19:07):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:08):
The crowd was stunned because they knew that he was a thief and that he had been overcharging people on their taxes. And so they wanted Jesus to rebuke him, to wave his finger at him and say, you good for nothing thief. You’re going to hell. But that’s not what Jesus did. He says, Hey, I’m coming over to your house. Let’s have dinner together.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (19:27):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:28):
The Bible doesn’t really give us much of the first part of their conversation, but Jesus must have said something significant because by the end, Zach Kieus completely repented and said, if I’ve ever stolen anyone from anyone, I’m going to give it back four times.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (19:44):
Yeah,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:45):
Totally. And so Jesus just showed he cared by listening to him and eating with him. And I think sometimes just having a meal with someone is a great way to be able to open up a deeper conversation.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (20:01):
I’m a huge believer in that, and I think that in this generation, specifically in Western countries, which are individualistic, young people are so disconnected and they’re just dying to have a loving community around them, but they don’t know what that looks like anymore. And I do believe hospitality will save the West that the more that Christians see that and practice it and live it, which is uncomfortable, it’s risky, it’s costly. You don’t know when you invite strangers to your table or people from very different walks of life. It’s going to be an investment emotionally, financially and whatnot. But the more that we are able to do this, the glory of God based on the commands and the guidance that God gives us in scripture, hospitality will win the hearts of those that no one else is winning. Right now,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:00):
You have identified several different spiritual conditions

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (21:04):
To

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
Look for in relationships. Talk us through some of those different spiritual conditions that we might find people in.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (21:12):
So that’s one thing. We use kind of a grid of six main categories of people that we will encounter as we’re sharing the gospel as we’re going through life and opening up to these spiritual conversations. The first and the most distant would be the disbeliever. The person who understands Christianity to a degree, they’ve heard about the gospel, but they are hostile against it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:40):
So this might be the hardcore atheist, someone who is actively, maybe they were in a church when they were younger

Speaker 5 (21:48):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:49):
They’ve decided that it’s all hogwash and they’re sometimes very bitter and just say, I hate God and I don’t even believe he exists.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (21:58):
Yeah. It could be that, and it could also be the softer agnostic who says, you know what? That’s great. I had some time in the church and I realized it’s too narrow. It’s just not for me. And I don’t think it will ever be Jesus, but you, we get a lot of that in today’s culture as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:17):
Yeah, that sounds very Canadian too.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (22:20):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Very Canadian and very postmodern.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:24):
You do you I’ll do me. Just don’t bother me. Definitely don’t

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (22:27):
Proselytize. Keep it to yourself. And so the disbeliever often seems like the most difficult person to reach, and many times they can be. But also we’ve seen with enough sharing of the gospel that oftentimes it just takes attention, care, and love, and the hard exterior begins to come down and they realize that you’re not against them. The people we maybe in the past who they’ve known. So that’s the first person that we talk about. The next is the doubter. This is the person who’s maybe a bit more open-minded, but they have so many ideas contrary to Jesus and the gospel, that they just have too many questions, too many unresolved things in their own experience of life and faith and the teachings of Christianity just don’t make sense to them. So yeah, they’ll talk about it, but it’s always from a position of trying to find the holes, trying to see how Christianity might not be the way. And I really like these people because they’re oftentimes very honest. They’re not dismissive like the disbeliever, but they’re also not just going to believe anything you say.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:42):
Okay,

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (23:43):
Yeah. What’s next? Then we have the observer, and I think we see a lot of these people, well, we used to see a lot of these people in our churches physically, but now we see them more online and more in those conversation spaces. Maybe Christian clubs and universities or Christian events that happen in public, they’ll go and watch because interested or they’ll listen to sermons. They’ll even listen to worship music online. I see that a lot, atheist or agnostics that just feel this draw towards what Christians offer as far as teaching and music and all that. And they’re interested,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:22):
And they may even label themselves as Christian without actually believing in a lot of the things that Christians would typically believe in.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (24:31):
I would say. So yeah, that would be an observer who’s a bit more plugged in where they feel like they belong to the Christian community. So they identify with the title, but it could even be someone who identifies as a Muslim or a Buddhist, but they say, I’m really interested in what this Christianity stuff is all about, and I think I’ll stick around and learn, but don’t expect me to get up after an altar call or anything like that.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:59):
And then your next level would be the seeker.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (25:02):
Yes, the seeker. And this is the individual who is noticing that there’s something missing in their life and they’re trying to find whatever this higher power or experience or truth is that can satisfy. And they’ve often gone through a variety of other belief systems or even substance use things to try to connect them to something bigger than themselves.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:30):
So maybe they spent some time believing in astrology or crystals. I’ve met a lot of people like that. They’ve tried out different that they’d say, I’m very spiritual. I don’t really know what’s out there, but I want to believe, and I’m very spiritual.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (25:47):
That would be a person. But the seeker for us would also be someone who’s a bit more intentional about going in the direction of, tell me more about this Jesus. Because there can be people who have that disposition who are more doubters observers, spiritual, not religious, but the seeker. They’re going after it. They’re putting in the work. And I love to disciple those kind of people because they’re coming at you with so many real honest things and they truly want to get to the bottom of it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:21):
And then you have the believer.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (26:24):
So that would be the person who knows that Jesus is the way, the truth and the life, the person who has received and seen their desperate need for his forgiveness of their sins and is alive in Christ, filled with the spirit and living a life that is in the direction of glorifying God. Now we know there’s a whole spectrum of perhaps the most lukewarm, I don’t know where the cutoff line is, only God does to the most zealous and the most committed, but the believer is the person that we understand is a brother or sister in Christ who we will live together forever with.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:06):
And then your final stage is the disciple.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (27:09):
Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:11):
Describe an ideal disciple.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (27:14):
It’s interesting that we kind of separate the believer and the disciple because in many senses, the believer might be going in the direction of unbelief, and they’re not really that invested in their faith, but they still believe they’re still in it. But the disciple is the person who we see that is actively daily desiring the apprenticeship of Jesus to become more like Christ. And so this is the person who sees well, who reads the word of God, who builds their life on the foundation of God’s truth, and they want to live out what the word asks of us. And so an ideal disciple to me is just simply someone who’s humble, who you can tell they’ve died to their selves and they want to learn and grow to be more like Christ. It’s very simple. It has a million implications, but that’s just the core essence of what we’re hoping for.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:11):
As I’m thinking about these different spiritual conditions, I really remember the parable that Jesus told about the farmer who went out to sow seed in different fields. And there’s a lot of parallels there. Some of the seed fell on hard ground. Maybe that’s the disbeliever, and Satan is coming and stealing the seeds.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (28:33):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:33):
Then some people, there’s been thorns, so they’re like a doubter, but these thorns have grown up around them and caused these doubts. But then you have the good ground, and this is someone who might be a seeker. And then with the good ground, you have some that produces 30 some, 60, some a hundred fold. And so you have those different levels of people that are responding to the gospel, becoming a believer, then becoming a disciple.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (29:05):
Yeah. Yeah. I would say that’s a really, really good parallel for sure. And we see it going beyond that too, that even in the believer’s life, God could be depositing seeds of the kingdom, but in that stage of life, they’re just closed off. And that truth or that calling from the Lord will not bear fruit even though they’re a believer. And then the other disbeliever could actually have gone through a season where they’re so broken by something or something massive changed in their lives, and now they’re open to this idea of God, and then the seed comes at the right time. It could be you could be me, it could be anyone listening to this podcast that God uses to see a disbeliever become a full fledged disciple very quickly because they were ready. And I think that’s why we have to be ready no matter who we’re meeting on this scale or these categories, just be ready to scatter the seed. That I think is the biggest takeaway.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:03):
God doesn’t call us to grow the harvest. He calls us to be farmers, to go out and scatter seed

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:09):
And be surprised at the growth. It is a miracle. We plant someone else waters

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:15):
And then God gives the

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:16):
Growth and we’re just amazed by it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:18):
Alright, and so then there are four core skills

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:22):
That

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:23):
You teach that help people with their outreach conversations. So first you want to connect with people, then you want to tell your faith story, then you want to share Christ’s story, and then you want to give them God’s word. So let’s talk through these four core skills and how you help people to develop in each of those skills.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (30:44):
Sure. Yeah. So the first skill connect, very simple. We go with what’s called the grid model. It’s kind of like who are the people that you are already connected to and them personally, you know them by name, they’re probably people you see on a weekly basis, maybe biweekly at minimum. And we want you to know who these people are who don’t know Christ, so that you can see the way that God has intentionally put you in their lives. I find it really interesting. There’s often a lot of people that we know that we’ve never really considered them as someone that God wants us to share the gospel with. I’ve been a young adults pastor and I worked with a lot of university students, and a lot of them never really saw their classmates or especially their teachers as someone that they could ever share the gospel with. Why would God want me to share with them? Maybe my youth pastor or someone else will do it. A Christian club leader will do it, but me, it’s like, yeah, God has given you a grid. He’s given you favor, he’s given you trust, and it’s our responsibility to use that, of course, to lead people to Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:59):
So your first skill is to connect with people. How do you recommend that people start to connect with people?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (32:05):
Yeah, the central skill with that is be intentional. Know the people, identify the people and be intentional with them. We also have some questions for people to get started if they think, okay, well yes, I know them. Yes, we talk. So what’s next? Well, what do you have in common with them? Begin to build a more connected, deeper relationship based on things you can do together. Shared experiences, how can you pray for them? That’s another question. Do you actually know what’s going on in their lives? To the degree that you can pray specific prayers for them, whether it’s for their family, for their work, for their mental health. There’s so many ways. The next is how can you serve them? God has given all of us gifts and abilities, and we are called to use that to bless others. And so look for ways that you can go out of your way to bless them. Finally, what can you give not only tangible assets, but also what gifts? What spiritual strengths has God given you that you can share in their lives, ultimately leave their lives in a better place because of your investment? We would say those four simple questions. If you can answer all of those and act on them with any individual on your grid, you’ll be in better shape than most people. As far as building a healthy, intentional relationship.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (33:33):
When I think about connecting with people, I think of some of our friends who live here in Tulsa, who are from Afghanistan. We had a lot of refugees from Afghanistan that came here, 800 different families. And so we started to develop relationships with some of them. And when they first came as refugees, we were helping them to find jobs and get driver’s license. And there was one girl who was pregnant, so my wife was helping take her to the doctor for her appointments, for her baby. And so we were looking for ways, what did we have in common with them? How can we pray for them? How can we serve them? And then looking for ways to give to them. And so building that connection. And in these Afghans, they’re all Muslim,

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (34:19):
But

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:19):
We’re looking for ways to connect with them,

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (34:22):
Putting yourself out there. And it’s actually beautiful because Muslim people who move to North America, they’re often shocked by how individualistic we are and seemingly disconnected, and they’re used to a very warm, very familial culture. And so when they can come here and see that we as members of the church, as part of the body of Christ are willing to go outside of our comfort zone, our cultural norm, and be like a family to them, it’s amazing. It completely surprises them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:58):
The second skill that you teach is tell your story. How do you help people to tell their gospel story?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (35:06):
So you can imagine you’re deepening your relationship from small talk. Personal talk is getting to the spiritual level. People seem to be open to hearing about what you believe, what gives you hope in life. And so we want to equip people to show the proof is in the pudding. We don’t just believe in God because it makes sense intellectually, but we actually have a story. We have experiences with God that verify that he is real and that he is worth believing in. So we make it really simple for people to share their story. First, we talk about this big idea. What are you trying to convey to this person? We talk about telling your story. For most of us, we’re trying to show that there was a point in my life where I did not know Christ or I was far from Christ. And through some means I was able to get to know him personally, and he changed everything.

(36:01):
So God changed my life. That’s kind of the big idea we want people to know. So we break that down into three different stages. The first stage is your life before Christ. So why did you need Christ? What was your life like? What major problem or challenge or confusion were you experiencing? And then we give people a list of words to help describe that in one word. What would you describe your life as before Christ? Secondly, how did you come to Christ? We all have a story of the time or day or process by which we knew that Jesus is Lord. And so how did that happen? We give people again, a list of words and small sentences to describe how you came to know Jesus. And then thirdly, what difference does he make today? So what is your life like now because of Christ?

(36:55):
And then one word to describe that. So once people choose this word or short sentence for each of those stages, they can break down their story into honestly a 10 or 15 second thing, which is enough to grab people’s attention and allow people to identify with you. For me, I say my life before Christ was addicted. I had so many addictions, so many things going on, but I came to know Christ through a crisis as a result of that crisis, and me realizing that Jesus is Lord and him saving my life today, my life is pure. It is just full of the purity of God. And those sound like three pretty disparate things like addiction, crisis, purity that doesn’t really add up. And so that 10, 15 second presentation can open the door into a longer development of each of those stages and telling the full story if you have enough time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (37:51):
Yeah, I really like the idea of telling your story because no one can argue with it. It’s your story.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (37:58):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (37:59):
If you give them a verse or a fact, then there’s room for argument. But you say, this is what happened to me.

Speaker 5 (38:05):
That’s

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (38:06):
Your experience. Your life is what you know. And so you are able to share with people in a way that there maybe won’t be so argumentative. And then one of the things that you say that I really like is that it’s better to spend most of the time actively listening to the other person in order to understand. And so I think one of the mistakes a lot of people make when they’re witnessing is they get this script and they have these stories going to share and they just jump into it. And it’s actually a really powerful technique to listen to people, to hear where they’re at, and then allow the Holy Spirit to guide you in what you say to their situation.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (38:51):
Yeah, that’s perfect. And that’s definitely the deeper, more intentional level that we want people to get to. So you have your basic story, how you would tell it. Generally speaking to any group, if you were just asked on a whim, tell it. Okay, here’s my main points. However, we know that our stories are far more complex and beautiful, but also there’s a lot more going on that we could share about. And so if you know have a variety of struggles in your past that Christ set you free from, or Christ healed for you, and you’re meeting someone who’s really struggling in one of those particular areas, it wouldn’t necessarily be the first one that you’d share. But you also have experience there too. Well, God just opened the door for you to show how the same way that he met your needs, he can also meet theirs.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:40):
And when you listen to someone, you’re actually earning the right to be heard.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (39:48):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:48):
Here in the United States, we have the first amendments, which gives you the right to free speech,

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (39:54):
Which

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (39:54):
Is great, but just because you speak doesn’t mean anyone’s going to listen to you. Often they don’t want to listen to

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (40:00):
You,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:01):
But by listening to them, then you earn the right to be heard. When you start to share your story, you show you care for people. Someone said that no one cares how much until they know how much you

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (40:12):
Care.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (40:12):
And so by listening, you are showing that you care about their story, and you earn the right then to share your story and what God has done in your life.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (40:21):
Yeah, a hundred percent. And that’s why I think this relational conversational model, it’s so essential for every follower of Christ because that’s built into it. To have a relationship, you have to hear people, you have to know who they are, what they want, what makes them happy, what gives them what makes them feel fearful. And when you get the accumulation of all this knowledge and connection with them, you’re way better equipped to talk about Christ rather than a really professional summarized portrayal of Jesus. You’re going based on the individual’s needs.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:02):
Alright, then skill number three, you want to share Christ’s story?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:07):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:07):
What does that look like?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:09):
Yeah, so more important than our own story is of course the story of Jesus because we wouldn’t have a story if it wasn’t for him. We wouldn’t have life if it wasn’t for him. So how do we become good at sharing Jesus? The big thing

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:22):
For, I really like the story of Philip, the evangelist in Acts chapter eight, when he was with the Samaritans. It says he preached Christ to them and then he meets the Ethiopian eunuch on the road. And again, the story specifically points out that he spoke about Christ to him.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:40):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (41:40):
So you start with your story, but then there has to come a time where you bring Christ into this story.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (41:47):
Yeah, exactly. Who is this Jesus that saved you? And we really want to make it a personal telling of Jesus that we’re not just communicating theological truths or summarizing biblical stories or even quoting that many Bible verses, because a lot of people doesn’t really matter to them. We know there’s power in the word of God, but we of course have to prepare people to want to hear the word of God. So we want to share Jesus as our best friend, as the most important person in our lives, the person of Jesus, and talk about him and how we relate to him on a personal level. And so on our worksheet, we go through what are five categories of Jesus’s life that will help express how he can be a best friend and not just a theological idea to other people. So we talk about his personal life.

(42:39):
Jesus was born in Bethlehem. He lived in a specific region of the world. He was born into a family where his father was a carpenter and he himself learned the trade. Jesus was a person. A lot of people can relate to that. I worked as a carpenter. Relationships. Who did Jesus have in his life? He had siblings, he had family, he had friends. He had his community, his Jewish community. I mean, there’s so much you can say about him, his influence, his credentials like Philip did. Philip gave the prophetic truth about Jesus and Isaiah and through the whole scriptures for telling who he is and the major events of his life. What did Jesus live through? What did he do historically verifiable so that we could know who he is on a personal level,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (43:31):
And then Jesus is coming again. And so you talk about that. Are you ready for when Jesus comes again?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (43:39):
Yes, exactly. And there’s of course a lot of really important details about Jesus’ life that proves or tells that he’s our Lord and Savior. We talk about his miraculous birth, we talk about his ministry, the miracles he performed and how he amazed so many thousands, tens of thousands of people during his life. We talk about his death, how significant his death was on a Roman cross and what it meant for us on a spiritual level, the forgiveness of our sins, the perfect sacrifice that the sacrificial system could never provide or fulfill. And then his resurrection and ascension and how all of these things together show that he is actually the one true God. He is the way, the truth and the life. He is one with the Father. And that no other religious system or worldview could provide the, it’s more than security, but that could provide just the comprehensiveness of the gospel of Jesus Christ to build your entire life on it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:46):
And then how do you bring people to a point of decision

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (44:51):
To

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (44:52):
Where they’re saying yes to Jesus?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (44:55):
Yeah. So we as a ministry, we have our resources that we talked about earlier, the Hope and Spark magazine. And in the back of those magazines we have this summary of what it means to receive Christ as your savior. It’s literally on the back page. It goes through these three main ideas that God loves you. Everyone has to know that God loves them to be drawn to God of course. And what he did for us, we talk about how all are sinners, which is also very much a part of the Romans road approach to summarizing the good news and what we’re being saved from. And then we talk about God’s plan to save us and what God did by sending his only Son Jesus to actually make a way for us to be with him. And so we know that people are going to present the gospel in a variety of ways and use particular scriptures that they’ve come to love and have significance in their lives. But we just really want to make sure that when people present the gospel, that they do talk about this desire, this longing that God has always had to be with us. What prevented him from being with us was our sin and what he did to take care of that problem so that we could be freed from death and give an eternal life.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:17):
And so I like the word commitment. You ask people

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (46:20):
To

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:20):
Make a commitment to follow Christ. And then the fourth skill is to give God’s word. And this is something that your organization excels at.

Speaker 5 (46:31):
You’ve

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (46:31):
Been giving God’s word for decades, and so you love giving God’s word. But what are some of the resources that you have that can help people give God’s word? I know you have an app and some other ideas and ways that people can give more of God’s word to people.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (46:50):
Certainly. So as we already covered these hope and Spark magazines are kind of our two flagship resources that we give to virtually every church that we work with uses them. There are a few unique cases where we work in some closed countries that they can’t actively distribute the word of God the same way. So we work with audio Bibles and other things and partnership with other ministries, but we also have resources for things like prison ministry, working with people who are living in addiction or people who are unhoused so that we have a deeper look into the book of Romans justification. What does it mean for God to declare you innocent, even though you might be seen as guilty by the world? We also have a magazine called The Light and where we talk about Jesus being the light of the world. And we found that certain cultural backgrounds, particularly indigenous peoples, people from India, even certain groups, Chinese groups, that talking about this true light, this pure light, the goodness that is represented by it, it really resonates with them culturally speaking.

(48:01):
And so it allows us to share the gospel more effectively. But we also have our digital resources. We have currently nine short articles addressing very specific topics like depression, anxiety, loneliness, greed, things that people wrestle with on a personal level. And we show how the word of God speaks to that through these articles that you can easily download on your phone and send to someone in two seconds all the way across the world if you want. Beyond that, we have our New Life Bible app, and that is the complete Bible, and I think it has hundreds of languages right now. We also have on that some kind of topical Bible studies and even a find a church near you so that churches that we partner with that we’ve seen as trusted and true places to get discipled, we include all that in there so people can have a kind of one-stop shop application.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (49:00):
And so for the app, if they go to the iTunes library or on Android, how can they find it? What would they type in?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (49:11):
Yeah, just type in New Life Bible app. It should come up. It’s the icon of it is this kind of black square with a few other colors in it. I’ll pull it up on my phone right now just to, it’s been a long time since I’ve searched for it, but I’m assuming it’s still the top one that comes up.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (49:32):
Yeah, that’s always important to be able to find apps that people have. Alright, well those four skills. Connect with people, tell your story, share Christ’s story and give God’s word. Absolutely tremendous. And I think giving God’s word is really the answer to the question is how do you follow up on a new believer?

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (49:53):
Well,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (49:54):
The key is getting them into God’s word.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (49:57):
Yeah. And it’s been amazing, even these spark books that we have, we have such a desire from young people, from children and preteens that are so curious and interested about learning about God. They want to keep meeting with other kids and go through this book together. So we’re starting to see these little clubs forming like we want to call them Spark clubs or Spark groups, that we can gather children locally so that they can come to know Christ. And then many times their parents who drop them off also want to listen in. We’re seeing this happen all across Latin America and a lot of other nations, even in North America now and beyond who are requesting, can we do these spark gatherings as well? We have all these kids that want to learn, but where do we gather them? And so many, many things are happening. I mean, I could go on for ages about the miracles that we’re seeing and God opening up governments in previously closed countries, communist countries that are asking us to give our resources to every child in the country, millions of scripture resources that we are printing to distribute for those needs.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (51:06):
Well, tell us again how to find out more information about Share Word global and how people can get connected with you.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (51:17):
Yeah, so www.sharewordglobal.com. That will be the first and best place to go to explore it and see what we do there. Please, if you’re interested in anything that I said and bringing this to your church, because we offer our training for free, it’s a service that we love to give to the local church to mobilize and equip your people. I myself was a pastor and I wish I knew about Share word Global while I was pastoring because I would’ve loved that for our people. But yeah, you can send me an email, jordan@sharewordglobal.com, and I can answer any further questions you might have in any way that we can come and serve your church.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (51:58):
Well, Jordan, thank you so much for sharing the depth of expertise that you have on evangelism. It would bless any local church that wants to get their people fired up about sharing their faith. So Jordan, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Jordan Chanin – ShareWord Global (52:17):
Yeah, it was a huge pleasure. Thank you for the time, Daniel, and just for being an amazing, gracious host.

Evangelism Podcast Host (52:22):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more. If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (53:24):
Thanks much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. So that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (54:45):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Chris Kingston | Identifying, Affirming, Training, and Mobilizing Evangelists

Chris Kingston is the Executive Director of ETeam Global, an evangelistic ministry founded by Dr. Tim Robnett. Their goal is to equip Ephesians 4 evangelists by identifying, affirming, training, and mobilizing evangelists worldwide. The organization partners with local churches to equip believers for evangelism through various training programs and outreach opportunities. Today you will be inspired as Chris Kingston shares why he is passionate about evangelism.

Learn More About E-Team Global: https://www.eteamglobal.org/

Learn More About Nick Hall and Pulse Evangelism: https://www.pulse.org/

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Chris Kingston is the executive director of ETeam Global, an evangelistic ministry founded by Dr. Tim Robnett. Their goal is to equip Ephesians for evangelists by identifying, affirming training and mobilizing evangelists worldwide. Today you will be inspired as Chris Kingston shares why he is so passionate about leading people to Jesus.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:38):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:02):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus Today I have a very special guest with me, Chris Kingston. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (01:16):
Absolutely, Daniel, it’s definitely a pleasure and it’s good to be talking with you and the rest of everyone today.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:23):
And so you are the executive director for ETeamGlobal. Tell us a little bit about what ETeam Global does.

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (01:33):
Absolutely. Great question. So ETeam Global is a partnership of evangelists and basically we identify and affirm train and mobilize evangelists worldwide. But how we do that is through three different ways equipping in the local church here in the United States regionally and nationally. But then we also do quite a bit international kind of forum training with evangelist pastor leaders. And our ministry is now 14 years old and we continue to, we’ve had the blessing being invited to 28 different countries and over the 14 years and currently we’re really focused where God’s had us for 14 years actually in Nigeria. But Ethiopia we’ve been serving in for three years, Slovakia the last three years, as well as southern Spain with tons of African refugees that are coming across. So our team is small, but we function at a high level. We’re all very passionate to share the gospel and Jesus Christ, the greatest hope we have. But we really do work in and through the local church and we believe in the local church. So that’s a quick little shot of who E Team Global is.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:53):
That’s so wonderful. E Team Global was founded by Dr. Tim Robnett, who used to be with Luis Palau for many years, helping to lead the Next Generation Alliance, which I’m connected there. And I met Dr. Tim and he invited me to come and take a class with him at Multnomah University. And he has what is probably one of the greatest training places for evangelism in the world. I don’t know of many universities that offer training for evangelists at the doctorate of ministry level, but they have a great program there at Multnoma. And I went, I took a class with Dr. Tim Robnett and learned so much from him. How did you get connected to Dr. Tim?

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (03:51):
Yeah, well that’s a great question, Daniel. In life and in ministry, it’s all about relationships and Jesus was all about relationships. So another evangelist, probably your friend as well, Brad Butcher, Dr. Brad now. He and I have known each other for years. I served with passionate people for about a year and a half, and I was introduced through Brad to Dr. Tim And Dr. Tim came one day and sat down and he was invited by Brad and there was a bunch of evangelist pastors that were praying together on a regular basis. And Tim came and kind of shared with us like two or three times. And I met him years ago and then got reconnected with him I would say in the summer of 2017 through another evangelist, Mike Parker. And so I’ve known Tim since 2010. I consider him since 2017, my mentor friend and also the head founder of ETeam Global Ministry.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:55):
So the goal of ETeam Global is to equip Ephesians for evangelists. And you mentioned it, identifying affirming training and mobilizing evangelists worldwide. Let’s just talk about what each of those things look like. How do you identify a firm train and mobilize evangelists?

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (05:17):
Great question. Yeah, I’ll try to make that quick. The identifying is, as you’ve probably seen when you’re out in the field, when you’re doing evangelism or especially in our case when we’re training others, especially our laser point is the evangelist, but we are blessed to go into local churches. But once we train the believers in the local churches, we go out with them. So we go and mentor, we go and model it. And when you’re doing anything, whether it’s street evangelism or festival evangelism or just school evangelism, you see which evangelist kind of rise up from the whole group. And so that’s one of our ways that we identify just through other evangelists who invite us and we do trainings. And then the affirming is really, that’s the long-term relationship. And just as I said, I’ve been knowing Tim since 2010, but 2017 has kind of been pouring into me.

(06:16):
And so the affirming side is another area, but it’s one-on-one relationships. It’s being invited by other ministry leaders, especially evangelists like Nick Hall with Pulse 100 evangelism to kind of affirm younger evangelists or firm. And then the training side, I think that is really the core of ET global. There’s so many great and unique evangelist ministries out there. I really believe through Dr. Tim and his 50 years of faithful ministry and just my heart and passion for the local church is the training side. And so again, we could have a room of 10, we could have a room of 200, and typically those evangelists are usually the ones who come up after the fact or during breaks, ask us questions, say, well, when are we going to go street evangelizing? And so that’s kind of the training side. And then the immobilizing is just the going and doing.

(07:20):
And so that’s kind of where we get on fire when we can go out, share Jesus and some of our friends. It’s many different looks, many expressions, but it’s all the same message whether what it is for me, my wheelhouse and area where I love to go most, where not everyone likes to go is drug rehab centers and just where people have addictions. And I come from a background in that and God pulled me out of the darkness. And basically that’s just one of many areas that we will go, but we will support others like your ministry with missions and just being on the ground for a festival style. But it’s a little bit of all kind of ministry when we mobilize, but we always model it to the individuals that we’re training.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:15):
That’s wonderful. You mentioned Nick Hall and Pulse evangelism. Nick is doing such a great job of bringing evangelism back to America and then raising up this young generation of evangelists. And I know that you have been involved in helping to coach some of the young evangelists with Paul’s evangelism. What does that process look like?

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (08:42):
Yeah, great question. Well, as you know, Nick and his ministry is based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, and they have this vision, and they’re on year four now where it’s a season ministry where they basically put out to the whole country for younger individuals who are already identified as evangelists or just growing in ministry, but they’re passionate to share Jesus. And so the process with Nick’s team is it’s typically ages 18 through about 28, and they have an application process. And a lot of times, just as I mentioned, when they’re out doing outreach, when they’re sharing the gospel, when they’re partnered with different ministries around the country, those evangelists kind of rise up and are the ones on the front lines. So they have an application process, but basically it’s a process once you get kind of accepted for the next year, these young individuals, there’s a hundred of ’em I think this year, I believe there’s over 14 states that are easily represented amongst a hundred evangelists.

(09:48):
They’re men and women, A lot of ’em are university age students or just post university. And what Nick does is just they have some wonderful, it is gathering four times a year in person. And with that, typically that’s a two and a half, three day gathering. And then what we’ll do is there’s worship, there’s time of coaching, mentoring and teaching. And then myself and many others are coach mentors who are evangelists. And so then we connect with our smaller group, which is typically a group of 10, and typically men with men, women with women. And so I’ve got three young men that I’m mentoring right now. I’ll talk to ’em probably twice a month. And then we gather on Zoom to do a core training once a month as a whole entire group. The whole process with Nick through that, they have an internship program, and I think at the end of May, we’ll go out and all be a part of a larger festival style outreach that Nick and Pulse Evangelism 100 are planning. And so that’s kind of like the base of what it looks like, but it’s a great feeder program for them to then take some of those students who are passionate or make the time and then they become interns with that ministry and then they can continue to grow. So that’s just some of the quick DNA of I believe, how they do it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:19):
That’s awesome. Well, let’s talk about your testimony and how you got excited about evangelism. What brought you to a place where you are passionate about training up evangelists?

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (11:33):
Yeah, thanks for asking. Great question. So I didn’t come to know Jesus until I was 30, and so I have,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:43):
That’s very rare. A lot of people that are saved today are usually saved pretty young under 18. And so thank God that he can also save older people too.

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (11:56):
Absolutely. Well, to your point, my aunt who was 90 years old in Indiana, she had her 90th birthday many years ago, and I went and stayed with her and that weekend she received Christ as Lord and Savior as a 90-year-old.

(12:14):
So God, it’s never too late. That’s always the messages never too late to come to the hope of Jesus and to know him. So my testimony came to know Christ at the age 30, I’d hit rock bottom. I was living in the country of Australia. I used to my previous life, as I said, I was a sports marketing guy, and basically it was the business world. It was event management, it was just working all the time. But I just always had this emptiness, this spot in my heart that just wasn’t fulfilled. It was always like I needed more. There was the next thing to achieve or to purchase, and it was just empty. And so I came home from Australia after working there two and a half years, and I was really broken. And at that point I had this, it really hidden from almost everyone but my brother, a pretty serious drug addiction that kind of kept building over my years with pain and hurt that I have mask.

(13:14):
But then God sent me to San Diego, and once he sent me to San Diego, I kind of hit rock bottom. But through that, someone, a stranger invited me to church and they invited me and I went for the first time in years. And I got to tell you, Daniel, it wasn’t like church, it wasn’t all about the religion. It wasn’t about all these traditions or liturgical things, it just was worship with young people in this gymnasium. And the pastor got up and he shared the gospel, and I just, in my heart, the Holy Spirit moved and he’s just like, Chris, this is what you’ve always been looking for. This is it. You don’t need to look anymore. This is it. And I got to tell you, Daniel, I mean the whole room for me out of a thousand young people, it got smaller and smaller.

(14:03):
My eyes were just locked on this pastor sharing this truth. And I was like, why hasn’t anyone ever shared this with me? Why have I never heard this? And so anyways, praise God for his patient waiting and loving kindness, even through all my past sinful things, I walked forward that night and asked Jesus to come into my life. And I got to tell you that night and the next morning I woke up, I was a different person. No more desire for drugs and alcohol, just really cold Turkey, just that. But what really propelled me into what is my call as an evangelist. So I was growing. Finally, I got connected with this church. I was part of Men’s Bible study weekly. I started serving on the hospitality team, low level things. But then I moved in with these three men who were believers and they were discipling me in San Diego in this really small apartment that I didn’t even know what the word discipleship meant, or they’re discipling me.

(15:11):
And through that, I just kept reading God’s word. It says, go therefore and make disciples in all nations. And about a year and a half into my walk with Jesus, I was just like, I keep reading this word go, especially in the New Testament and well, I want to go. And so anyways, long story. After I prayed that prayer, I think it was probably just like two to three months later, I meet this guy through a roommate of mine and they’re going to Nepal and they’re going to go do a door to door evangelism, mission outreach during the largest Hindu Festival of the year in mid October in Nepal, in the Capmandu Valley. So God says, go, I have my Bible. I didn’t know any of these other people. And with that, we went and it was just faithfully reading God’s word. And we would go and knock on people’s doors, and it was almost like Christmas time in America, but in their festival and their culture, all their family members were all together and they were all there and we’re knocking on these doors. And they invited us in. We started telling ’em why we were there. And Daniel that week amongst our group that was 16 people, and I was one of those, there was over 376 people that came to Christ.

(16:33):
And I was just like, is this normal? I’m asking the other leaders, is this what normally happens? They’re like, this is pretty special. God’s spirit is moving. Holy spirit’s moving. And so with that, there’s a lot more to that story. But I came back after that mission trip and I ended up staying an extra five weeks radical things were happening. God was using four of us that stayed back. And basically that is where my passion for evangelism came. I never knew I was an evangelist. I really, honestly, I had my Bible, I had little tabs and I would read one scripture. I was still such a new believer. Then I flipped to the next scripture and the next one through that, I came back and I was like, what just happened there in Nepal? I want that to be the rest of my life. God was so faithful to continue to open doors. And basically he led me three months later to an evangelist disciple making school in San Diego with Pastor Mike McIntosh, who’s an evangelist. Greg Laurie and Mike McIntosh were part of the Inner Circle with Chuck Smith out of the Calvary Chapel. But from there, I entered the school and I just continued to grow. And so that is where I really found my calling as an evangelist. And that was in 2006, and I really haven’t looked back from there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:03):
Wow. What an amazing story. Thank you for sharing. I noticed on the wall behind you, there’s lots of flags from different countries.

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (18:12):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:13):
What are some of the favorite places that you’ve been and what have you seen God do in some of these places?

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (18:19):
Loaded question. Okay. Well, I would say one of the flags back here is Haiti. And Haiti is a very special place for my wife and I. And we had the privilege to go three different times back in 2012. And that was just, it was a reconfirmation for me that I was supposed to be basically a missionary living in the United States, but going and coming back and partnering with local churches and denominations. But that trip to, let’s just say that trip, the first mission trip to Haiti really reignited some passion of mine that Satan was kind. He was honestly stealing a lot of joy. And at one point I got married, we moved up to Portland, Oregon, and things got kind of rough. And I wasn’t really, I was serving in a ministry for a year, and then the ministry was growing. I was a youth pastor.

(19:19):
Kids were getting stayed. We were doing multiple collaboration outreaches with other youth pastors and other churches. And one day they just came back. I came back from visiting my dad who’s dying of brain cancer, and the people were like, Hey, we’re just going to go another direction. And I was like, well, what do you mean? And they’re like, well, this is going to be your last week. Ministering to the kids as youth pastor and Daniel, there was no sin. There was no ministry fall. They just were going to go a different direction. And so I kind of sat in that for a year and a half, which was a very dark time for me. But Haiti was the place that God used to reignite my passion. So I have a very special place in my heart there. Obviously the Nepali flag, you heard that story, but I would say that one of the flags that I probably, I don’t even have it up, it’s not in all, but my second mission trip in May of 2006 was to Poland.

(20:20):
It was southeastern corner of Poland. What I didn’t know at that point, Daniel, was we got a chance as our ministry school, 56 individuals that were all more or less evangelists or growing into being evangelists. We did outreaches and collaborated with the local church, but God selected myself and this other guy, Nick. And every day, the missionary couple would pick us up early in the morning right after breakfast, and we would be whisked away in a car and we would go to all these public high schools all across Southern Poland. And we were sharing our testimonies. We were sharing most importantly God story, and kids were getting saved inside the local public schools. And I just remember the whole culmination was we always had invitations. And at the end of the three weeks, we invited them all to come to where we were staying at, and we did a large outreach, and there was just tens and tens of kids that got saved that day.

(21:19):
And so Poland for me is also very special just because the fact that I originally went to Europe as a kid in 1985, and then there was all this time in between. And then what I didn’t know about what God knew was he sent me to Poland in 2006. But since then, I’ve gone numerous, numerous times to Europe and really had a very special place, especially with central Europe and Eastern Europe. And one of the other flags is Slovakia. God has led our ministry to, and we’ve been partners for just with other evangelists, a family, a dad, and two sons. And God’s used that in very powerful ways. So my heart is the great commission. My heart is to win the loss. My heart is all nations. But it’s one of those things. At the same time, I’m thankful to be able to go, but then come back home. And also being a equipper in the local church or a pastor that I was for 10 years locally in the West Coast, and now we live in Ohio, so now it’s a new season. We’re not sure what God’s doing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:27):
You bring a unique perspective as both a pastor and now an evangelist. What are some of the things that you would do to encourage pastors to involve their congregation in reaching out to their community?

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (22:44):
Oh, that is such a great question. Thank you for asking it. So a lot of times we realize, I think our wheelhouse, what we do and encourage pastors, usually it’s like mid-size churches or smaller churches. And the reason we say that is let’s use the smaller churches like a standalone pastor. They maybe have one admin assistant 10, 12 hours a week, but we say, Hey, this is what we just want to get to know them. We want to pray with them and then hear their hearts and hear where their congregation is. And so much of the time, as you probably experienced too, Daniel, it’s the fact that the congregation, they might have the desire to go reach their neighbors, their family members or their coworkers, but the fear sets in. And so we just have some very basic trainings that it’s baseline, but it really takes evangelism and makes it very practical.

(23:45):
And so I would say to pastors out there, sometimes you hear the word evangelists and you’re like, oh boy, what does this guy want? Is he going to swoop in? Is he going to just be all focused? But then you’re never going to see him again. I want to encourage pastors to ask the question of any evangelistic ministry, any evangelist, well, what is this relationship going to look like and how long do you plan to partner with us? And so with the ETE Global, we do a minimum of a two year partnership with any pastor, local church, and even our ministries overseas obviously. And some of those are 10 years, eight, 14. But for the local pastor, I’d say give the evangelist a chance. But I think one of the core things that hopefully the evangelist would do first and foremost, just even having the privilege to maybe come in where the pastor’s opening the church up to equip their saints for the work of the ministry is the fact that as evangelists, we would just have a heart of prayer and we’d be people of prayer.

(24:50):
Just as Billy Graham said, it begins with prayer, and the middle has to be prayer, and the end is always prayer. And so that’s one of the encouragement I would give to pastors. Sometimes those pastors, smaller, mid range size churches, they’re just so maxed out and they need to have a brother in Christ who’s very specifically called to equip the saints and to show and to go model. It’s not just to tell, but it’s to go model with the people and looking at what would that special outreach or what are simple things they can do in their community to begin winning the people around them. And as you and I know, I mean the Holy Spirit always has to be at the center of this, and it’s not us, and it’s not our words. It’s God’s word and the power and the Holy Spirit moving and convicting in people’s hearts and minds to draw them in. And so that would just be a few little pieces of advice I’d share with a local pastor.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:54):
Well, that is tremendous advice. If someone is interested in connecting with ETE Global, finding out more about you, maybe even supporting your ministry, helping you to go to different nations around the world, how can they find out more information about you?

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (26:12):
Thank you. Our website is the best centralized place, so that’s obviously WW Debo, and then ETE Global, all one word, E-T-E-A-M-G-L-O-B-A l.org. So ete global.org. And they could learn so much more about the ministry. We’re always looking for prayer partners and other future ministry partners that would love to come alongside us financially or even go with us. And so we’re always open. And even for pastors that might be listening to this, we would love to talk to you by phone, zoom, and then start praying with you to see if this might be a fit to come alongside your church and be able to bless you and the congregation.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:56):
Awesome. Well, Chris, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. I appreciate it.

Chris Kingston – ETeam Global (27:02):
Such a privilege, Daniel. Have a blessed Merry Christmas and thanks for the opportunity.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:07):
Yes, sir. Bless you.

Host of Evangelism Podcast (27:08):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Daniel King (28:10):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (29:31):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Danger on the Mission Field | Daniel King

On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast we hear stories about danger on the mission field. Evangelist Daniel King shares stories of the most dangerous situations he’s ever faced when preaching the Gospel. We read Psalms 91 and as you listen you will learn about God’s plan to protect you even when you are under attack.

Transcript:

Jace Gustin (00:00):
On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, we hear stories about danger on the mission field. Evangelist Daniel King shares the most dangerous situations he has ever faced while preaching the gospel. We read Psalms 91, and as you listen, you’ll learn about God’s plan to protect you while under attack.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:30):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:55):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special guest with me, Jace Guston. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast

Jace Gustin (01:08):
And I’m glad to be here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:10):
Alright, so Jace, you have just started an internship with King Ministries and you have a great heart for missions. Where are a couple of the countries that you’ve been to so far?

Jace Gustin (01:23):
So I’ve really just been to Guatemala and Brazil.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:27):
And you had a great time in both those countries.

Jace Gustin (01:31):
Yes, we’ve seen a lot of people went over for Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:34):
And so you have a heart to go to the mission field to tell lots of people about Jesus.

Jace Gustin (01:40):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:40):
And we’ve been talking some about what God has put on your heart. Do you have any questions about the mission field?

Jace Gustin (01:50):
Yeah, so I wanted to ask just one big question and it’s that, what was the most dangerous trip you’ve ever been on?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:00):
The most dangerous thing that we’ve seen on the mission field? That’s a great question. Well, first of all, I don’t think we should be too worried about going to the mission field. In Psalms 91 11, it says that God gives his angels charge over you to keep you in all your ways. And one time there was a missionary who said that there are no closed doors just as long as you don’t care whether you come back. And that’s true, we can go anywhere because we know that if we were to die, we are going to go to heaven. And so we don’t worry that much about the danger. Of course, you don’t want to tempt God. And so we take proper precautions. And over the years we’ve seen a variety of dangerous situations, but God has always protected us. And when I think about danger in the mission field, I really like to remember the example of Reinhard Bonnke, the great missionary evangelist from Germany. And one time he was doing a crusade in the nation of Sudan. And at that time, Osama Bin Laden was living in Sudan. He was the same one who attacked America on nine 11 and knocked down the World Trade Center. And at that time he was in Sudan. And when he heard that this evangelist was coming to Sudan to preach the gospel in cartoon, he actually sent threats by email to the offices of Christ for all nations. And so everyone was wondering, do we shut shut down the big festival?

(03:58):
And his staff, they’re wondering what would happen being threatened by this terrorist. And this is what God said to Reinhard. God said, you are Satan’s prime target for destruction, but you are my prime target for protection. I like that.

(04:19):
And so even when Satan threatens to attack us, even when he tries to come against us, we can know that we are under the protection of God. He wants to take care of us. Alright, so dangerous situations on the mission field. My parents were missionaries in the country of Mexico. And so we grew up working in the streets of Juarez, Mexico right across from El Paso, Texas. And every single week we would go across the border from El Paso into Juarez and we would minister on the streets. And of course in Juarez there’s a lot of different drug wars. At one time, Juarez, Mexico was one of, it was the number one murder capital in the world. So more people were being murdered per a hundred thousand people in Juarez than any other city on earth. And so it was dangerous. And so one time as my father was preaching in a church up on a hill, I wanted to go out in front of the church and invite people to come in. And so I went down the hill and started talking to a group of teenagers that were there and one of the teenagers, he was part of this Mexican gang drug gang, and he was angry that we were there preaching about Jesus. And so he reached in his pants and pulled out a pistol

(06:01):
And pointed it right at my forehead and told me to never come back to the neighborhood. And I didn’t really know what to do. I was just a teenager at the time.

Jace Gustin (06:13):
Not

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:14):
Scary, it was a little scary. But what I did is I went and I handed him a flyer and said, you’re invited to come to the meeting. And then I turned around and went back up the hill. And in wars, Mexico, we always saw God do great results, but sometimes people threw stones at us. I remember one time my father was preaching in the dump area in wars. There was this dump that people would go and they would dig through the trash in order to find tin cans in order to recycle, to make money. And so they’d support their entire family just going through the trash. Well, we would go to the dump and we would preach. And one time we were there preaching, and again there was a group of teenagers and they picked up some stones and they started throwing them at my father.

(07:12):
One of them hit my father on the head and he started to bleed, but he just kept preaching. And so that was kind of the example that I followed. And we’ve had people throw stones at us in different countries. I was in Ethiopia one time and in Ethiopia it’s about 30% Muslim. And so we were in an area that had quite a few Muslims in it. And I remember I was going out, passing out flyers, inviting people to come to the festival and there were a group of teenagers that got in my face and they started yelling at me and one of them knew a little bit of English and he started just getting in my face, why you say three gods? Why you say three gods, which he’s referring to the Trinity. Christians believe in the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, three unique beings together as one Godhead, three and one, one and three. That’s the way it has to be.

(08:19):
But Islam thinks that saying that there’s three gods is a blasphemy against the one true God, which Christians do believe in one God, but one God in three beings. And so they’re really mad at that. And I was quickly surrounded by a group of maybe 20 or 30 of these young Muslim boys and they were all yelling at me. And so I got out there just as quick as I could. Again, I invited them to come and many of them came. Then we were in Lalo, Chile, Ethiopia, and there was a Muslim mosque that was right next to the festival grounds. And so the imam of the mosque, he called people to come and pray five times every day. And his speaker was really loud and he turned it all the way up so that everyone could hear. But we were there for a crusade.

(09:19):
So our speaker was much louder than his speaker. And so as we drove by the mosque on Friday night, which is normally when people would go to the mosque, we noticed that out in front of the mosque, there were only 10 slippers there. So all of the people that would normally be at the mosque, we suspected they were probably at the festival with us. And so on Saturday night, they were really upset that we were there. So as we were driving past the mosque, somebody from inside threw a massive stone, probably about the size of a watermelon

(10:00):
And threw it over the fence and hit the side of our vehicle. And so it made a loud of bang when it hit and we’re like, what was that? And so we looked out and okay, well they were just throwing rocks at us. So we got stoned and we didn’t do anything, but we figured that the devil was mad that so many people were getting saved at the festival. By the way, we sometimes call what we do crusades in some countries it’s a crusade, but for Muslim nations we would call it a festival because of course the word crusade has a bad connotation for Muslims because during the Middle Ages, the people doing the crusades, they came and attacked Jerusalem, the Christians. And so we don’t call it a crusade, we call it a festival. Okay? So we’ve had, let’s see, one of the early events that we participated in was a crusade in Iquitos Peru.

(11:17):
Iquitos is in the jungle of Peru, right on the Amazon River. And so we actually rented a boat one day and went up the Amazon River and stopped at every village. As we passed by, we saw on the bank there was a little village. So we stopped, went and preached to the village and then went to the next village and preach. And so in Iquitos, when we first got there, they said that right now there’s a lot of unrest in the city. We said, well, why is there unrest? And it was the local teachers were rioting. And the reason they were rioting is because they hadn’t been paid in like a year. And so the government owed them lots of money and the government kept promising, oh, we’re going to pay you. We’re going to pay you next month. Don’t worry, we’re definitely even pay you next month.

(12:13):
But they never got the money. And so finally the teacher’s union shut down all the schools and they announced that they were going to hold riots. And so all of these teachers and all of their friends and their whole families, they were going through the city and we were scheduled to have the crusade right in the main plaza in Iquitos. And they warned us, they said, tonight is the big night where they’re planning to riot. And so they said, just be ready to shut down the crusade at any moment if people come. And so I was there preaching in the center plaza in Iquitos, and we heard reports that this riot was on the way and it was like 10 blocks away. And I said, well, is it bad? And I said, well, they’re taking sticks and breaking windows of the shops along the way.

(13:27):
Some of the people are starting fires. And I said, yeah, that’s pretty bad. And so I said, well, keep me informed if it comes close. And so then we got the report, okay, now they’re nine blocks away. Now they’re eight blocks away. And so as they’re coming down the street, all the shops were closing. They had garage door type things out in front of the shop. And so they pull the garage door down and so that their windows wouldn’t be busted. And someone came up behind me and they’re like, preach faster, preach faster. They’re only five blocks away now. And so I got as quick as I could to the altar call, and when they were four blocks away, I told the entire team, get on the bus and head back to the hotel. Just leave one car for me. And so we had a big crowd.

(14:16):
I gave the altar call and lots of people prayed with us for salvation. And I said, amen. And dismissed the crowd and our crowd left the plaza going this direction as the riot of teachers was coming in from the other direction. And so they stayed there all night long. They tore tires off some of the cars and set them on fire and had bonfires. And so we got all that on video. I told my cameraman, I said, go get some video of it. This is good video. We can show people what’s happening. But as the right is coming in one side of the plaza, we said, amen. People got saved and we left and no one was hurt in ketos Peru. Alright, so one of the scriptures that I really like to think about in times of difficulty is Psalms 91, which is a psalm that talks about how God will protect us. So Chase, why don’t you read through Psalms 91, and as you’re listening, I want you to think about how God has plans to protect us even in the most difficult situations. Alright, go ahead.

Jace Gustin (15:44):
Yes. So we have it here. I’m starting from verse one.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:48):
Yeah, it’s starting in verse one of Psalms 91.

Jace Gustin (15:50):
Alright, so it says, he who dwells in the shelter of the most high will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. I’ll say of the Lord, he is my refuge and my fortress, my God, and who my trust. Surely he will save you from the Fowler’s snare and from the deadly pestilence, he will cover you with his feathers. And under his wings you’ll find refuge. His faithfulness will be your shield and your rampart. You’ll not fear and terror of the night, nor will the arrow that flies by day, nor the pestilence that stalks in the darkness.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:31):
Alright, let’s take a break there. I’m thinking of another story. So I was in Goma Congo, and that’s where I met my wife Jessica. So she was a festival director. She was actually helping to organize and set up festivals. And I was a young evangelist, and so God took me all the way over to Goma Congo, right on the board of Rwanda and Congo. And it was at that festival that I met Jessica, but the conditions were really difficult. Goma has an active volcano and it had erupted a few years before we were there. And so lava covered half the city. And as you’re walking through the city, you could see iron bars sticking up out of the ground of windows of the houses that used to be there. And so the lava had come, covered the houses, but the iron bars from the windows were sticking up out of the ground and the lava made everything super dirty.

(17:40):
By the end of the day, you would basically be completely black and you would go back to the hotel and take a shower and it would take maybe five or 10 minutes for the water to wash all of the dirt and the black lava dust off of you. And that part of Congo is very rough. There’s a lot of different groups that are rebelling against the government gorilla groups. And so as the sound truck was coming to that location, it passed through an area where there were gorilla groups that were in control. And so they tried to stop the truck, but we gave instructions just keep going. And so as they passed the truck, they took a shot at the truck and when it arrived, it had two bullet holes in the container of the truck and one of the local leaders who was helping to sponsor the event, he was a colonel in the army of Congo.

(18:57):
And so he says, don’t worry, don’t worry. He says, we will protect you. And I went and preached to this church. He was a colonel, but he also had a church. He was a pastor. And as I was preaching for him, I noticed that in front of his Bible, he had three cell phones, which it’s very poor there in Congo. So to just have one cell phone is a big deal. But he had three of them. And I said, why do you have three cell phones? He’s like, that’s my personal cell phone. He says, that’s the cell phone that the Army uses if they want to call me. And I said, what’s the third one? He says, that cell phone was given to me by the president of Congo. If he wants to reach me, he says, I want you to make sure that you always have this phone so I can reach you anytime I want to call you.

(19:43):
So he had a direct line right to the president of Congo and he had a group of soldiers and he says, I’ll send my soldiers to the festival to protect you. So a lot of his soldiers were very young, like 14, 15 years of age, and they all had full armor with these big guns and everything, AK 40 sevens. And when the evangelists came to the field, they would run along beside his car to get us there to the platform. And then they stood around the platform, the entire service. And I was a little scared because I have a 14-year-old son and he loves swords. And the other day he threw a sword onto a bed and cut up one of the sheets. And my wife was like, don’t you know how to handle a weapon responsibly? I can’t imagine my 14-year-old son with an AK 47. But here you have these 14, 15-year-old teenage boys that are in the Congo military protecting us at the

Jace Gustin (21:04):
Crusade.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
And then they took it upon themselves to make sure that the crowd didn’t get too unruly. And so the evangelist would say, who needs a miracle? Everyone would raise their hand and even some people that were sick would start running forward to the front and these teenage soldiers with their AK 47 would grab a whip and start to whip people to stay back from the platform and say, no, please don’t hit the people. Don’t hit the people. And they’d be whipping them and say, get in line, stop being unruly. But then I noticed that one of these 14 year olds kids, he didn’t have an AK 47, he had a surface to air missile and a big missile on his back. And I was thinking, if any helicopters attack our crusade, we’re going to be okay. We got our surface to air missile and he stood at the back and just looked important there with his service to air missile. And it felt a little dangerous because of these military guys that were there. But this verse, you’re just reading, it says that I whatever slings and arrows, you will not fear the terror of night nor the arrow that flies by day. And so even though we were shot at in Congo, we didn’t worry because of Psalms 91. Alright, keep reading, let’s start there.

Jace Gustin (22:36):
From seven,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:36):
Yeah,

Jace Gustin (22:38):
Eight a thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 at your right hand.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:44):
Alright, let’s talk about this. A thousand may fall at your side, 10,000 by your right hand. I was in Juba Sudan, and this was right after a civil war between what is now North Sudan and South Sudan had just ended. And so we were literally the first Christian organization that went in after the war ended. And lots of people were hungry because they’d been fighting and not much food had been able to get in. And so for the crusade in Juba, we bought 10 huge trucks full of food in Uganda and drove them up to Juba to give away. And so these were huge dump trucks. Each one filled with corn and rice and I think we brought some soap and some cooking oil, just different materials. All in all, it was like 53 tons of food. It’s a lot to give away to people. And the people were hungry. And so we were thinking, okay, if we pull up at the crusade grounds and start giving out this food, there’s going to be a riot. How can we give it away?

(24:20):
And we came up with an idea that we’re going to distribute the food to the churches that participated in the crusade. And then we were going to give away coupons at the crusade. So anyone who came to the crusade could get a coupon. And then on Sunday morning they could go to a Sunday morning service at one of the local churches and if they went, then the local churches would be able to give out the food. And so that kept it from being a big riot at the crusade grounds. But I was one of the team members at this crusade in Juba, and I was assigned to give away the coupons at one of the gates. So we had it in a football stadium or soccer stadium. And so people would come in one of the gates, and it was my job to give everybody who came in the gate a coupon.

(25:20):
And someone asked me, what is the coupon for? And I said, oh, later on you’ll be able to take it to the church and get some food. And so when they heard that there was going to be food, the people started rioting for the coupons. And at first it was like a dozen people yelling and then suddenly it was a hundred people yelling. And then suddenly it was like 2000 people pushing, trying to get a coupon. And people were pushing and yelling and grabbing for them. And I was trying to politely give everyone, I think you already got one. And so finally I had to take the entire batch of coupons I had and I threw it as far away from me as I could way up in the air. And so the coupons went everywhere and I went running in the other direction so that I could save myself. And so even though there are people falling down on the crowd, a thousand at one hand, 10,000 at the other hand, I survived passing out coupons for free food. Alright, keep reading.

Jace Gustin (26:42):
Alright, so yes, but it will not come near you. You’ll only observe with your eyes and see the punishment of the wicked. If you make the most high, your dwelling, even the Lord who is my refuge, then no harm will befall you. No disaster will come near your tent for he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:14):
So we actually have angels that are guarding us. I’m thinking about Pakistan. We’ve done quite a few different crusades in Pakistan. And I remember one of the first events that we did there, everybody that came to our event had to pass through a metal detector. They were worried that someone might bring a bomb to attack people. And then the police came and they put sharp shooters on all the houses surrounding where the festival was going to be. And most of these policemen are assigned by the government to protect us as foreigners because the government doesn’t want an incident. But these guys are Muslims. And so one night there was a Muslim policeman, his name was Muhammad Nassim, and he was blind in one eye that night Jesus healed him. And this policeman who had a big gun, he actually came to the platform to testify and says, I was blind in my left eye, but tonight when you prayed to Jesus, Jesus opened my eye and now I can see.

(28:37):
And so I said, what’s your name? He said, my name is Muhammad Nasim. And so of course everyone knew that he was a Muslim and the word spread that Jesus was healing Muslims. Another time I was going to Pakistan Ann, and the week before I went, I ministered at a church in Rockwall, Texas and God spoke to the pastor’s wife there in Rockwall that their church was supposed to be praying for us and God actually gave her a vision. And in the vision she saw that we were in danger and guns were being pointed at us. And so she said, we commit as a church to be praying for you. So we went, we were preaching and saw great results. The local imam came, stood in the back of the festival, saw all the people that were being healed by Jesus, and he went to his moss the next day and told everyone, Jesus is healing the Muslim people.

(29:37):
So if you want to be healed, go and the prophet Jesus will heal you. And so even the imam was encouraging people to go, but there were some that were not happy that we were there. And so on the last night as we were leaving this festival, we were out in the middle of this village, kind of in the middle of nowhere, and we were leaving on this dirt road that passed through some fields. And the bishop that we worked with, he suddenly told our driver drive faster because there was a suspicious car that was following us. And so this bishop, he’s a little elderly, and during the festival he would always kind of fall asleep on the platform when I was preaching, but then he would nod off and I’d get to a good point in my sermon, and then he would suddenly wake up and say amen and pretend like he hadn’t been sleeping.

(30:41):
But anyways, this bishop, he told the drive faster. So we sped up and this car that had five young Muslim guys who looked suspicious, it sped up and was following us. And so up ahead of us, suddenly there was a bicycle motorcycle, not a bicycle, a motorcycle that was parked in the middle of the road. And the guy who had the motorcycle, he had a handkerchief and he was trying to get us to stop. And the bishop told the driver, he says, just drive around him, just keep going. So we swerved into the field, drove around him and kept going. And as we passed him, the guy took a rifle off his shoulder and he shot at us. Bam.

(31:42):
We thought the driver was driving fast before, but now he really stepped on the gas. So he’s doing really fast. And the bishop’s wife, she started to pray in tongues at the top of her voice. She was just praying really loud. And then the bishop’s daughter, she had a baby that had just recently been born. And so she was scared. She thought her baby had been shot. And so she was freaking out and what are we? And so my wife was there with me, my wife was pregnant with Caleb at the time, and I was very proud of my wife. She started to minister to the daughter and saying, it’s okay, your baby’s okay, don’t worry, you weren’t shot. And then I was looking out the back window and trying to figure out what was happening, and this car was still following us with these Muslim young in it.

(32:40):
And so my wife, she was ministering to the daughter and then she kept turning to me and pulling me down and saying, if they shoot someone, they’re going to shoot the white face, so get down. And so she’s ministering to them. And of course I wasn’t listening to my wife, I was pulling, I kept looking out the back window. She kept pulling me down and ministering to the daughter. And then I looked over at the bishop and I didn’t know it, but the bishop had been carrying a pistol the entire time. And so he pulls this pistol out of his pants and he’s waving it around the car. And I don’t know much about guns, but I know you’re not supposed to point it at me. And so I’m like, Bishop, don’t point that thing at me, point it out the window, don’t point it at me.

(33:28):
And he’s waving the pistol all over, yelling at the driver, drive faster, drive faster. And this car is following us. And so we’re all praying and my wife is ministering to the daughter and then pulling me down and I wasn’t listening to her. And so we drove like this for like 20 minutes and then finally we were able to get off the dirt roads onto the main road, make some turns, and after 20 minutes we lost the car that was following us. I knew everything was going to be okay. When I looked over at the bishop and he had put away the pistol and he had fallen back asleep, that’s when I knew everything was going to be okay. But the amazing thing is, is that when we got back to the United States, the church from Rockwell called us and they said, we were in the middle of our Sunday morning service and we felt like we were supposed to pray for you guys.

(34:24):
So we stopped singing our praise and worship songs and we spent 20 minutes praying for you guys. And we figured out the time difference between Texas and Pakistan. And the very time that they were prompted by the Holy Spirit to pray for us was the time that we were in danger in Pakistan. And so the principle here is that if God prompts you to pray for someone, sometimes you’ll think of someone that you haven’t thought of for a long time and suddenly you’re like, why am I thinking about my Aunt Molly? Well, maybe it’s because your Aunt Molly needs prayer right now.

(35:10):
And so when the Holy Spirit prompts you to pray for someone, it’s probably because they’re facing a situation and they might be in danger. And so this church, they prayed for us at the exact time that we were in danger. So sometimes we need to be very sensitive to the voice of the Holy Spirit because he will bring people to our remembrance. He’ll prompt us to pray for people. And so now sometimes I’ll think of someone, why am I thinking of that person? Well, it’s probably because God wants me to pray for them. I’ll take a moment to just cover them in prayer. Alright, let’s keep reading.

Jace Gustin (35:57):
They will lift you up in their hands so that you’ll not strike your foot against a stone. You’ll tread upon the lion and the cobra. You’ll trample the great lion and the serpent, because he loves me, says the Lord. I’ll rescue him. I’ll protect him for he acknowledged my name. He’ll call upon me and I’ll answer him. I’ll be with him in trouble and I’ll deliver him and honor him with a long life. Will I satisfy him and show him my salvation?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:41):
So one time we were in k Myanmar, Burma, and we were doing a three night festival there. And as we were preaching, there were gang members who got saved. They were addicted to drugs, and they actually came up and threw all their drug paraphernalia up on the stage and we’re crying out. Jesus set me free. And so Jesus was setting them free from being addicted to drugs. And on the last night of the festival, the gang that was selling drugs in that neighborhood, they came and they attacked the brother of my crusade director who was helping me to organize that event. And they threw rocks at him and picked up sticks and beat him. And they hurt him so severely that he went to the hospital. He was in the hospital for several days. He had blood streaming from several cuts on his head, his face and his back was really bruised badly.

(38:04):
And we don’t know if he was attacked because they were Buddhists who were mad that we’re preaching about Jesus or because they were gang members who were mad that we are setting people free from drugs. We’re not quite sure why he was attacked, but he was attacked. And so there is potentially danger when you preach the gospel, but God also has special protection for you. Another time I’m thinking about my mother and father. So after 20 years as missionaries in Mexico and Juarez, which as I said earlier was the murder capital of the world for a period, then I kind of joke around and says it got too dangerous for them in Juarez. So they decided to go somewhere else and the place they decided to go was Kabul, Afghanistan, which probably is even more dangerous. But I was so proud of my parents. They went and they were in Kabbala, Afghanistan, and they taught at a school there.

(39:15):
But they had some friends that they went to their house for prayer meeting. They were very close friends of my family. And they had a son and a daughter who went to the school that my parents taught at and were actually the son and the daughter. They were in classes with my brother who was teaching there. Well, the Taliban attacked this family and it was in the middle of the day. They attacked the house where they lived. They used rifles and machine guns to attack their house, started throwing grenades. And so my mother and father, they lived just a couple of blocks away and you don’t really know what’s going on, but suddenly you hear all the gunshots and the grenade blasts going off. And so my mother and father didn’t have anything to do, but to get under their bed and to pray. And so they stayed there for several hours because the Taliban attacked and then the Afghan military was called and they attacked the Taliban.

(40:35):
And so all day long my parents were hiding under their bed listening to the bomb blasts, grenades, the rifles going off and just praying. And it wasn’t until later that they found out what happened. The Taliban came in and they killed several Afghans there that this man had been working with. They killed the father and they killed the son and the daughter, both teenagers and the mother escaped because she wasn’t there at the time. But she had to come in to the hospital, the morgue, and identify the bodies of the father and her son, her daughter. And as she’s identifying them, the Afghan doctor was really surprised and said, why are you so peaceful? Usually if someone has a family member who dies, they’re freaking out, they’re crazy. And she was able to minister to the Afghan doctor in the morgue say, I can have peace because I love Jesus.

(41:53):
And Jesus. He died to save them from their sins. And because they believed in Jesus, they’re going to go to heaven. And if you will cry out to Jesus, you can go to heaven too. And so even right after this woman was seeing the bodies of her martyred husband and son and daughter, she had tremendous peace because of the prince of peace, Jesus whom she served. And so even in very difficult situations, we can have peace. Another time we were in Jammu, India and we actually had a situation where we set up a tent to do our festival in and a bunch of Hindus came and they rioted and they tore down our tent. And so they had 30 people who came in and they started marching around the place where we’re going to have our festival and basically saying, this is a Hindu nation and you are Christian, you can’t be meeting here. And they were acting very radically. So the pastor that we were working with, he went to the police to report the situation, say We have a permit. We were supposed to do a festival in this place, but they tore down our tent,

Jace Gustin (43:44):
They

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (43:45):
Tore down all the poles. And the policeman who was taking his report, he says, oh, I know what happened. He said, how do you know? He says, well, I was there. I was one of the people protesting. So they’re reporting this to the policemen. And the policemen had been one of the people there who was helping to tear down the tent. So the policemen weren’t able to help, but then a miracle happened. There was a local politician who came, and he was actually the head of one of the political parties that normally would be against Christians, but he heard that they tore down our things. And he came and he says, I don’t think this is right. And this politician, God really softened his heart. And he came to us and he says, the Hindus, they have their festivals and no one stops them. The Sikhs, they have their festivals and no one stops them.

(44:52):
He says, why shouldn’t the Christians be allowed to have a festival? And so he says, I’ll give you a place in town and you can have your festival there. And so we went from the outskirts of the city to he moved us right into the middle of the city, into this big hall that was normally used for weddings and that type of thing. And so we were able to have our festival there because God gave us favor with this Hindu politician. And many people were touched by God in that place. So there’s lots of potentially dangerous situations, but there are also great miracles that God does when we are obedient to him. And so I think it’s important to remember that we don’t need to fear, we are protected. God puts his angels in charge of us. And we read here in Psalms 91, these great promises of God, of what he can do to protect us, to help us. And ultimately we know that God will protect us here on earth. But even if something was to happen to us here on earth, we would go immediately upon death to be with God in heaven for all of eternity. Alright, let’s just finish by praying for protection. Jace, pray for my friend who is listening to this right now is maybe worried about going to the mission field. Just pray that God would protect our friends and that no harm would come to anyone on the mission field.

Jace Gustin (46:43):
Alright, well, father, we just invite you to be in our lives and that Father that in wherever we go, let it be guided and directed by your Holy Spirit so that wherever we are, we know that you are with us, that you are guiding us, and you’re just bringing us into the places that you have prepared to reach people for your name, for your glory. And Lord, just give us just the divine knowledge of where to go and what to say and how to act, and that we know and trust that you’ll carry us through it and protect us. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (47:29):
Amen. Thanks for listening to the Evangelism podcast.

Evangelism Podcast Host (47:33):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (48:35):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you. For

Evangelism Podcast Host (49:56):
More information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Two Questions that Lead to Heaven | Ethan Hood

On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast, I talk to Ethan Hood. He is only fourteen years old but he is already being used by God to lead people to Jesus. Today, he explains the Two Questions that can Lead to Heaven. Get ready to be inspired…If a fourteen year old can preach the Gospel, you can too!

Learn more about Ron & Christina Hood and their ministry: https://www.musgomissions.com/

Summary:

In this episode of the Evangelism Podcast, 14-year-old Ethan Hood shares how he uses his family’s “evangelism trailer” to share the gospel with people in his community. Ethan explains the two key questions he asks to start gospel conversations: “If today was your last day on Earth, are you sure you would go to heaven?” and “If you stood before God and He asked why He should let you into heaven, what would your answer be?” Ethan then walks through the five-part gospel presentation his family uses, covering grace, man, God, Christ, and faith. He shares testimonies of how this approach has led people to put their trust in Jesus, even including a 6-year-old child. At just 14 years old, Ethan has already seen God use him to share the good news and lead many to salvation.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, I talk to Ethan Hood. He is only 14 years old, but he is already being used by God to lead people to Jesus. Today he explains the two questions that can lead to heaven. Get ready to be inspired. If a 14-year-old can preach the gospel, you can too.

(00:29):
Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:34):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:59):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Ethan Hood. He might be the youngest guest we’ve ever had on the Evangelism Podcast. Ethan, thank you for joining me today.

Ethan Hood (01:17):
Yeah, thank you for inviting me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:19):
Alright, so Ethan is the son of Ron and Christina Hood, great friends of ours here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and they have a great ministry called Must Go Missions. And so Ethan has been our friend for many years. He hangs out a lot with my son Caleb, who’s also 14. And Ethan, do you remember meeting Caleb? How long have the two of you been friends now?

Ethan Hood (01:48):
As long as I can remember. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:51):
So you were pretty young when we first met. Now your father has a great heart for evangelism and he put together an evangelism trailer. Can you kind of describe for the people who are listening, what does the evangelism trailer look like?

Ethan Hood (02:07):
Yeah, so the evangelism trailer, it’s kind of like a food truck. So the sides open up and they’re flap so they open up and so you can speak from inside the truck to anybody passing by. So it’s painted sky blue with clouds all over it and it has big words, big letters on the front that say, are you going to heaven? Two questions are really answer. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:29):
Alright, so are you going to heaven? Two questions that reveal the answer, and in just a minute here we’re going to ask you what those two questions are. But first of all, kind of tell the people who are listening, how do your family use this evangelism trailer? What are some of the places you’ve taken it to and what would it typically look like when you use it?

Ethan Hood (02:55):
So we use it at different events and outreaches that happen all over the city. So we take it to the Tulsa Dream Center a lot and we talk to people there with Tulsa Dream Center. And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:09):
So let’s tell people what the Tulsa Dream Center is. So we live in South Tulsa, but up in North Tulsa there is the Tulsa Dream Center run by our home church, a victory church. And there’s a lot of people that have a lot of needs up there in North Tulsa. And so our church has been reaching out to North Tulsa for many years now. People come to the Dream Center for food. They recently built a swimming pool to help teach kids how to swim up there and lots of ways to reach out to the community. And so sometimes they’ll do a big feeding event, and right now it’s Thanksgiving time and so they just gave out a bunch of turkeys and stuff. And so when people come for the food, you guys will take your trailer and you’ll park it there in the parking lot and as people are waiting in line, you’ll start to talk to them.

Ethan Hood (04:07):
Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:08):
Okay. So kind of tell us what those conversations are like. What do you say when people come and start talking to you?

Ethan Hood (04:15):
So for a lot of the time people are just wondering what the two questions are that I mentioned earlier. And so those

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:21):
Two now they’re wondering because big on the truck it says, are you going to heaven? Two questions that reveal the answer.

Ethan Hood (04:29):
Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:30):
Alright, so everyone’s wondering, Ethan, what are the two questions? Can you tell us what are the two questions that reveal if someone is going to heaven? I really want to know. I want to make sure I’m going to heaven when I die.

Ethan Hood (04:43):
Yeah. So the first question is that if today was your last day on Earth, are you sure that you would go to heaven?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:52):
Okay, so if today was my last day on Earth, am I sure? Well, I hope so. I sure hope I go to heaven.

Ethan Hood (05:00):
That’s the answer we get a lot of the time. And so then that’s why you have the second question. If you were to stand before God and he was to ask you, why should I let you into heaven, what would your answer be?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:13):
Well, what answer do people usually say there?

Ethan Hood (05:16):
Well, a lot of the times they are Christians. So they say, I believe in Jesus Christ and this is good. And once, if they say that, then we ask if we can pray for them if they need any prayer. But also a lot of the time they say, well, I’ve been a good person, I’ve done good things. And this is,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:35):
Oh yeah, I go to church sometimes. Every Christmas I go to church. I love going to church at Christmas time, usually you get some presents and stuff and you see a little twinkly line on the top of the tree. And so probably got to let me in if I go to church on Christmas. Do you hear that type of answer?

Ethan Hood (05:54):
Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:55):
Okay. And so if someone gives you that type of answer, what do you do?

Ethan Hood (05:59):
And so then that’s whenever we go into the main message,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:03):
The main message, Ethan, tell us the main message. How can we be sure that we’re going to heaven when we die?

Ethan Hood (06:10):
So we use a format that was made by an evangelist who taught other people how to lead people to Christ. And so it starts with grace, then man, then God, then Christ, and finally faith.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:27):
Okay, so let’s go through those. You start with grace, then you talk about man, then you talk about God, then you talk about Christ, then you talk about faith. And so each of those different points, I’m sure you would say several different things, maybe pull out some scriptures to talk about. Kind of walk us through how you would present the gospel to someone. By the way, I think that this format was originally developed by d James Kennedy, who he started evangelism explosion. And so he taught people to go through these five different points. Alright, so start with grace. What would you say about grace?

Ethan Hood (07:08):
So grace, it’s really short. You just share the verse, the verse. Romans 10 13, whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:21):
That’s a good place to start. Whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. And so that’s God’s grace. Okay, then you go into talking about man. Now does it include women too? Is it Yes.

Ethan Hood (07:33):
This is man as humanity.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:35):
Man as humanity. Okay. And so what would you say about humanity?

Ethan Hood (07:39):
And so a lot of people at this point are wondering, well, what do I have to be saved from? And so man, we have to be saved from sin and saved from death. And so we lead with Romans 3 23 for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:54):
Okay, I’ve sinned, you’ve sinned, we’ve all made mistakes. What is sin? What do you say? If someone asks you what is sin?

Ethan Hood (08:02):
Well, sin is the wrong things that we do, the things that keep us from God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:09):
And so when people sin, there’s a price that has to be paid. What’s that price?

Ethan Hood (08:15):
And so the Bible says in Romans 6 23, the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:26):
So Jesus was the only one who was ever sin free. He was the son of God and he, he died on the cross to take the price for our sins. So we’ve gone through grace and man, then we go to talking about God, what would you tell someone about God?

Ethan Hood (08:42):
And so a lot of people have misconceptions about God. Like I said earlier with the second question, they say, oh, well I’m a good person. I should get into heaven. They think that God is up there with a set of scales judging the things from the bad things you’ve done. And if you’ve done more good things than bad things, then you get into heaven. And so we really just explained that this is not how heaven works. And so heaven is a free gift and that leads into Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:09):
So if you’re talking about God, you might quote John three 16 there. Can you quote that for us? Do you know John three 16?

Ethan Hood (09:17):
For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, that whosoever shall believe in him shall be given eternal life

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:25):
And kind of explain what does that verse mean? Imagine you’re talking to someone they maybe haven’t heard John three 16 or they don’t really know what it means. What do you tell ’em it means?

Ethan Hood (09:36):
Yeah. So Jesus Christ came down from heaven and was born as a baby and he lived a sinless life and died on the cross for our sins. And if we believe in Jesus Christ, then we will be saved and we’ll be given eternal life in heaven.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:54):
Alright, so you talk about God, God loved the world so much, he gave his only son, and then you talk about Christ. What would you tell them about Jesus Christ?

Ethan Hood (10:04):
Yeah, so with Christ, we start off with Ephesians two, eight through nine, which says four, by grace we are saved through faith and that not of ourselves, it’s the gift of God not of works so that no one should boast.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:21):
Okay, so why was Jesus’ death on the cross necessary? Why was that needed for people to be saved?

Ethan Hood (10:28):
Well, we said in man sin, you have to pay a price for our sin. And so Jesus died on the cross for our sin. He paid the ultimate price so that we could live free sinless lives with Jesus. And so that’s what Christ is talking about. For our grace, we are saved through faith.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:50):
Alright, then we come to the fifth and final term that you talk about and that is faith. What is faith? How can someone have faith? How do we put our faith in Jesus Christ?

Ethan Hood (11:02):
Yeah, people really don’t know what faith is. So faith is kind of like trust. Faith is sitting in a chair, which is a common example that we use. If you sit in a chair, you have full trust in the chair, you completely trust in the chair that it’s going to hold you up and it’s not going to break. If you see a chair that one of its legs is broken, you’re not going to sit in it, you’re not going to trust it. You’re not going to have faith in it, so you’re not going to sit down on it. And that’s what we have to do. We have to have faith in Jesus that he can save us.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:36):
So we put our trust in Jesus, that through Jesus we can be saved.

Ethan Hood (11:41):
And so with a chair, if you sit down partially, but you still have all your weight on your feet, you’re not really sparing your feet, you’re still on your feet. So you have to put all of your trust in the chair so that you can have rest for your feet. See, you have to put all of your faith in Jesus. You can’t put some of your faith in Jesus and still try and do good things. Try to get into heaven that way. You have to put all of your faith in Jesus. That’s the only way to get into heaven.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:12):
Alright, so then if someone says, I’m ready. I want to put my faith in Jesus right now. I want to make sure I’m going to heaven, I want to make sure I’m saved. How do you lead them in the process of putting their faith in Jesus?

Ethan Hood (12:25):
Yeah, so we just start off with again, or not again, sorry. Romans 10, nine. If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. And it’s really that simple. You have to confess with your mouth and believe in your heart. And so we just lead them in the salvation prayer.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:47):
Okay, well why don’t you lead us in a salvation prayer right now. What would that sound like?

Ethan Hood (12:54):
Well, very simply, it’s just, Jesus, thank you for dying on the cross for me and for my sins. Thank you for your forgiveness that you’ve given me, and thank you for helping me to live with you forever. Jesus name, amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:10):
Amen. Alright, and then after someone says a salvation prayer with you, then what happens?

Ethan Hood (13:15):
Well, after that we ask if there’s anything they need prayer for, any problems that they have, family issues, anything like that.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:23):
Alright, this is a great outline and you do a great job of quoting the scriptures, knowing how to present the gospel. Does this work, have you actually seen some people come to Jesus as you’ve been talking to them? Give me some testimonies. What have you seen happen?

Ethan Hood (13:41):
Yeah, this works all the time. Every time we go there are people who just come up interested and we tell them about this wonderful gift that God gave us and they believe. I remember one time we were at a community event, not a church outreach or anything, and it started raining. So we put up a tent to help people just get away from the rain. And so there was this family that was under this tent and they were just sitting there and we weren’t trying to force ’em or anything, we were just there, just reaching out to them, giving them water as we do. And eventually they just came up and asked, you guys are really nice, why are you like this? My dad and me, we just helped them go through this process and we just went through the process. This process is very adaptable so you don’t haveta halt, always start with the two questions. And so they didn’t come asking about the two questions. They came asking about why we’re so kind. And so with this process, it’s really easy. You can just share the gospel with anyone. And so we were able to lead these people to the Christ just originally just being kind to them and then helping them with this.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:59):
And you often give out water or something to people who are coming by.

Ethan Hood (15:04):
So we give out water and sometimes other drinks if they’re available and we just give them out. Sometimes it’s hot days and so they need water. So we’re just able to help the community and just help.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:17):
Alright, I got some rapid fire questions for you. One question is, what is the oldest person you’ve shared the gospel with and then what’s the youngest person you’ve shared the gospel with?

Ethan Hood (15:29):
Oldest person I’ve shared the gospel with, well, the cool thing about this, I haven’t just done this with my truck. I’ve been on mission trips and I’ve helped with this too. The oldest person I’ve shared the gospel with I think was in Florida. We were on a mission trip one year and we were going to door to door and knocking and just telling them about a block party that we were doing with our ministry there. And so we were just talking with them and if given the chance, we would tell them about Christ and tell them about Jesus. And so when we were talking, this old lady came to the door, I dunno how old she was, but she was maybe 60 or 70 and we were just,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:08):
Yeah, that’s really old.

Ethan Hood (16:09):
Yeah, we were just talking with her.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:11):
Don’t tell my grandma that.

Ethan Hood (16:14):
But we were just talking with her and just telling her about this block party and she was saying, oh, I don’t know if I can make it. And so we just started talking about how this gift that God gave us and how we can live free of the burden of sin. And so we just led her to Christ through that, just knocking on doors, giving out flyers, talking about Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:40):
That’s awesome. What about the youngest person? How young have you shared the gospel with someone, the

Ethan Hood (16:45):
Youngest person? Well, I think again, on the mission trip at this block party that we had, a lot of families came and a lot of children came because we were giving out clothes and toys and stuff. And well, we let our ministry let an altar call at this place and the people who lifted their hands, we would go out through them and just pray for them and just help them through it and just help them understand what they’re getting into because we don’t want to sign them up without actually telling them what they’re getting into. So we were doing this and there was this little boy who raised his hand and he was just wanting to know Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:27):
How old do you think this little boy was?

Ethan Hood (17:30):
He must’ve been six.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:33):
About six years old. Yeah. Okay. So from six all the way up to 70, you’ve seen the two questions work in sharing the gospel. Okay, here’s another question for you. How many times, just an estimate, doesn’t need to be exact, but how many times in the last 12 months do you think you’ve gone out with a truck witnessing?

Ethan Hood (17:55):
Yeah, so we’ve mainly done it over the summer, over the hot months, just handing out waters and things like that. And we really helped a lot during Covid as well, just handing out food and ministering, stuff like that. So over the past 12 months, we’ve probably gone to an event almost every month, so maybe 10

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:16):
Times. Wow, that’s amazing. Now each time you go out, how many times would you share the gospel typically?

Ethan Hood (18:22):
Well, when you go out to these events, they’re sometimes mainly Christian events that are held by Christian organizations. So I wouldn’t start with these two questions maybe 10 to 15 times, but five out of those I would actually share the gospel with and 10, they would already be saved.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:42):
So if you’ve done it like 10 times this year, you’ve probably shared the gospel anywhere from 50 to a hundred times this year. That’s pretty impressive for a 14-year-old to share the gospel. Now, how many people would you estimate that you’ve prayed a prayer of salvation with?

Ethan Hood (19:00):
Yeah, so a lot of people, they hear this story and they’re really moved, but they’re not really ready yet. So we don’t push them, we just only do it when they’re ready. See, sometimes these people, they’ve been going through a lot and there’s been so much leading up to this moment. And so when they finally ask, they’re ready for it. And so sometimes this is the first step in their process. Sometimes we’re the first step in the process for them being saved sometimes or the last out of the however many times I’ve shared the gospel with them, I’d say maybe 20 or so.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:34):
Wow, that’s amazing. I mean, for a 14-year-old young man to be able to share the gospel that many times and to lead 20, probably even more people that you’ve actually led to Jesus is really impressive. Now, last March you got to go on a mission trip with us down to the nation of El Salvador. And my son was on the trip too. What was one of the things on that trip that really moved you, that God really did in your life when you were in El Salvador?

Ethan Hood (20:10):
Yeah, in El Salvador. Man, that mission trip was so amazing there. After one of the Crusades, I believe, or maybe it was the night before we had a crusade just talking about it. I just realized, and a lot of us realized that we are on this mission trip to save people, but this is also helping us personally. And so on Wednesday night we had a massive worship session and the pastor of our church came down to help with this and we just had this massive worship and we really just had massive baptism in this pool at the hotel that we were staying at. And so many people were getting baptized. And eventually towards the end I decided to get baptized too. And that was really impactful for me. And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:07):
What did it mean for you in your life spiritually?

Ethan Hood (21:10):
Well, spiritually, I was sharing the gospel. I was going out and I believed it, but I wasn’t really talking to God. I was praying for these people, but I wasn’t praying to God. I wasn’t really having a connection with God. I knew he was my savior. I knew that he was my friend, but I never really understood that on a personal level. And so after that, I just started, whenever I was praying for people, I wouldn’t just pray for them to a spiritual guy up in the sky floating around. I would pray to a friend and asking them, please help this person. Help them to realize that you are so much more than just an angel floating around up in the sky who has magical powers. You are a real person who can help them. And it just really came on a deep person.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:13):
And so your relationship with God really became more personal and God really moved in your life. That is so awesome, Ethan. Thank you so much for sharing. If you want to know more about the ministry of Ron and Christina Hood and Ethan Hood, and the entire family is involved, you can find out more about them by going to their website must go missions.com. And so you spell that M-U-S-G-O missions.com. And on the website there’s a place where you can give to them through PayPal. You can be involved in helping them to go out. If you are in the Tulsa area, the Oklahoma area, you can connect with them and actually go out and volunteer and help to witness to people. They’re doing stuff almost every single month. And so you can get involved in helping to witness to people. And so let’s just finish up today, Ethan, by praying for the people who are listening today, would you just pray that everyone who’s listening would have boldness to share the gospel? Maybe they’re much older than you, but if a 14-year-old can do it, I think anyone can do it. And so just pray that we all have boldness to talk to people about Jesus.

Ethan Hood (23:40):
Oh dear God, I just thank you so much for all that you’re doing in all these lives, and thank you for everyone listening that you are helping them to realize that no matter what age they are, no matter who they are, that you can help them and you can empower them to lead anyone to Christ and you can connect with them on a personal level. I thank you that if there’s anyone watching who may not be saved, I thank you that you are just working in them. Jesus name, amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:12):
Amen. Well, Ethan, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Yes,

Ethan Hood (24:17):
Thank you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (24:18):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism, learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give antar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more. If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:20):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (26:41):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Shane Degen | Jesus Loves America

Shane Degen is a from Australia, but he has a heart for America. God gave him a vision to do fifty stadium events – one in each state in America. Today we talk about how God set him free from a life of addiction to heroin and gave him a passion for evangelism.

Learn more about Shane Degen: https://jesuslovesamerica.com/

Discover Shane Degen’s Two Hearts Gospel Presentation:

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Shane Deagan is from Australia, but he has a heart for America. God gave him a vision to do 50 stadium events, one in each state in the United States. Today we talk about how God set him free from a life of addiction to heroin and gave him a passion for evangelism. You’ll be inspired as you hear his passion for living for eternity.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:43):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:06):
Daniel King. 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, Shane Deagan from Australia. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Shane Degen (01:20):
Good morning, Daniel. Thanks for having us.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:23):
Alright, so you are an evangelist.

Shane Degen (01:25):
Yes sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:25):
And you have come here to America as a missionary because God has given you a vision to reach the nation of the United States for Jesus.

Shane Degen (01:38):
Yes sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:38):
And your ministry is Jesus loves America. Yes,

Shane Degen (01:42):
He does.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:42):
So I love us.

Shane Degen (01:43):
Yes. It’s the gospel in three words.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:45):
Well, let’s start at the beginning. How did you become a believer and then how did you start stepping out in evangelism?

Shane Degen (01:56):
Okay, right. So we’ve only got half a day. No, I’m kidding. Give an evangelist to Mike, he’ll take over the show, but okay. So I met Jesus in the jail cell in the year 2002, January 16. So up until that point in my life, I’d gone to church as a boy. But in my latter teenage, some stuff happened to me as a kid and I got kind of tempted by the enemy as it were for that big wide world of sin and depravity. And so as a teenager started taking drugs, trying to probably numb the pain, but looking for hope. Never really as a boy, I went to Sunday school and church. I never really met the Lord. I just had lots of good teachings, but I did love God in my heart. Anyway, at any rate, I went off into the world, got tempted and started taking drugs as a teenager, starts with marijuana. But by the age of 19, I was a heroin addict. I had a $3,000 a day habit, but I was always very, that’s pretty expensive. Yes sir. It’s

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:10):
After a few days I’d run out of money.

Shane Degen (03:13):
Yeah, I guess. So thus eth the lifestyle of crime to support that. And so there’s a lot of people either deal or steal in that world. And I was selling a lot of drugs to support my habit and it just went from the lighter, lighter party drugs. It just got worse and worse. But I was studying science at university and my major was chemistry. So I kind of fell in with some meth cooks and I was using that to support my heroin habit and all that. Started around 18, 19 and continued up until about 24. I owned some businesses. I had an internet business, a nightclub, and a rave production business. So I was a bit entrepreneurial. Within a year I dropped out of university. I didn’t finish my undergrad at that point. And by the age of 24, the police caught me, sent me to jail.

(04:16):
Then six months later, I was laying on my bed of the Toowoomba Watch house, which is kind of like the holding cells in Australia. And I was just laying there and I was thinking about what am I going to say to the judge because the next day I had to stand before him and give an account and he was going to sentence me and I realized I am not going to be able to talk my way out of this one. They had me, had me on some, I had stabbed a guy. I was on production of methyl amphetamines. So very serious charges. I was going away to jail for a long, long time. And as I was laying on my bed trying to come up with an excuse, realizing going to, I can’t took my way out of this, God spoke to me in that moment.

(05:08):
I wouldn’t say I necessarily heard an audible voice or I didn’t see a light just deep within my heart. I knew I knew and it was like God said to me, how would I like to be standing before him on judgment day, trying to come up with an excuse for hell because that’s what I was doing, trying to come up with an excuse for the judge and I didn’t want to go to jail for a long time. The idea of hell and eternity, that’s not just a couple of years, that is forever. That struck me. The fear of the Lord struck my heart, eternity became real. And so I surrendered to God in that moment. In my heart, I just chose to do the Christian thing, whatever that meant, I’m going to do that. So read a Bible, get to church on Sunday, try and pray. But really what happened in that moment, even though it was a fear of the Lord moment, I had an amazing encounter with the love of God that just changed the trajectory of my life. I did do a couple of years in jail, but when I got out, I met my amazing wife, Amanda.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:24):
And now you have eight kids.

Shane Degen (06:26):
Yes sir. So our oldest

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:28):
Is 22. A big family.

Shane Degen (06:29):
Yes. Well, God has blessed us. Yeah, without a doubt. My joy.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:37):
So your oldest is 22,

Shane Degen (06:38):
That’s Locklan.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:39):
Yes. Going down to what’s your youngest?

Shane Degen (06:42):
So I’ll go through it. So Locke’s 22. Then we have Elijah, he’s 20, they’re kind of one’s in the army and one’s a mortgage broker. Then I have Noah, he’s 18, just finished school. Then Gabriela is 16. Then we have Moses is 13, Abe, Abraham. Oh, sorry, I missed, Evangeline is 11 and then Abe is nine and then Isaac is

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:10):
Seven. Okay, so then you got out of jail.

Shane Degen (07:14):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:15):
You became an engineer.

Shane Degen (07:16):
That’s true.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:17):
And then God called you to be an evangelist. And so how did that happen?

Shane Degen (07:24):
Okay, so from jail. Yeah, I got out. I started studying engineering in aerospace, avionics and I did undergrad. I worked for Boeing for a season in Australia. And then my professor offered me a scholarship to do a PhD. So I was about six months into that scholarship, enter revival now. So from 2002 I went into jail. 2004 I got out and started college straightaway. And then up to 2008 was my undergrad years. And then my last few years I worked for Boeing and I was going to work for them full-time when the scholarship opened up. But in the mid of 2008, there was, that’s the year I started my PhD. There was a revival that was broadcast on God tv and that just changed my world. I saw lots of people getting healed. I saw wheelchairs getting empty.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:19):
Which revival was that?

Shane Degen (08:20):
That was in Lakeland, Florida.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:23):
Okay.

Shane Degen (08:23):
Yep.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:24):
And who was leading that?

Shane Degen (08:28):
I forget the name of the evangelist, but yeah, but that revived.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:33):
I remember hearing about that. Yeah, it was powerful. It was a big deal.

Shane Degen (08:36):
Yeah, they had like 35 people get raised from the dead over a series of 120 days.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:44):
Wow.

Shane Degen (08:45):
Now I’d been a Christian for six years and I’d never seen any miracles. We believed in miracles. I just never saw them in the west. You’d hear about happening in places like Africa and that kind of thing. But I was seeing them live on TV every night. I mean 55 people got up out of wheelchairs over the course of 14 days watching these people get up and walk. And then every couple of days there was a new dead raising testimony. There were 35 different testimonies. I tuned in about day 55 and tuned out about day 80. But that 30 days was enough to catalyze me into the things of God. So up until that point, if you had have asked me how long was I going to live, I would’ve said, oh, 70 years, 80 years would be good. But after that, I just knew that I was going to live forever and I had to reprioritize my life for the forever.

(09:45):
As an engineer, I won’t in this major international competition for UAV design, I was a workaholic. We would be up to 80 hours in the lab or field testing. And I realized in that revival that everything I was working really hard on meant nothing in eternity. I was going to get to heaven bankrupt as it were, that I couldn’t take any of that stuff to heaven with me. The only thing I could take to heaven with me was people. And I needed to reprioritize my life to help others get to heaven. So that mobilized me out onto the streets to start showing the gospel, the message of that evangelist, it was essentially, Hey, the stuff we are doing up here, God will use you to do it. Get out there, tell people about Jesus and you will see these miracles break out. Gone are the days where we just tell people about Jesus. Now we need to demonstrate the power of the kingdom. I’d been a Christian six years, never shared the gospel. Once I had seen one person come to the Lord just through living it, he’d seen the change in my life and he started coming to church with us. I was too scared to be honest with you. But since that revival, I see a handful typically get saved daily.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:08):
Wow. So in Australia you had the opportunity to do a stadium event.

Shane Degen (11:15):
Yes sir. Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:16):
Jesus loves Australia. Tell me about that. It took a big step of faith to do it

Shane Degen (11:21):
Right. Wow. Let me just tell you the process to that. So I stepped out of my postgrad in 2010, took a masters just for an early exit just because I had this fire for souls in me. The word of the Lord is shut up in my bones, like a fire says Jeremiah and I grow weary of trying to hold it back and indeed cannot. And so I just had to go after God. So I stepped out, started going out on the streets. But then within a couple of weeks I went to a conference, had a visitation from the Lord and he said, stop, wait. I had stadiums and crusades and everything in my heart, but the Lord said to me, wait, I want you to pray for three years. And if we do that, then we would see the birth of a worldwide revival in 2018.

(12:15):
So this is the year 2010. I needed that word from God. It was a very clear conversation, two-way conversation. It was only a few sentences, but I had it with the creator of the universe. And up until that point, I had very little faith for hearing God’s voice, but I needed that word to sustain me through a three year prayer meeting. So from 2010 to 2013, I just prayed like about eight hours a day, up to 16 hours a day. Instead of going to work, I would go pray, but I would still go out on the streets once a week into 2013. That’s kind of when I stepped into the ministry just started. But even since then, I spend the first half of my morning with the Lord just in prayer and worship, really trying to hear direction from him. And then we mission in the afternoon, go do whatever it is God’s called us to do.

(13:11):
So just in our local area, we started off with a seven university campaign across southeast Queensland in Australia. All this kind of transition happened in Brisbane, Australia, which is the capital of Queensland. And so we did seven university colleges kind of doing revival and harvest. But I was very frustrated at the fruit I was seeing, wasn’t seeing much. But then we stepped out and we did cities. We started doing country towns. We did three major towns, but again, there was only some getting saved. We weren’t filling the arenas and the stadiums we were booking at that stage. And so I left Australia, I packed up, moved to North India, poured my life for a few months into North India as a missionary, trying to reach the largest, most unreached people group on the planet in the states of Uta, pian, Bihar. But that door closed after a few months.

(14:16):
We couldn’t work there any longer. So returned to Australia, just started seeking God, what do you have for us? What do you have for us? And it was stadiums, big stadiums in the capital city. So went in and had a lot of conversations with those guys. Went and booked this massive series of gospel events and then went back to my prayer closet and prayed for the 80 million to do it. And it didn’t come, but that caused me to go get alongside churches, start to rally churches, work with pastors. And then in 2017 I went to Sydney because I kept having dreams about Sydney. Sydney’s the largest city in Australia, has a population of about 5 million people. And I kept getting words about Sydney. So I said, okay, Lord, well which part of Sydney do you want to do? Like this area or this area or this area? And God just said, stop. He says, come up here, see what I see. I saw the whole city of Sydney. I went, all right, well if it’s going to be Sydney, then we need Stadium Australia, which is right in the middle of Sydney. It’s the largest stadium in Australia at that time. Its sponsored name was a NZ stadium. And so we booked it by faith, this multimillion dollar stadium. At the time I was still believing God for a bottle of milk for breakfast some days for our family. But whilst we booked the $2 million.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:55):
So you booked the stadium while you were praying for milk for your family,

Shane Degen (16:00):
Right? Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:00):
So that’s a big step of faith

Shane Degen (16:03):
That actually the word that caused that to happen actually started eight years earlier in 2010 after I first stepped out. So one day I was in my backyard really trying to figure out how I was going to get a bottle of milk to feed my children. The next day we had no milk and I just cried out to Lord. I said, Jesus, I need $2 for a bottle of milk. And I very clearly heard the audible voice of the Lord say to me, son, right now you’re learning to trust me for $2. One day it will be $2 million. I woke up, went to bed that night, a great peace came on me. I went to bed, I woke up the next day, milk was on our doorstep. And so God showed his faithfulness with the milk. And indeed it happened almost a dozen times over the next 12 months where we would go to bed, no milk, and it would just be on our doorstep the next morning. So that really sustained me through that eight years until we saw the fulfillment of that word December 1st, 2018, where we booked the $2 million stadium.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:15):
And so God enabled you to raise the budget, and what were the results of that outreach?

Shane Degen (17:24):
So we had a couple of thousand people turn out growing in the grace of fundraising. So yeah, we didn’t have any money two weeks out, but we got enough money for the deposit six weeks out and then two weeks out we made the final payment on the stadium. But over the course of watching it unfold, churches when we came to town, they knew we had no money. And so it was hard to get them to come on board. But as we just kept going back to the churches, letting them know what’s happening, helping them with their evangelism programs, we had a point where we had a couple of major breakthroughs, either financially or with connections, and it was those breakthroughs that the churches saw, oh wow, God is in this. So they started signing up and in the end we had 2002 people come in the door according to the counter.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:34):
Wow, okay. So then God gave you a vision for America.

Shane Degen (18:40):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:40):
So you’re from Australia, but you’ve come here to America as a Australian missionary and you’ve started, Jesus loves America. What do you see God doing here in America?

Shane Degen (18:54):
Well, first of all, the harvest is so ripe. It’s just amazing the number of people who know about Jesus but don’t know him. So we see a lot of people come to the Lord here.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:08):
Do you feel like the United States is more open right now than Australia?

Shane Degen (19:15):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:16):
Just in conversations that you have with people.

Shane Degen (19:19):
Without a doubt, I would say that America is probably four to five times more Christian than Australia, particularly in the southern states, which is where I mostly am. But even in the northern ones, the ones that a lot of people would consider heathenistic states, they’re twice as Christian as Australia. So yeah, there is definitely an openness for the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:43):
I think that’s an encouragement for people in the United States to hear, Hey, we have a great place where we can really make a big impact for God.

Shane Degen (19:52):
That’s right. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:53):
I mean, you talk to pastors everywhere you go, it doesn’t matter where you go in the world. They say, oh, in this place it’s really hard. It’s hard. But I’ve found that wherever you go, there’s people that are open to receive Jesus.

Shane Degen (20:05):
That’s right, absolutely. The harvest is ripe. It’s the laborers that if we need people to know their God, that lion of the tribe of Judy, he wants the raw and he wants to save souls. So yeah, it’s definitely very ripe here. What’s kind of mobilized me for stadiums and those kind of events is personal evangelism. Everything that I’ve just learned on the streets, we just take into churches and we take that from churches to the cities. So our typical campaign philosophy, what a typical campaign would look like is we’ll go into a city and tried to connect with the gatekeepers in the city, the senior leaders, senior ministries, just share with them. We’re evangelizing pastors. Go in there, share what we do, asking them if they need help with their evangelism programs. Could be bible colleges, seminaries or just ministries in general. And then typically they’re a little bit standoffish until they get to know you. But once they see some of the fruit, then they’ll open their doors and then we go and train, mobilize their people. But it’s right from the beginning, it’s with this vision of we are going to bring the city together. So at the same time we’ll start talking to the stadium, start negotiating with them the price, because that takes a lot of money plus faith and yeah, whilst rallying a team that’s going to help us pull this event together.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:42):
So what does that look like when you go into a church

Shane Degen (21:47):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:47):
You’re training them in evangelism, what are some of the principles that you share? How do you motivate normal church members to get involved in sharing their faith?

Shane Degen (21:59):
Okay, well, so the key is the Holy Spirit. We always start with without the Holy Spirit, he is the master evangelist. We are wasting our time because the number one reason you probably know these statistics that people don’t share their faith is fear. 22% don’t share their faith because of fear. 17% don’t share their faith because they dunno what to say. Another 17% don’t share their faith because they don’t have opportunity and 9% don’t share their faith because they are too busy. So the fear thing, the Holy Spirit is the key. The spirit of power and boldness dunno what to say. Well, we’ve got simple little tools that we train people and what to say. But also what we’ve found is that once people know what to say, many Christians actually dunno how salvation works. So when we train people in tools, they just got saved, they made a decision, they prayed. Now they come to church on a Sunday, maybe go to a midweek group meeting, but they don’t know the process of salvation. So by training them in how to evangelize their friends, we’re actually giving them the confidence in how to be able to share the gospel. So that lowers the fear factor as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:24):
So what do you want to see God do here in the United States?

Shane Degen (23:30):
Well, we were just at Lasagne and I just came back from, well, okay, a few weeks ago now, about a month ago I think, or six weeks. Yeah. I came back from Anne with such a fire. God shifted something in me that it is possible if the church collaborates for us to evangelize nations. Two years ago we had a prophetic word given to our ministry. We came to America to Dallas based on two words and a dream a friend had. So that sent me to America and really it was just to do a citywide event. But while we were there raising the money and bringing churches together, training churches, getting a team and everything, we received this prophetic word around 50 states, 50 stadia simultaneously. One day, 20, 25. Now at this point in time, I was struggling trying to pull together a multimillion dollar campaign, one team, one budget, one city, the whole,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:39):
It’s interesting how God works, like our biggest vision, we’re like, we’re going to dream so big, we’re going to take the whole city. And then God says, no, my vision is 50

Shane Degen (24:50):
Because you start once you’ve

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:52):
Done, because God thinks way bigger than we do.

Shane Degen (24:55):
And sometimes when you’ve done something once, he wants to stretch you.

(25:00):
My background’s engineering. We have project management plans with roadmaps and milestones and yeah, that’s not how the Lord works. He wants you to get out of the boat, walk on the water. It defies all science. So yeah, that’s often what we find, which is why I don’t always have a management plan anymore. Our project management plan is the Lord. We seek him daily. He kind of shows you, I’ve found the big picture, but the mistake that we can make is trying to get to the big picture in our strength, leaning on our own gifts and talents and that kind of things. If we want to see God type fruit, God type results, we need to become 100% dependent on him letting him do the work, letting him bring it together. And we are just following him that way because he does the work. It’s a lot more effortless, it’s a lot more fun, and he gets the glory.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:04):
Now you also have a passion for entrepreneurship.

Shane Degen (26:09):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:09):
And God’s given you a mandate to raise up believers who will be so entrepreneurial successful that they can give 90% and keep 10%.

Shane Degen (26:27):
What

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:27):
Would you say to the entrepreneur who wants to be used by God to put resources into evangelism?

Shane Degen (26:36):
So this whole concept comes from a man, I’m pretty certain his name is Rg Lano, about a hundred years ago. And what he did, his testimony is he was just a business guy who went to his local church, but they were always telling these stories of missions overseas and how God was moving. And so he went to his pastor from memory, he went to his pastor and said, what can I do? I really want to help more. He felt called to go be a missionary overseas. And his pastor said to him, no, how you can help the most, you’re an entrepreneur, how you can help the most is get more money to give to missions and let the missionaries do it. This was kind of the mentality, the philosophy at the time and just with that church. And so he was like, alright, God, well bless me more so I could give more because the missionaries, they need the money and the more money they can get, the more souls they can reach.

(27:41):
And on both levels, number one for eternity. But number two, helping them just here on earth. And so what he did was he signed 90% of the equity of the shares of his company over to the church. That way he could give 90% tax free. Now, yes, in America people can give tax free, but the limitation not many people know is that it’s at 60%. You can only give up to 60% of profits tax free. Above that you have to pay taxes because he wanted to give above the 60% threshold. He gave ownership to the ministry and then lived off the 10%. Well after he did that, God exploded his business. I forget the exact figures, but like a thousand fold type thing because God could trust him with the little God gave him much. So he did retire very, very wealthy. There’s a university at Tyler now called Larna University, but his entrepreneurial activities were in earth moving equipment. I think he built one of the first or had a patent for one of the first one ton moving Earth equipment a hundred years ago. But he had many patents in that area.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:03):
A lot of evangelists. Listen to this podcast. What advice would you give to evangelists?

Shane Degen (29:13):
I love Jesus. Everything. The number one thing that just has made the biggest difference in my life as it’s that first watch recently, this is what I’ve realized it is I spend the first three hours of the day just with the Lord and in the Bible from Hare culture, it’s called the first watch. But I think giving that first part of your day and your morning to Jesus, number one, you fall more in love with him. People want to not just know about God, they want to meet people who know God. We want to bring them into a relationship with God. We’ve got to know him. So kind of, I think I meet evangelists all over the world and I’m very blessed to be able to do that. But that’s the key to everything for me has just been that first few hours with the Lord in the morning.

(30:16):
From there, I get the ideas from there, I get the direction. He’s my CEO. When you work in a business, a lot of businesses, not every business starts with a staff meeting. People get delegated their tasks for the day. But so I get my instructions for what to do next or where to go for the ministry from that place. But David says this, he says this one thing I have desired that I will seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life to behold his beauty, number one, to inquire in his temple. Number two. So I think when we come before the Lord, there’s got to be this place of letting go of your to-do list, and I need help with this, this. And it’s really just a place to worship, to praise, to behold his beauty and his goodness and to fall more and more in love with him.

(31:10):
And this ever number one pursuit to mine is this deeper intimacy with the Lord. And then from that place, half the questions actually get answered, that God just sorts ’em out for you. But we typically still have our questions. So he just starts to speak and then you can go about and do what he says. And I’ve found that’s the way to be the most fruitful. The days where I get busy, and I don’t do that because you’re pressured, because of some deadline. I get up and I start phone calling, emailing, you’re kind of hitting the target with 10% of the phone calls, 20% of the emails. But if I would be disciplined in setting that first part of my day apart, when I come out of that place, people are contacting me. I don’t have to ring them. The phone calls I’m making, it’s hit, hit, hit, hit. So I can actually be more fruitful, even though I’m working less, but I’m spending more time with him because he’s ordering my footsteps.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:18):
Let’s finish with a word of prayer for America. Would you pray that God would send revival to this nation?

Shane Degen (32:29):
Amen. Yes, Lord. Oh Lord God, there is 50 states, Lord here, 50 states, 50 states, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. We thank you Lord for what you did last Tuesday. God, there was a mighty breakthrough for this nation and just, I really believe the word of the Lord now is run. The doors are open, wider, wider than before. There was already so many people getting saved before, but for the evangelists, for the missionaries, for those in ministry, there is such a port says one Corinthians 15, A great effective door for the gospel has been opened for me. And so God, we just, I pray, Lord for the revivalists, the evangelists watching here, Lord, that you would mobilize, mobilize, run now with the vision, run, run, run, run, run. Now is the time to run. Go up your loins and run. Because we have this window, we have this window where things are going to rapidly accelerate.

(33:49):
There is going to be just I, just a massive advancing. I see just this rapid acceleration. The interesting thing about the harvest fields is once a seed goes into the ground, it grows for months. The Bible says a man sows seed to the ground, goes to sleep all by itself. The ground produces first the blade, then the head, then the seed in the head, then he puts the sickle in. It’s like there’s all this time of preparation, but in one moment the harvest comes. I really feel like this is that moment for America. Everything we’ve gone through for the last four years has just been ripening the harvest. But now is the time. Now put your sickle in, says the Lord. Hallelujah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (34:54):
Amen. Shane, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Shane Degen (34:59):
Thank you for having us. Daniel,

Evangelism Podcast Host (35:01):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more. If you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (36:03):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you. For

Evangelism Podcast Host (37:23):
More information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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How to Minister at Schools

On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, I talk to James Moore from Gift of Faith Ministries. He’s about to go on a mission trip to the nation of Brazil, and in Brazil he’s going to have the opportunity to share the gospel in a school setting. We talk about how to share the Gospel to school kids. If you’re interested in being effective at sharing the gospel to a group of school children, keep listening.

Subscribe to the Gift of Faith YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@GiftofFaithMinistries

Transcript:

Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, I talked to James Moore from Gift of Faith Ministries. He’s about to go on a mission trip to the nation of Brazil, and in Brazil he’s going to have the opportunity to share the gospel in a school setting. So on today’s episode, we’re going to talk about how to share the gospel to school kids. If you’re interested in being effective at sharing the gospel to a group of school children, keep listening.

Evangelist Daniel King (01:07):
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, James Moore. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast. Thank you, sir. Okay, so James, you have been coming over to my house about once a week for the last several weeks, and we’ve been talking about evangelism and God has really put it on your heart to preach the gospel. Tell me a little bit about your father, the ministry that he had and what God’s put on your heart.

James Moore (01:46):
Well, my dad always growing up was a missionary to Africa and India and the Philippines. And he had a pretty amazing miracle ministry and he was very into evangelism as well. He did pretty large crusades in Nigeria and Uganda, and many thousands of people would get saved and several hundred healed and it was always a really big influence on me. And he passed last year, but God has really been calling me to continue his work in the world.

Evangelist Daniel King (02:23):
And so how did you hear about me?

James Moore (02:27):
I was actually recommended to by one of my dad’s best friends, mark Swagger.

Evangelist Daniel King (02:34):
And so Mark Swagger is a great evangelist, good friend. He has been involved in evangelism for many years. He did some great evangelist events over in the nation of India and God actually gave Mark swagger a vision to train up evangelists in India. And he had the whole plan put together. He was going to send out two by two. He was going to give each one a truck and a little sound system. He had their uniforms designed everything, and right as he was about to put this into practice, he tried to get into India and they wouldn’t let ’em in, which happens kind of frequently for some evangelists just because of visa issues. And so he was never able to implement that vision for India. But I think that that was an idea that came from God and it shall surely come to pass. The idea is that God gave Mark swagger. We’re not giving up on them, they will come to pass. Okay. So James, mark swagger recommended that you came to me and talk to me about your motivation, why you wanted to learn about

James Moore (03:49):
Evangelism. Well, God has been calling me to do evangelism my entire life. Several times when I was young, God would give me a vision or a dream regarding that and very obvious call from the Lord about it. And in the last couple years especially, so the same thing, several dreams and visions regarding evangelism and really strong burning desire to help save the lost and set people free from illnesses and demonic possession and different things like that, but more especially about evangelism. And it’s something that I don’t have a lot of experience in. So I was really grateful when Mark recommended me to you.

Evangelist Daniel King (04:34):
And so as we’ve been talking, God gave you a name for your ministry. What’s the name that God gave you?

James Moore (04:40):
It’s Gift of Faith Ministry.

Evangelist Daniel King (04:41):
So Gift of Faith Ministries. And so we’ve been talking about what ministry looks like, what this evangelist, that calling upon your life could look like. And one of the very exciting things that’s happened is you started a YouTube channel and the videos that you’ve been putting up on there have been very successful. What have you seen happen with some of your teaching videos?

James Moore (05:09):
Well, the Lord’s gave me word specifically for certain videos and people responded to watched it. One man told me that it really convicted him when he watched it and he said God made him click on it. He saw that it was about the Lord and didn’t want click on it. God made him and he did. And then he ended up being really convicted by the Holy Spirit and got down on his knees and cried out to God for he actually received Jesus because of one of my videos. And that was really encouraging. And several other people have said similar things that just God drew them. Like Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I’ll draw all men unto me. And he was drawing their heart to him through some words that he told me to say, which I was really excited about. And I mean I’ve had that happen just one-on-one in person, but all this is really new to me with videos and groups of people.

Evangelist Daniel King (06:04):
Well, you’ve been doing a great job, you’re just pulling out your cell phone, giving a little message, whatever God put on your heart for that day. And some of those videos have really gone viral. What’s the most views that one of the videos has gotten so far?

James Moore (06:20):
I believe one of ’em was about 1600 views.

Evangelist Daniel King (06:24):
I mean that’s amazing because anyone would want to preach to a crowd of 1600 people. And so by putting this video up, having impact on 1600 people and then what’s the average number of people that are watching each video?

James Moore (06:40):
Right now it’s around 500.

Evangelist Daniel King (06:44):
Yeah, that’s great. So God’s already giving you an outlet for the calling that he has upon your life. And really that’s something that’s brand new. I mean you’ve just been doing it for a little while now, but God’s already giving you great fruit on YouTube. And so now something very exciting is happening. You are going on your very first gospel crusade and you are going with one of my evangelist friends, Adam Smith. He’s been working down in Brazil for many years now. How do you know Adam Smith?

James Moore (07:24):
He’s actually married to my sister.

Evangelist Daniel King (07:26):
Okay. Yeah. And so he married your sister. How long have they been married now?

James Moore (07:32):
About a year and a half I believe.

Evangelist Daniel King (07:34):
Okay. Because when I first met Adam years ago, he wasn’t married at that time. So it’s exciting that he met your sister and he invited you to come on this crusade. Yes sir. And so you’re going to go down and what are you expecting to happen? You told me that you’re going into the Brazilian state of Seattle,

Evangelism Podcast Host (07:56):
Which

Evangelist Daniel King (07:57):
I’ve been down there. And what are you expecting to happen while you’re there?

James Moore (08:03):
Well, I know Adam has planned to set up a big stage in ua, the city there. And I know my sister and I are going to go into several schools, quite a few schools, I believe several schools a day for several days and preach a gospel message to the children there. And I’m so glad they’re so open to receiving us in all those schools. And it sounds like it’s going to be a pretty tight schedule with lots of schools. And we’re also going to be handing out some food to the needy in several areas.

Evangelist Daniel King (08:36):
Yeah, I’ve been down to Brazil quite a few times, love going into the schools down there. And so when you came to Knight, your question was basically about going into these schools and what to do in going into the schools. So let’s talk about that a little bit. When you go into a school, it’s a great opportunity. Like here in the United States, usually the schools would not allow you to preach the gospel

(09:12):
Because here in the United States there’s this idea, I don’t think it’s an idea actually found in the Constitution, but you’ve got separation between church and state. It’s kind of something that secularists have imposed upon government and trying to keep people away from God. And so they say there’s no religion, therefore only having their religion of secularism in the schools here in America. But in many countries it is possible to go into schools. And so the last few years I’ve been invited to teach for Christ for All Nations by Daniel Kalinda. They have their evangelism bootcamp and they’re training up their students to preach evangelistically. And in many countries, God has opened up doors for the students, the evangelism students from the bootcamp to present the gospel in youth crusades, often with school kids. So let’s kind of talk about the process. If you’re going to a school, first of all, you go in and hopefully they will give you the opportunity to speak to an assembly of all the students together.

(10:32):
So first you would go and meet with the principal of the school, they’d probably greet you and you can ask, can we gather all the kids together and an assembly? And in most schools, that’s something that they would probably do about once a day to say the national pledge and to have announcements for the day. So they’re used to coming together in assembly. And so you ask them where to go, you set up your equipment. If you’ve got a little sound system, you get everything set up and then you ask permission to start the meeting. And then the first thing you should do is to honor the principal and the teachers that have invited you there. And so you get all the students to clap for the teachers that, wow, it’s such an honor to be here. I want to say thank you to the headmaster and to the teachers for allowing us to speak.

(11:39):
Let’s give them a great round of applause for what a great job that they do. So you start out by honoring the teachers, and that’s good. That will make the teachers like you if you get the kids to honor them. And then you introduce yourself, Hey, my name is James, I’m from the United States. We’re so happy to be here, introduce any of the team members who are there with you. Then you would pray a short prayer. And so you encourage the kids to all be quiet, everybody quiet down and listen, I’m going to pray and invite God to this place. And so then you should pray a short prayer. And then what I would do is I would tell a story, right? Won’t you say amen with a prayer? Tell a story that grabs their attention and then use the story to present the gospel to them.

(12:44):
And so after you tell the story, then you connect the gospel to the story clearly by asking the kids to choose to believe in Jesus and then to repent. And so there’s many different things that we can talk about with kids, but the main purpose of being there is to share the gospel. And so the word gospel means good news, and it is the good news that even though every human has sinned and that there is a price that must be paid for sin, Jesus, the Son of God died on the cross to pay the price for our sins, but he didn’t stay dead. He rose from the dead. And today Jesus is alive and the Bible says that everyone who calls in the name of Jesus will be saved. And so do you want to call on Jesus right now? And so you bring the kids to a point of decision to where they have an opportunity to say yes to Jesus and to repent from their sins.

(13:53):
Then after you ask them to make that decision, then you lead them in a salvation prayer. And then you take an opportunity to explain to them what salvation is and what just happened in their life. Then you can mention the Holy Spirit, pray for them to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and then explain the power that comes from the Holy Spirit. You can pray for people to be healed. If the Lord leads you to do that, and then you say, thank you so much for having me, you ask them to clap for your translator, who’s there with you? And then you can finish up by singing a song or something. And so that’s how I would typically do a school assembly. But the key is to have some good stories that really help you to communicate the gospel. Now, when you think about Jesus, what are some of the stories that you think about that Jesus told

James Moore (15:01):
Being a good shepherd and how he would leave the 99 and go and help the one lost sheep? And I dunno, anytime that I’ve shared the gospel with someone, it’s been on a one-on-one basis, and it was something that the Lord would lead me in what to say. And so it’s kind of new for me to speak to a whole crowd, especially children about this sort of

Evangelist Daniel King (15:29):
Thing. And so are you a little bit nervous or how are you feeling about this opportunity? Well, I’m excited. It is

James Moore (15:38):
Not something I have a lot of experience in.

Evangelist Daniel King (15:42):
Alright, so let’s talk about some stories that you can potentially use to minister to the kids. Okay, so I’m going to talk loud because when I talk to kids, I talk loud. But the first thing I would do is I do something to grab the attention of the kids. Like, Hey boys and girls, I’m so excited to be here. If you’re happy today, I want you to wave your hand at me. Everyone wave your hand at me. And so the reason I do that is to get them to respond, to grab their attention, and then to get the audience to start acting. So if you’re happy today, just wave your hand at me. I’m so happy to be here. I want to tell you a story. How many of you like stories? If you like stories, I want you to wave your hand at me.

(16:32):
If you want to hear a story today, wave your hand at me. Alright? And so everyone, they’re waving their hands like, okay, I want to tell you a story. Once upon a time, right here in Brazil, there was a very smart teacher and this teacher was the smartest teacher in all of Brazil. And let me tell you about this teacher. This teacher was able to answer every single question he was ever asked. And so students would come up and ask the teacher a math question, and the teacher would always know the answer to the math question. They would come and ask the teacher questions about history. And no matter what period of time in history they’re asking about, the teacher always knew the right answer. Sometimes the kids would come up and ask a question about geometry or something that they were studying. In one of the classes, the teacher always knew the right answer.

(17:29):
And in that school there was a little boy and he was also very smart. He says, my teacher always knows the right answer, but I’m going to ask him a question that he can’t answer. And so this was his plan. He says, I’m going to go out into the garden behind the school and I’m going to catch a little butterfly and I’m going to run with the butterfly to the teacher, and I’m going to ask the teacher, teacher, teacher, teacher is the butterfly in my hand alive or dead? And this was his plan. If the teacher said The butterfly is alive, he was going to crush the butterfly in his hand and says, no, you’re wrong, it’s dead. But if the teacher said the butterfly is alive, or if the butterfly, if the teacher says the butterfly is dead, he was going to open his hand and let the butterfly fly away and prove that the teacher was wrong.

(18:33):
And so that’s what he did. He went out, he caught a butterfly, he went running into the classroom. He said, teacher, teacher, teacher, I have a question for you. Is the butterfly in my hand alive or dead? And the teacher stroked his beard like this and he said, Hmm, boys and girls, I want you to pretend like you have a long beard, stroke it right now and say, Hmm, how do you think the teacher is going to answer the question? And the teacher was a very wise teacher. And so he looked at the little boy, he says, little boy, he says, you are a very smart student. He says, the choice of life and death is in your hands, boys and girls. Today I want to talk to you about the choice between life and death in the Bible, which is God’s book, it gives us two choices, it gives us a choice that leads to life and it gives us a choice that leads to death, a choice that leads to blessing and a choice that leads to cursing.

(19:48):
It’s like a test. Boys and girls, how many of you like tests? Well, this is God’s test for each one of us. And God says, I give you life or death, blessing are cursing. And then God gives us the answer to the test. He gives us the answer key. He says, therefore choose life. Now, let me tell you about the two choices we face. You see, there is a way that leads to life in that way is through Jesus Christ. How many of you boys and girls know who Jesus Christ is? Jesus is the son of God. And if you choose Jesus, it leads to life. But there is another choice. And this choice leads to death. And that is the choice of sin. Who knows what sin is? Sin is when we do something wrong. Boys and girls who can give me some examples of things that are wrong to do, lying, cheating, stealing, disobeying our parents, killing someone.

(20:53):
All these things are sin. And the Bible says that if you choose sin, you choose the way that leads to death. Because the Bible says that there is a price that must be paid for sin, and the price for sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ. And so every single one of us have sin. We’ve all done things that are wrong. We’ve all lied, we’ve all stolen, we’ve all cheated. We’ve done something wrong in our life and we deserve to be punished. But I have good news for you. Everyone say good news, come on, everyone say good news. The good news is that Jesus, the son of God, he came from heaven to earth and he paid the price for our sins. He died on a cross to pay the price for my sin and for your sin.

(21:46):
But Jesus didn’t stay dead after three days, Jesus rose from the dead. And today Jesus is alive. And the Bible says that everyone who calls on Jesus will be saved. If you will call on Jesus right now, he will lead you to God’s life. And so I have a question for each one of you, boys and girls, do you want life or do you want death? Do you want to choose the way of Jesus or do you want to choose to go the way of sin? Do you want God’s blessing or do you want cursing? If you want to choose life, if you want to follow Jesus, lift up your hand right now. Everyone who wants to follow the way of Jesus, everyone who wants to follow the way of life, lift up your hand right now. I see many of you are lifting up your hands. How many of you want life? If you want to follow the way of Jesus, lift up your hand. And usually a hundred percent of the audience is going to lift their hand because I’m presenting a very clear choice. I’m presenting the choice between life and death, blessing, cursing Jesus or following the way of sin. And so you can see, and so you want to present a very clear choice

(23:07):
That people can make. And then I want to make the choice of going towards Jesus to be as attractive as I possibly can because some people may choose to go the way of death. They may choose the way of sin, but I want to use everything I can to try to convince them to choose to follow Jesus. And so you use your words to build faith in their hearts that they can choose to follow Jesus. And so if you want to follow Jesus, if you want to follow the way of life, lift up your hand right now. And many people will lift up their hands and then say,

(23:46):
Okay, now we’re going to pray. And I want you to say this prayer after me. I’m going to say the prayer first and then my translator is going to repeat it. And then I want you to repeat this prayer after the translator. And I want everyone to say it loud enough so you can hear it with your own ears. Everyone say this prayer with me, say, dear God in heaven, the transfer says it, then they say it usually the first time they won’t be very loud. Say, I can’t hear you. I want you to pray this prayer and to mean it with all your heart. Everyone say this together. Say, dear God in heaven, come on, say it.

James Moore (24:25):
Dear God in heaven,

Evangelist Daniel King (24:26):
I cry out to Jesus,

James Moore (24:28):
Cry out to Jesus.

Evangelist Daniel King (24:30):
Jesus saved me.

James Moore (24:32):
Jesus saved me.

Evangelist Daniel King (24:33):
I believe Jesus died for my sins.

James Moore (24:36):
I believe Jesus died for my sins.

Evangelist Daniel King (24:38):
I believe Jesus rose from the dead.

James Moore (24:41):
I believe he rose from the dead.

Evangelist Daniel King (24:42):
And today I choose to follow Jesus.

James Moore (24:45):
Today I choose to follow Jesus.

Evangelist Daniel King (24:47):
Today I choose the way of life.

James Moore (24:50):
I choose the way of life.

Evangelist Daniel King (24:51):
I turn away from sin. I

James Moore (24:53):
Turn away from sin.

Evangelist Daniel King (24:54):
I repent of every wrong thing I’ve done.

James Moore (24:58):
I repent of every wrong thing I’ve done

Evangelist Daniel King (25:00):
And I turn to Jesus

James Moore (25:02):
And I turn to Jesus.

Evangelist Daniel King (25:03):
Jesus

James Moore (25:04):
Jesus, I want to follow you. I want to follow you

Evangelist Daniel King (25:08):
All the days of my life.

James Moore (25:09):
All the days of my life.

Evangelist Daniel King (25:11):
Amen.

James Moore (25:12):
Amen.

Evangelist Daniel King (25:13):
Everyone say hallelujah, say amen. And so you would bring them to a point

(25:24):
Of praying, the prayer of salvation, and then you can take them into talking about the Holy Spirit. Right before Jesus went up into heaven, he promised to send a helper, someone to help you every day. And his name is the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit wants to come and dwell inside you. He wants to walk with you and talk with you every day. If you want God to give you the gift of the Holy Spirit, wave your hand at me. I’m going to pray for you. And when I pray, if you will receive this gift from God, God will fill you with the Holy Spirit. Dear God in heaven, I pray that you would fill every boy and every girl with the gift of the Holy Spirit. I pray that you would walk with them and talk with them every single day. Lord, I pray that they would have all the fruit of the Holy Spirit in their lives, that they would have love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faith, self-control. And Lord, I pray that every single person here would have the gifts of the Holy Spirit in their life. And I pray that they would follow Jesus and be filled with the Holy Spirit every single day in Jesus name. Amen. And I want you to clap your hands for my translator. He’s done a very good job. And now let’s sing a song together to celebrate what God has done. Alright, so talk to me, James, what do you think about that story and how do you think kids would react to that story?

James Moore (27:08):
Well, I’m sure it’s age dependent, depending how old they are, depending how you would present it. I know when I got saved when I was six, it was a real turning moment. It wasn’t just like somebody had me repeat some stuff and that was it. I remember that day to this day when I was six in a Reinhardt Bonky meeting and I was so excited and I ended up prophesying some. So I know that that’s a very valid moment for those people and it’s just something I need to work on and learn about all those aspects of what you were talking about.

Evangelist Daniel King (27:43):
I tell another story about a little monkey. So once upon a time there was a big jungle. And in that jungle there were lots of monkeys. And in the jungle there were also some monkey hunters. And so what the monkey hunters would do is they would get a box and they would cut a hole in the box. The hole was big enough for the monkey to stick his hand in. But it was small enough that once the monkey grabbed the bait, the monkey couldn’t escape from the box. And so the monkey hunters would put something in the box that monkeys love. Boys and girls, what do monkeys like to eat? And what do you think the answer is? What do monkeys like to eat? Banana bananas. That’s right. The monkey hunters would get some bananas, some yummy delicious bananas, and they’d put those bananas inside the box.

(28:45):
Now the smart monkeys, they knew that that box was a trap. But boys and girls, there was always a stupid monkey. That’s right. There was always a stupid monkey. And that stupid monkey would come out and he would smell the banana and he would look at the banana and he would want that banana so much. And so he would look around. He didn’t see the monkey hunters, so he reached his hand into the box and he grabbed the banana and then he couldn’t pull his hand out. He was trapped by that box. And boys and girls, did you know that monkey was stupid? He would sit there with his hand inside of the monkey trap until the monkey hunters come and trap him. Now, boys and girls, that monkey trap is not just a monkey trap, it’s also a sin trap. See, sin works exactly the same way.

(29:49):
Sometimes sin might look attractive, sin might even smell good, but if you grab a hold of sin, you’ll be trapped. Now boys and girls, what does the monkey have to do to get out of the monkey trap? All he has to do is let go of the banana. What does he have to do? Say let go of the banana, let go. All he has to do is let go of the banana. But boys and girls, that monkey will hold onto the banana until the monkey hunters come and trap him. And boys and girls, sin works exactly the same way. If you hold on to sin, you’ll be trapped by the devil. But if you’ll cry out to Jesus, if Jesus will set you free from the trap of sin. And so right now, if you want Jesus to set you free from the trap of sin, I want to pray together. If you want Jesus to set you free from the trap of sin, just lift up your hand to heaven and let’s pray together. And the kids lift up their hands and then you lead them in a prayer of salvation.

(30:58):
And then you can explain concepts of repentance. What does it mean to repent? It means to turn away from your sin. And so you turn away a life of doing things that are wrong and turn towards Jesus. And Jesus sets you free. So the gospel can be broken down into several different points. And so there’s different ideas that you can communicate. And you probably in one school setting, you wouldn’t communicate every idea, but the components of the gospel are, sin is bad. We can’t save ourselves the idea that your valuable to God, that Jesus took our place, that we need to put our faith in Jesus, that we need to come to a point of making a decision that Jesus has power over the devil. Will you become a Christian? And then the urgency of salvation. So each one of those is a concept that you could build a message for children. And so you look for a story. So the first concept that I mentioned is that sin is bad. Okay? How do we establish the idea that sin is bad? Explain what sin is and then give the good news that you can turn away from sin. Can you think of a good story to talk about how sin is bad?

James Moore (32:49):
Well, I mean there’s lots of stories in the Bible you could choose, but kind of the wise man building his house on a rock rather than on saying you’re placing your life on shaky ground rather than Jesus.

Evangelist Daniel King (33:02):
Yeah, so that’s a great story. I mean, you could build an entire sermon around the story of the wise man who built on the rock and the foolish man who built on sand. And so you would tell it as a story When Jesus communicated truth, he always communicated through stories.

(33:19):
And it’s because stories are more memorable than just facts. Like in the West, we kind of always have point a, point B, point C, point D, and that’s kind of how we think. But in a lot of cultures they often communicate truth through stories and then people can discover the truth hidden within the story. And so if I was talking about the concept of sin is bad, I might tell a story about my son Caleb, when he was younger, when he was about six years old, one day my wife made some chocolate chip cookies and it’s filled the entire house with the smell of chocolate chip cookies. And do you like chocolate chip cookies? I mean, everyone loves chocolate chip cookies just to smell them. And so if you like chocolate chip cookies, boys and girls just rub your stomach say. And so I am interacting with them, getting them to respond to think and imagine these chocolate chip cookies.

(34:21):
And of course my son at the age of six, he wanted to eat a chocolate chip. So he came into the kitchen and says, mommy, mommy, it smells so good. Can I have a chocolate chip cookie? And my wife said, no, Caleb, these are for dessert after dinner, we’re going to leave them here to cool on the stove and we’re not going to eat them until after dinner, so don’t touch the chocolate chip cookies. And so then she went in the other room, and before long here comes my son, six years old, and he’s crawling on his knees into the kitchen and he is going to sneak a cookie. And so he crawls in and then he reaches his hand up to the top of the stove, he grabs himself a cookie and then quickly stuffs it in his mouth and he eats it. And then that first cookie was so good, he went and grabbed a second cookie, stuffed it in his mouth, and right then my wife came back in the room and he’s got crumbs coming out of his mouth, a mouthful of chocolate chip cookie, just Caleb, I told you not to eat the chocolate chip cookies.

(35:39):
Did you eat one of the cookies? And he’s still chewing crus going like, no mommy, I didn’t eat any cookies. And she’s like, no, you are sinning. First you disobeyed your mother, I told you not to eat the chocolate chip cookies. And now you’re lying. You’re saying you didn’t. When the evidence is clear, you’ve got crumbs on the floor all over your mouth and chocolate chip cookie in your mouth. Not only did you disobey your mother, you also lied to your mother and see boys and girls that day, my son Caleb was sinning. He disobeyed his mother and he lied to her and because of that he was punished. And the same is true when we do things that are wrong, when we sin, it separates us from God and we deserve eternal punishment. We deserve to. The Bible says the price for sin is death.

(36:41):
We deserve to pay the ultimate price for doing things wrong. And so by telling a story like that, you get people to think about the concept of sin and then to think about it in their own lives. And then from thinking about the concept of sin, you can bring them into a place where you’re talking about how Jesus sets us free from sin. Alright, so another gospel concept would be the idea that we can’t save selves. So there’s another great story about a monkey. One time there was this monkey in the forest and his mother says, you can play anywhere in the forest but don’t play near the quicksand. If you fall into the quicksand, it’s going to pull you down and you’re going to die. So one day, guess what the little monkey did? He decided to go play in the quicksand. And sure enough, he got stuck and he knew that if he called for help, his mother would come, but then he’d be in big trouble for disobeying her and falling into the quicksand.

(37:48):
And so the little monkey, he says, I can pull myself out. And so he grabbed a hold of his ear and he started to pull on his ear as hard as he could and he is pulling on his ear. But boys and girls, no matter how much he pulled on his ear, did you know that he was not able to pull himself out of the quicksand? You see, sometimes we think that we can save ourselves. We think if we can make enough money, we can buy our way into heaven. We think that if we’re good, if we do enough good things, that God will let us into heaven. But the truth is that no matter how hard we try to save ourselves, there’s no way for us to pull ourselves out of a place of sin. The only way to get out of the quicksand is if Jesus comes and throws us a lifeline.

(38:40):
And so today, Jesus is here, and you might be stuck in the quicksand of sin, but Jesus is here to throw you a lifeline. Everyone reach up at your hand and grab a hold of the salvation rope, the rope that Jesus is throwing to you. Do you want Jesus to pull you out of a life of sin? And if you want Jesus to set you free from a life of sin, say yes and let’s pray. So you bring them to a place of salvation. Like another concept is the idea that you are valuable to God. And so I tell a story about this one time, and by the way, all these stories, you’re welcome. I give them to you, you’re welcome to use them. You’re adapt them to yourself and use them to communicate the truth of the gospel. So one time I went on a mission trip with a friend and my friend, this was his first mission trip and he was so excited about going on the mission trip before we left, he went to the store and he bought an expensive camera and he loved this camera so much.

(39:51):
He also bought a nice pouch that he could hang on his belt to put the camera into. And so as we were traveling through the country, everywhere we would stop, he would jump out and he’d pull out his camera and he’d start taking pictures. And then when we’re in the car, he kept saying, stop the car. Stop the car. I said, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? He says, look at that beautiful mountain. I want to take a picture. So he’d jump out of the car, go and take a picture of the mountain, and then we drive a little bit farther. Stop the car, stop the car. I said, what’s going on? He says, look at those beautiful flowers. And he’d jump out and he’d pull out his camera and he’d take a picture of the flowers. And so that camera was so valuable to him. He took lots of pictures.

(40:36):
But then we went to this little village. And in that village there were no restrooms. And so he had to use the restroom and all they had was an outhouse. And so he went into the outhouse. And as he was using the outhouse, guess what happened? The camera that was in the case on his belt, it fell out of the case and into the hole. He’s like, oh no, my camera, my valuable camera. What’s happened? His heart was broken. Here is beautiful, valuable camera is there way down below. And you know what my friend did? He loved his camera so much. He thought his camera was so valuable with one hand he held his nose and with his other hand, he reached down into the hole. He reached down as far as he could all the way down into the filthy mess. And he was just able to reach the string on the edge of the camera.

(41:48):
And he pulled it up and he was so happy he had rescued his camera and he said, got lots of baby wipes and wiped it all off. And soon it was as good as new. And he was willing to reach down into the mess to rescue his camera because his camera was valuable to him. Now, boys and girls, I want you to know that you are valuable to God. God loves you. God cares for each one of you, and God made you in his image. And because of that, you are valuable in the eyes of God. And so it doesn’t matter what situation you’re living in, maybe you are living in a life of sin. Maybe you are living in a family where there’s lots of abuse. Maybe you’re in a situation where everyone around you is doing things that are wrong. But I want you to know that you are so valuable to God that God is reaching down from heaven into the filthiness of our sinful lives and is reaching down to rescue you because God believes that you are valuable and he wants to save you.

(43:11):
Everyone lift up your hand to heaven and say, I am valuable. Everyone say God wants to rescue me from a life of sin. And boys and girls, no matter what type of life you’re living, God wants to reach down from heaven and rescue you right now. If you want God to rescue you, just lift up your hand to heaven and let’s pray together that God would rescue you. And you take the so. So you have this big concept that you are valuable to God. And then you go and you look for a story and you start to ask the Holy Spirit, holy Spirit, give me some good stories. Give me some good ways of communicating truth through stories. And it can be a Bible story. It can be a story that you made up a story like one of these stories I’ve told you today. But you tell the story and then use the story to bring them to a point of praying to Jesus. What do you think?

James Moore (44:17):
Yeah, I think that’s a great thought process. I can definitely see what you’re saying about Jesus speaking in parables and telling people from stories and it’s very effective. And especially for children. I could see that. Yes sir.

Evangelist Daniel King (44:34):
Yeah. So you have another concept like the need for faith. Like what is faith? Faith is a big word. There’s a lot of meaning in the word faith. So how do you communicate faith to a child? Well, you could ask a child to come forward and have him sit down in a chair, stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down and say, boys and girls, when this young man sits down on the chair, he puts his trust in the chair. He believes that the chair is going to be able to hold his weight because he has faith that the chair is not going to break. Now, the word faith means trust. It means to put your trust in God. And so when you put your trust in God, you’re saying, God, I believe that when I rest in you that you will hold me up, that you will hold me.

(45:41):
And so the boy has faith when he sits in the chair. And you can put your faith in Jesus today. You can know that he will hold you up, that you can trust him to do what his word says that he will do. And so when I ask you, do you want Jesus to save you, you need to put your faith in Jesus. Do you believe that Jesus can actually save you? If you believe that Jesus can actually save you, lift up your hand and we’re going to put our trust in Jesus and ask him to save us today. And so you look for a little illustrations and stuff. So, alright, so you’re going next week, you’re preaching at some schools. I believe God will lead you and guide you and help you to do that effectively and give you some messages that will be effective for the children that you’re ministering to. And let’s just finish up the podcast today by praying for your trip.

James Moore (46:40):
Yes sir.

Evangelist Daniel King (46:40):
Thank

(46:41):
You. Alright, give me your hand, James. Let’s pray together. Dear heavenly Father, I pray for James as he heads down to the nation of Brazil. Lord, I pray that you would be with him as he ministers in the schools that he’s going to, and as he sees this great gospel crusade with evangelist Adam Smith. Lord, I pray that you would be with him, that you would speak through him. And Lord, I pray that many young people would come to know you as their Lord and Savior because of the ministry that he’s doing in the schools. Lord, I pray that you would open up great doors for him to be able to share the gospel, both one-on-one with people and in the schools and everywhere he goes, Lord, I pray that he’d be a shining light in the midst of great darkness. And Lord I that during this trip that you would deposit something significant into his life and that he would be able to lead many people to you. And Lord, I pray for you to begin to mold him and help him to be the very best evangelist he possibly can be. In Jesus’ name, amen. Amen. Amen. Alright, James, be blessed. I’m excited to hear. Maybe we’ll have to record another podcast after you get back. You can tell us what God did

James Moore (48:04):
In

Evangelist Daniel King (48:05):
The nation of Brazil. Amen. Thanks for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Thank you, sir.

Evangelism Podcast Host (48:10):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more. If you want to be an evangelist but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelist Daniel King (49:12):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review. You will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (50:32):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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The Call of the Evangelist | Global Evangelist Alliance Mentorship Call

The Global Evangelist Alliance hosts a monthly mentorship call for evangelists. During a recent call, Evangelist Rubens Cunha introduced Evangelist Daniel King, who has led over 1 million people to Christ through his worldwide evangelistic ministry. Daniel discussed the biblical role and calling of the evangelist, highlighting the examples of the evangelist Philip in the book of Acts. Key points include:

Evangelists are called to preach the gospel to large crowds and see miracles, but also to equip and train others in evangelism.
Evangelists must remain humble and focused on glorifying God, not themselves.
Teenagers and young people can be effectively trained and deployed as evangelists.
Evangelists should develop a strong support base through consistent communication and vision-casting to partners and supporters.

This insightful mentorship call provides valuable guidance for those called to the evangelistic ministry.

Join the Global Evangelist Alliance: https://globalevangelistalliance.com/

Transcript:

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:00:00):
The Global Evangelist Alliance has a monthly mentorship call for evangelists, and recently I was invited to teach on the mentorship call. It consists of about 20 minutes of teaching on what is an evangelist, and then we opened it up for a question and answer session. I thought that you would be interested in hearing this mentorship call. If you want to sign up for future mentorship calls, you can do so at the Global Evangelist Alliance.com. So I encourage you to go there today and become a member of the GEA, the Global Evangelist Alliance and start participating in the mentorship in how to become a better evangelist. Let’s listen to this month’s mentorship call.

(00:01:10):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King.

Eleanor Curran (00:01:36):
So I just want to welcome you all as everybody’s jumping on, make sure that our room is getting filled up with all these amazing people from around the world. And I’m going to introduce our host today, which is Evangelist Rubens Cunha. He is a very powerful evangelist that the Lord has called to reach the nations and it’s a privilege to work with you, sir, handing the microphone over to you.

Rubens Cunha (00:02:04):
Thank you so much Eleanor Curran. It’s a great joy to be here. Hello everyone. I hope you feel as blessed as I do to participate in these calls. I am calling you guys now from the mission field

(00:02:21):
In the city of in northeast Brazil battlefield for the gospel. So I was talking to Daniel King earlier. It is great that we are doing this as real evangelists. We are doing the work of evangelism as we elaborate these calls, as we do the mentorship projects. And I want to ask all of you to kindly mute your microphones so that no environment noise where you are disrupts the teaching and the mentorship call. Again, I am very glad that you are here. I want to welcome you and let you know that you are in for a treat today. Today we have with us Evangelist Daniel King, Dr. Daniel King, an evangelist that is being used by God in many, many nations. Daniel King is a missionary evangelist who has traveled to over 70 nations in his quest for souls. His goal is to lead 1 million people to Jesus every year through massive crusades distribution of literature and also by training leaders.

(00:03:43):
Daniel was called to the ministry when he was five years old and begun to preach when he was six. That’s a great blessing. Dr. Daniel’s parents became missionaries to Mexico when he was 10, and then you spent the next 13 years ministering in Mexico alongside his parents. When he was 14, he started the children’s ministry that gave him the opportunity to minister in some of America’s largest churches while he was still a teenager. Daniel is also the host of the Evangelism podcast. I hope Daniel will tell us a little bit about this podcast today because it’s great. He has already interviewed over 250 evangelists. I have had the honor to be featured in one of these podcasts. He has interviewed evangelists, pastors, missionaries, church growth experts. Daniel has also offered over 20 books and appeared on numerous TV and radio programs. He has planted six church overseas and is the father and president of King Ministries International. He’s married to Jessica, have two children, Caleb and Grace and Katie Grace, and I’m honored to call Daniel King a friend. We live in the same city though we usually meet in different parts of the world. Last time I believe was in Congo in Africa before that South Korea and before that Colombia. How are you doing, Dr. Daniel?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:05:20):
It is so wonderful to be with you today. Yes, Rubens is a good friend. We meet all over the world and we are excited about telling people about Jesus.

Rubens Cunha (00:05:32):
Amen. Amen. We are going to have now a time of teaching. Dr. Daniel King is going to share with us about the call of the evangelist. I want you to pay attention and to make notes. And remember, you get to participate in these mentorship calls. Make sure you send your questions through the Zoom chat. And after Dr. Daniel King finishes his teaching, we are going to be selecting as many questions as possible, as many questions as time allows. And then we are going to be talking about those questions here live. So Dr. Daniel King, it’s an honor and privilege to have you today and you can go ahead with what the Lord has put in your heart for today.

Evangelist Daniel King (00:06:19):
Thank you Brother Rubens. It is such a wonderful privilege to be able to spend time with each one of you today. Thank you for making time in your busy schedule to be mentored in evangelism. Today I am going to be talking about the question, what is an evangelist? And this is a question that I have been exploring my entire life. When I was five years old, my father pastored a small church in Cloudcroft, New Mexico. And one Sunday he invited a prophetess to come and minister at the church. And God woke her up the night before and said, tomorrow there will be someone wearing a blue shirt. You are to prophesy that this person wearing a blue shirt is called to be an evangelist. And so she came to church. None of the adults in the adult service were wearing a blue shirt. And so she invited the kids workers up hoping one of them would have a blue shirt on and they didn’t have a blue shirt on, but there is this long line of kids.

(00:07:18):
And at the end of the line was a cute little five-year old boy wearing a blue shirt. And that cute little boy was me and she prophesied over me that day that I was called to be an evangelist. Of course, at the age of five, you don’t really know what an evangelist is. It seems like a big word, but I didn’t waste any time. I jumped right into the calling that God had in my life and I preached my first sermon at the age of six. And my mother and father still have the cassette tape from that first sermon. And one of the things I say is, if you are saved, stay saved. If you’re not saved, you need to get saved. So even at the age of six, I sounded like an evangelist. And then as I was growing up, my favorite books were by TL Osborne, the great missionary evangelist from here in Tulsa, Oklahoma, oral Roberts, Reinhard Bonky, Billy Graham.

(00:08:12):
I’d read the books and look at the pictures of all of the people that they minister to. And so God planted that in my heart. And when I was 15 years old, I was reading a success book. It said, if you want to be successful, you need to write down your goals. And one of the goals they’d say would be good for young people is to try to become a millionaire by the age of 30. But when I was 10 years old, my parents had become missionaries in the country of Mexico. And I realized that because of my upbringing as a missionary in Mexico, that money was not what was important to me. What was important was souls. And so at the age of 15, I wrote down, hi Daniel King, want to lead 1 million people to Jesus Before I turn 30 years of age, instead of becoming a millionaire, I wanted to lead a million heirs into the kingdom of God, become a soul millionaire.

(00:08:57):
And so God started opening up doors in different nations. I did my first gospel crusade in the nation of Honduras while I was still a student at Oral Roberts University and studying New Testament there. And then the next year I did two crusades and the next year I did four crusades. And by the time I was 30 years of age, I had led face-to-face over a million people to Jesus. And I was praying and say, God, what comes next? And I felt like God say, go for a million souls every single year. And so in the natural that’s impossible, but with God, all things are possible. And so I’m excited about evangelism and this entire story of my life has been searching for this question, what is an evangelist? Because I want to be the very best evangelist I kept possibly can be to fulfill the calling that God has put on my life.

(00:09:50):
And so eventually I ended up doing my doctorate of ministry at Oral Roberts University and studying the question about what is evangelism and is mass evangelism effective? And for my doctoral project, I actually did a project researching one of Ruben’s Una’s crusades down in the nation of Brazil. And so he’s there right now. I want everyone to offer up a prayer for the ministry that he is doing this very week in Brazil. And so I’ve been studying this question, what is an evangelist? And so I want to go to God’s word to answer the question. The word evangelist is mentioned three times throughout scripture. And so the first time it’s mentioned is in Ephesians chapter four, it says it was Jesus who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers to prepare God’s people for works of service.

(00:10:51):
And so the job of an evangelist is to prepare the body of Christ to do the work of an evangelist. And so the evangelist, of course, preaches the gospel. We want to fulfill the great commission. Jesus said, Matthew 28, go and make disciples of all nations. Mark 16, go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature. Luke 24, forgiveness of sins will we preach in his name to all nations. John 20, as the Father sent me, I am sending you Acts one, eight, you’ll receive power from the Holy Spirit to be a witness to the uttermost ends of the earth. So Matthew, mark, Luke, John, and Acts. We have this great commission. And the great commission is given not just to evangelists but to every believer. Every single one of us are called to share our faith. But the evangelist is especially gifted by God to do evangelists but then to equip God’s people to do evangelism.

(00:11:50):
And so as an evangelist, you are equipped to inspire the body of Christ and to motivate the body of Christ to go out and to share their faith with others. And so our job as evangelist is to activate the entire body of Christ to go and to do evangelism. And so then the second time that we find the word evangelist is in second Timothy chapter four, verse five. Paul the apostle is a writing to his protege Timothy. And at the time Timothy is serving as a pastor in the church of Ephesus. It was a very significant church. Mary, the mother of Jesus actually moved to Ephesus. And so you can imagine this young man preaching with Mary sitting there on the front row. It was a significant place that he was ministering at. But this is what Paul says to Timothy. He says, but you keep your head in all situations and do her hardship, do the work of an evangelist.

(00:12:51):
And so even though Timothy is serving as a pastor, Paul tells him to do the work of an evangelist. And so every single member of the body of Christ can do the work of an evangelist and to share our faith. And then the Bible mentions the word evangelist for a third time over in Acts chapter 21. There is a man named Philip who is living in Caea. And Paul the apostle stops there and he meets Philip in. Philip has four virgin daughters who all prophesy. And this passage specifically calls him Philip the evangelist. And so of all the characters in the Bibles, we got lots of prophets, we got apostles, we got disciples. But the only person in the entire New Testament who is specifically called an evangelist is this man whose name is Philip. And so I believe that God gave us Philip as a model for evangelists to follow.

(00:13:59):
So we got to ask this question, who was Philip the evangelist? His story starts all the way back in Acts chapter six. In Acts chapter six. There was a great increase in the number of the disciples and they were feeding the disciples every day and the apostles were getting worn out because they were serving food to all of the different groups of people that were newly saved. And so there was one group of widows that started to complain that they didn’t have enough food and the apostles didn’t have enough time to spend time in God’s word. And so they decided to name seven deacons who would serve as servants to help wait on the tables for all of the people that they were trying to feed. And so in Acts chapter six, it says they proposed the proposal, please the whole group. And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit and also Philip.

(00:15:04):
And so the first time we see Philip, he is being named as one of the seven deacons who are going to serve food to the widows. And so in the beginning of his ministry, he wasn’t an evangelist, he was simply someone who had a heart to serve. And I really believe that that is where every evangelistic ministry should begin. We should begin with the heart of a servant. Jesus said, I did not come to be served but to serve. Jesus said, the greatest in the kingdom is the servant of all. And so Philip the evangelist started his ministry out simply by being willing to help out. And then a time of persecution comes and Philip the evangelist, he scatters along with all the other people who were fleeing persecution. And we come to Acts chapter eight and Acts chapter eight, I believe is the greatest chapter in the entire Bible for the evangelist to read in order to understand the calling of the evangelist.

(00:16:14):
And so in Acts chapter eight verse four, it says, those who had been scattered preached the word wherever they went, Philip went down to a city in Samaria and he proclaimed the Christ there. When the crowds heard Philip and saw the miraculous signs he did, they all paid close attention to what he said. With shrieks, evil spirits came out of many and many paralytics and cripples were healed. So there was great joy in the city. And so we can learn a lot about the calling of an evangelist from what Philip did here in the city in Samaria. If you’ll look at that passage in your Bible, you’ll notice that as Philip begins to preach, there are multitudes and there are miracles. And so those are two signs of the evangelists. Evangelists have the ability to pull multitudes together. Just last week I was ministering at an organization up in Moline, Illinois, and it’s this organization that reaches out to children in their community.

(00:17:20):
And so they’ve been serving the Lord there since 1936. And I went in and they invited me to help them with their fall outreach. I said, let’s go to the local schools, let’s pass out flyers. And we packed out the entire building and many of the staff members that had been there for 20 years said, this is the most kids that we’ve ever seen packed into our building. And there’s something about the evangelistic gift that just pulls crowds of people together. And so we packed out the building, that’s part of the anointing of the evangelist is to bring multitudes together. And then it says that there were miracles. This is another sign of the evangelist. The evangelist is especially anointed by God with faith to believe God for miracles and miracles are the dinner bell that call people to the banqueting table of heaven. And so when people see a miracle that happens on the platform, then it opens their heart to Jesus.

(00:18:25):
I’ve preached the gospel in many different nations, Hindu nations, Muslim nations, Buddhist nations, and I’ve noticed that people, when they see the miracles that Jesus does for the people, it attracts them. They are drawn towards God. Jesus said, if I be lifted up, I will draw all men onto me. And so Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever. He did miracles 2000 years ago. He can still do miracles today. And the evangelist is especially anointed by God to believe God for healing miracles. And then you’ll notice his message. It says that Philip preached Christ. Christ is the main message that the evangelist is supposed to preach. And so there are a lot of different traveling ministers in the body of Christ. Some traveling ministers talk about how to have a happy marriage, how to be successful in business, and sometimes they call themselves evangelists.

(00:19:24):
But really I can very quickly identify who is called by God to be an evangelist because the evangelist will preach about Jesus Christ. And so a true evangelist, it doesn’t matter where he starts in scripture, he can preach on any subject at all, but just as quickly as possible, he will get to the good news about Jesus Christ. And so an evangelist, he or she will preach good news. The Bible says that all have sinned, all have fallen short of the glory of God. The price for sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ, the son of God. He died on the cross to pay the price for our sins, but he didn’t stay dead. After three days, Jesus rose from the dead. And today Jesus is alive. And the Bible says that everyone who calls on the name of Jesus will be saved.

(00:20:17):
Will you call on the name of Jesus today? This is your opportunity. If you want to call on Jesus, lift up your hand to heaven and let’s call on Jesus right now. The evangelist is going to take people straight to Jesus. And so Philip the evangelist preached Christ. There were multitudes, there were miracles. He cast out evil spirits. God gives us the evangelists, the ability to take authority over every evil spirit. And then it says that there was great joy in the city. And I have seen this hundreds of times in different cities across the world where you go and it could be a city that’s struggling economically. It could be a city that has religious persecution. It could be a city where one tribe is fighting against another tribe. I’ve seen it all. But when you begin to preach the gospel, we find that great joy fills the city as people come to Jesus.

(00:21:10):
And so some of those things that we see are the signs of the evangelist. And so Luke tells us the story about Philip the evangelist. So it is a model for us to follow as an evangelist. The evangelist is called by God to preach to massive crowds of people. But what’s very interesting is that in the second part of the chapter, we see Philip begin to operate in a different manner. He’s having a very successful meeting there in Samaria. And then it says, an angel of the Lord said to Philip, go south to the road, the desert road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza. You can imagine Philip complaining a little bit to God and saying, God, why do I have to go down to the desert road? No one is on the desert road. I don’t know if you’ve noticed God, but here in Samaria, we’ve been having some really good meetings.

(00:22:09):
I’ve been getting some really good pictures for my newsletter here in Samaria. Why do I have to go down on the hot desert road to Samaria? But he is an evangelist who is obedient to the voice of God. And so he goes down there. And so it says he started out and on his way, he met an Ethiopian eunuch, an important official in charge of all the treasuries of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians. This man had gone to Jerusalem to worship, and on his way home was sitting in his chariot reading the book of Isaiah, the prophet. The spirit told Philip, go to that chariot and stay near it. Then Philip ran up to the chariot and heard the man reading Isaiah the prophet, do you understand what you’re reading? Philip asked, how can I? He said, unless someone explains it to me. So he invited Philip to come up and sit with him.

(00:23:00):
So this man, this Ethiopian eunuch had come all the way from Ethiopia, a very long distance to Jerusalem, to worship Yahweh, the God of Israel. And when he got to the temple in Jerusalem, he discovered that in the law of Moses, that there were certain people that were forbidden to enter into the temple. And so we find that in Deuteronomy chapter 23 verse one, it says that no foreigners are allowed to go into the inner court of the temple. And it says, no eunuch, no one who has been maimed or who is imperfect is allowed to go in. And so you can imagine this Ethiopian eunuchs disappointment. He’s come from this long distance away. He wanted to worship Yahweh. The people of Ethiopia had knowledge of Yahweh going all the way back to the queen of Sheba who had come and met Solomon. And she had taken the news about Yahweh back to Ethiopia.

(00:23:56):
So he came to worship and he discovers that the people who are foreigners and the people who are eunuchs are not allowed into the temple. So he’s very disappointed, but he spends a huge sum of money. The scroll of Isaiah would’ve cost one year’s wages. So he spends this huge sum of money to buy this book of Isaiah the prophet, but he doesn’t understand it. So God sends Philip the evangelist to the desert road in order to explain the scripture to him. And so Philip begins to minister one-on-one to the Ethiopian eunuch. And so in Acts chapter eight, we see Philip ministering to multitudes and we also see Philip ministering one-on-one to this Ethiopian. And so as an evangelist, sometimes you’ll preach to big crowds and then sometimes God will put you on an airplane sitting next to someone for eight hours and you’ll have the opportunity to share the gospel with that person that you’re sitting next to.

(00:24:57):
And so if you’re an evangelist, you should be ready to preach the gospel to the multitudes, to big crowds of people. But then you should ask the Holy Spirit to lead you to those individuals, one-on-one to minister to people whose hearts are ready to come to Jesus. The Ethiopian eunuch, he reads Isaiah chapter 53, which is the beautiful passage about what Jesus accomplished on the cross about how Jesus became a lamb who was slaughtered for the sins of the whole world. And I don’t think he’s ended there. I think they kept reading and they came to Isaiah chapter 56 verses three through seven. And in Isaiah 56, there’s a beautiful prophecy that says that the day will come where foreigners will be allowed into the temple of God and where even the eunuchs will no longer be cut off from worshiping Yahweh. And so the Ethiopian euch begins to ask, he says, what’s the difference between what happened in the law of Moses where eunuchs and foreigners are forbidden to enter the temple?

(00:26:03):
And now in Isaiah 56, this beautiful prophecy where there will come a time where God’s house will be called a house of prayer for all nations. And so it says that Philip beginning with that very passage of scripture, told him the good news about Jesus. And Philip says, the difference is that Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God came to earth, he died on the cross to pay the price for our sins. And now no one is excluded. Everyone is included. There is a place for everyone to come to Jesus. Isaiah the prophet made the prophecy that there is a day coming where everyone will included even the people who come from a long distance. And so the Ethiopian Munich is super excited about this good news. He says, stop the chariot. He says, is anything preventing me from being baptized? And Philip says, no.

(00:26:56):
He jumps right out of the chariot, he baptizes him. And then immediately the spirit catches Philip away and he begins ministering in other places. And so one of the questions that an evangelist often gets is, what do you do about follow-up? Well, what did Philip do about follow-up for this Ethiopian eunuch? He’s actually caught away by the spirit, but the Ethiopian union, he goes back to Ethiopia. He tells everyone about Jesus. And to this day, there are Christians in Ethiopia who trace their spiritual heritage back to this encounter that Philip the evangelist had on the desert road. And so this tells me that if you can reach the one person for Jesus, you potentially could impact an entire nation. And I’ve preached many times in Ethiopia, and it’s so beautiful to see the people of Ethiopia stretch out their hands towards Jesus. They’re ready and willing to come to Jesus.

(00:27:55):
And it’s because of the seeds that Philip the evangelist preached. Philip the evangelist, he becomes a model for us to imitate. We should be ready to preach to multitudes and we should be ready to preach to the individual. But what’s very interesting is that in both of these cases, what does Philip preach about? He preaches about Jesus. And so that is the message of the evangelist. It’s all about Jesus. Jesus changed the city of Samaria. Jesus changed this Ethiopian eunuch and Jesus will change the lives of the people that you minister to as an evangelist. Hallelujah. Yeah. Let’s go into a time of questions. I hope that blessed you guys. Did you guys enjoy hearing that?

Rubens Cunha (00:28:42):
Great, great time. Thank you so much Dr. Daniel King. I was really blessed about the teaching here, you really brought of an evangelist. And I want to invite all of you now that heard this teaching, send your questions to Dr. Daniel King. Use the chat in the zoom call and send your questions. It’s a very unique opportunity for you to ask an evangelist who has so much experience, so much Bible knowledge, questions that are in your heart. And we already have some questions here, Daniel. And I want to start with a question from Timothy. Timothy, from France. He is asking, when do we know we’ve crossed the line from sharing humbly what the Lord has done through us to look how great of an evangelist I am and see crowds I have preached to someone said, don’t impress express. So what do you say about this?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:29:47):
Well, I think as an evangelist we need to stay very humble. And I’ve had the opportunity to be with some of the greatest evangelists of our generation. And I’ve found that the greatest evangelists often are very humble. And it’s because we realize we can’t do anything through our own power. I can’t heal anyone. It’s Jesus that heals someone. And so personally, I think we remain very humble, but we walk in great boldness in knowing who Jesus is and what Jesus can do. And so I think you should personally remain humble, but then be very bold in telling people this is what Jesus did and this is what Jesus can do for you. And so as an evangelist, we do walk that line. We like to take pictures of the big crowds of people to show people what God is doing. But one time TL Osborne, he told me, he says, you always take pictures.

(00:30:51):
He says, when you take a picture of a miracle, a miracle happens twice, once in the life of the people who receive the miracle. And then again, the miracle happens when you show people what Jesus is doing. And so the reason that you show pictures of the crowds of people coming to Jesus and the pictures of the miracles is not to inflate your own ministry or your own sense of self-worth it is to show people look at this amazing thing that Jesus is doing in the world today. And I think when people see that they will get excited and they will want to be a part of it. But of course, we must always examine our own arts and make sure that we are preaching the gospel for the right motive, the right reason. And really it comes down to asking God to give you compassion for people.

(00:31:45):
You’re not there for a photo op, you’re not there as an influencer. You are there because you care about people. You have the same compassion that Jesus felt when he saw the crowds of people who were harassed and helpless. And if we keep our hearts broken before God and realize that you are rescuing people from hell and taking them with you to heaven, that you are actually standing in the gap. And if you don’t preach the gospel, people could be in danger of spending eternity separated from God. And so I think that actually gives us great humbleness to know that God would choose to use us, and it also gives us great boldness to preach the good news with authority and power.

Rubens Cunha (00:32:34):
I love what you said Daniel. And the Bible verse comes to mind in Matthew chapter five, verse 16. In the Sermon of the Mount, Jesus said in the same way, let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven. So I think you made a great point there. So it’s so much about the motivation of our hearts and each evangelist must seek his or her own heart. If you are showing the pictures, if you are showing the miracle so that God gets the glory, that’s the right way of doing it. But if you are doing it for the sake of self-promotion, that’s a wrong motivation that does not honor God and he’s not going to bless it. How do you think, Daniel, we should watch our hearts. What are the questions we need to ask ourselves when dealing with this issue?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:33:34):
One of the things that God asked me one time, I had my camera out and I was trying to capture a good photo of a crusade I was doing. And God asked me, he says, Daniel, would you preach to these people if you didn’t have a camera with you, would you be willing to preach to them even if you weren’t able to take a picture or tell anyone what had happened? And immediately I said, yes, I want to preach to them. I want to rescue people from hell. It is rescuing people from hell that creates joy in heaven. It is rescuing people from hell that creates joy in my heart as an evangelist. I celebrate the victories, but it is all about leading people to Jesus, and that has to remain the motives of our hearts. And so from time to time, I just examine my own heart and say, God, help me to always have the right motive and to do things for the right reasons.

Rubens Cunha (00:34:41):
Amen. I love this. And I think just being very honest, here we are among evangelists. I think this needs to be a constant pursuit in our hearts as we preach to crowds. And sometimes we come to places where we receive the applause of people. We need to constantly give glory to God to make sure our hearts remain pure and the Holy Spirit can flow through us and bless the people. Now I have another question here from James. James is asking, can you train teenagers to become evangelists?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:35:14):
Absolutely. Teenagers are some of the best evangelists there are because teenagers are very influenced by their peer group. And so if you can get a couple of teenagers excited about sharing Jesus, they can start a revival, a revolution in a nation as people turn to Jesus. And so absolutely we need to look for teenagers who have a heart for God and begin to develop their ministry gifts. And so one of the things that I do in my crusades is I often take a younger evangelist with me. And sometimes I’ve had teenagers, sometimes early twenties, and I give them an opportunity to speak on the platform. The platform costs a lot of money for our ministry to be able to invite people, and sometimes a teenager would never have the capacity to be able to do a crusade of that size on his own, but I give them the platform to preach and they get excited about that.

(00:36:18):
And that really is the launch to their evangelistic calling. And so if you are going out to do evangelism, take some teenagers with you, have them go out and help pass out flyers, give them opportunities to share their testimony, help them to develop in their ability to talk about Jesus. And teenagers will become some of the most effective evangelists that we can train. And also kids. Kids make great evangelists. And so when my two kids were young, 10 and eight years old, we took them on the mission field and they weren’t ready to preach yet, but they helped to pass out flyers and to invite people to come to the crusade. And now my daughter, Katie Grace, she’s 12 years old, she comes to me, she says, daddy, I feel like God’s calling me to be a missionary. I say, good, we will develop that in you and you will be a great missionary.

Rubens Cunha (00:37:16):
Amen. I love what you said. And sometimes we have the impression that Jesus’ disciples we’re like this old man, maybe because of some artwork. We have seen some paintings, they are depicted as older people, but the evidence is that they were all very young. Peter is the one that complains about paying the tax. And you all know the story. Jesus gave him a miraculous fishing. A coin was in the mouth of the fish for him to pay tax. And only people 20 and older had to pay the tax. And Peter’s the only one reported to have to pay the tax. So most likely the disciples were all under 20. Think about that. And also in that culture, typically a rabbi met his disciples or the disciples for the rabbi when they were very young. So even though we have this idea of the disciples as older men, it’s very much possible that they started as teenagers following Jesus, which is an amazing thing to think.

(00:38:26):
I agree with Dr. Daniel King in our experience as well, the teenage evangelists are the ones who are the most on fire. They are bold, they are courageous. So I want to encourage you all to train and empower and give opportunity to teenagers and children to share the gospel. And as I’m saying that, I see some people like India, she’s just nodding with her head, looks like she has had some experience training teenagers as well. Now Pedro from Brazil, Daniel is asking how to develop discernment to take bigger steps of faith, developing the call of an evangelist.

Evangelist Daniel King (00:39:11):
When I first started out in doing evangelism, I started small. My parents were missionaries in Mexico. And so we went out on the dirt streets of Juarez, Mexico and we invited kids to come to the church. And so sometimes we would have 50 kids come. And then one day we decided we would have more kids if we dressed up as clowns. And so I dressed up as a clown and went out and waved at the kids and invited them to come to the church. And then suddenly we had a thousand kids show up at the church. And then God opened the door for me to go on a mission trip to another place. And it wasn’t a very big budget, but for a teenager it was a lot of money. So I asked God to provide. And so God provided that small budget God provided then that gave me faith to believe for a bigger budget.

(00:40:13):
Then it gave me faith to believe God for a bigger budget. One of the principles of God’s kingdom is faithfulness. You stay faithful with what God gives you right now. And then as you’re faithful, God will give you greater and greater opportunities. And so just with whatever tools and gifts and budget that God has given you right now, look for opportunities to do evangelism. If it’s one-on-one, do one-on-one evangelism. If it’s teaching on evangelism at a local church, do that whatever opportunity God gives you, throw yourself a hundred percent into it. And then as you’re faithful with the opportunities that God gives you, God will begin to give you greater and greater and greater opportunities. And so that’s kind of how our faith develops too. Faith is a little bit like a muscle. You start small and you lift one set of weights and then after a while that set of weights is easy and you can build to a bigger set of weights.

(00:41:17):
And so over time in your evangelistic ministry, God will increase your faith to believe God for bigger and better things. But you start small, you start where you are and you walk in the fullness of the calling that God has placed on your life and then God will build your faith and eventually you’ll be doing huge things for the kingdom of God. One time said that which is considered great, today will be normal tomorrow. And so of course Reinhard bonky one time he got to lead over a million people to Jesus in a single salvation prayer. And so I think that God is accelerating what’s happening in the world today and that what used to take 10 years to accomplish God now will allow the evangelist of the GA to accomplish in one year what used to take some people a lifetime ministering. Now we’re going to see evangelists accomplish that very quickly. And so Jesus is accelerating things. I think Jesus is coming back very soon. And so if you will stay faithful, even in doing the small things, God will test you. And then as you prove yourself faithful, God will very rapidly begin to give you greater and greater opportunities.

Rubens Cunha (00:42:36):
I love your answer, Daniel and I feel the same in our ministry this year we preached to crowds in excess of 80,000 people in Congo and we met in Congo. You also had an amazing large crusade there, but this has been 30 years in the making. Most of my ministry, in the beginning especially, we were preaching bus stops and in the streets praying for multiplication. And this has been a gradual process. Nowadays. We have our own PA system here in Brazil. We do several crusades a year, but it didn’t happen overnight. I really like what you said about taking steps by faith and then God will stretch you and then you take that step and then God brings increase. But I do have a question for you in the same subject here. How can you discern between a step of faith and a foolish action?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:43:37):
Well, first of all, I don’t think that the devil will ever tell you to go get someone saved. And so if you are taking an action of faith where it is going to lead to people getting saved, even if you make a mistake, I think God will back you up because he’s excited about people being saved. Even in our ministry, we continually take steps of faith for the crusades that we do. Some have big budgets, some have small budgets, but we almost never have the money in the bank. When we make the commitment to do a crusade, we put it on the calendar and then we start to trust God and we begin to look for the money. I begin to share the vision with our partners and friends and ask people to invest in what we are doing. And then God brings the provision and often it doesn’t come from the people that I think it should come from.

(00:44:47):
Like I say, he’s a rich businessman. He could give me a lot and then he doesn’t give me anything, but then someone else will step up and be very generous and help us. And so even this year, I’ve seen God stretch our faith and we’ve seen God provide in tremendous ways. And I think that the vision of the evangelist is always bigger than the resources that the evangelist has. Every evangelist I’ve ever met, they always ask me, well, how do you raise money to do crusades or how do you raise money to be an evangelist? I am sure that’s true for many of us here on the phone call that you have bigger vision than what you have in your hands to be able to do right now. And I think that’s good because I think God gives us big vision so that we have to rely upon his provision.

(00:45:42):
God wants us to stretch our faith. I do think that faithfulness is what leads to bigger faith though. So if you have nothing and you say, next week I’m going to do a massive crusade like a Reinhardt Bonky crusade, I would say that will probably not happen because it took Reinhard Bonky 40 years of faithfulness in ministry in Africa to build to the point where his ministry was able to do these massive crusades. And so sometimes people think I’ll start doing crusades and then immediately I’ll be able to do what took Reinhard Bonnke 40 years to accomplish. And that’s just not going to happen. But if you stretch your faith by 10% or 20% and say, I’m doing something at this level and I’m going to trust God for an additional 20% to increase 20% every year, I think over time you’ll be able to build to the level where you are doing amazing things for the kingdom of God. And so we prove our faithfulness by staying faithful. And then as we’re faithful, year by year, by year, God gives us greater capacity, greater relationships, greater resources to be able to do things for the kingdom of God.

Rubens Cunha (00:47:11):
Very, very insightful. So the heart here is continue expanding, but be patient. Many ministries took decades for them to accomplish the amazing things they are doing, and God will take you all in a process that is similar. Now I have a question here from Jean from France. What are the things you wish you knew earlier as an evangelist?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:47:40):
One of the things that I think is very important is building up your support base. When I first started in the ministry, I scraped together all of my money to put into crusades, and I did some really wonderful crusades where we spent lots of money on full color posters, plastered the entire city, and we had great crusades, great healings. And then when I got back home, I didn’t have enough money to be able to send out a nice newsletter. So I just took some of the pictures from the crusade and went and made a black and white photocopy and sent that picture out. And it was so grainy, you could barely see anything that had happened. And if I could change anything, I would go back and I would say, you need to work in the ministry. But then also you can work on your ministry and make sure that as you’re developing the great things that God’s doing, because the opportunities for ministry are endless, you’ll always have opportunities to do ministry. But along with the ministry, make sure that your support base is built along with the ministry that God has given you. And so that involves putting time into calling your friends and partners and telling them this is what God has done. It involves printing material to share the vision of what God is calling you to do and make it look good, make it look professional.

(00:49:26):
You can make a nice website for your ministry and put time into doing that because if you get too far out with the ministry side, that’s where sometimes then you run out of funding. So you kind of develop your support base at the same time as you’re developing in the ministry opportunities that God gives you.

Rubens Cunha (00:49:50):
I really love what you said, Daniel. And we have a question here from Etel since you talked about that and you have a book on raising funds. Can you give the people here today some ideas on how they could raise funds to support their ministry, how to find sponsors, how to work on the ministry?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:50:14):
Fundraising is driven by vision. And so people don’t want to give to a need. They want to give to a vision and they want to be a part of what God is doing. And so it’s very important to continually be communicating what God is doing, not just for the motive of asking for money, but also to ask people to pray for you and to participate and to volunteer. And so I think it’s very important to tell the story of what God is doing as you’re doing it, and then to invite people to participate because people want to be a part of something that is successful, that something that God is doing. And so if whatever level of evangelism that you’re at, tell the stories of what God is doing. If you’re on a bus and you have the opportunity to share the gospel with someone on that bus, make a post on Facebook.

(00:51:17):
Hey, today I got an opportunity to share the gospel on the bus. The guy rejected me, he spit at me and he said, I don’t want to have anything to do with your Jesus. That’s okay. You got rejected. It’s not a problem. Just tell the story and say, Hey, can you help me share Jesus with more people? I know that next time I’m going to find someone who’s not going to spit at me. You just tell the story and then people will be intrigued and they will want to be a part of it. And so I think that’s the biggest thing about fundraising, is communicating with people what God is doing and then asking them, inviting them to participate in the work of God. And so you can use Facebook to do that. You can do it by text message, you can do it by calling people. But the more you share the vision and invite people to participate, not everyone will participate, but God has people who he is specifically talking to that will step up and be a part of what God has called you to do.

Rubens Cunha (00:52:26):
Very, very insightful as you say that a Bible verse comes to mind. Matthew 1344 says, the kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field. When a man found it, he hid it again and then in his joy went and sold all he had and bought that field. It’s interesting here that the men wanted the treasure, but he bought the field that came with the treasure. Sometimes we want the treasure, but we don’t want the dirt that comes with it. And the ministry, we want to preach the gospel, but sometimes we don’t want to deal with all the administrative work that comes with the ministry. You said something powerful. We have to work not just in the ministry but on the ministry. And it’s so important that as evangelists, we study the Bible, we preach the gospel, but we are also doing a good job like you preparing newsletters, communicating with partners, with prayer partners, letting people know about what we are doing.

(00:53:34):
And many years ago, Dr. Daniel King helped me. Our ministry was just beginning. We are doing crusades. And I asked Dr. Daniel King at the time, he wasn’t a doctor yet, but it’s good to call him like that because he earned a degree. I study a lot for that. He said, what do you do when you are raising funds? And he said, well, when I’m not traveling and preaching, I’m home calling people, talking to people. And that was life changing. I really integrated that in my personal ministry. In the way I do it is I spend time with personal contacts. I call people, let them know what’s going on, what happened. I give them reports, I tell them what’s coming up. And then like you said, the people got called to participate in your ministry, be stirred in their hearts and they will start to give. I really believe that we need to pay attention to those things.

(00:54:33):
I was running the numbers a few years ago and realized that I spent 3% of my time preaching and 97% of my time working on the ministry, studying, writing books, taking care of legal issues and documents and updating partners and raising funds and writing newsletters. So as we are building a team now, I am able to dedicate more time to the ministry, but still it’s a consideration. Everyone that is called to evangelism, especially to be full-time needs to have, there will be a lot of work involved around the preaching of the gospel. Would you like to add anything to that?

Evangelist Daniel King (00:55:15):
Well, Paul tells Timothy do the work of an evangelist, and part of the work of an evangelist is telling people what God is doing and inviting them to participate. And so it’s actually a lot of work. It’s not an easy job to be an evangelist, but we do the work of an evangelist. Also, you mentioned the book that I wrote about fundraising, and I’ve written several books about soul winning and I would like to give those books to the people who are participating on this call. And so if you will go to my website, king ministries.com, KING King ministries.com and enter in your email. There’s a box where you can put your email. I will send you as a free gift, the fundraising book that I wrote, how to Raise Money for your Ministry. And then I’ll send you a couple of my soul winning books that I’ve written on how to preach the gospel and some books that will inspire you to be a better soul winner. And so I just want to give those as a free gift to each of you. I’ll send them to you as an ebook where you can click on it and download and read, but especially that book on fundraising has some really great ideas that will help you to raise money for your ministry. So go to king ministries.com and sign up for my email list and I will send you the book on fundraising as my gift to you.

Rubens Cunha (00:56:41):
What a wonderful gift I want to recommend to everyone on this couch. Go there, get your books. I personally have been greatly blessed by Daniel’s books. He’s a great writer. Well, and we are coming to the end of this call. It’s very good, but we need to come to a conclusion here. But before we finish, Daniel, please tell people here how can they find you on social media, on the internet, your website, your podcast, which is a must for every one with a calling for evangelism.

Evangelist Daniel King (00:57:16):
Yeah. You can find my podcast by typing into any search engine, the Evangelism podcast, and wherever you listen to podcasts, it’ll pop up. And so now I’ve interviewed over 330 different evangelists and missionaries and pastors from around the world. And so I have talked to a lot of different people about how they’re doing evangelism in their local context. And so just this last week we did an episode talking about evangelism in francophone countries that the countries where they speak French. And we did another episode on evangelism to children, whatever context of evangelism that you’re in, just go through some of those episodes and you’ll find something that will be a big blessing to you. You can find the Evangelism podcast just by typing in the Evangelism podcast with Daniel King in any search engine. And then my website, king ministries.com. You can find links to my YouTube and a lot of videos of different crusades that we’ve done. I find those very encouraging for people to go and to watch, to see what God has done to build your faith for what God can do through your ministry. We also have a lot of training resources there. And again, if you want some of my books on evangelism, go to the website king ministries.com, give me your email address and I will send an email out to you later today so that you can download those books as my gift to you.

Rubens Cunha (00:58:56):
Wow. Wow. This was a wonderful call. Thank you so much, Dr. Daniel King, for taking time to pour into the lives of so many evangelists. I believe we were blessed here. I believe I’m speaking for everyone. We are really grateful that you took the time to be here with us today. And I want to remind everyone on this call that we will have our next mentorship call on December the third, December the third at the same time. And our guest will be a dear friend, Desmond Henry. Desmond Henry is involved in different networks of evangelism around the world. He is an academic, he’s a professor of missiology. He serves as the international director of the Global Network of Evangelists led by the Palau Ministries. Desmond Henry is also the chairman of an academic journal, the Conspectus from South Africa, and he serves as the catalyst for the Zen Proclamation Evangelism Network.

(01:00:08):
So on December the third, we are in for a treat again with a great men of God who has tremendous insights in the area of global evangelism. So I count on you, make sure to invite other evangelists, friends, so many evangelists. I know I have prayed for something like that for many years. I wish when I was starting, we had a call like that, that we have direct access to evangelists who are making a difference in our generation. This is a privilege. Let’s not keep this mentorship a secret for ourselves. Please invite other evangelists to be on the call, tell your friends, invite them to join, and let’s build a strong community of people who love Jesus and love evangelism. So thank you all for being part of the call today. Thank you so much AOR Kern for mediating and organizing all the technology for the call. Thank thanks to all the interpreters that translated to other language today. And again, thank you, Dr. Daniel King. Please say your final considerations before we end the call.

Evangelist Daniel King (01:01:20):
Yeah, let’s finish with a word of prayer. And I especially want to pray for Reubens. He’s in Brazil right now. He is team is in the schools this morning preaching the gospel, telling people about Jesus, and they’re going to be doing a crusade this week. And so everyone just stretch out your hands towards Reubens and let’s pray for him. And I want to pray for each one of you. Dear heavenly Father, Lord, I lift up Reuben’s to you, Lord. I pray that this would be a mighty harvest in the nation of Brazil, that this week they would see God do great miracles. And Lord, I pray for each evangelist, every man, every woman who has joined us on the call. Lord, I thank you that they will walk in the fullness of their calling as evangelists. Lord, I pray for great opportunities, great resources, great relationships, great abundance. Lord, I pray that from the people on this call that millions of people will come into the kingdom of God through their efforts. Lord, I pray that your Holy Spirit would anoint them. I pray for a greater release of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the gifts of healing, the gifts of faith. Lord, I pray that you would increase our gift of faith to believe you for greater things than we’ve ever seen before. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Evangelism Podcast Host (01:02:44):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out that Daniel King’s School of Evangelism learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and has seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry and much more if you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where To start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelist Daniel King (01:03:46):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review By giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (01:05:06):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Mark Drake | Bringing Youth Hope

Youth Hope was started in 1936 by some little old ladies who wanted to reach out to young people. It was originally known as the Christian Friendliness Society. Now they minister to children across the Quad Cities area. Today, Evangelist Daniel King interviews Mark Drake who has directed the ministry for the last thirty-seven years.

Learn more about Youth Hope: https://www.youthhopeqc.org/

Watch a video from a recent outreach we did at Youth Hope

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, Mark Drake from Youth Hope. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (00:12):
Thanks for asking, Daniel. Appreciate it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:14):
Alright, so Mark, we are here in a beautiful facility in Moline, Illinois and we are with Youth Hope. You’ve been leading this ministry for 37 years now.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (00:32):
Yeah, 37.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:33):
And so tell me a little bit about Youth Hope and what Youth Hope does.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (00:39):
Yeah, appreciate you asking. First of all, I would say when you say in a beautiful building, we didn’t have these facilities, but I’ve often said we can sell all the facilities. It matters what we’re doing with people, right? It’s all about the hard people. They were reaching a lot of people for Jesus as Christian Friendliness Association, which began in 1936 without the centers, we built the centers and the camp so that now we have a place to take people, but we also have something that might be magnetic to, because people sometimes far from Jesus, I call ’em everybody future believers, we’re either going to believe on this side or that side attorney. So everybody’s a future believer that future believers might come in here, cool looking, or it has an activity center or a sports center. And if we can get ’em in for whatever reason, we don’t care why they come, we care how they leave, right Daniel, we don’t care why they come to your festivals, right, to have fun and do we care how they leave. So 1936, the women that were in a Bible study really came to.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:42):
So 19 36, 19 36,

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (01:42):
It

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:44):
Got started.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (01:45):
Got

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:45):
Started. And what’s the story of the start?

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (01:47):
Yeah, good for you. 1936, a group of women in Bible study. We’re seeing a lot of immigrant families to our quad cities in Illinois, part of Quad Cities and Molina and Rock Island, Illinois. And they saw the need to reach out and love and they said they want to give them food and they had a clothing at the time and then teach ’em about God’s love. So it was all by seeing the need that they decided to start Christian Friendness Association, which became Youth Hope and it’s grown since then. Not any different in heart or spirit, but in what our reach and breadth of it is.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:23):
So what are some of those core values that have led Youth Hope over the years?

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (02:30):
Yeah, first off, the way it started going, we want to see the needs in the community to say what are the needs? We’re doing a mentor program with schools and there’s need to support teachers. So chaotic in public schools. There’s programs not in schools anymore, so how can we be a partner within? And that’s exactly, they looked and they saw people immigrating saying they need food, they need clothing, they need friendship in God. So again, the core value I think for all of us believers is to say, what’s the need? Because the need’s going to get filled by somebody or something, but we have the hope of the world and the true answer so we can meet physical needs. We still have a food pantry here. If we can meet needs with art because they got art programs are dropped and schools and that leads them to the hope of the world, then we got ’em on the right path.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:20):
As I was touring the facility, I’m absolutely amazed. I mean, you have a dance studio, you have an area dedicated to art, you’ve got a beautiful gymnasium, you’ve got a food pantry where you’re giving out food and there’s lots of people lined up there today waiting to get food. And so you’re looking for needs. You’re helping to meet those needs. Now tell me a little bit about your story. It started back in 1936. You weren’t there originally. You’ve come, but you’ve been here for a long time. So how’d you get a part of Youth

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (03:55):
Hope? It ends up being a calling, but it was really motivated by, I was a delinquent youth in the Quad City Surf Factory. My mom lives two blocks from this particular center. And when I came to Christ a month later I left for Yso National Park. Then I left to go to college and then I went to graduate school and seminary and then worked a couple places and I always found a need to come back to the quantities to share Jesus with all the people I hadn’t before I left because I just became a Christian. So my story began that I had decided I was going to come back quad cities and commit for two years. I wanted to share with my old drinking friends, I want to share with family. I wanted to share with people that would be marveled at what God’s done in somebody’s life because I was a delinquent. And so my mom actually saw an ad in the paper about an opening for somebody who worked with troubled youth, said This would be perfect for you. And it was called Christian Friendness Association. And I came here to do that and pursue God that way.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:59):
And then you got involved and how long did it take before you rose to being a director?

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (05:08):
Well, that’s a director of an area demeanor, minimum security prison here for juvenile boys. I used to do ministry out there on Wednesday nights too. He said to me, mark, I said, the problem with you is you’re coming as the director of youth, but you’re also coming as the director of the whole organization. So I never got promoted. I came, you started out, I was the director and director of youth and I didn’t know what that encompassed it. I came here to worked trouble youth and they said, well, you’re in charge. And that was it. I had no training anything. I have a master’s in counseling, went seminary in counseling. And so I had no business training. I had no, how do you run an organization? I didn’t have me teaching me. So I sought mentors. So I just kept going forward with my heart to reach people and I’d see needs one of great needs.

(05:55):
I went to probation, I was going to court with this one boy over and over and the one probation officer pulled me aside and said, he has the biggest file on probation in our county right now. That’s how rough and tough this kid was. I said, that’s why I love him. I think it’s great and he needs the Lord. And they took me back and met, had a probation and everybody’s going, who are you? I work with this Christian organization. They go, oh yeah, we know Christian organizations around. They’re kind of doing their thing. And I realized, Daniel, we should be their hope. We should be the first people they turn to. And I said, Hey, we’ll work with any probationary youth you have. Oh man, we have a need. So again, they say,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:33):
We got all kinds of people we

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (06:35):
Want you to work with. And so that’s where it began the concept. I think God started planting that seed that we needed to be not the best kept secret in the quad cities, but the light on the hill. And so God gave me, I’m a deer hunter and I actually wasn’t getting a deer and I was doing all what spiritual men do. Then you talk to God about the deer. I felt like he was breaking my heart out there one day saying, you don’t really love the kids you’re working with. And I was telling him why I do and what I’ve done of course. And he said, I want you to commit a place for them to come to. So a few years down the road we opened a Rock Island youth center, so they have a place to come to and get off the street.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:18):
And so over all these years of ministry, you’ve seen many transformed lives, many miracles that have happened. What are some of the stories of the miracles that God has

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (07:28):
Done? Oh yeah, Danny, when I first started it was real big gang stuff going on in the quad cities and we opened the Rock Island Center and then we opened the Moley Center, we started calling it. And then we opened a camp and we call it the three parts. We go out and find and we pursue ’em. And unfortunately, in fact, I just saw a demonstration of it today, unfortunately quite a bit of the church has stopped looking out here and they look in here

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:53):
Instead of looking out at the community, we got to

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (07:55):
Keep going after they stay inward focused and then we open centers to bring them in and then we open camp to get ’em out of their environments for a week or a weekend to just, I call it purification time. It’s kind of like these kids are born on the north side of Denver and they’re drop of water and they’d land in the water and it’s real pretty stream when they’re infant possibly. And then it goes through the sewer system of Denver and they come out and they’re so we’re taking ’em on there. We’re purifying that water for a week or get ’em away from music and their phones and the gangs and everything.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:28):
I mean, that must be a great experience for a young person to go from TikTok all the time to being out at the campground.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (08:37):
And Dan, you were talking about creation. You start with creation. I was one time out there we were cleaning woods to put in our basketball court and using chainsaw and a tough kid came up and he’s involved in a gang and he’s like, man, I got a bathroom. I said, well just find a tree dude. And he’s like, what? Just go out. So there right away they’d never experienced that. So he ran across the whole field to go way down in the woods to go to the bathroom. I don’t know why saw him fixing. So he comes running down, not even all the way finished yet screaming. And he was scared of something and I’m thinking, what in the world could be so scary out here? And he ran into, he called it a prehistoric bird. It was a wild Turkey. It was in a rut. But how far this kid in a housing complex who doing gang stuff? He was from the creator and the created that we have dominion over that and that that’s meant to be enjoyed. And he scared of something he shouldn’t be. And Satan’s twisted his mind to think that’s the fear. But his life, you can put it back in the hood that you

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:38):
Might run into a gang, but let me introduce you to it, Mr. Turkeys. Exactly.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (09:45):
But then as soon as I said, Hey, that’s just the Turkey. Don’t worry about man. You tell anybody I wet on myself, I’ll kill you right away. The tough guy came up right thinking the guy cheese are scared of a Turkey threatening in my life, right? I said, that’s not how in a lesson about ta, you talk to men. And I said, I would never do that. So when the group was coming back, I said, let’s start a water fight. He said, why? I said, because we’re going to get all wet. And so we started a water fight as soon as they got there and everybody was wetting it, right? So he got that. But it’s just that whole thing. So stories like that to me are taking people back in the woods to creation and getting them there so that they can hear the creators whisper out there.

(10:26):
We’ve been fortunate enough to have quite a few people live with my wife, Sarah and I, and it’s really neat. One Asian boy that became an older son to us, and he don’t want to tell you, but he’s in his forties now, but he was with us and he came to Christ and he had sisters and cousins all involved and he’s not going to get back home. We’re like, well how come? And he goes, because if I don’t get home quick, I won’t even get a place on a couch. And his name’s Sue. And I said, Souk, what are you talking about? He goes, well, my cousins are living with us. And my brother, he had a bunch of brothers, sisters and they’re from Laos and said, and Sarah looked at me and I said, is it okay? She goes, yeah. And I go, well you want to come stay here? And he lived two cities away from us and we offered it to him and it was like one of those funny things in a movie we feel like he shut the door and we start talking about it and he’s knocking and he already went home and packed his one bag. It was that fast and he was moving in and

(11:19):
It became life-changing from us and our kids because as he walked with the Lord, he’s a minority and they don’t see that. My kids don’t see that they saw souk. He’s our brother and we’ve had different races live with us. And so the life transformation that I’ve seen like souk and his other boy are amazing. But it also always impacts our lives, doesn’t it? Daniel and our kids’ lives.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:46):
Tell me some more stories of this transformation in people’s lives that’s happened over a period of time. Because evangelism isn’t just something that happens in a moment. Sometimes it takes a lot of work and effort to bring people to where they’re walking close with God. So what are some of the

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (12:04):
People? Yeah, before we had a camp, I used to take kids in advance to the boundary waters, Minnesota Canadian boundary water. We take ’em out in canoe and backpacks and you camp out there, you make your own latrine just to make ’em really get away from everything. There was a young man, he was a teenager then, but he was involved in a gd, he’s a gangster disciple and said he gave his life to Christ, disciple him. All of a sudden he shoots two people. Fortunately they didn’t die, goes out for pizza. That became his big thing in the community at that time, I remember the chief police at this task force I was on said, how can somebody go out for pizza that? And I said, Hey, if you don’t respect the creator, you don’t respect what he created.

(12:51):
Well this boy went to prison and I’m sitting in the office in here, I look talking, you say 10 years later he comes walking out and dreads and everything and I said, how you doing? And I’ll leave his name out. But he said, man, he goes, I just got out. I go, I had to come find you. And I go, I’m glad you did. What’s going on? He said, God was speaking to me while I was in prison. I got in solitary a lot. And he said, and all those things that you was telling me they’re true.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:21):
And

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (13:21):
He said, I had time to think about all the people that tell me all these other things. It got me where I was at. And he goes, I just want to tell you I believe him now. And to me that’s transformation in God’s time wouldn’t be the way you and I’d want it, right? I’m sure he wouldn’t want that way, but he got there. We lived for this real short time on earth and that 10 years seemed I wasted my whole life. What he kept saying, I said, now lemme tell you they’re true. Satan wants you to believe that because now what was he 30 something? I said, you’re 34 and if you believe that, then you believe there’s nothing left to do but to trash your life or take whatever you want from life. But you’re 34, you can do amazing things. Now he went on to have a family and stuff. So God transforms lives in his time

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:06):
And you’ve really seen God do amazing things and a lot of it has come because of your many years of faithfulness. What advice would you give to someone who might be young in the ministry and just starting out like that? I mean you starting out with just a position and now seeing what God has done through youth Hope, I mean is really miraculous. So what advice would you give to someone young in ministry who maybe wants to give their life to serving God?

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (14:37):
Oh yeah. I think two things, and I think you maybe saw this with your parents. One of the best things you can give to as a leader is longevity. Because when you’re there a certain amount of time and then you leave, you’ve grown to where God wants you yet growing us all the time. So he’s wanting to transform your life and by you growing and transforming where he has you, it becomes impactful. And then just even today in our meeting, the one young man that came in, he wanted to see me, he goes, I can’t believe you’re still here. And he’s in his thirties now. No, he’s at 41. Mark, I can’t believe you’re still here. It gave him familiarity. It gave him comfort in him. I introduced him to pastors over there and said, Hey, I’m still going to be around. Let’s go to lunch, but here’s some guys I want you to meet. Because it gives that consistency.

(15:31):
It is in that journey that we grow the most. And the other thing I’d say to young leaders is if you’re gifted, even if you don’t feel like it, I struggle with the imposter syndrome. Even if you don’t feel like it or think you are and you can’t hear when people say it, you’ll get chances and opportunities and it may look like this is it. I had a great campus ministry recruit me. I had won a ministry for Eastern European Ministry that would be based out of Colorado Springs and they recruited and a mega church that was really on the boom. Then it would be a name you’d know that recruited me three times and it was so honoring. But I remember my pastor and his wife at that time, and so young leaders listen to this, unless you’re released, you don’t have a right to take the calling. And that was a great word to me because that excitement of the potential of growth and the things I could do and maybe make a world impact, but you got to go back home and say, has God released me yet where I’m at? Even if it’s hard right now, even if I’d kind of like to get out because there’s times in every ministry, I’m sure you even had it at times. One more adventure in a different,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:43):
What would you say are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced with Youth Hope over the years? What does it take to keep a ministry like this going?

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (16:54):
Well, it’s grown. It’s grown and grown and grown. I think it takes humility to say, I dunno how many times I’ve said to people, I’m really not good at anything but finding

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:05):
People that God still manages to do something with me.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (17:08):
My wife and I are working on a book and I titled it, it’s amazing what God gets done with what he’s got to work with in the 50 mistakes I made to build a ministry

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:17):
Because so 50 mistakes, I had to, you didn’t have just one or two, you

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (17:20):
Didn’t. I had to narrow it down. There was a lot more I wrote down, but I’m trying to narrow down to go which ones are the most impactful that I can do. I’m trying to do it in one to three page, almost Proverbs

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:30):
Going, what were some of a couple of the biggest

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (17:33):
Mistakes? Right? Right off the bat, I came here at 25, my master’s plus at

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:38):
25, everything

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (17:39):
I knew everything dude. And I was working at a college campus charge of two halls, the biggest two hall and a full-time interventionist counselor for suicide, ideology and counseling students is alive on college. And I came here and our first building here was a house in the middle of a small residential neighborhood with the stairs that go up the back door. And I remember the first day I reported, I go in early, no one’s there and I go to the back door and there’s aluminum storm door and it was stuck and I was like, God, why did you call me here? I’m so mad at God going, what am I going to do in this little neighborhood? What are you possibly as? I leaned my head against the door and I was like, okay, God, I’m going to give you two years. I told him, I’m going to give you two years. I went down and I got my tools and I fixed the score. The first thing I did is executive director here and it was only called director then, but I was so dishonoring to God that if God calls you and I felt like he’d called me here, but I was already begrudging God for calling me to such a lowly position that nobody knows I’m in this aluminum storm when you’re 25 you kind of want the lights. And I had a lot of attention there. And

(18:48):
So that was the first one. The first mistake was right on the first morning to go, man, when God calls you embrace it. He’s got a big plan, doesn’t he? And we say that, but we don’t believe it in the moment. That would be the beginning of the mistakes. But the journey was tremendous because he took a young man that was training, counseling and started teaching him how to lead to lead, to lead to lead. And he did that through a lot of people too. Right.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:19):
So now you’re going through a time of transition and the reason I’m here is because you’ve asked my sister Esther Joy King to come on board and to take a leadership role here. And what are some of the dreams and visions that God has placed in your heart for the future of youth Hope?

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (19:41):
It’s a really cool question, Daniel, because first year I was here, a board member asked me to put together kind of a five-year dream vision thing without a community. Just say, Hey, what would be for you? And one of the things is to move across the river from Illinois, Iowa, around the Mississippi and reach people in Davenport too because it impact back and forth too. And with your sister, we were just met with people from Davenport, they called us to take over a youth center there and it was fun to be here still to be a part of that beginning.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:13):
So that was an idea you had back when you first started

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (20:17):
In the first five years I think goes from God. Yeah, it was right

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:19):
Off. That’s one of the interesting things is God puts dreams and vision in your heart and some of them are for next year, but some are for a long

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (20:26):
Time I’ve written on that five year plan, I have to look at it again. I think I showed it to your sister, but I think it was in two years later. It was supposed to happen 30 some years ago in my human mind. But God had started that ball moving way back then knowing one in his time and in human time. We think it’s a long time ago, but not for God. Right.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:48):
Well, I’m super excited that my sister Esther is going to be here. What a tremendous blessing that is. Our family comes from a great legacy of ministry and so I’m so proud of her and it really is amazing. I mean I think you’re very wise because a lot of ministries in America, sometimes the leader holds on to everything. I was just last week with a pastor from Japan and he was telling me that 50% of the pastors in Japan are over the age of 80. I mean, that’s a situation where they’ve held on too long and not given it over to the next generation. And so I think you’re very wise to start looking for the next generation. And I’m very honored that you would bring my sister here to be part of Youth Hope. And I think that God always moves from level to level, from glory to glory. And so there’s been great victories in the past. I think there’s going to be great things happening in the

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (21:54):
Future. Yeah, I always hope we’ve had an opportunity in Galesburg to take an armory in Monmouth and we’ve had opportunities to go expand bigger, but I was never able to do it in building what I felt God had me build here. But I dream that and your sister actually started talking about some of those because she has contacts here. So it’s just cool to go, wow, we almost did this and we didn’t, but maybe now it will still come to fruition, but don’t give me too much wisdom that 55, it felt like God nudged me and said, put in your notice. So I put in a notice board, I’m resigning. They’re like, what? And I was like in seven years and I really thought God was saying 62 and I didn’t know financially how or if I could, but it didn’t matter. Once God nudges you because he has his plan and his time, I see it all coming together and it feels great.

(22:41):
I hope to do a lot more ministry and a lot of other things and still help here, but we’re still growing and I’d rather be going on the way out when it’s still growing than staying so long that it’s going flat or declining. And I’ve seen that in churches being here 30 some years. You see that and you see it in ministry too, that somebody hangs on. It becomes too much of an image of who they are. And this was never mine. It was all God. And for a season of time, never know what guy can do with what he’s got. He didn’t have much to work with, but he did a lot. Right. And he plans to do a lot more.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:18):
Yeah. Tell me one more story of someone’s life. Who has changed or what God has done through Youth Hope?

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (23:25):
Yeah, it just happens to be another young man that comes right to mind because he just passed away in 2021. So he was a young man, he was in his forties, but he was around the same time as Sue. His name was kk. He was from Laos too. But in 2020, in March of 2020, he called me from California where he was living his wife and kids and said, Hey, we’ve got to meet with a surgeon to find out my final diagnosis of some liver problems.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:56):
And

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (23:56):
He said, we think it’s going to be real bad. And I had heard from him for years. He said, would you come out here? Absolutely, absolutely. So flew out there and went with him and they said, Hey, if you make it till Christmas, it’ll be amazing. And he ended up going through Christmas till the next September. But during that time there was a real time of reconcile him with God again and it never had left him. He still believed in God, but he had from his past and culture, Buddhism was kind of

(24:28):
Almost like the whole theory of, hey, it’s all those different ways to get to God. And he wanted to carry ’em both together. So because we were so close, and I brought soup too when he came here and visited too before he died in Suk with tomb. But it’s so close, just be able to say to him that we have a jealous God and there is the different God. And here’s word in scripture and I think you know that in your heart. And just to see him, he’s in glory now. And to see it all get adjusted and well and witness to his family. So it’s a privilege when you stay long enough somewhere to be a part of those phone calls and those people and to know one of the greatest wisdom for young leaders like you said earlier, I would say is don’t try to count what you’re doing.

(25:16):
Just keep doing what you’re supposed to do. Plant the seeds due to water because one comes out of prison, one was on his deathbed, you don’t ever know. And it is another place I failed. I shared the gospel for a year here with Troubled You took ’em to boundary water. I’d had guest speakers videos. I was showing everything. Not one teen gave it life cry. I literally was thinking about quitting my first year going, but I’d made a two year commitment. So I stuck it out. But I was like, I got to be the worst evangelist in the whole world. I tried everything. And we go to the beach up there at the end of a week and about was, and the guy guiding said, Hey, I feel like God’s leading me to do last message. He said, go for it. If God’s lenient go every team. But one gave their life to Christ on the beach that night. Every team and I realized, and they start talking about all they learned from the different speakers. And I realized, Daniel, we have no power. We can’t do. And God wanted to show me, it has nothing to do with you, mark, but be faithful what I ask you to do and in my time I’ll do my thing. And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:22):
I think it’s really significant. You’ve shared these two stories about these two young men from Laos last year. I went to Laos,

(26:31):
Got to minister there. And ministry there is very difficult. It’s a communist nation, like you said. They’re Buddhist and the Communists actively persecute the church. And for the believers there, they pay a very high price. And so it’s very hard to reach people in Laos, but yet God brought them here and you were able to reach them. And so I think people really need to be looking for opportunities that God puts people right in our backyard to reach the world. Whether it’s immigrants, I mean we have lots of new immigrants coming to every different part of America. Immigrants are coming and some people get upset about it. But I think as the church, we can recognize this is God bringing the mission field to us and it could cost thousands of dollars to fly to the mission field, but right in our backyard, there is a mission field of people that need Jesus. And that’s what Youth Hope is all about, is looking for the mission field right here in the Quad Cities area. We have a lot

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (27:33):
Of immigrants here a lot.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:35):
And doing everything you can to reach this mission field that God has brought us.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (27:39):
I love your image of that too, because even being human, I don’t agree with illegal immigration period. But as a believer, illegal or not, it doesn’t matter if they’re there to share, God may have.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (27:54):
There’s lots of scriptures that talk about welcoming.

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (27:57):
Who cares? Again? They come in our centers, who cares why they came? We care how they leave. So they come here. Wouldn’t it be cool if so many of ’em were coming to Christ? They’re going back to their countries to say, I found the hope that we all need down here. And it’s not more material things or more money or the plethora you can find in America. It’s in your heart. You can be lost sometimes. I think faster in America, everything can become your God. You don’t need God very much over here compared to the places you’ve been, I’m sure.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:27):
Well, I’m so impressed being here at Youth Hope. It’s so amazing to see what God has done. It’s amazing. So many miracles. And thank you so much for sharing some of your story today. I really appreciate it and God has more for you. Your story’s not finished yet. Hopefully,

Mark Drake | Youth Hope (28:45):
I’m hoping. I know an evangelists now and I hope to carry his beans and rice on the missions field. You’re welcome to come anytime. We’d love

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:52):
To have you brother, mark. Thanks for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Alright, God bless. Thank you.

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Global Day of Youth Evangelism | Dare 2 Share Live with Greg Stier

November 9, 2024 is going to be a global day for youth evangelism and you are invited to participate. Greg Stier from Dare to Share has put together an app called “Life in Six Words” and a series of training videos that will help young people to share their faith. It is all free and today on the Evangelism Podcast we talk about how you can be involved in this worldwide outreach.

Learn More About the Event: https://www.dare2share.org/events/live/

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
November 9th, 2024 is going to be a Global Day for Youth Evangelism and you are invited to participate. Greg Stair, from Dare 2 Share has put together an app called Life in Six Words and a series of training videos that will help young people to share their faith. It’s all free. And today on the Evangelism Podcast, we talk about how you can be involved in this worldwide outreach.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:39):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:04):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus today. I have a very special friend with me, Greg Stier from Dare 2 Share. Thank you so much for joining me,

Greg Stier (01:16):
Daniel. It’s great man. So glad to be here. Last time we were together was in South Korea and you and I and about 23 others hit the road, hit the streets and did some evangelism. It was awesome

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:26):
And it was really a tremendous time. We were at the Uzon Conference on world evangelization and out of 5,000 participants, we managed to get 25 to go out with us and share with people. And I remember we had about 53 gospel conversations and presentations and eight people that responded in a positive manner to the gospel message that we shared with them.

Greg Stier (01:56):
And remember the miracle we’re trying to have that first gospel conversation and the guy couldn’t speak English very well and a guy came out of nowhere who was an 18-year-old who knew a little bit of English, but he translated for us and he wasn’t even with the event. He stayed with us for what three hours and got so excited that he wanted to continue to do evangelism with his friends on the streets of South Korea.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:21):
And I think what God did in his life was actually probably the most significant part of the entire time. He got a chance to share his faith. He was discipled some while we were there and he became enthusiastic about talking to people about Jesus. It was really amazing.

Greg Stier (02:39):
And I got to see Daniel firsthand do evangelism. And I just want to tell you, this is a guy that isn’t just talk about it on a podcast, he does it and he gets right in and shares the good news with a big smile on his face. And the joy of Christ is all over him. So testify to Daniel King, man, it was awesome.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:58):
Well, that’s what it’s all about. Alright, Greg, you have an exciting event coming up. I mean, your ministry Dare to Share has been challenging people to share their faith for many years now, and you have this exciting event that you’re trying to get people all over the world to participate in it. Tell me about it.

Greg Stier (03:20):
Yeah, it’s called Dare to Share Live. And so we’ve trained millions of teenagers and adults for the last 33 years. We used to do big mega events and bring students in and train ’em and equip ’em and unleash ’em. And once we decided, Hey, it’s time to go global, we said, you know what? Let’s make it on demand. Let’s make it a day of global youth evangelism. Let’s provide the inspiration. So I got key speakers from around the world. We do a drama, there’s training, and then the key part is everybody’s equipped. And then they go out, students go out, adults go out, share the gospel, and there’s City. We give them all the tools. We have a life and six words app for them to be able to share their faith. It’s in 24 different languages. They’re trained, equipped, and then they go out and then they come back and share stories.

(04:05):
And on the app you’re able to see stories from around the world of teenagers, from Nigeria to Nevada, from Dubai to Denver, sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s completely free. It is an English, Spanish and Portuguese. And so man, if you’re in a country that where the students speak English, just do dare to share live English, Spanish or Portuguese, go to Dare to share live.org, sign your group up, it’s free and it walks you through the steps. And November 1st you’ll download the videos. And November 9th is the Global Day of Youth Evangelism. And if you’re not able to participate, would you be praying for these tens of thousands of teenagers around the world getting trained, equipped to mobilize to share the gospel on November 9th?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:59):
And so this is a big initiative specifically for November 9th. And tell me what you’re hoping to see happen around the world as people participate.

Greg Stier (05:11):
Well, we did it last year on November 11th, and I’m going to tell you what we saw was teenagers in Nigeria where it’s the fifth most persecuted nation in the world, going out and sharing Christ on the streets, calling their friends or Muslim friends in Sharon Christ, Argentina. We had another 3000 students going out, Sharon Christ, wherever across the United States. It was awesome and really, I mean brought tears to my eyes because you can scroll through the hashtag on the Life in six words app and see teenagers from around the world risking everything to go out and share the good news of the gospel. But they’re equipped. It’s not just inspiration and go, it’s like we train you. How do you bring it up? How do you share Christ? How do you explain the gospel? How do you bring somebody to a point of decision? So it’s highly inspirational, it’s very practical and what really makes it work is going out and like we did in Luanne Daniel, we hit the streets with the gospel and you come back just like we did. Then we came back and we all shared stories. These youth groups share stories, but they also hear stories from around the world from other teenagers. And so for a teenager in Lincoln, Nebraska where there’s 20 kids in the room, they may feel, well, there’s not a lot of us. But then they realize, man, there’s not tens of thousands. There’s thousands of tens all over the world sharing Christ. And so our vision ultimately is to see this happen in every country so that every teen everywhere can hear the gospel from a friend.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:48):
So if my friends who are listening want to participate in this worldwide outreach on November the ninth, where can they find more information? Where can they sign up and get involved in what’s happening?

Greg Stier (07:00):
Yeah, just go online to Dare to share live.org. That’s the number two Dare to share live.org and register and it’ll walk you through the steps. So what you need to do is very simple, and again, the videos which you’ve already filmed pre-filed, the videos are available November 1st you download those and English, Spanish or Portuguese, and then November 9th you gather your students and you show ’em the videos. You can have your own worship band if you’d like and everything else you can make it a big, big event or it could be 10 of you in a room and then you go out and share Christ and it is awesome. It is really, really cool.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:45):
So a youth pastor could use this to equip his young people in order to share their faith or someone who leads a small group of young people or even a young person who’s listening. If you’ve got a group of friends and you want to go out and do some evangelism, they can use this to equip themselves and how to share their faith. And then to go out and actually lead someone to Jesus.

Greg Stier (08:08):
And I would say even if you’re an adult and you say, I have an adult small group, adults need to lead the way. We just did a research project. The number one impact on whether a teenager shares the faith is if they have adults in their lives that are actively sharing the faith. So it’s something you could do as adults, college groups. We have a ton of college groups doing it. What’s really, really cool is yesterday I was backing out, I was on the other side of town, I was backing out, this is not cool, I almost hit you guys. I was talking on my phone. That was a bad move. I got out, I thought they were angry, I was going to apologize, and I knew one of the guys, and he’s a ministry guy that used to go to Dare to Share and he’s like, Hey, this guy trains teenagers how to share the gospel.

(08:48):
And this other guy who I’d never met goes perfect. He goes, I have an 11-year-old, she started a bible study on our public school campus with 25 other 11 year olds and they want to share their faith but they don’t know how and I didn’t know what to do, so show me what to do. And I said, dare to share live. And I explained it and he’s like, yes, dare to share live going to be led with a group of 25 11 year olds on November 9th here in Denver, because I almost hit a dude, almost hit her dad with a car.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:21):
Well that’s awesome when God can turn something like almost hitting someone into an opportunity to get people involved in witnessing. Alright, so you have mentioned several times this app that you’ve developed life in six words that’s available wherever apps are downloaded, just life in six words.

Greg Stier (09:46):
Yeah. If you go to your app store and just look up life in six words, it’s the numeric six life in six words, and you can download it again. It’s in 24 languages and growing. And what’s cool is you go through the app and you put your six words in, and when you want to share the gospel, you just ask someone, how would you describe your life in six words? And they choose from words like relationship, freedom, fun, god, meaningless, happiness, family struggles, adventure, money, purpose, routine, broken pain. And then you, after they push the words, you ask them, tell me why you chose those words. You hear their story and people just open up and then you say, can I share with you my words and I have my words and that’s how I share my testimony. Then can I share with you God’s words? And it’s just a simple gospel acrostic that it is like a digital track. If you can swipe and read, you can share the gospel using this, and you get all the way through and it spells gospel and then you ask ’em at the end, are you ready to trust Christ? If they push yes, water comes out and baptizes them, no, that’d be cool. That doesn’t happen, but that’s a later update. We’ll have that, but it’s a really, really simple way to share the gospel. Just go on your app store life in six words.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:10):
One of the things I’ve noticed is that a lot of people don’t really know what the true gospel is. And we had some conversations about this when we were out looking for people to talk to in South Korea, but just take a moment and share what is the gospel? What do people really need to know about the gospel?

Greg Stier (11:29):
Yeah, so you and I talked about an illustration. I use a ladder versus a chair. So most world religions have a ladder approach. You got to climb, you got to stop or try or cry. You have the 10 commandments of Judaism, you have the doctrines and covenants of Mormonism. You have the five pillars of Islam. You can go on and on eightfold path of Buddhism. There’s that. You climb, only Christianity is a chair. Well, there’s no rungs to climb. It’s not about you trying or turning or giving or I mean it’s about resting, sitting, relying on the finished work of Christ. When you put your faith alone in him and what he’s done for you on the cross, you’re saved. And that is a mind blowing because our flesh wants to climb. But Jesus said, you have to humble yourself. It’s not about what you can do, it’s about what he has done.

(12:26):
You receive that by faith, and so I dare to share. We use that simple gospel acrostic. God created us to be with him. O is our sins separated us from God. S his sins cannot be removed by good deeds. P is paying the price for sin. Jesus died and rose again. He is everyone who trust in him alone, his eternal life and hell is life with. Jesus starts now and forever. And that’s the gospel that we kind of train students in. And right in the center of it is a bloody cross in an empty tomb that Jesus paid the price in our place for our sin and he rose victorious from the dead and through faith alone in him we have life. And that is repentance. When you change your mind about trusting in the ladder and trusting in yourself and you put your faith in Christ alone, you rest on the finished work of Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:18):
Yeah, religion always says, do you have to do this? You have to do that. But when Jesus died on the cross, he said, it is finished. And so true. Christianity says, done, done, done. Jesus accomplished everything that needs to be accomplished on the cross, and now we rest in it. We can sit down because we don’t have to strive or strain or work really hard in order to earn anything. All we have to do is accept what Jesus accomplished for us on the cross.

Greg Stier (13:47):
Well, and Daniel, what’s so cool about that is once you get that and you understand the grace of God and you receive it by faith, then you actually want to go all in and I’m going to run up and pick up my cross every day and follow Christ. Not because I have to be saved. I’m grateful and it’s a whole different motivation, man. I’m jacked to pick up the cross. I’m pumped up. Let’s go because I’ve received the free gift of eternal life. And now it’s like I told a guy one time, I was in a mall, talked to two gang guys. One dude was big, he was jacked, and the other guy, he wasn’t interested in listening. So I talked to the big guy and he was in a gang, and I said, I went through the gospel and he understood. I said, does that make sense?

(14:27):
He goes, yeah. I go, would you put your faith in Christ right now? He goes, yeah. I said, where are you going to go when you die? He goes, heaven. I go, how do you know because you live a good life. He goes, no, Jesus died from my sins. And I go, okay, then you’re in the family, so you got it. But then I said, let me ask you a question. If I had a million dollars in a duffel bag and I gave it to you as a free gift, would you take that free gift and then punch me in the face, push me to the ground, Goodfellas boots, stop me, spit on me and walk away? And he goes, no, I’d buy you a hamburger, man. Go. Okay, why? He goes, because I’m grateful. I said, God is just giving you something better than a million dollars.

(15:01):
He’s giving you the free gift of eternal life through faith in his son, yours simply by faith. Now you’re going to spit in his faith, you’re going to serve him. He goes, I’m going to serve. I go, why? Because you have to, because you’re grateful. He goes, because I’m grateful. Right? Then he got it. Serving Christ, surrendering Christ is a response to that free gift of eternal life. After we receive it, then we get the privilege and opportunity of going all in for Jesus because we are grateful. And that’s a whole different thing than religion.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:29):
Amen. Well, I am grateful, and if you’re listening, you’re grateful for what Jesus has done for you, then you will want to share that with others. And so November 9th is the big day. I encourage you to participate in it, get out, share your faith, and one more time, give us the website where people can sign up. I want you to go there right now, sign up and get involved. Download the video training and the information. Get the app on your phone so that you can be better at sharing your faith.

Greg Stier (16:02):
Yeah, it’s just dare2sharelive.org. That’s the number two. Dare2sharelive.org.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:10):
So go sign up right now and participate November 9th this year and worldwide, I believe God will give a great harvest of souls. Greg, thanks so much for being on the Evangelism podcast.

Greg Stier (16:23):
Thanks my brother.

Evangelism Podcast Host (16:24):
Is there evidence for God’s existence? How do we really know Jesus was raised from the dead? Can we trust the Bible? Do miracles happen? Does God care about me as an individual? In Dr. Daniel King’s book, proof God is real. You’ll find the answers to these three vital questions and more Is God there? Does God care? And do I dare to follow him? In his powerful, easy to read book, Daniel provides seven convincing proofs of God’s existence. You’ll learn about the evidence of cause. Design, logic, morality, scripture, miracles, and religious experience with proof God is real. You’ll read about topics like, was Jesus the son of God or just a crazy preacher? If God does exist, is he interested in your life? If God is there, why do bad things happen to good people? In proof, God is real. Daniel King shows you, God is there and he cares for you. Plus how to take a leap of faith and start a relationship with a God who deeply loves you. Order proof God is real today by calling 1-877-431-4276 or find the book on Amazon.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:28):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the evangelism on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (18:48):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine in a Time of War

Ukraine used to be known as the “breadbasket” of Europe but now, because of the war, many people in Ukraine are going hungry. Who will step into the gap and help feed Ukraine during this time of need? Today, Daniel King interviews Yuriy Boyechko. His organization “Hope for Ukraine” is providing humanitarian aid and spiritual support to the people of Ukraine in the midst of the ongoing war.

Key points:

Boyechko’s organization distributes 1,500 food kits to families in frontline towns in Ukraine each week, as the country has gone from being the “breadbasket of Europe” to facing severe poverty and famine.
The organization also runs an internally displaced persons center that provides shelter, meals, and opportunities for spiritual growth, with over 3,000 individuals visiting the center and many coming to faith in Christ.
Boyechko’s own background as the son of a Pentecostal pastor in Ukraine has shaped his commitment to sharing the gospel while providing practical aid.
As the war continues, Boyechko sees the long-term need to provide counseling, job training, and other support to help rebuild lives and find spiritual healing in Ukraine.

Learn more about Hope for Ukraine: https://hfu.org/

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:19):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus Today. I have a very special guest with me. Yuri, thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (00:32):
Thanks for having me. Thank you.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:34):
You are working in Ukraine. Ukraine has been in the news a lot lately because of the war. Tell me, what is the situation on the ground in Ukraine and what are you doing to help?

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (00:47):
Yeah, so I’m founder and CEO of for Ukraine. So we’ve been, it’s a humanitarian aid organization that we’ve been working on the ground in Ukraine since 2016, way before the full scale war and after full scale war that took place in February, 2022. Our main ministry in Ukraine has been distributing food kits to family needs. So on average right now we provide 1500 foot kids to families living in frontline towns where the full scale war is taking place. So right now, I mean we are two and a half years into the full scale war and what we see on the ground is how they say after afterwards, famine comes in and we see a huge number of people that are falling behind poverty lines because all just the regular citizens, the ones who had some kind of savings, they have exhausted that. And also Ukraine before the war was a bread basket of Europe as far as the grain production and everything that’s been cultivated in there.

(02:19):
But right now because of shellings and bombings, a lot of fertile soil that was cultivated before farmers are not able to use. So basically we see the Ukraine as a country going from being a bread basket of the Europe to become a baggers of Europe. And that’s me as a Ukrainian. I came here when I was 16, so I lived in Ukraine 16 years. My life, it’s set to see how evil forces of devil I can use something like war to just rev whole country and destroy mailings of lives. So I mean the situation is bleak. I mean it’s not here in the US and other parts of the world. It’s not on the frontline line on the news, but because other things have come up, but we work on the ground every day and we see that things are not getting better, they’re getting worse, they’re getting worse for regular citizens and families that we serve.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:33):
And so in this time of desperation, how is your organization able to help the people on the ground in Ukraine? Tell me what’s happening on a day-to-day basis.

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (03:47):
So just to give you an idea that we feed in 15, a hundred families each week. We give them food kit and a foot kit, and the food kit can feed a family of poor people up to 10 days. So the way the process works, we have our hub that’s located in Louis Ukraine, that’s a western Ukraine close to Polish border. And then we work with about a hundred different partners all across Ukraine. Many of them are faith-based organizations. So every day we have two to three volunteering events that come to our big warehouse in Weave. They load up with the food kits and they bring into hard head zones. So most of our areas that we serve are folks in the Nets region, Herson region, McLay region, Haki region, Summa Region. A lot of these territories, for example in Herson region, they used to be occupied by Russians.

(04:56):
So folks live there, the infrastructure has been completely destroyed. Some of the families, they have not had light or running water there for two years. So basically for them, these food kits that our volunteers bring, it’s basically a lifeline because there is no steady supply. There’s not a supermarket where you can go in and buy stuff. And so that’s what we do every day and that’s our main program. The second one will also provide afterschool program for children of war where we give kids opportunity after school to go to arts and craft classes. So we have tutoring opportunities because we understand that right now in Ukraine, most of the kids are raised by single mothers because most of the male population in the army defending the country, a lot of them have been, just to give you an idea, right now in Ukraine there is a 70,000 ties.

(06:12):
And just to give you a comparison, France, which is twice the size of Ukraine as far as population goes, they have about 20,000 altogether. So you’re looking at a lot of folks, a lot of dads who come back home and they not capable of supporting families no more. So a lot of that falls on mother’s shoulders. So we as the organization trying to support them by giving the kids free access to afterschool program. Also we run internal displaced center in review Ukraine, the same place where we have our warehouse, we have a big living quarters where we take in folks who run from the front line, we place them there and then we try to find them permanent place to stay, whether it’s in Ukraine in the western side of Ukraine, some of them they moved to central Europe and stuff.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:21):
What is happening spiritually in Ukraine, often when there is peace, people become complacent spiritually, but then in times of war and displacement, people start turning to God for help. And so what are some of the spiritual needs and what is your organization doing to help people spiritually?

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (07:47):
So first of all, just to give you an idea, in our refugee center we have a chapel there. So all the folks who come there and stay there, most of them don’t know Christ, dunno about God. So every Sunday we have church service there where we don’t force anybody to go there, but we encourage them to come. And a lot of people who came through the doors of our center eventually dedicated their life to Jesus. So just to give you an idea, since the start of the full scale war, I think we had over 3000 individuals who came through these doors and some of them, so the way our center works is they don’t have a time limit how long they can stay there. It’s not like we give them two weeks and you got to get out. Some of them been living there for a year, year and a half, and some of them, and that’s what I see the best method to preach gospel is through your lifestyle. Some these folks, they come to the center and everybody, all staff that all who work there, they born and believers, and by the way they’ve been treated by the way we taken care of them. They start asking me, can I find out what’s different about you guys? Let me hear about the good news of Jesus Christ. And that’s a lot of them has been become devoted Christians by watching our team and our staff conduct them themself in a Christ manner.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:31):
Are you actively doing events where you are sharing the gospel with people and helping them to come to faith in Christ?

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (09:41):
So we do food distribution events and humanitarian distribution events almost weekly, whether it’s for displaced folks or the people in the frontline. So before each event we have someone who shared the word and the pray for them and letting them know that the best hope is found in Jesus because some of them come through, they went through hell and back. And a lot of them they question if God exists, why He has allowed me to go through all this horror that I’m going through. And we use each and every opportunity to let them know that no matter how bad the current situation is that Jesus still got their back, but places like her son, her son is, it’s been liberated but still under constant attacks, right by auxiliary drones and stuff like that on Sundays, churches packed there and after every service there, our volunteers there, they cook fresh meals for them folks who come there. So it’s this time of desperation. I think we see a lot of people open to the gospel more and more. And because we have a lot of opportunities because of these constant eight give giveaway events, there’s events that we serve thousand people at a time. It’s like a small crusade. And so to some of our partners, they put Bible verse on the foot bags that they give away to people. So every chance, all our partners are faith-based, they use every opportunity to tell people about God.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:10):
Tell me a little bit about your story. I saw that you graduated from Regent University and how did you get started doing this type of ministry in Ukraine?

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (12:23):
Yeah, so my story is I come from a family of Protestant bishop. My father is a Pentecostal bishop in Ukraine. He’s still alive, he lives in iv. When I was four years old, he was actually put to prison by communists for preaching gospel for smuggling the Bible into Ukraine during those days. So there was 1986 and he did two years there for that. So basically as far as serving people, serving God, and that’s always been integrated in our family. Then I came here, I did undergrad in Zion Bible college that’s in Rhode Island. And then I went to do film in region university. So after that I spent some time in the media industry. But my whole life, whatever I did as far as a business or my daily life, I was trying to use my talent and my ability to represent Christ right in every marketplace I was in.

(13:45):
So the way hopefully Ukraine started is that there was annexation of Crimea that took place in 2014. And at that time we already saw first wave of refugees and also on the ground we’ve seen a lot of, there was a lot of kids was treatable medical conditions that because the parents didn’t have money to pay for extra medical treatments, these diseases would progress in their lives. So that’s how we started to try to help these families who were poor, who were kids who were sick. And then little but little, I believe this is all been designed by God from the beginning because I never studied, I never plan on studying nonprofits. And nonprofit is really hard grueling kind of work. It’s not like business where you have a goods and you sell it and then you get money back here it’ss a different story. But God used everything to set the platform when 2022 would come because just to give you an idea, since the full scale war, think right now we have served 97 million meals in Ukraine.

(15:15):
So with that amount and 1500 families a week, and that’s basically 1500 opportunities to tell someone about Jesus each week. So I would never be able to do it through a regular means of evangelism like going on a stadium. So I think it’s this tool and this organization, God used greatly to take so many people out of poverty, give people hope and tell them about Christ. We don’t can keep the records of how many selections or whatever, but I know just if the snapshot from the people who come through our doors in the center, those 3000 something individual, I mean I know about 80% of them have found Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:22):
That’s amazing. It’s horribly tragic what is happening in Ukraine. And eventually I pray the war will come to an end and when that happens, there’s going to be so much ministry that needs to be done in Ukraine for many years to come. I mean the scars from this war are going to be long and deep lasting. What role do you see that your organization will have in helping to heal after the war is over?

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (17:01):
I mean it’s all of the about, because what we see right now is about 80% of kids have some kind of post-traumatic disorders now developed by war, right? We have a lot of people who struggle with insomnia because of the constant air rates that and anxiety, fear and anger. I mean, you got to understand that the healing process after everything’s said and done is going to be the whole generation because some of the questions that we get a lot, God is so good and why this happening to our country? Why this happen to my family? And that’s something that we will have to work with to try to rebuild these lives, to rebuild them spiritually, emotionally, and also on the regular level as far as getting folks at home job education. Because just to give you an idea that most of the folks, they lived okay life before 2022.

(18:35):
And if all of a sudden you lose everything, you have no home to go to, you have no job, your career, everything. And basically all you have is you have one mattress to sleep on now and two meals a day to eat. And you have no way what you’re going to do with your life. This is basically, I mean, it’s very hard for these individuals to process. So us as a organization, I think we are going to get involved a lot into counseling, rebuilding lives. And I think the most important is for these people to find closure. For them to understand that, okay, no matter what happened, the God still has a plan for me. And the way forward is to finding Jesus anchoring my life into him and then he will be that person next to me who will never leave me or forsake me. So no matter what happened to me. So I think that’s where we will go right now. We still in emergency response and we do what we can because I always tell that I feel like I’m a firefighter. I have to this fire one day we plan on doing Christmas gifts for Christmas season and then we are dealing with energy crisis. So we have to divert into providing January this, right? So that’s where we at right now. But I think long run, it’s going to be rebuilding lives and helping these families to get reestablished again.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:19):
Well, thank you so much for what you’re doing to help the people of Ukraine during this very crucial time. God has prepared you for such a time as this. If someone is listening and they have a heart to help Ukraine, maybe they want to help to feed people, what is the website or a way that they can get in touch with you, find out more about your organization?

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (20:47):
Yeah, they can go to our website, hvu.org and they can find more there. They can contribute over our feeding program. They can learn more how they can help in Ukraine. So it’s hf.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:05):
And that stands for hope for Ukraine, HFU,

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (21:08):
Correct? Yeah. Hope for Ukraine. Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:11):
Wonderful. Well, let’s finish by praying for Ukraine and would you pray, but instead of praying in English, could you pray in Ukrainian for the people of Ukraine?

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (21:27):
Sure.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:01):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast.

Yuriy Boyechko | Hope for Ukraine (22:06):
Thank you Daniel.

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Ryan Brown | Open Doors to Help the Persecuted Church

Can God use a chicken farm as a tool for evangelism and church planting? Find out on today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast. Daniel King interviews Ryan Brown, the CEO of Open Doors, a ministry dedicated to helping the persecuted church. The organization was started by Brother Andrew who was known as God’s Smuggler for his work smuggling Bibles into the former Soviet Union. Today, Open Doors continues its work of standing up for Christians who suffer persecution and discrimination.

Learn more about Open Doors: https://www.opendoorsus.org/en-US/

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Can God use a chicken farm as a tool for evangelism in church planting? Find out on today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast, I’m going to interview Ryan Brown, the CEO of Open Doors, a ministry dedicated to helping the persecuted church. The organization was started by Brother Andrew, who was known as God smuggler for his work, smuggling Bibles into the former Soviet Union. Today open Doors continues its work of standing up for Christians who suffer persecution and discrimination.

Evangelism Podcast Host (00:48):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:15):
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, Ryan Brown from Open Doors. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (01:28):
Oh, Daniel, thank you. It’s such a privilege to be here with you today.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:31):
Well, tell me a little bit about what your organization Open Doors does.

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (01:37):
Yeah, so Open Doors this next year will actually be 70 years ago that the organization was started and was started by a gentleman that’s come to be known as Brother Andrew. And he smuggled Bibles behind the Iron Curtain and that work gave as he responded to the needs of the church that was experiencing persecution in those areas that work, smuggling Bibles and gospel materials gave birth to an international ministry where we are now working in over 70 countries around the globe where Christians are most persecuted or discriminated against because of their faith in Jesus. So every year we put out a world Watch list in which we highlight the 50 countries around the globe where Christians most suffer because of that decision to follow Jesus. And we are really honored and humbled by the privilege that we get to come alongside the church in all of these areas in which it’s being persecuted to support the church in those contexts so that they can continue to be the hands and feet of Christ right there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:47):
So on this year’s World Watch list, what are some of the countries where our Christian brothers and sisters experience the most persecution right now?

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (02:58):
Yeah, question. I think one of the big trends that we have seen this year, and I should say that this has really been a multi-year trend, which is continuing to escalate at alarming levels, but has been just the incredible violence in Sub-Saharan Africa. And more specifically, I think one of the areas where you see that played out the most is actually in Nigeria. In Nigeria, we saw more people martyred for their faith this last year than all other places in the globe combined. But there has been massive of displacement that has occurred throughout Sub-Saharan Africa just because of the instability. And it’s not just Christians that have been impacted, but Christians have been uniquely impacted in that there are about 16.2 million Christians across Africa that have been displaced and currently living in either internally displaced people’s camp IDP camps or some of those are formal, some of those are informal and Christians have been targeted and Christians have been the focus of much of the instability, the targets I should say, of much of the instability there.

(04:24):
For those folks that are living in IDP camps, it’s been a difficult proposition. Many of them because of their Christian faith have been overlooked or have been neglected in the distribution of aid and those types of things by others that might share the same faith of the folks running the camps. So a very, very difficult situation for Christians throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and we see an increase in the number of countries there. We continue to see other areas where some of the totalitarian regimes just continue to exert influence and make things very, very difficult for Christians where the solidarity and the community that Christians exhibit is seen as a threat to the state. And so governments will crack down harshly on the church and those areas, these are places like North Korea and places like that. Just to give people a little bit of context, North Korea is on the top of the world watch list.

(05:37):
It has been for a number of years and this is a country where Christians and their entire family can be in prison just for being in possession of a Bible. So very, very challenging and difficult for Christians there. We also see the world watch list areas like in Central and South America where as you take a look at the cartels, the drug cartels and those types of things in these areas as pastors have either spoken out against the cartels or have been reaching out to their communities in ways that are pulling young people into the faith and out of the cartels and out of the lifestyle that would financially support the cartels, the leaders of those cartels see the church as bad for business and so they’ve targeted those churches trying to tear them down. So those are some of the trends that we’ve seen emerging over the course of the last year.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:43):
Okay. Let’s talk about some of the things that you mentioned. First of all, Nigeria, I’ve been over there to Nigeria and actually taught at the largest mission school in Nigeria, run by the Redeemed Church, which has churches all over Nigeria. And I remember the leader of this mission school he had was telling us stories about some of their graduates that had gone up into northern Nigeria, planted churches and the churches were burned down, the Christians were killed. In one case, they actually took all the members of the congregation, put them inside a church building, burned the church down around them. And I saw pictures, very graphic photos of the charred bodies that were left there. And so tremendous persecution, South Korea or North Korea. Last week I was at the Uzon Conference

(07:49):
In Korea and it was really beautiful to see the South Korean church praying for the North Koreans. Their society really has tragically been split in half for many years now and technically they’re still at war. And the South Korean Church is earnestly praying for God to bring peace to the Korean Peninsula. And it was actually really beautiful to see. And then the drug cartels down in central and South America. My parents were missionaries in Mexico. We grew up in Juarez, Mexico, right across the border from El Paso, Texas. And at one point that was the area that had the largest number of murders of any city in the world because of the drug trafficking that was coming through Juarez. And so in our services we would often have drug cartel members that would come to our services, sometimes would persecute the Christians. One of our close pastor friends that we worked with in Juarez in his church, he had a drug rehab program and obviously the cartel was not happy about him helping to set people free from an addiction to drugs.

(09:15):
And so they came in, they told him to stop, he didn’t stop. And the next time they came in, they came in, they shot four people including the pastor that we were working with. And so this persecution is a reality on the ground around the world. What do you think should be the response of Christians here in America who hear these stories? We live sometimes very comfortable lives, but our brothers and sisters are being persecuted for their faith in these different countries. What should be the response of people that hear these stories about what is happening to Christians worldwide?

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (09:59):
Yeah, such a great and beautiful question. I think first and foremost, that response should always be one of prayer because when the people of God are persecuted or discriminated against because of their faith in Jesus, that first and foremost is a spiritual issue. And so prayer is not a strategy of last resort in this case, prayer is the frontline of what we should be doing. It’s the first way that we should be engaging. And I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard from our brothers and sisters that are experiencing persecution when asked in what ways we can be supporting and helping them. That is so often the very first things off their lips. It’s just don’t forget us. It is such an encouragement for folks to know that brothers and sisters around the globe are lifting them up in prayer. One of the byproducts of persecution can often just be this feeling of isolation that individuals are alone and whether that be because they’re imprisoned or just because they’re cut off from different aspects of their culture and to know that they are part of a global body of believers that is lifting them up, that’s a powerful encouragement.

(11:19):
I think one of the other ways that we truly looked to support and come alongside is the church can experience, and we kind of characterize that persecution in two different ways, painting with a broad brush in some ways we characterize as smash of persecution. So these are some of the things that we’ve been talking about where persecution is carried out with violence and whether that be through actual people being martyred for their faiths or physically beaten or assaulted or property being destroyed or burned, that idea of a physical violence is a smash of persecution. But there’s also another very real reality that threatens the church in these areas and that’s what we call the squeeze of persecution. And this is a dynamic in which churches, individuals have been denied access to education, they’ve been denied access to employment. And for Christians in those areas, if they can’t feed their families, they’re forced to leave.

(12:29):
And that’s what can gut the church in these areas is that when leaders have to leave the area because they can no longer survive or live in these areas that decimate the church. And that’s one of the ways that the church comes under attack. So one of the areas ways that we come alongside is to support the church in these areas with things like livelihood programs or literacy programs that allow the church and individuals in the church to remain rooted in those very very areas and allow them to continue to be the church in those areas. And so you’d mentioned that in many ways, many of us live in a position of comfort that’s not necessarily something that we should inherently feel guilty about. Paul talks about the God of all comfort has extended us comfort, but the reason that he’s extended his comfort is not just so that we can be comfortable, but so that we in exchange can be a comfort to others.

(13:30):
We can extend that comfort as the hands and feet of Christ to others. And so with some of these blessings and some of these resources that Christ has given us, we have an opportunity to mobilize those to our brothers and sisters. Scripture also talks about when one part of the body hurts, we all hurt. And as we believe that, as we act according to that, it gives us opportunity to come alongside and support these livelihood programs to support these education programs that again allow individuals to continue to remain the church right there in these areas that so desperately need the gospel, but areas in which the gospel is so aggressively attacked.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:19):
What does your organization open doors specifically do to help Christians in these persecuted areas? You mentioned just now literacy programs. You mentioned helping them out with vocational training. Are you still smuggling Bibles like Brother Andrew did back in the day?

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (14:41):
Yeah, so it was over a million Bibles or so that were distributed this last year. Obviously it is changed quite a bit with the internet, those types of things as far as what access looks like to some of those things. And so getting people access to the word of God has and will continue to remain a priority at a core part of our organization, the word is living and active and sharper than any two-edged sword. And it’s the tool for discipleship and to grow in our faith with Christ. And so the word of God is just critical and central and so that very much is still remains apart in some cases, yes, it does require a covert type of presence to be able to get those Bibles distributed. Other times it’s not the case and it’s just a matter of being able to mobilize some of those scriptures in some cases too.

(15:49):
I mean especially where illiteracy is high, there are things like digital audio bibles that we’re able to provide so that people can hear the word of God in places like North Korea, like we’ve mentioned we have, it’s very, very difficult to operate within the country and their are economic sanctions and things like that that have to be observed. But we are able to broadcast radio across borders and proclaim and read the word of God in those contexts as well. So yeah, the Bible is a big, big part of what we continue to do. We also do other things such as providing trauma counseling and care and operating safe houses in different locations. I don’t think that it’s hard for us to imagine that even with the presence of Christ in our lives, there are people that have experienced horrific expressions of persecution that can be emotionally and psychologically damaging and scarring.

(17:05):
And to be able to offer with Christ as the center piece of that counseling and support and to walk people through that and help walk with them back to a position of health, spiritual, emotional, and physical health, that can be a big part of our work in places like North, excuse me, in Sub-Saharan Africa rather where talked about the IDP camps and things like that. There’s some of that that very much looks like some of the emergency relief type of a situation. Like we’re bringing in food items and providing area access to food for folks in other areas, it is more kind of that socioeconomic development. There are places where I won’t necessarily mention specifically just for the security of those believers there, but there’s one country that I know of that I think by all accounts most of us would kind of consider close to the gospel.

(18:16):
But in that area we’re working with about 500 house churches and that when we’ve come alongside those churches, one of the things that they’ve said is they would say that over the coming years they would like to double, they’d like to see 500 more house churches planted. And so the way that they have asked us to come alongside was to actually develop a chicken farming school in which these pastors, one, they, they’re able to draw a livelihood from that, but it gave them a cover under which they could be going to a lot of different houses and a lot of different people to meet people to provide training. And under that umbrella that gave them opportunity to provide the training to help plant additional house churches. And so it can look different in different types of context. I think that the big thing is that we recognize that the Holy Spirit is living, working and active in all of these places.

(19:20):
And so it’s not about what open doors is going to import through customs or smuggle or those types of things. It’s about how do we come alongside what the Holy Spirit is doing right there in these different places? How do we come alongside and support the church in what it is doing and what Christ has called it to do and who Christ has called it to be right there in those contexts. So that looks different. God is working in ways in Eastern Asia that looks different than even central Asia. It looks different in Africa or South America, but God is at work in these places. His Holy Spirit is present. And so we really looked to contextualize it according to that work that Christ is doing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:10):
Well, I’ve done evangelism in a lot of different parts of the world and I’m a student of different evangelism techniques and ways for reaching out, but that’s the first time I’ve ever heard of the Chicken Farm Evangelistic tool starting a chicken farm as a way to give people an excuse to go door to door and to plant house churches. What a tremendous story. So if someone is listening and they want to find out more about your organization or they want to help to support you in your mission to help the persecuted church, what is your website? What’s a way for them to find out more about you?

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (20:53):
Yeah, it’s open doors us.org, open doors us.org. And as you go there, you’ll see it a number of resources. And one of the things that I often will point people towards is that World Watch list that I mentioned earlier that highlights the 50 countries around the world. That is a resource that we’ve been doing it for 30 some years now. And originally started as an in-house tool just as we were looking to understand how the face of persecution was changing and evolving and emerging or declining in different parts of the globe. We had our teams in place to help inform that and began putting a very systematic approach to look at that. And we began to realize that others ministries might find this helpful. And so we began making that available. And I think we were, many were surprised by just the reality that it wasn’t just churches or Christian ministries, it began to reference this information.

(22:01):
But people like the State Department and the UN and other types of academia began to utilize this as a resource because under that broader freedom of religious belief discussion, it can be difficult at times to look through the specific lens and understand for different faiths what that looks like as far as what does persecution look like for Christians. And so we’re able to provide that resource, but that resource, when folks engage with that, I mean, it’s not just the information talking about the horrors or the realities that believers face there, but it also provides very specific prayer points. So many times in these situations it can be difficult to even know how to pray in some of these situations. And these prayer points are prayer points, not just things that we’re praying for the church there, but they’re things that the church has vocalized as ways that they would ask for us to pray.

(23:06):
So we’re not just praying for the church, we’re praying with the church because these are the ways that they’re praying as well. And so would always point people towards that as a first resource to engage with that. You’ll see different things on there as far as different prayer calendars and things that people can utilize just to even get a little bite size piece of information that on a daily basis that they can work that into their daily cadence of prayer and their routine of locking arms with our brothers and sisters as one body of Christ around the globe. And so yeah, we pray that those resources would be a valuable resource to folks here in the United States.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:52):
Let’s finish up with a specific story. Can you tell me about an individual or a family that opened doors was able to help during a time of persecution?

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (24:05):
Yeah, there are many, and I think one, I have the opportunity to read many of these stories, but I think that we can always be impacted in different ways with individuals that we’ve had opportunity to meet and to dialogue with. And so there’s a gentleman that I won’t mention the country that he’s from because for security concerns, but he was a leader in the Muslim church in that area, and he was sent to a country in Europe as part of his training for Jihad. And I know for many of us when we hear Jihad that we can focus on a specific aspect of that, the idea of terrorism or things along those lines. And that can be an expression, but that there can be a broader definition of that where in some cases we might also consider a bit more like we would maybe missionaries or things along those lines.

(25:23):
But he was sent to this European country and had a hate for Christians. He’d been told a narrative of who Christians were and what they stood for all of his life. And as he came to Germany, he had to find a place to live. He had to find some employment as he was learning about the culture there. And it just so happened that he got a job and ended up living with a family that were Christians and they knew he was Muslim. They said, we’re not going to try to convert you, but we want you to be part of our family and all of these things. And he began to experience through them something that he couldn’t reconcile with everything that he had learned about Christians up to that point in time. And it honestly sent him on a tailspin because he started to question everything.

(26:18):
He got involved in drugs, he got involved in alcohol, and at a point of desperation, he cried out and said, God, I don’t know if you’re real, but you need to tell me who you are. And fairly quickly thereafter, he had a dream one night and he was in the market shopping and a shopkeeper invited him in. And in this shop mean it was just tables filled with diamonds and gold and jewels. And the shopkeeper gave him bags and he said, take, this is for you. And he started loading up his bags and he walked out of the store. And in his dream, he was just ecstatic that he was rich beyond anything he could have imagined. And a roommate woke him up and he was so disappointed and was even in a little bit of depression when he realized that that dream wasn’t real.

(27:14):
And then a couple nights later, he had another dream and that that shopkeeper was standing in a throne room and he realized that that shot keeper was Jesus. And Jesus said, come to me. And this individual, one of the things in the Muslim faith, there is not a completed sufficient work of Christ to cover in atone for sins. It is much more like a work-based theology. And so he said, I can’t. I’m sinful. And in his dream, his sin, actually, he was wearing his sin almost like it was skin. And Jesus said to him, I forgive you. And he looked down and this physical manifestation of the sin started to fall off of his body. And he woke up and he realized, okay, I need to know who this Jesus is. And he started engaging with the church and came to faith in Christ, began working with refugees from his country that were living.

(28:28):
And the church in this country that he’s originally from has issued several death proclamations against him. Not only him but his wife and also his newborn son. I first met him on, it was a Wednesday and literally the day before the church in his birth country had just issued their fourth proclamation calling for his death. They sent people across the border, they’ve attacked him, he had been knifed, and his wife and children opened doors, has helped provide some safety and security for while he continues to minister to refugees and bring them to faith in Christ, open doors has continued to support him in that work that he’s doing. So just neat to see that Christ wants to be known and Christ is going to great lengths to call people unto himself. And again, Christ’s spirit is active and is working in these places and all that the enemy may seek to do to extinguish the light of the church. We know that the church may come under duress, though the church may come under persecution. We know that Jesus themselves said that not even the gates of hell are going to prevail against the church. And we see that we have the privilege of walking alongside and being part of that church that not even the gates of hell are prevailing against.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (30:18):
That’s awesome. It’s so wonderful to hear a story of a Muslim who comes to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior. My parents worked for 12 years in Kabul, Afghanistan, and so we love Muslims and we love praying for Muslims. And Jesus is doing a great work among many Muslims around the world. So thank you Mr. Ryan so much for being on the Evangelism podcast. Really appreciate you,

Ryan Brown | CEO of Open Doors (30:48):
Daniel. Thank you for what you’re doing just to call people into evangelism and to recognize it’s not just a side satellite activity, but it’s core to who we are. It’s core to what Christ has called us to. And so thank you for the work that you continue to do.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:05):
Yes, sir.

Evangelism Podcast Host (31:06):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give an altar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:08):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (33:29):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Peter Kalagi | Uganda for Jesus

Evangelist Peter Kalagi from Uganda has been involved in extensive evangelism efforts across Uganda and other parts of Africa, including street preaching, feeding programs, and revival meetings. He had a powerful encounter with Jesus at the age of 14 that led him to pursue full-time ministry, though he initially resisted this calling. Peter Kalagi is now focused on a campaign called “I Am a Soul Winner”, seeking to inspire and equip more Ugandan believers to engage in evangelism and reach the lost.

Learn more about Peter Kalagi: https://enjiricenterministries.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, Peter from Uganda. And can you please say your last name?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (00:13):
Peter Kalagi

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:15):
Okay. So tell me, what are you doing for God in Uganda?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (00:21):
I do the work of evangelism.

(00:24):
I evangelize, we do quite a number of things. We do capacity building, we do street preaching, we do kids feeding, we do revival, prayer summits. And we recently, we started a fellowship in Ginger City where we have over 400 plus people come. We meet once a month, every second years of the month. And this is also a platform where God is redefining Destin of so many believers in the city of Jinja. And we believe that being that Jinja is where the source of the nano starts from Uganda, it goes all the way to Egypt. So I believe that there is a great move of, God is going to hit the entire continent of Africa, and God is changing the trend before, especially in Africa, we’ve been receiving the gospel from the Europe, from guys like you. They’ve been coming to Africa. And you remember that the Ledan bank said that Africa shall be saved. And I believe that God is raising missionaries from Africa to Europe now. So I believe that there is a great move of God that is hitting Uganda and it’s going to go across the continent of Africa. Yes sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:50):
And so tell me, how did you know that you were called to be an evangelist? What’s your testimony?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (01:57):
My testimony at the age of 14, Jesus appeared to me. I was staying with my auntie from the side of my mom. I lost both my parents when I was young. I grew up with a strange, strange way. Life wasn’t that easy for me at all. I ended up being a houseboy in a family where I felt that they were going to take care of me. So Jesus appears to me at the age of 14, and I remember that entire night, the full night, like an overnight when I woke up, they told me, Peter, you’ve been praying the entire night. I’m like, I’ve been sleeping. No, we had you pray all night. And guess what? I was seeing a vision of Jesus. I was like, when? Every time I talk about it’s like it happened yesterday, five minutes back. So God called me in two minutes at the age of 14.

(02:54):
And that it’s one of the challenging moment for me because I didn’t want to go and do ministry. I didn’t want to just be in ministry. So after some time I started going to church, a local church. I was staying in a village called Kenya. That’s where I was raised up. So I started joining a local church, but later alone, I wanted to do business. So I quit the ministry staff. I’m like, I don’t want this stuff. Let me maybe make money. I supported Venice till 2016. You know what happened? I went to one of the Arab countries to make money. I almost died from that country. I won’t mention the name. I was poisoned. I repented and I told God, if you ever give me a chance, please, I will serve you the rest of my life.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:46):
So

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (03:47):
God saved me from those country countries. And then I went back to Uganda. Surprisingly, when I left Uganda and went to that country, by the time I came back, they had broke into the house where I was staying. I lost almost everything. I went back to zero. So I discovered that I cannot run away from the coal. I said, God, now you have me. What do you want me do? So he came me a ministry, which I’m running right now in G Center and G stands for Gospel Center. So through that ministry, we reaching out to the schools, reaching out to the community, to the slum areas where people are not willing to go. And even during Covid, I was moving from Uganda to Kenya, Tanzania, those countries I was doing evangels, even in Covid. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:36):
You’ve been evangelizing in many parts of Africa?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (04:38):
Yeah, many parts of Africa.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:40):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (04:40):
Yeah, even Arab countries as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:44):
Wow. And what do you see God doing

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (04:50):
In these countries where I’ve been going?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:52):
Yeah, share with me some testimonies of what God has done.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (04:56):
I remember one of the scenarios when I was in Tanzania, I happened to preach in one of the churches and God connected me to a family. When you go, Jesus met this lady on the well. And the conversation went far and far. And then the lady discovered that this is a prophet. And then she went and brought other staff, other people to hear Jesus. So for me, when I was in Tanzania, I met a bishop. God connected us in a molecular way. So he went to his church, preached there, God performed miracles, signs, and wonders. And then I used to meet people and someone came for prayers. Well, we are praying. He said, Papa, pastor, can you pray for my mother? My mother lives in the us. I’m like, okay, no worries. So they call the mama in the us or when I was talking on the phone, I said, mama, I see you.

(05:56):
You are in Maryland. Say, how did you know? Yes, I’m in Maryland. I’m like, you even have twins. Instant word of knowledge. God has been giving you word, instant word of knowledge. You meet a person, you tell them they’re in the first name. And that has been opening doors for me. Most of the people that have been discouraged, wounded, abandoned, and God, just you bump into someone they don’t know, you speak to them and you give them word of knowledge and then they open up. So now, every time I go to Tanzania, that family hosts me because of that word of knowledge that

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:33):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (06:33):
Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:35):
What a great testimony. Now, just recently, Christ for All Nations came to Uganda and did a De Capitalis event, which is multiple

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (06:47):
Crusades

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:48):
In different cities. And so I teach every year at the Evangelism Bootcamp that Daniel Kalinda leads with the Christ world Nations. So many of the graduates from the Evangelism Bootcamp went to Uganda. I just finished doing a crusade in partnership with Christ for all nations in Congo. And while I was there, I was hearing so many stories of what God had done in Uganda, and they were just sharing so many testimonies. So I wanted to hear about the miracles and what you saw God do through the eyes of an evangelist from Uganda.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (07:27):
Yeah. First and foremost, for the first time in history, Chan, they’ve been celebrating 50 years of adversely

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:35):
And

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (07:36):
In ministry and also,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:38):
And their goal is to do 50 crusades all over Africa, from Cape Town to Cairo and Reinhard Bonky many years ago, had a vision of Africa, washed in the blood of Jesus. And so like you mentioned earlier, he said all of Africa should be saved. And so to celebrate 50 years, they’re doing 50 crusades this year. And how many took place in Uganda? There were quite a

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (08:03):
Few. 17.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:04):
17. Just in Uganda?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (08:06):
Yeah, just in Uganda.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:06):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (08:07):
And it was first time. It was the first time to have such s happening. And Uganda being not like any other country, most of the areas we had distant were far five hours drive, six hours drive. They were not just closed to each

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:26):
Other.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (08:27):
So the team, the standard coin, had to fly in these whole cities in order to accomplish

(08:36):
The assignment. So I’ll talk about the tremendous move of code that happened. First and foremost, the first engagement I was given because I knew Chan, but I never worked with them. And I have coordinated several events work of God in Uganda for other ministries in Kenya and Uganda. So a friend of mine that I went with on a mission in Kenya is the one who connects me, recommends my name to one of the senior directors of Chan. So they needed to have a father’s meeting, a father’s gathering in Kampala to meet all the fathers. And it, it’s not easy. Most we’ve been having challenges where fathers are crashing with one another. So I came on board, they had a list. I’m also come up with a list. So we started to strategize paying a cut service to each one of them. And surprisingly, by the grace of God for the first time in history, for the first time in history, to have all of them in one room, even those that were busy, they had to send their,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:42):
It was a miracle.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (09:43):
It was a miracle. Actually. One apostle greater apostle called me and said that, you know what, this is not even a miracle. It is awanda

(09:49):
Because they have never seen it. And that is one of the greatest move of SI that brought in Uganda. First of all, they brought reconciliation, they brought peace, love, and harmony in the board of Christ. And it went all over the news, pastors, bishops meeting in one place. So after that, God opened up the hearts of Ugandans and pastors, including the church of Uganda. And every denomination came on board, not for any other business, but for the souls and for the sake of the gospel. And I even the C can say this, for the first time we had the government, the statehouse being involved in the crusades, they offered, the statehouse offered transportation for Daniel Lander. They offered, they cleared the trucks, the VIP, the treatment, everything and the impact, even rain action. Let me say this. The guys who were serving as some of them were serving in the army. And what they have been promoted, yes, they’re been promoted to those who came to serve. Those who are moving with dk, they are promoted right now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:08):
They saw what God was doing

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (11:11):
After two weeks, three weeks here, a guy in the news being promoted by the president. That’s an anointing that came with Chan. And not only that, the wind, there is a wind that has been growing all over Uganda whereby there is an awakening of evangelism. Every church, the pastors, the bishops, denominations have been a awakened to evangelize. You hear, everyone is talking about evangelism. You go now to Kampala, you go to every east, west, north, south. Everyone is talking about evangelism. There is a move and any hunger that cannot be moved, people they own fire to evangelize.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:53):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (11:54):
Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:55):
Wonderful. And so what do you see God doing? Lots of people were saved at the Christ for all nations. Crusades

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (12:02):
Over, I don’t want to give wrong, but over 200 plus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:08):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (12:08):
Over 200 plus

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:10):
200.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (12:11):
Yeah. 200,000,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:12):
200,000. Yes. 200 is not very much, but 200,000. Praise the Lord.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (12:17):
Yeah. 200,000 plus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:19):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (12:20):
Because people came on, all crusades, people came.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:23):
Wow. So what role did you play? How did you get to help out?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (12:28):
Surprising. I don’t know. Dunno how I can say this, but I was almost everywhere. I was almost everywhere. Everything that was happening in computer, we are stuck. Peter, the visa. My visa has linked, someone is coming at the airport. Peter, the police is not doing this, Peter. So for the first time in my life, I had never worked like that. And I wasn’t doing it for money. I wasn’t doing it for pay. People think that, oh, maybe I was paid money to do this. No, I am committed to the work of the Lord. And I made sure that the work of God moves on smoothly, even when my body was, because I reached a point when I was sick, I fall sick. I was on drips. But even the drip could not stop me to go and do ministry. Even when that’s how serious it was. I had to make sure God, Uganda, I was standing there for my country and for the sake of the gospel and for the sake of Africa because I ended up serving everywhere.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:32):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (13:33):
Yes sir.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:33):
And so even though you weren’t paid, God will reward you for that and he will give you great fruit in your ministry.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (13:40):
Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:41):
Because that same anointing will come upon your life.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (13:44):
Yeah. Yeah. Because why did I bring out that? Because most people, when they see big ministry coming, they think of money. They don’t think of winning souls. You get my point. So for me, I was, I’m fully persuaded and focused on winning the lost owe my energy because God is our great reward. You get my point? Because if I didn’t do that, I wouldn’t have met you because that’s the connection. You don’t know how many people have been calling me like, oh, you’ve been working with si. We saw you take this. And because God looked at my heart, it was pure. It wasn’t about anything.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:24):
Talk to me about the future. What visions and dreams has God put in your heart? What would you like to see God do through your ministry?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (14:34):
First and foremost, in 20, in 21, when we are crossing, I think we are coming to 2022. God spoke to me to print out T-shirts written on. I am a solo winner. So we are running a campaign written called I Am a solo winner campaign. Like the book you’ve written?

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:59):
Yeah. I wrote a book called Soul Winner or Soul Winning. And we’ve given thousands of those books away all over the world. But just trying to stir up people to have a passion for soul winning. Yes.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (15:10):
Now it’s almost the same because God told me, just do that. We’ve printed over 1065 T-shirts, those T-shirts. We go on the streets. We’ve given them out in Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Ethiopia, us and other countries. But God told me to print 20,000 of them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:32):
Wow.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (15:33):
So we do that. And people that have been shying away from winning the Lost, when they put on that T-shirt, someone just feel like, I want to go win a song. I want to go win a song. So we are running that campaign every day. I have a team of over 100 people, like guys that are ready that we do. We meet in Jinja, even other places. But mainly now I’m putting a base in Jinja because we started, we launched a fellowship there and on every before the fellowship on Monday, we go on the streets of Jinja. We cover over 17 streets with evangelism, solo winning, going to the streets and the churches joining. It’s a platform that brings everyone to go and win. The lost people are not settling, they are not just now focused on, they are small congregation. They want more to come because there is more. When we go out and we win them, they come to our churches. So that is one of the areas that God has called me. And by his grace, we are pushing on that. And then I am building leaders that are kingdom-minded people who are Kingdom-minded people are willing to go to Egypt. People are willing to go to Pakistan for the sake of the gospel. And this is going to happen in Uganda. God is going to use Ugandans to go to these Arab countries and Europe to bring a revival.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:10):
Amen. Well, if someone’s listening and has a heart for Uganda, how can they get in touch with you? What’s your website?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (17:18):
The website is ww dot jeri center

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:27):
Com. You might have to spell Jeri. How do you spell

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (17:29):
It? Jeri. It is E-N-J-I-R-I-C. Center.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:41):
And then Center?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (17:42):
Yes. And then.org

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:45):
Center ministries.org?

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (17:47):
Yes. Judy

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:49):
Center Ministries Do org.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (17:51):
Org. Yes. Thank

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:51):
You. Okay, wonderful.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (17:54):
I’m also on the Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:59):
Wonderful. Well, brother,

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (18:02):
It’s

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:02):
So exciting to hear what you’re doing in Uganda. I celebrate with you,

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (18:06):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:07):
Thank you so much for being on the Evangelism podcast.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (18:10):
Amen. I’m humbled. Thank you so much.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:13):
Yes, sir.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (18:13):
Yeah. Thank you so much for the work you’re doing, and I believe that this is a movement that God is steering up advantage across the globe to move out. I just loved when you’ve been sharing with us, I just loved everything because there is an anointing of multiplication. Like we are deprecating ourselves in so many nations. And this is going to happen. You, you’ll be hearing testimonies upon Testimon. Why? Because God is raising an army that is going to go and win the lost.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:51):
Amen.

Evangelist Peter Kalagi (18:52):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:52):
Well, thank you. God bless you. Bless you too.

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Jean-Claude Chaffra | Evangelism in the Ivory Coast

Francophone Africa (including countries like Ivory Coast, Togo, Benin, and others) has unique cultural and linguistic differences compared to other parts of Africa. Today, Daniel King talks to Jean-Claude Chaffra who has a heart for reaching people in French speaking Africa.

Connect with Jean-Claude Chaffra: https://www.facebook.com/chaffraj

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 from Francophone Africa. So how do you say your name?

Jean-Claude Chaffra (00:11):
My name is Jean-Claude Chaffra and I’m based in the Ivory Coast (Cote d’Ivoire). And it’s a great privilege to talk about what God is doing in the Francophone Africa.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:21):
Alright, so Francophone Africa is very different than the other parts of Africa. What do you think are some of the differences?

Jean-Claude Chaffra (00:33):
The first one will be the language, the culture, and also how we understand and how we do things.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:41):
Yeah. And you are connected with the Global Network of Evangelists and representing GNE for Francophone Africa. And tell me some of what God is doing in the areas of evangelism across Francophone Africa.

Jean-Claude Chaffra (01:00):
Thank you for this opportunity. Daniel, the Global Network of Evangelists exists to equip, to raise evangelists, and also to build the network of evangelists within the countries. And so far we have been working in 12 country, 12 francophone country.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:21):
Okay. Let’s name off the, what are the Francophone countries?

Jean-Claude Chaffra (01:24):
Look, Francophone country where we are working now, we have Covo, we have Togo, Benin, Nija, Mali, Guinea, RI, we have Cameroon, central Africa Republic, we have Gabon, we also have DRC Congo.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:43):
So I was just in Congo, DRC, and I was wishing I knew more French. I was like, I felt like, oh, I don’t know enough French, I only know a few words and I felt lost. It’s

Jean-Claude Chaffra (01:56):
Okay. We are trying from the francophone angle to be able to express ourself in English. It’s not always the case from the English speaking country, but God is working. We have embraced the work of the global network of evangelists and through the training that we organize with the mental guide provided by me trust, we undertake some training called advanced training. And advanced training has been a great tool to revive, to equip, to challenge ordinary believers to start and do the work of an evangelist.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:33):
Yeah, the advanced training was written by Ben Jack who’s here with us this week. We’re actually in South Korea at a conference. They’re talking about the billion soul harvest, reaching a billion people for Jesus. And so it’s such a delight to meet you here. We were also last week at the Uzon Conference and you and I actually went out with a small group witnessing in South Korea.

Jean-Claude Chaffra (03:00):
Yes. The aim of the global network is to raise evangelists. We have been seeing all over the US that it has been forgotten, redeem the church. And church people are keeping quiet, not taking advantage of everyday life to share their faith. So it was very great to size this opportunity during Lausanne to express our faith and also reach out to people to present the gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:27):
And so tell me a little bit about your background, how you became a believer, and then how you received a call from God on your life.

Jean-Claude Chaffra (03:37):
Thank you. I gave my life to Christ since 31st December, 1990, almost 34 years now. And it came while I was at the Sunday school and come from and home background where my mom was no more in the family and my dad was having another wife. And it was very tough because when my younger sister was misbehaving, they were criticizing my mom. So it has create a kind of bitterness in my heart and sitting in the church and the pastor was preaching, clearly hear the voice of girls talking to me saying that Jean Claude, you can’t love me if you don’t love your sister. And I was like, God, I love you, but I can’t love my sister. She’s so difficult. And it was like, unless you love your sister, you can’t pretend that you love me. So with ts, I came to my need. I confess my sin and I vented him to my heart, praying that I’ll devote my heart to love him and to love my siblings. This is how I gave my life to Christ. And I pray over one year, 12 months for me to have the kind of love that God is having for his people. And since then I’ve started serving.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:53):
Wow. And so what about the call for evangelism? What’s on your heart for evangelism?

Jean-Claude Chaffra (05:00):
Since the school, even on grammar school, I’ve been leading student, young people to reach out to others. I came to the university I was doing with the same passion, the same zeal for prayer and also to share the gospel. So it’s like I’ve been serving him since 1995, even though I was still in the grammar school.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:25):
Wow. Talk to me about the Ivory Coast. What do you see God doing in the Ivory Coast and what do you think God will do in the future?

Jean-Claude Chaffra (05:36):
It’s good to know that Ivory Coast is located in south in West Africa and we have the heart and we have the calling to send missionary, and this is what you have been doing. The church in Ko Devore, I’ve been sending missionary to Guinea, to Niger, to Mali, to other places, to Senegal, to other places because we are more vibrant in terms of zeal, in terms of engagement. And we have this burden to see all the Francophone Africa being touched by the word of God. So it’s like a responsibility that we are carrying on our shoulders and we are praying and asking God to help us in his way to spread his gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:20):
Amen. Well, thank you so much for sharing your heart for Francophone Africa. Let’s finish today by praying for Francophone Africa, but I want to ask you to pray, but pray in French, not in English.

Jean-Claude Chaffra (06:33):
Thank you, Daniel King, for this opportunity.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:18):
Amen. Well, many evangelists listen and so just take a moment to invite evangelists to come to Francophone

Jean-Claude Chaffra (07:27):
Africa. This is a great opportunity and I would like to call to each one of you who are listening to what Daniel is sharing through this podcast. Please remember Francophone Africa for long we have been left out and we believe that even the language should not be a barrier. We are desperate to experience a revival. You are desperate to experience the power and the work of God. God is doing something and we’re calling you to be partner to join hand with us. God bless you. Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:58):
Thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast. Thank you.

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Gerald Bogantes | Dia 1 (Day 1) in Costa Rica

Gerald Bogantes, an evangelist from Costa Rica, has a vision for reaching the youth of Costa Rica and Latin America with the gospel. On January 1st every year, he hosts “Dia Uno” (Day One) to call the youth of Costa Rica to repentance and unity. This event has grown from 4,500 attendees in the first year to over 10,000 in attendance across multiple countries. On today’s episode of the Evangelism Podcast, we learn about how God is moving in Central America.

Learn more about Dia Uno: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100068739000519

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, Gerald Bogantes from Costa Rica. Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Gerald Bogantes (00:12):
Oh, thank you, Daniel. It’s such a privilege to be with you and with all the people that are watching

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:19):
You. And I have been friends for a long time. I went down to Costa Rica many years ago and you helped to translate for me.

Gerald Bogantes (00:28):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:29):
Over the years you’ve actually translated for many great men and women of God who have come to Costa Rica. Who are some of the people that you get to translate four?

Gerald Bogantes (00:38):
Well, Tia Osborne, imagine that’s such a blessing to have been his translator also. Well, I was, and I am still the translator of Cindy Jacobs, Tommy Tini. I even translated from Kenneth Copeland when he came to Costa Rica. Well, many more. Tommy Barnett from the Dream Center and many, well, Marilyn Hickey, even Tia Osborne’s daughter, Laona Osborne was the last one that I translated for.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:12):
Wow. So what a privilege. You get to be the voice for all these great men and women of God. But God has given you a tremendous vision for Costa Rica. And the name of your event that you do every single year is Thea Uno, which means day one, and you always hold it January 1st. Talk to me about Dia Uno.

Gerald Bogantes (01:36):
So Dia Uno is a vision from the Lord that the Lord gave me when I was in my home, I was in the living room and in 2009 the Lord spoke to me and said, Gerald, I want you to call upon the youth of Costa Rica. And the funny thing is that he spoke to my heart about a specific date, which was January the first, 2011. So imagine it was two years beforehand. So it was a crazy date because

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:01):
How old were you when you received that vision?

Gerald Bogantes (02:04):
Well, I was, I guess in my late twenties, something

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:07):
Like that. So you were young, but you were called to reach young people.

Gerald Bogantes (02:11):
Exactly, exactly. And at that moment, I didn’t have a leadership role at national level like I do now. So it was crazy for a young kid to call upon the youth of Costa Rica and to do it in a date, which was really a need is not necessarily the best states to do something because of New Year’s. But the Lord spoke so clearly to my heart that I had to obey his voice. And the Lord even spoke to me about the event’s name called Day one, Theo. And he finally told me about had to do with unity. So I just began to seek the wisdom of different leaders and pastors, and they said, yes, we believe it’s from the Lord because it’s centered in prayer and unity, but why don’t you change the date or maybe do it in a Saturday or whatever. And I just said, I have to be faithful to what the Lord said to me. And some of them really didn’t have a lot of faith. You can’t

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:09):
Have diare.

Gerald Bogantes (03:12):
Yes, exactly. And yeah, the is not only day one, not only it’s the first day of the year, but it’s a day of unity that we are one. And there’s many examples in the Bible of not only of unity being part of revival, like Acts chapter two verse one, but also in Nehemiah chapter eight verse one, it says that they were together as one. So when we were about to do the first day one event in 2011, some pastors said, at most you’re going to have 200 young kids, but praise the Lord. We had 4,500 kids in our first day, one.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:50):
Wow.

Gerald Bogantes (03:50):
And from that day on every single 1st of January, every year we did day one. I say we did because with the pandemic we had to stop. But now we’re going to do it again next 2025 for January 1st. So we’re going to continue. And the good thing is that the Lord is expanding that vision to other countries now. So it’s a blessing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:14):
Wow. So how many is the most that you’ve ever had at a day one event?

Gerald Bogantes (04:19):
Well, I would say the thing is that obviously the first one was amazing because it was almost 5,000 young kids. But to tell you the truth, I think we can, we have more than that if we include the countries where we have done it in Costa Rica, in Venezuela, in Ecuador at the same time. So maybe 10,000.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:42):
Wow. And at day one, what is the focus of the event you’re inviting young people and then what are you talking to them about? What is the spirit saying?

Gerald Bogantes (04:57):
Since it’s mostly targeted towards Christian kids, it’s not too much as an evangelism, but what we do is we motivated, we challenge them to have a lifestyle of evangelism. And really what we do is a day of repentance and humility and just coming before the Lord and saying, Lord, we want to give our lives back to you, and we want to also consecrate the whole year for the Lord. It’s like the first fruit. And after day one, what we have seen is that some of these kids, they have gone into a deeper relationship with the Lord. They want to do evangelism with their churches. And that’s part of what we do after day one. We do evangelism, outreaches. We call upon the youth to do evangelism, outreaches with their schools, with their high schools and also amongst their communities.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:53):
Talk to me about evangelism in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is a very unique country, very special country. It has no army. It’s a very peaceful country. It’s very beautiful. A lot of tourists love going down there to see ecotourism. It is got beautiful beaches and stuff, but I would say in some ways it’s more secular than some of the other central American countries. So what are some of the unique challenges of evangelism in Costa Rica? And then what are you seeing God do in evangelism?

Gerald Bogantes (06:29):
Yes. The thing is that compared to central America, Costa Rica has maybe, I don’t know how to say it, but in a sense of people are better off in a sense. And when prosperity comes to a nation, sometimes they forget the Lord a little bit. And we have seen that in a sense of people not being so much in fire for the Lord, maybe they’re not suffering so much of poverty. So they’re like, okay, maybe God is just something that I can put a little perfume here and there a little religious ity in me on Sunday morning. That’s it. So when you have Jesus as just something that you put on Sundays, it’s not a God for you. So maybe you see money being a God. And that’s what we fight against a little bit of the religious spirit or maybe just secularism coming in. We have seen some of the kids saying, well, we don’t need as much religion shot down our throats.

(07:39):
So the way we have fought against that is just telling the kids what we need is revival. So what we need is getting on fire with the Lord. And we have seen great results when we just tell it as it is to the kids and say, do you want to really have the fire of God in your heart? Do you want to see signs and miracles? Do you want to pray for the sick? And they’ll recover. And when they see how God uses them, then they are really on fire with the Lord. And they do want to continue in love with the Lord. But you have to be definitely sold out for the Lord. If you want to do something. Costa Rica, you can’t go just and paint a little bit of religion on the Costa Ricans or the Kos are as they call us, you need to be on fire and you’ll see results.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:28):
And so what is the message that God has given you for young people?

Gerald Bogantes (08:34):
Well, the message is one of revival, obviously for the people that they don’t know, the Lord, obviously the message of salvation, the message of love. But for the church itself, for the young kids, what I tell them is that you have to be on fire for the Lord. And just to condense it in a phrase is when you have inner fire, you have outer love. If you have the fire of the Lord, the glory of the Lord inside of you, that is going to come out some way. And the best way is to love others as yourself with the preaching of salvation. So what we have done is we have gone to the universities, and I am also an attorney, so I had to go to university. So I know the secular arena. And even when I was in my university years, we did a drama in front of 800 of my classmates and I was dressed up as Jesus in front of them and I was like, Lord, I’m going to do it for you.

(09:32):
So I’m going to go all out. And I preach to 800 of my college professors and classmates and people respect that. People respect that. So my message to the youth and to people that hear me is that if you are on fire for the Lord, your life is going to be transformed. You’re going to have the greatest adrenaline spiritually speaking, and it is going to be the best life that you could have. So I really am a preacher that speaks about the love of God, but also that fire of God. We need to be like that prophet that has fire in his bones.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:11):
And so are you still practicing law or are you full-time in the ministry?

Gerald Bogantes (10:15):
I’m still practicing law, but really I do it as a tent making process. And the Lord has allowed us to even do ministry almost without any type of restriction. So it’s a blessing. If the Lord ever tells me to leave the practice aside, I’ve done it before. I have quit my job before and I’ve done it to serve the Lord. But in this moment, the Lord has allowed me to even give testimony using my law practice and to finance the ministry. So in this moment, I can go with you to campaigns and I can go with different, like today we are talking from outside the country. For two weeks I’ve been outside just preaching and teaching.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:02):
Yeah, we’re at a great conference in Korea. In Korea it’s called the Billion Soul

Gerald Bogantes (11:08):
Harvest.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:09):
And they are calling the body of Christ to reach a billion people for Jesus.

Gerald Bogantes (11:16):
And

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:16):
So it’s great being here because we’re around lots of ministries that have big vision, but then also very humble people that are in the villages of India or Bangladesh just ministering. And so it’s been very encouraging being here just to see how God is using so many different people, but all of us can unite around this vision of reaching the world for Jesus.

Gerald Bogantes (11:40):
Yes, and I love it. So the Lord has allowed me to even have this ministry of law practice because I can see that also as a workplace ministry. And that has allowed me to be here for two weeks already. And thank God I don’t have any type of hindrance in that sense. So I also encourage people that they don’t need necessarily to have maybe a salary from a church to say that they are full-time ministries. They can be full-time ministries, whatever the way the Lord finances them, if they give it all to the Lord, they’re in full-time ministry.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:18):
Amen. What would you say to evangelists in Latin America? One of the themes that we heard last week at the Uzon conference this week too, is that the mission field shall become a mission force. And we see this here in Korea because Korea went through a war where north and South Korea were divided. And at the end of the war, Korea was very poor, extremely poor people working out in the fields, growing rice. And I would say Central America, south America has a lot of poverty like Korea did at that time. But a large number of people here turned to God. And now over 30% of Korea is Christian. And I would say being here, it’s a very modern country. God has really blessed this country, beautiful buildings, everything is clean. The people here are very blessed.

Gerald Bogantes (13:23):
Now

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:25):
They have, Korea has now sent out missionaries all over the world. In fact, after the United States, I think Korea is now the number two missionary sending country in the world. I think God wants to do the same thing for Latin America because Latin America has lots of

Gerald Bogantes (13:44):
Fire.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:45):
The churches of Latin America, they know how to pray. They have so much fire. And now prosperity is coming to Latin America. I mean, it’s very vibrant, it’s very alive. Economies are growing, but it’s very important that the church doesn’t forget Jesus in the midst of it. But I think what God wants to do is to start raising up more and more missionaries from Latin America that will go to other countries and preach the gospel. What do you

Gerald Bogantes (14:16):
Think? Yes, exactly. I think that if we just see how the Lord is prospering, a country is not just for our own benefit and prosperity and better roads and better economy. No, it’s because of our prayers and just asking the Lord to prosper a country. But it’s mostly to finance the last wave of evangelism and missionary work. And I think we’re in the last day, so we need to see the times. We need to be the sunset bicycler that they knew the times and they knew what Israel had to do. And we need to understand the times. These are the last days we need to, yes. If the Lord prospers us, yes, we have to use those funds to finance the ministry and to do evangelism and to do crusades and to have these outreaches. So really the time is ripe. And we have seen sparks of revival, not only in Costa Rica but in Latin America, and we have to be sure that we take advantage of this revival because this is the last harvest. And I don’t know if we’re going to be here for many years in the sense of the Lord, maybe he is going to tardy a little bit more, but we have to live as if the Lord is coming in two weeks.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:37):
Amen. One of the speakers, I forget who it was, but they said, we are marata people, which the word Marta means come Lord Jesus. And so we are eagerly awaiting the second coming of Jesus Christ. And I think Jesus is coming soon, but the greatest harvest of souls in history will happen in just the next few years. And what’s exciting is we are the generation that gets to participate and gets to be a part. And I think this is a very special

Gerald Bogantes (16:08):
Generation. Yes, I love it. And you and I, we were here in Korea evangelizing in the streets, and we have seen results. And people are so open, they really want to have genuine and sincere conversations. If you are genuine in your faith with the Lord, people want to, they see through that. They see if you’re genuine. They see what you have is real. And when you have something that is real and something that is good, they want it also. And I have seen that for my desire for the youth of Latin American, obviously for all the ages, but specifically for the youth, is for them to know the gem of high praise, which is Jesus and for them to share it. If you have that beautiful encounter with the Lord, we have to share it as much as possible. So that’s why I commend you for everything you do.

(16:56):
Also, Daniel around the nations, and we need you in Costa Rica. So please come. I want to be your translator, but I really think that we need to learn from people like you, from your ministry, king ministries, and thank you also because you today gave us a great teaching on evangelism and resources. And I think it’s part of what we need. And I want to tell you, you didn’t tell me to say this, but I want to ask the sponsors of your ministry and those that join forces with you to continue to do that because we need ministries like you and many others to continue to have that last harvest, to sow that last harvest for the Lord.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:39):
Amen. Well, thank you, Gerald. Let’s finish by praying for God to send revival to Latin America. And could you pray for, but pray in Spanish?

Gerald Bogantes (17:53):
Yes. I love it. Thank you. Ate Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:27):
Amen. Thank

Gerald Bogantes (18:29):
You so much. Your best.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:32):
Okay, that’s good. That’s good. Thank you so much.

Gerald Bogantes (18:36):
All right, now.

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Carrie 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.

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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:

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.

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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.

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Sean Dunn | Reaching Millennials and Gen Z With Innovative Digital Strategies

Today’s generation is not worried about going to hell when they die because they often feel like they are living in hell right now. So how can we reach them for Jesus? Sean Dunn is reaching Millennials and Generation Z with innovative digital strategies. First he interrupts their social media time using paid advertising and Hollywood produced content. Then he uses online chats to provide answers to the real questions young people are asking about the pain they feel in their lives. They present the hope that comes through Jesus and ask people to make a commitment to follow Christ. You are going to love hearing about Sean’s innovative method of evangelism on today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast.

Learn More About Sean Dunn and Ground Wire: https://www.groundwire.net/home

See how Sean Dunn reaches people who are hurting: https://www.jesuscares.com/

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Today’s generation is not worried about going to hell when they die because they often feel like they’re living in hell right now. So how can we reach them for Jesus? Sean Dunn is reaching millennials and generation Z with innovative digital strategies. First, he interrupts their social media time using paid advertising in Hollywood produced content. Then he uses online chats to provide answers to the real questions. Young people are asking about the pain they feel in their lives. They present the hope that comes through Jesus and ask people to make a commitment to follow Christ. You are going to love hearing about Sean’s innovative method of evangelism on today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast,

Evangelism Podcast Host (01:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary, and evangelist, Daniel King.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:24):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Sean Dunn. Thank you for joining me on the Evangelism Podcast.

Sean Dunn (01:36):
Well, thank you sir. Glad to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:39):
Now you have a very unique ministry reaching out to Generation Z. Tell me about it.

Sean Dunn (01:47):
Yeah, actually our focus is really millennials and Gen Z. I’ve been a youth ministry guy since I was 18, and as the generations continue to flow through, my focus is continue to stay right in that spot. So we specialize in 15 to 34, 39 is really our specialty.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:05):
And you are using innovative strategies to reach out to this demographic, mostly here in America. Tell me a little bit about some of what you’re doing to reach out.

Sean Dunn (02:20):
Yeah, well, we in the church and parents and grandparents, we look at our kids who are staring at their phone all day and we wish that they’d put ’em down, engage with people. And I’ve had pastors pound the table and say They won’t come to church. And my response is, but they won’t put down their phones either. So it’s either a problem or it’s an opportunity. We’ve seen it as an opportunity to really engage with them and go after them. So our strategy is really not to invite them to a location where they can hear the gospel, but it’s really to interrupt them as they’re living their life on their phone every day with messaging like Jesus cares dot God likes you.com. What’s the point? Do I matter? I feel broken.com. Invite ’em into a conversation through marketing. Our tagline is often when life hurts, Jesus cares.

(03:13):
Chat with somebody who understands, and we have this massive team of online volunteers that are engaging with the lost. They don’t come online and say, Hey, I need to go to heaven. They’re saying, Hey, I’m going through hell. And we’re able to help them understand how Jesus interacts with them to give them peace, hope, joy, perspective, purpose, but also let’s talk about what he does eternally as well. So really it’s a marketing play with a backend call center that’s not on the phone like our generation embraced, but it’s really through text, instant message with volunteers all over the world.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:47):
Okay. So you mentioned the word interrupt and that seems to be a really important term that you use. So you are going after people, they’re on their phones. I know my son and daughter 14 and 12, they love screen time, they love getting on the phone and we have to pry it out of their hands sometime. But this generation is spending all their time on phones. And the challenge that a lot of churches have is how do we get people into the four walls of the church? People just aren’t going into the four walls of the church anymore, but you’re trying to reach them on their phone and you use this term interruption where you’re interrupting them in the midst of whatever they’re doing. They’re on TikTok, they they’re scrolling doom, scrolling over, just watching videos and how do you interrupt their random search for entertainment and bring them to a point where they start thinking about spiritual things?

Sean Dunn (04:45):
So the same way that if you start thinking about getting a new car, all of a sudden the Jeep dealer knows and he starts targeting you. So it’s really through strategic advertising where we’re leveraging the algorithms. We are going after young people that are, they’re walking past the church, not into it, and they’re struggling with some form of depression, suicidal ideation, purposelessness. They’re showing those signs in the way that they’re behaving online and our messaging finds them. And so we don’t approach them in that moment and say, would you like to have a theological discussion with me? We approach ’em and say, life’s hard. How are you doing? Come talk to us about it.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:36):
And so these are kids, they’re going through depression, they’re thinking about suicide, they’re having issues with their parents having issues at school, and you come to them in that moment where they’re experiencing pain. And what do you say to them?

Sean Dunn (05:52):
It depends on the campaign, but like I said, some of the campaigns are when life hurts Cares come to Jesus cares.com. Some of it’s God likes you. I had people wrestle with me and say, no, God loves you, but God loves you is almost white noise to them. They believe that God loves ’em. They don’t believe God likes them. Some of it’s I feel broken.com, some of it is one of the young ladies logged in and she said, do I matter? And she instantly connected one of our online volunteers who said, you absolutely matter. You matter to me. I’m sure there’s people in your life that you matter to, but most importantly you matter to God. So we teach our online volunteers. You have to transition the conversation because if you let people, they will talk around the true issues for days. And so she said, you matter to God. Has anybody ever shared with you what God sees when he looks at you? And she said, no. Can I share? Absolutely. So she said, just eight, like one-liners out of scripture says, you are created in his image. You are fearfully and wonderfully made. You are precious in his sight.

(07:01):
You are. The apple of his eye just started to layer these things and you could just tell the young people today, they just want, they need to know because they’ve been beat down so much. If they know that somebody’s there for them, that God loves ’em, they just eat it up. And so she was eating it up and the coach, the online volunteer takes it and transitions and says, not only does he say those things about you, but he thinks you matter so much that he can’t imagine eternity without you. Did you know he made a way so that he could spend eternity with you? And she said, no. She ends up praying to give her life to Christ. It was beautiful. And at the end of the conversation, the online volunteer says, Hey, you came online and you asked me this question. You said, do I matter? But now that you know what God sees when he looks at you, now that you have a hope and a future in him, I’m going to ask you, do you matter? And her response, she came on with a question mark. She left with three exclamation points in all. She said, I do matter. So that’s just one of literally the thousands of stories of young people that are just coming to us because the marketing captures their attention and they end up having these amazing conversations with somebody who will take the time for ’em.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:14):
And so you are actually marketing to people. You’re doing advertising campaigns. Which platforms have you found the most success on? Are you advertising on TikTok, Facebook, YouTube? Where have you found the most success?

Sean Dunn (08:30):
Well, as you know, technology shifts, platforms change. Right now our top two platforms are TikTok and Instagram. So TikTok is very unique in that TikTok, TikTok will not let you succeed if you take people off of their platform. They want to keep everybody on their platform. So we had to figure out how. So our old call to action on all things meta is come over here and chat with us. In TikTok, we had to figure out how do you share the gospel, give a call to action, start follow inside of their app. And so we have videos that just like we have an animated video that just starts with this animated person just says, Hey, you got a minute. God’s got something he wants you to know. And just pure gospel for a minute, 27 seconds long. I thought it was too long, but it worked.

(09:19):
And at the end of it, it says, if you recognize that you’ve sinned and that sin has kept you from being close to God, you want to be, if you realize Jesus paid the price for your sin, it takes care of the eternal, I mean walks through the gospel, then go in the comment section and just make a declaration. I just gave my life to Christ. It is a public profession of faith because everybody who follows them on TikTok can now see that we’re seeing between five and 600 people every day on TikTok make a public profession of faith on there. So each platform has its own unique nuances, but man, it’s just been so fun to see what God’s doing.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:57):
That’s awesome. What are some of your TikTok channels that you’re sending people to?

Sean Dunn (10:02):
Yeah, so just off the top of my head, it’s the campaigns, but I don’t know how they’re worded, but Jesus cares. Jesus changes everything. I feel broken, do I matter? What’s the point? According to him, which is a website where we’re just encouraging people to say, Hey, come explore what Jesus sees when he looks at you. When I ask somebody, what do you think Jesus sees when he looks at you? I get two answers usually. First one I get is He doesn’t see me, he’s ignoring me. He’s not paying attention. Or the second one is he doesn’t like what he sees. And either one of those we can interject. Let me tell you what Jesus really sees when he looks at you and he adores you. He created you intentionally. You can just, so yeah, so those are some of the different URLs and the different campaigns on TikTok that you can go and explore.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:55):
That’s awesome. And are you putting out multiple pieces of content per day? Yes. Because I know that on the TikTok algorithm, they love it when you just pump out a ton of content. And tell me about some of your content. What is it that’s catching people’s attention? What hooks are really resonating with the younger generation?

Sean Dunn (11:17):
Well, so TikTok is different. TikTok has, we had to create a whole new strategy around TikTok, but meta for what’s been working for us for years is it truly is we need them to see themselves in the content. So we’ll have a picture, an image of a girl she’s sitting in a car and slow motion, just a tear dropping down. Her who of us hasn’t just had a bad day.

(11:46):
So it dropped because of the slow motion, the artsy piece of it, it’s dropping. And then as soon as it hits her leg, you hear a honk and you realize she’s sitting at a green light and she’s not moving. And it just says, when life hurts, Jesus cares. People say, Hey, I feel that pain too. Or there’s an African-American girl who she’s getting in her car and she’s talking to her phone and she just says, why is life so hard? I try so hard and I keep failing. I just don’t know if anybody cares about me. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get this right. When life hurts, Jesus cares through that content, we know that we’ve hit it, hit it perfectly. When people log in and they say, Hey, I just saw this piece of content and that’s me. That’s how I feel.

(12:35):
And so again, unfortunately young people aren’t waking up saying, oh no, I’m going to hell. They’re not asking the right questions. We have churches out there that we talk about the seeker sensitive model. They’re not seeking, they’re not asking the right questions. They’re in survival mode. So we have to help them ask the right questions, suggest Jesus is the answer, and then give them an opportunity that’s safe for them to walk in. So again, the attitudes and the perspectives of younger generations, especially Gen Z when it pertains to the church is very negative. 70% believe the American churches irrelevant. But here’s the one that really gets me. 26% of Gen Z trust pastors, that means 74% of the younger generation, they drive past the church and they think, I don’t trust them. That’s not safe. So if we help them ask the right questions, hoping that they’ll walk into a church, most of them won’t, but we know that they’ll live their life and they’ll dig into deep conversations on social media. So that’s what we offer ’em as the stepping stone. The old model of ministry used to be, let’s get ’em to a building so we can tell ’em about the man. Now let’s introduce ’em to Jesus and then move him towards the local community.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:50):
So once you capture someone’s attention, then you bring them to one of your websites where they can actually chat with someone who will minister to them via their typewriter. And so these young people, they’re not worried about going to hell because they feel like they’re living in hell right now. And then how do your counselors, the people that volunteer to help, how do you train them? Is this something that anyone can do? Do they have to be, do they have to go to seminary in order to answer questions? What do they need in order to actually help some people?

Sean Dunn (14:29):
Yeah, so our training is actually, we call it the Groundwater Training Academy. It is pretty extensive because there is both message as well as methodology, meaning we’ve learned a lot of things. When you don’t have tone, you don’t have eye contact, you don’t have body language, all you have are words. There are some really there, there’s some things that you need to understand. You need to understand how to language things so it doesn’t come across as aggressive. And so we take you through all that. It’s about a six hour training, but you can’t do it in one setting. But it covers everything from the technology behind the ministry to the heart behind the ministry, to how do I deal with the suicidal kid, or how do I minister to a Hindu, or how do I minister to a Muslim? So we train you on all those things and you’re assigned a mentor to walk with you through it.

(15:21):
Our team of volunteers both 24 hours a day in English and Spanish both, and it’s about 15 to 1800 people that are active on that team, ministering to people all through the day, 24 hours a day. And it’s amazing because the models of ministry I’ve been involved with is you had to show up at church at seven o’clock to be able to engage. If you wake up at three in the morning and you can’t sleep, there’s people who want to talk to you. If you have time at three in the afternoon, there’s people who want to talk to you. And so it’s always moving and always flowing. And one of our greatest needs is more of these volunteers so that as our traffic continues to increase, which it has been, we have enough coverage to make sure that we can do a good job with them.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:08):
Now, I have a lot of evangelists and people that really care about the Great Commission who listen to the Evangelism podcast. So if someone’s hearing this and saying, Hey, that is the great opportunity for me. I would love to be a keyboard warrior for Jesus. How can they get connected to you and find out how they can volunteer to be a part?

Sean Dunn (16:30):
Yeah. Let me tell you a quick story. First. I had a new volunteer just join, it’s probably been six months now, but he called me and I think in the first month he led eight people to Christ. And he said, this has amazing. He said, it reminds me of going fishing with my grandpa. And I thought it was a great analogy. He said, when I used to go fishing with my grandpa, I loved it because he loved it. My grandpa loved to fish. And he took it a step further and I thought, that’s beautiful. He said, when I used to go fishing with my grandpa, my grandpa did all the work and I got all the credit. He baited the hook, he cast it, he reeled it in. Eventually he’d clean it, but I got to stand there and take a picture like I did something. He said, I feel like the harvest truly is ripe. People are more open to the gospel right now than they’ve ever been. They just need to be approached in the right way and invited into kind of process what’s going on with them. So if you’re interested in learning more, the best place to do that is to go to ground wire.net/coaching. It will take you to a place where there’s frequently asked questions, some interviews with some online volunteers or a place where you can begin with an application. But that’s ground wire.net/coaching.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:41):
Let’s talk a little bit about your history and how you got started doing this. What is it that drives you? What gives you this passion for evangelism? Where’d that come from? And then how’d you get started in doing this type of ministry?

Sean Dunn (17:58):
Yeah, well, thanks for asking that. I was a weird kid. I’m a weird adult, but at 14 years old, the Lord called me to ministry. It was so clear that I actually wrote in the back of my Bible, contend for a Generation was the phrase he gave me. And I just assumed that meant youth pastor because that was the only model of ministry at the time. Nothing entrepreneurial was encouraged. And so at 18 years old, I go to Bible college, I get hired the first week or the second week I was there at a church to be their youth pastor. At the time, my arrogance thought, wow, they recognized God’s hand on my life. Looking back, I’m thinking they were stupid and desperate. I mean, they did not. I was 18. They didn’t check references. They needed some help. And so I stepped in and I just say that to say I’ve been in full-time ministry since I was 18 as I stayed in the local church and started to travel full-time as a speaker and an author in 97, and I was the guy traveling with the bands, the bands could get ’em in the field.

(18:58):
It wasn’t about my name, it was about the band, but I got to share the gospel with them. And I learned very quickly, I’m an evangelist. I am not a pastor. And so I thought that I would do that my entire life. I mean, that filled my cup. My ego was out of control. I thought it was all about me and I was loving it. And it was December, 2002 and I was climbing the ladder and it was on a Tuesday. I’m sitting in my office and I’m adding up the number of people I’d spoken to that year. And that year I’d spoken to 156,000 people and I was patting myself on the back thinking that I was pretty great. And two days later, I was deflated because two days later I started reading a George Barna book, and George Barna never leaves you feeling good.

(19:41):
He points out the problems, he points out the trends. He says, we are losing. But the thing that got me was, and we all know that there’s times when God amplifies something and whether it’s a scripture that you’ve read so many times before this particular time, it was a statistic that I knew, but it grabbed my heart differently. On Tuesday, I’m excited about 156,000. In the first paragraph of this new book that I’m reading to prepare for the new year, it says that there are 33 million teenagers in the United States. And I went from feeling, really, I’m sorry,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:16):
That’s a huge number. It’s it’s a great harvest field that Jesus says, pray that God would send laborers out into the harvest field.

Sean Dunn (20:25):
And I went from really excited about 156,000 to being deflated. And it put me into this kind, a little bit of a tailspin for three months where nobody knew what I was struggling with, but I was struggling with my model of ministry because God was doing something different in me. And I had three epiphanies that came out of this. Number one is my model won’t meet the need. There is no way, even if I can triple what I’m doing and get it to half a million people, it’s a drop in the bucket. Second thing I realized was in the western world, heathens don’t go to Christian events. So I’m an evangelist who’s speaking to people who agree with me. And I was saying, God, where the lost? Where are the lonely? Where are the discouraged? I started to ask questions like, God, how do we reach a generation?

(21:13):
Doesn’t want to be in the same room with us. How do we reach a generation that plugs their ears every time we disagree with them? And the third one was scripture says, go into all the world. And I kept saying, come to me. And I was really wrestling with that. And three months in, as God tends to do, he just gave me a statistic that set us on a new journey. And that statistic changed my paradigm immediately. And the statistic is no longer relevant, but it simply said that 97% of the students in the nation listened to the radio at least five times a week in 2003. And I went to my board and I said, if we know where they are, why do we keep asking them to come where they don’t want to be? Let’s go to them. Let’s go buy time on these alternative rock stations, hip hop stations, country stations.

(22:05):
And so we started on traditional media. We started on radio. We added tv. We were on MTV, vh one Adult Swim. We were buying time on those major platforms. We added billboards. But our biggest pivot came in 2017. I went to my board and I said, young people consume media differently than we do. I love telling people my age that we’re talking about Jesus on MTV because we remember what MTV used to be, but it no longer has that influence, and the audience has changed dramatically. I said, they look at the small screen, not the big screen. I said, if we want to be relevant, we have to figure out how to invade their phone. And that’s really what we started to do, and that’s really when our scale began to grow. Can I share with you some of our numbers from last

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:53):
Year? Yeah. Please tell us what results have you seen?

Sean Dunn (22:57):
Yeah. So first of all, let me tell you that the numbers seem like I had a friend tell me, they’re like video game numbers. They don’t seem real. I had another guy in Houston look at me and say, Sean, I want to believe you, but I don’t. He said, because I know how difficult it is, the Western world Church doesn’t know how to reach young people in mass. And he said, I know how expensive it is. And so he challenged me. He said, don’t come back and talk to me until you get your numbers validated, but if you get them validated, please come back and talk to me. So we took that as a challenge. We called the Ranon Foundation, said, who do you trust to do non to do nonprofit metric evaluation and make sure that they’re not fudging the truth? And so they gave us the name that everybody trusts. And so we called ’em and said, Hey, we need you to do a deep dive. So they do that every couple of years for us. I can provide that if anybody has questions, but they basically validate our numbers. So here’s our numbers. In 2023, our commercials were seen 1.3 billion times.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:58):
Wow.

Sean Dunn (24:00):
And the way you measure if your marketing is effective is how many people take steps of the 1.3 billion? We had 6.8 million people take the next step and visit one of our websites. George Barnes, as the average church in the United States sees one person a year come to Christ. Last year we saw 567,545 pray to receive Christ.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:24):
Praise God.

Sean Dunn (24:26):
And here’s another one too. Churches and denominations in the US will tell you that it costs ’em over $35,000 on average to see one person give their life to Christ. Last year, our all in costs was $6 and 51 cents.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:41):
Wow.

Sean Dunn (24:42):
So it’s been mind blowing. And I talk about when I was traveling and speaking and people were asking me to sign things, my head was just, I thought it was all about me. This is really a humbling place to be because we know that God is doing this, and our job is just to make sure we stay as close to him as possible. He’s got the strategies, he’s got the messaging. We just need to be faithful and not get in his way.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:07):
So with all the advertising you’re doing, that’s a pretty significant budget. How do you raise money to put into evangelism? Do you have people that help to support you?

Sean Dunn (25:20):
We do, absolutely. Yeah. And it really is just about telling our story. There’s people out there that are saying, man, I care about my kids, my grandkids. I care about culture. I care about the morale in our nation. Some of ’em truly care about evangelism, and they say, man, I want to invest in something that’s effective. And so, yeah, it has become easier and easier to tell our story as we’ve continued to see more and more people come to Christ. And so people know that, okay, so for every $7 that came in last year, somebody walks the island, gives their life to Christ, and we have people say, Hey, I think I want to take care of 10, or I want to do a hundred, or I want to do a thousand. And so yeah, we continue just to let God bring in the resources and we invest it well when it’s given to

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:07):
Us. That’s amazing. So if someone wants to support you, how do they find out more information about how they can do that?

Sean Dunn (26:15):
If you go to ground wire.net, that is really the best website for that. So all of the other websites are facing the young people we’re reaching. So we don’t have donation buttons on those sites. We don’t. Here’s who we are about us. We just have messages. We’re trying to funnel them directly into the God conversations. But if you want to learn about us, go to ground wire.net and you can request request those financials. You can request our metrics audits that we’re happy to share with you, whatever we can, but you’ll probably find most of it on that site.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (26:54):
That’s awesome. Now, you mentioned this big number of young people that are giving their lives to Jesus, and as an evangelist, one of the questions I’m always asked, I’m sure you’ve been asked a thousand times. What do you do about follow-up? How do you get them to the next step?

Sean Dunn (27:11):
Yeah, so we have two primary goals this year. One is on the evangelism side, one ISS on the follow-up side. Our evangelism goal is to see a minimum of a million professions of faith in the calendar year. We are on track. We’re very, very close to that. As we approach the new year, we need to pick up just a little bit of steam to hit that goal. But the second one is to see 30% of those who make a profession of faith take a meaningful and measured step in their spiritual journey. So that can be everything from signing up for our, we have a discipleship drip that we call Hope Connection, where for 16 days it’s delivered to their cell phone. It’s basically spiritual discipline, but young people don’t want to be told what to do. They want to watch somebody else’s story about how did reading the Bible change their life?

(28:02):
And then they get to decide if they want to do it. We are building an online community on the app called Discord, which is an app that young people are very familiar with because it was built for the gaming community to have community. And we’re building a community there called Chasing Christ. That’s another one of our growth tracks that they can opt into. We have a group of people who will walk with them for four weeks after they come to faith to figure out how do I grow closer to Christ? So we give them different options. There’s about five or six things that we offer them, and we invite ’em. We have partners. Most of what we do is in the US when we do something internationally, it’s because we have a discipleship follow-up partner in that country that will take the follow-up. And so in Kenyan, India, some countries in South America, we are partnering with some ministries that are boots on the ground to move them forward as well.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (28:58):
Now you said that you do it in both English in Spanish with your Spanish track. Are you doing some things in Central and South America?

Sean Dunn (29:07):
Yes, sir. Yeah, on the Spanish track, we’re in five other countries in, so we’re in Mexico, Venezuela, El Salvador, Columbia, and Argentina. I think I could be wrong, but that’s roughly what we’re doing. But yeah, we’ve found that it’s a model that’s working very, very well, even in these other countries. And so when we have the right partners on the ground, we take our expertise in the marketing space and we take our massive coaches and we move in and buying marketing in their country.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (29:43):
That’s awesome. And I think that’s very innovative. Every country I go to around the world, I mean, people all have very nice cell phones. They spend a lot of time on cell phones just like kids here do. And so I think that your strategy will work well in many different countries and even in some Asian countries where here you would pay a significant amount for each impression. In some countries, I’ve done some advertising and it can be pennies to reach thousands of people. And so there’s just so many people and the advertising isn’t expensive in some other parts of the world like it is here. So I think the years to come as you strive to reach your million and even beyond that, I really pray God gives you a strategy that will work around the world.

Sean Dunn (30:43):
Thank you. Yeah, I appreciate that. Our board said a couple of years ago, we weren’t going to even begin to think internationally until we hit a milestone of a thousand or a hundred thousand Professor of Faith in the US in a calendar year. Because the quickest way to destroy momentum is to try and grow too quickly. So when we hit that a couple of years ago, we began to explore internationally. But our focus continues to be the us. This is where we believe, this is my calling. It is Western world predominantly us young people who have everything, and yet they have nothing because they don’t have Jesus.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (31:18):
That’s awesome. Well, Sean, it’s really wonderful to talk to you today. Thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast. Really appreciate it. And I love your strategy. I love what you’re doing. The young people of America need a touch from Jesus, and you’re connecting them to Jesus right where they’re at. So thank you for what you do, and thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Sean Dunn (31:45):
Thank you, Daniel. I appreciate you having me.

Evangelism Podcast Announcer (31:48):
Are you called by God to be an evangelist? Do you want to lead millions of people to Jesus? Do you desire to be trained in the practical side of building a ministry? Then check out the Daniel King’s School of Evangelism. Learn how to be an effective evangelist from Dr. Daniel King’s 20 plus years of experience. Daniel King has done crusades all over the world in over 70 nations and is seen over 2 million people give their lives to Jesus. But it wasn’t easy. There was no crusade school. So Daniel traveled the world learning from and observing top evangelists, noticing how they successfully won souls for Christ. Now he wants to share decades of knowledge and experience with you. Topics of the Daniel King School of Evangelism include what is an evangelist, how to be a master soul winner, how to give antar call, how to organize a crusade, how to raise money for your ministry, and much more. If you want to be an evangelist, but don’t know where to start, the Daniel King School of Evangelism is for you. Enroll today in the School of Evangelism by going to Daniel King ministries.com/evangelism.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (32:50):
Thanks so much for listening today. I am excited about telling people about Jesus, and I want to invite you to be a part of helping us to rescue people from Hell and take them with us to heaven. There’s two things you can do to help. First of all, can you go find the Evangelism podcast on Apple iTunes and leave us a positive review by giving a review, you will help other people find these valuable resources about sharing our faith. And second, would you become a financial partner with King Ministries. Every single dollar that people give us enables us to lead at least one person to Jesus. And so that means for only $1, you can help start a party in heaven. And so today, I want to invite you to become a monthly partner. You can start out for just a dollar, but if God puts it on your heart to do more, of course you can do more. But please go to king ministries.com and become a monthly partner with us today to help us to lead more people to Jesus. Thank you so much, and God bless you.

Evangelism Podcast Host (34:10):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches, visit king ministries.com. Again, that’s king ministries.com.

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Bret Sipek | Crusade Planning in Africa

Today on The Evangelism Podcast, Daniel King interviews Bret Sipek, a Christ for All Nations Crusade Director, about their recent successful crusade in the Democratic Republic of Congo. They discuss the challenges and miracles they experienced during the organization of the crusade, including the logistics of transporting equipment and the overwhelming response from the people. You will learn the secrets of organizing a successful crusade in Africa.

Learn more about Christ for All Nations: https://cfan.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 here today, Brett Pac. And thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (00:12):
Thank you so very much evangelist Daniel. It’s so, such an honor for me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:16):
So we are here in the Democratic Republic of Congo and we have just completed a very successful crusade in Ika with Christ for all nations. And you’ve been working with Christ for All Nations for many years, helping to organize crusades, and you have helped to organize a series of crusades across the nation. Tell me what have been some of the biggest challenges and also the biggest miracles that you’ve seen here in Congo.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (00:51):
Well the Congo, as you can see, democratic Republic of Congo is a very different level than many other African countries. Even some of our African coworkers, directors said, we never ever in our life seen so much poverty. So the infrastructure is very, very, very low. There are people living in the houses, there’s no water, no electricity, electricity comes from only from Gensets, which are expensive and water is distributed in the barrels and people have to buy. So there’s a lot of challenges in just a pure staying in the country. And first of all, we are amazed of the hunger of people, the response of people. People are very hunger, very responsive. We see so powerful response for altar call. I know that in Gda gca, you had almost every hand raised, I was looking at the numbers and I was like, oh my almost everybody in the crowd wants to receive Jesus. And that’s true. The country is Christianized, but many people has very more prodigal sense relationship or sleen relationships or more like a nominal Christian relationship with Jesus. So it is so important to preach gospel and we are so excited to have you here in gda gca. Yeah, it’s a great honor for us.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:26):
Well, I want to say thank you to you and to the entire staff of Christ for all nations. I know that it has been a lot of work organizing here in Congo. Great challenges. I was watching the trucks, the pictures of them coming across the country to get to this place. It took several weeks and at one point they’re only going like 30 kilometers a day because the roads are so bad.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (02:51):
It is, yeah. It was really a new challenge, a new level of challenge for us. And we have experienced drivers like Vinny Wetland, our chief driver. He’s very well experienced. He crisscrossed Africa, all the roads that you can imagine, and he really believed that he will be able to, he would be able to make it, but they had to stop and they had to go back to Mumbai after three, four days, pushing forward, pressing forward. It was simply impossible because they have 20 meters, 60 feet, long track, very heavy, like 40 metric tons. And you can go on the road and suddenly there is a big, big bump down, maybe one and a half meter, five feet deep, and in between are another bumps. So the trucks, they had to use beams to support the wheels. It was so difficult, so much dust because it’s a dry season. It was very a load load of dust. So we had to and unload, unload and load everything to the local, they call it hobo trucks. It’s more like kind of construction side tracks or kind of military truck with higher, higher chassis and bigger wheels. And that’s how we finally get it to the crusade locations. That was the biggest logistics challenge probably in so many

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:23):
Years. I mean this is true pioneer crusading. It is, yeah. But it’s very rewarding because in Ganja where I was, there had never been a crusade there before. The people were so hungry and they came from everywhere and they were ready to receive Jesus.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (04:44):
Yeah, I’ve seen the photos. It was powerful crowd and all our stuff on ground, they were amazed. And you are very right. There was never, ever international evangelist crusade, like maybe some local crusades. We sometimes call it like church yard crusade, which is good. People can come, but typically like one 2000 people know your number. I was looking like 50, 60,000, maybe even bigger. I was so amazed. It never ever a day, never ever heard in this city. And it was the same for we do all, actually we already did four ess including Yor, inand, gca in every place. We were amazed like

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:22):
This. And you have two more coming up. We have

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (05:24):
Two more. We have two more in another big, big city called Kanga, probably 1.2 million people. So we expect another great

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:32):
Harvest. And my good friend Nathan Morris is coming for that crusade. You’re

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (05:35):
Excited

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:36):
To have the nation. It’s wonderful. And Ruben’s, Kya will come as well this coming week. And so it is really exciting to see the teamwork between different ministries, different evangelists working together.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (05:49):
I believe that that’s the part of end time vision that we are really standing together. Evangelists are like lone runners. You want to go and you want to press forward, push forward. But we need to understand that some territories are too big for one ministry, even for two ministry. So we really need to strategize how we can make it. And Congo, Congo is over 110 million people and the territory of Congo is 2.4 million square kilometers, which is like six times bigger than Germany in Europe. It is huge territory. And as there is no logistics, we need to go to some region. Now we are in the region called Kasai, Kasai Central Car Oriental, and it’s just a little part of Congo in a way. But still we need combined four like yourself, evangelist Nathan Morris, evangelist Ruben. That’s the beauty of it. End time harvest, let’s press forward, let’s push forward.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:51):
Together everyone achieves more. We can do it by working together. Now you have come from the Czech Republic and you were friends with one of my friends, Terry Hinshaw and Terry and Brenda Hinshaw many years ago went to the Czech Republic to plant a church, a victory Christian Center. And you knew them all the way back

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (07:17):
All those years ago. It was more than 30 years ago. As you know, evangelist Billy Ty, he did a crusade in St. Petersburg, Russia in early nineties after the fall of regime.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:30):
That was the first crusade I ever went to. Really? I was 14 years old. I went to one of the Crusades in St. Petersburg, Peter Praise. And I remember 30,000 people ran as fast as they could to the altar call when he gave the altar call. They were so hungry for God, they just ran forward. And I think that had a big impact on my life and is one of the reasons that I’m so excited about being an evangelist.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (07:52):
It was kind of like Holy Spirit outpouring in Eastern Europe and Soviet Union right after the communist regime collapsed. We’ve seen it in many countries in Czech Republic, in Hungary, in Bulgaria, most very much in Russia, Soviet United at this time. So it was, people are so hungry for God. And at this time we connected with, as you mentioned, with missionaries Terry and Brenda Hechos. We helped them to relocate from St. Petersburg to Czech Republic and then help them to start a church. It was great. We have great memories. It was so beautiful time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:31):
Then how did you get connected with Christ for all Nations?

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (08:33):
Well, I always admired Evangelist Rein Haron from early eighties when I seen him pushing forward in Africa. And it was kind of like my dream to meet him sometime and to be around him. And it happened in 2002 when he came to Prague, Czech Republic for a small Christian conference, and I happened be his driver driving evangelist Bunker. It was a great privilege and great experience because he was sharing his heart and his heart was evangelism. His life was what he was preaching, just so winning. So winning, so winning. I asked him whatever question I could ask. He always end up with evangelism. So many. I was like, oh my. He’s so much focus at this time. I realized focus in your life is something that will take you way higher. So evangelism was like embodiment of focus. Focus on the soul’s focus on Africa. Africa shall bee. So it was my first connection in 2002, and then I ended up to go for on Cruise eight one, cruise eight in Aki Nigeria. And it was mind blowing. It was time of huge opening and outpouring of holy the Spirit after 10 years of closed in Nigeria. And it was time of super, super great harvest and powerful miracles.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:52):
And what is your role with Christ for all nations now?

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (09:55):
I am a crusade director and in a way, crusade Director is somebody who’s preparing the stage for evangelists like yourself or evangelist Reinhard Bonky and or now evangelist Daniel Kolenda. My goal is to see the powerful harvest. I’m praying for harvest. It is like mobilizing all the local churches. We are meeting hundreds of churches sitting with bishops, these pastors, and face-to-face, sharing the vision. It may seem easy to get several hundred pastors together, but I can tell you it’s not that easy as it may seem. They have so many different opinions, so many different church backgrounds. So it’s a lot of work. As Evangelist Bunker used to say, you have to drink a lot of coffees to cast the vision. So that’s what we are doing, casting division. And then of course we need to do a lot of logistics things and mobilizing training the volunteers. We are training for your crusade. In gda gca, we trained well over 10,000 local volunteers, giving them teaching what we want to do, how we want to reach out to people on ground. And after that, when you have to make the bridge from the crusade to the churches. So that’s the big part. And then of course the event management itself that you experience. We are on the meeting, we have everything on spot. Generators are working like sound is working on. It may seems easy when the show runs, but the

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:26):
Backstage, there’s a lot of logistics behind it. It is, it is. They say with the military, they run on logistics. And I think it’s true of crusade evangelism too. The logistics is so important. It’s not just the preaching. There is so much that goes on behind the scenes to make a successful event.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (11:47):
I always say to our directors, if you want to fire fall on some ground, you need to prepare a lot of material, which is flammable like a lot of wood. Everything that you can bring together. And this is our task, prepare everything, make sure that people would come definitely for the first night or for the whole crusades, because when people are there and evangelists preach gospel and the Holy Spirit come, there is thousand or tens of thousand people that are ready to hear because we are preparing them for it. And if you do a lousy job as a crusade director, you have just few hundred people. Evangelists can do his best. He can preach his heart, and it doesn’t have too much impact because there is just few hundred people. But if there is already 10, 20, or in your case, I would think that the first night it was already like 70,000 people. It was mind blowing. In other crusades, we typically see five, 10, maybe 15,000. But in here in Congo, everything is twice or three times bigger. And we are really excited

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:49):
Now. Something very special happened this last week here in Muji Maya. Your daughter preached a woman’s crusade. And tell me about that and how that came to pass.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (13:01):
No, Yana, Ava, our daughter, she’s here with her husband David. He’s working as a technician. She had a dream to preach gospel in Congo. She was preaching now in Uganda and in many, many different places in churches doing kind of this crusade director’s work. Now she’s transiting, although to being evangelist, and she’s doing I believe very, very good. And the dream was like, I want to preach gospel in Ji Mai. But when we shared with a local bishop, they were like, yeah, well, we don’t like women to preach. They should rather sit at home and maybe do cooking or cleaning of the house, all these old school mentality. So you cannot change the whole culture in one shot. But we didn’t want to just submit. We were like, okay, okay, what we can do, what the woman can do. Okay, she can sing. She can prophesize. She can teach ladies. Oh good. If she can teach ladies, she can preach like the ladies conference or ladies crusade. Yeah, for sure. No problem. So that was the discussion. So that’s how we jumped into this ladies crusade. Of course, many children and many husbands came, so no doubt.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:16):
Well, I heard her preach the other night and the adulterous woman, and she did such a powerful job. Amen. Your daughter is a great evangelist. Amen. You were sitting on the platform with your wife and I could see you are a very proud papa.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (14:29):
Proud, proud papa. Yeah, definitely. Honestly, when I was young, it was my dream to preach Crusades. Now my dream is a little bit different. I want to train crusade directors. That’s my dream to see that there are evangelists trained by evangelist Daniel Kolenda or other evangelistic ministries. But we also need to train crusade directors because without crusade directors, the impact of evangelists is limited. So that’s my dream. So we are now training teams of these crusade directors, and that’s how we can do six crusades in three weeks because we have six teams. And that’s the beauty

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:04):
Of it. Well, I say thank God for that vision. Every crusade evangelist needs a good crusade director. And so I believe that as God raises up more evangelists, more people that have gifts with administration and organizing and meeting pastors and all of the logistics of doing the crusade, God will raise them up as well. Praise God. We need them

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (15:25):
All. Amen. Thank you so very much for,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:27):
Well, brother Brent, thank you so much for being on the Evangelism Podcast and thank you for your work here. And thank you for organizing such a beautiful crusading. It was wonderful.

Bret Sipek | CFAN Crusade Director (15:38):
Daniel, thank you for coming. We really honor you. We appreciate your hard work. We know that it’s not easy to come to travel in and out to fundraise. Thank you so very much. We really honor you and let’s pray and strategize for the future, how the impact on the territories can be even bigger. So thank you so very much and God bless you and thank you for having me.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:00):
Amen. Amen.

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How to Take a City for God | Evangelist Daniel King

How can we take a city for God? As evangelists we want to take cities and regions and nations for the Kingdom of God. But as we find out today in an Old Testament story, sometimes it is not easy to take a city for God. Recently I was asked to give a devotion to the organizing team for a crusade in Gandajika, Congo. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast, you will find out that the people who take cities for God are heroes in heaven.

Transcript:

Evangelist Daniel King (00:00):
The devotion that I want to talk about is how to take a city for God. I’ve gone to many different cities around the world and we do big evangelistic events, and our goal is to take the city for the kingdom of God. The city I want to talk about is the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is very significant. It is the capital of three different major religions. The Jews claim it, the Christians claim it, and Islam claims it. And so Jerusalem is known all over the world. But what made Jerusalem famous, it’s not a port city. Usually the famous cities of ancient times were port cities where the ships would come bringing goods. It’s not on a river, it’s up in the mountains. It’s hard to get to. So what made it famous? The thing that made Jerusalem famous was King David decided to make Jerusalem the capital of his kingdom when he decided that he didn’t own it.

(01:17):
It was known as the city of Jab bbis, and it was owned by the Jbu, the Jebusites. And so how did King David come to own the city of Jab bbis? The story is found in two Samuel chapter five, verses six through nine, it says, and the king and his man went to Jerusalem against the Jebusites, the inhabitants of the land, who spoke to David saying, you shall not come in here, but the blind in the lame will repel you, thinking David cannot come in here. Nevertheless, David took the stronghold of Zion. That is the city of David. Now, David said on that day, whoever climbs up by the way of the water shaft and defeats the Jebusites, the lame, the blind who are hated by David’s soul, he shall be chief and captain. Therefore, they say the blind in the lame shall not come into the house.

(02:21):
Then David dwelt in the stronghold and called it the city of David. And David built all around from that region inward. So the city of Jab bbis was on top of a mountain. It was surrounded by high walls of stone. There were large wooden gates that guarded the only entrance to the city. When David and his men arrived, the gates were slammed shut, and it was impossible for anyone to enter the city. The men of jab were extremely confident. The Jebusites felt safe. They were hidden behind their eye walls of stone, and they began to make fun of David. They stood high on the walls and they shouted down, you cannot enter here. They said, even if the only soldiers in the city were deaf and lame and blind, you would not be able to enter. And so they’re taunting them from the walls. I don’t know if you remember the Monty Python in the search for the Holy Grail. There’s a group of French soldiers on top of a wall, and they’re making fun of the knights who come. You remember that scene? I don’t remember what they said, but it was funny at the time. Does anyone remember to quote it? You know what they say? You are a monkey. You are so smelly.

(03:55):
I mean, that’s what the Jebusites were doing. They were standing on the wall saying, oh, you can never take our city. It’s impossible for you. You are so stupid. We are here in the city. Even if every one of our soldiers was dumb and deaf and blind, you would not be able to take the city. But somehow, perhaps through a spy, David heard about another way of entering the city. It was a tiny water shaft that extended from the valley all the way up the mountain and came out in the middle of the city of jab bbis. And so here was a flaw in the city’s defenses, a tiny chink in its impenetrable armor. And David said, I am tired of these heathens making fun of me in saying that even the blind in the lame could defeat me. And so David gathered his men together and he promised who whoever climbs up by way of the water shaft and defeats the Jebusites, he shall be chief and captain.

(05:16):
And so for many years when I read this passage, I thought of a water shaft with fresh water going down to a well. And I had this picture of a soldier climbing up with his sword strapped to his back and his shield. And as he climbs, there’s a little bit of moss on the wall and the water is splashing in his face, but he manages to climb all the way up this water shaft, and he comes out at the top in the middle of the night, pulls out his sword, and begins slashing and takes the city. That’s kind of the picture I always had of this story. But as I studied this passage, I discovered that there are several commentaries that suggest that my picture of old fresh water well is not entirely accurate. Instead of being fresh water, it’s possible that this water shaft was actually a sewer.

(06:21):
And that’s why the Jebusites thought that it was impossible for anyone to climb up this water shaft. What’s in a sewer? It’s full of trash. It’s full of bones from dead animals, it’s full of feces. It stinks to high heaven. It’s full of rats flies and creepy crawly bugs. Climbing the water shaft would require more than just physical strength. It would also require a strong stomach and a stopped up nose. And so never in their wildest dreams did the Jebusites imagine that someone would climb up the sewer, who would push their way through the trash and waste altogether in a cramped up space. They didn’t imagine that it would be possible for anyone to attack the city through this sewer shaft. And so imagine the slime. Imagine the smell climbing this shaft would make you want to gag, and it would make you feel like you’re going to throw up.

(07:36):
By the time you reach the top, you would not be in the mood to fight a battle. Your sword handle would be slick in your hand. This attack was not a picnic, but sometimes in order to take a city for God, you have to go through waste. I don’t want to be too crass, but what would you call it? I mean, it’s waste feces, poo dung shit, kaka, stinky. It doesn’t matter what words you use, the reality is foul. And so David was surrounded by mighty men, but this mission required someone who was exceptional to lead. Usually climbing through the sewage is not heroic. It’s a job for a trash man. So who would step up to take the lead? Who would lead David’s men? Who would win the award that David was offering to the person who could take this risky climb? In 1 Chronicles 11:4-6, we find the name of the chief who volunteered for the job.

(08:59):
His name was Joab. And so Joab lifted his hand and he said, I will be the one to climb up this sewage shaft. I will be the one that will go first in the city. And he grabbed some of the other mighty men of David, and he grabbed and said, come on guys. We can do this. We can work together. We can get up there and we can take this city. And so Joab was a hero. And because he was the one who ascended the shaft later, David appoints him as the leader of all of his armies. And so taking a city for God requires heroes. It’s not easy. It’s not a stroll through the tulips. It’s not just a walk in the sunshine. Coming to a city like Ganja, dika requires sacrifice. Sometimes it’s hot. Sometimes when you take a city, it’s cold. Sometimes you have to take a cold shower out of a bucket. Sometimes it’s smelly. Sometimes you have to use an outhouse. Sometimes the road is bumpy. Sometimes there are mosquitoes. Sometimes you have to leave your wife and children at home for long periods of time. Sometimes there’s conflict. Sometimes there’s not enough money, and you have to bargain for everything.

(10:53):
Sometimes you have to sleep on a hard bed or even a hard floor. My bed over in Muji Maya, it was a nice room, but the bed had slates in it. It was very uncomfortable. Sometimes you’re sick. Sometimes you have to go for a long period without eating food. Sometimes you’re thirsty. Sometimes you have a gun pointed at you. I’ve had that happen to me in a couple of different countries in Pakistan. One time we were shot at. But in order to take a city, you have to be willing to go through dumb. Taking a city requires hard work in sacrifice, but the man or the woman

(11:49):
Who is willing to make the sacrifice to take a city will receive a great reward. And so I want to tell you today that each one of you are heroes. Some of you have been coming with C fan for many, many years, and that’s one of the greatest things about Christ for all nations is the years of dedication that people have given to it. And it’s not easy. When you read Reinhard Bonnke’s autobiography, there have been sacrifices, even people that have died. If you listen to Brother Winnie, he tells the stories of traveling across parts of Africa and some of the adventures he’s gone on would make a great blockbuster movie. It’s not been easy what CA has done, but that is what is required in order to take a city for God. It’s required your sacrifice to take ganja dika.

(12:56):
And for that, you are a hero. And I want to say thank you to each one of you for your sacrifice, for the effort you put into this, and not just this one. Some of you were here last week. Some of you are going to be here next week. We’re going to go from this city. We’re going to take the next city. We’re going to take all of Congo for Jesus. We’re going to take all of Africa for Jesus from Cape Town to Cairo. Do you know how audacious it is to say we’re going to take 50 cities in one year for Jesus? Never been done before, never even been attempted. But 50 different decap events. I mean, this is historic, but what are we doing? We are taking cities for Jesus Christ and we couldn’t do it without you. And so thank you. Let’s pray together.

(13:45):
Dear Heavenly Father, I want to say thank you for the heroes who are in this room. Thank you for their sacrifice. Thank you for the effort that they put into ganja and into Congo and into the other cities where crusades are happening. And Lord, I pray that because of them being willing to go through the challenges of operating in a nation like Congo, Lord, I pray that you would give them a great reward that just like Joab became the captain of all of David’s armies, he received a great reward. Lord, I pray that you would reward each one of my friends, my brothers, every staff member that’s here. Lord, I pray that they would receive a great reward. The type of reward that only comes through you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

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Evangelism Bootcamp Graduates On the Field

At our crusade in Gandajika in the Democratic Republic of Congo, I had the opportunity to sit down with some of the graduates of the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp. They all came to Congo to help with organizing the crusade. Today on the Evangelism Podcast they share about what they have learned as evangelists and about the calling that God has on their lives. You will be inspired by their stories to do great things for God.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King, and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I am in Ngandajika. Congo DRC, and we have a tremendous team here that has been helping to organize everything. And so I have with me some of the graduates from the Christ for All Nations Evangelism Bootcamp. And so they came to Orlando to be trained and now they are sent out and we are together here in Congo. And so let’s just begin by each of you introducing yourself and telling me who you are and where you’re from. My

Jasper Kim (00:41):
Name is Jasper Kim, and I am from Los Angeles, California.

Anastasiia Dvoinikova (00:47):
My name is Anastasia Awa, and I was born in Russia, but now I live in Orlando, Florida.

Grace Smith (00:53):
My name is Grace Smith. I was born in Zimbabwe and I now live in United Kingdom.

Maxie Smith (01:00):
My name is Maxie Smith. I live in England, but my parents come from Jamaica. I live in London, England.

Jacob Habiye (01:08):
My name is Jacob Habiye. I am from Tanzania. ausa.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:14):
Well, let’s start with you Jacob. What did you learn in the Evangelism Bootcamp? How did you end up at the Evangelism Bootcamp? And then what did you learn while you were there?

Jacob Habiye (01:27):
So the bootcamp, I learned about to have a heart for the lost, and I know I did before I preaching in the local church. But from there I just thinking now I’m going international and thinking about the loss. That is what I learning. And then as evangelist to have a personal relationship with God, that is really what are learning and yeah,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:54):
Can say that. So Maxie and Grace, the two of you are married. How many years have you been married Now?

Grace Smith (02:00):
We’ve been married 28

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:02):
Years. 28 years. Congratulations. And so how did you end up at the Evangelism Bootcamp?

Grace Smith (02:11):
Okay, I think he gives me the mic. Personally, I’ve been following Reinhard Bonnke’s ministry, Christ for All Nations for years. So I’ve been stalking the ministry and eventually there was a time that they were actually asking if anyone wants to come to the Crusades to sit in the crusade. And we were dreaming of that. So I told Max we were dreaming of that. So one day I saw on the website bootcamp, that was the first bootcamp. So my husband applied for that. He was accepted, applied for the second one. He was accepted. But we didn’t have enough faith to step out financially. But eventually this year’s bootcamp, we went for it and that’s how we ended up there.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:01):
And so the two of you are really a power couple. God has called you together. What did you learn while you were at the Evangelism Bootcamp?

Maxie Smith (03:13):
Yes, we learned practical evangelism that could be applied on the road. We’ve been so empowered, impacted to go out and preach the gospel. It’s been so excited. We’ve learned the need to pray and be constantly before God. We’ve learned how to apply ourself and the things that we’ve been learning. We’ve come out to DRC to practically use them. And we’ve seen through the training of bootcamp that we have been able to apply the stuff. And for myself personally, it’s been so life transforming and changing, and I’ve learned so much practical things that I’ve been able to apply and I’ve seen lives so changed and transformed. It’s been awesome.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:03):
Anastasia, you came to the Evangelism Bootcamp and you feel called to be an evangelist, and God’s really put the Slavic people on your heart. What were some of the big things that you got out of your time at the Evangelism Bootcamp?

Anastasiia Dvoinikova (04:22):
One of the things, the biggest thing which I get out of the bootcamp, it’s no compromises when you’re preaching the gospel because this is what many people doing when they’re preaching the gospel. Either they’re not mentioning sin or something, but this is a critical in the gospel to mention sin, to mention repentance. And in the Slavic community, it’s often you can see that they’re not preaching about that stuff. And so when you’re growing in your faith, it’s not really mentioning. And in the bootcamp, the big part for me, it was preaching the clear gospel, not only simple gospel, but the clear gospel and the true gospel.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (05:01):
Jasper, it has really been tremendous to be a teacher in each different year that the bootcamp has been running. And so I’ve had the opportunity to come and do several days of training for each bootcamp. Do you remember anything that you learned in my class that really impacted

Jasper Kim (05:23):
You? Oh man, Daniel, you know what I really remember was when you came and you were critiquing all of us, when we were giving our stories, I believe it was a boat story. And you really gave us really practical advice on what we need to do to do things better and what we could add, what we could take out. And these little tips are critical tips that only like an experienced evangelist can really see and identify. So I believe that part of you coming to bootcamp was awesome. Also, just your story and your testimony when you told us about what you do, how long you’ve been doing it, and just seeing someone with such a heart for evangelism, it truly inspires us to see that, to see someone actually living what we aspire to do for the Lord. So I think that was a big thing,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:13):
And God’s brought us together here in Gica one more time. And so it’s just been wonderful to spend time with each of you, and all of you have had a very significant part to play in helping with the outreach here. And so Jasper, one of the things that you were helping with, which was a big hassle here, was generators. Talk to me about the generators and what happened here in Conica trying to get the generator to the crusading.

Jasper Kim (06:43):
I’m going to try and do this in just a little jam packed kind of explanation. But yeah, so the roads out here in DRC are so just treacherous and rugged. It’s probably the most difficult terrain that I personally have seen, and I’ve driven in snow, I’ve driven in mud and all these different terrains. DRC is on another level. So logistics is really a nightmare to move things from one city to another. And yeah, we have big semi-truck that need to get things across. So my personal responsibility was getting power to our sound system, getting power to our lights through these generators. But finding a good generator and being able to transport it across cities has been such a big task. It’s been really difficult, but the Lord’s really been making it possible. We do everything we can on our end, Daniel, but in the end, the Lord is the one that really, really comes through and really pulls miracles

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:45):
For us. On Wednesday night, we were in Muji Maya and one of the generators stopped working. Yes. And that’s a horrible tragedy for a crusade because suddenly the people cannot hear. And that’s the whole reason we’re here, is so that people can hear the gospel. Exactly. And so for 25 minutes it wasn’t working, and finally the repairman came and he fixed it and it got working again. But he was supposed to be there all the time. And he’d wandered off. Yes. And he wasn’t supposed to. Exactly. And you talked to him. What did you tell him?

Jasper Kim (08:20):
Oh man, I, I don’t like having to raise my voice unless I don’t have to. But in this moment I had no choice because we literally had no power, no sound for 30 minutes. And that’s probably the worst case scenario when it comes to what we do, mass gospel crusades. So yeah, I had to really tell ’em like, Hey, you cannot leave. You have to stay here. And I had to say it in a kind of a loud tone, so that’s what I had to do.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:49):
But it’s worked every night since. It’s worked

Jasper Kim (08:51):
Every night since. And he’s been great and I apologize to the guy. And we’re on great terms now. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:58):
Here in Ika, there was a need for a generator and you found one that was actually built into a house. And so you had to rent a backhoe, a big shovel truck to actually lift the roof off the house and then lift the generator out of the house and put it on a dump truck to bring to the crusade. Exactly. So it is quite the challenge to have power. So your job is to get power to the sound system. My job as the preacher is to get the power of God to the people. Hallelujah. Come on. But both are needed. We need both kind of

Jasper Kim (09:38):
Power. That’s so

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:38):
Amazing. Alright, so I want to ask each of you, what has been your big role that you’ve played here at this crusade?

Anastasiia Dvoinikova (09:47):
So my big role here, overall, I’m interning with the senior director, but in Gada Gica, I’m a crusade photographer.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:57):
I gave you my camera. You’ve been running around getting pictures. I told you to take lots of pictures. I think the other night you came back with over 500 pictures and many of them were so good.

Anastasiia Dvoinikova (10:08):
Praise God. Praise

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:09):
God. So you just jump in with your talent.

Anastasiia Dvoinikova (10:11):
Yeah, this was happening when you on the crusade, you need to fill the need where it’s the most needed.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:19):
Yeah. Now Grace, you have a couple of different roles here. You are one of the scribes that is recording everything that happens. Why is that important? Tell me about what you do there and why it’s important.

Grace Smith (10:35):
Okay. So I have to make sure that I’m there when the service starts, and then I’ll record every moment of what is happening on the stage in from when you come on the stage, the mc. And it’s so important because then it allows everybody to know what is actually happening in. So it’s like a live scribe of what is happening. So anyone who is in the United States can actually know that, okay, we are starting the worship, the the worship team is there. So that’s what I’ve been doing. So it’s been important, but the most important thing is the testimonies as well. So if there’s no picture, if there’s no’s, no story. So I take the picture and then I write literally I have to type as the testimonies are going on. But I think one of the most challenging was trying to get the names because the names are French,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:36):
They’re hard to understand,

Grace Smith (11:37):
They’re very hard to understand, hard to spell hard. The pronunciation I, I’ve done my best to actually make sure that everything is in place up until the evangelist leaves the stage and leaves the field. I think of that time I have to be really focused in what is actually going on on the crusade.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:00):
And then you also are in charge of hospitality, and so you have been helping with the meals. You can’t go to the supermarket to buy food. Where do you find the food to feed everyone? Mama Grace.

Grace Smith (12:13):
That has been very challenging. I mean, this hotel that you’re staying in is quite a new hotel. So there’s no kitchen, there’s no food. But we’ve got another hotel that some of the C fund stuff are staying. There’s food there, but you cannot go to a supermarket or a store and buy stuff. So the lady who actually cooks there has to buy things from Ji Mai. So all the transport that goes to Ji Mai comes. So I’ve given her, which

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:41):
Is a challenge because Muji Mai is four hours away over very bumpy roads, is very difficult to travel from there to here. So you have to send a shopping list and then they send the food back.

Grace Smith (12:54):
So before the crusade I had to sit down with her. We went through a list of what we need, things like a burger. They don’t eat hamburgers here. They don’t eat chips here. So I had to actually take a picture to mama and show her what chips are,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:10):
What are chips, because we don’t know what those are in the United States either. Fries, french fries. In the United States, we call them french fries.

Grace Smith (13:18):
So in United Kingdom we call them chips. So the fries. So we made a list prior to the crusade and then she had to buy those things in Jamay and bring those things over. Wow. Yeah. Wow.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:31):
Brother Maxie, what have you been in charge of here?

Maxie Smith (13:34):
Yes, thank you. Yes, I’ve been in charge with working with committees. I’ve been involved with the prayer committee. People of DRC have a passion for prayer. They pray very powerfully. I’ve been organizing them and having meetings to see how best we can pray for the crusade and pray for the salvation of the people of DRC. It’s been awesome. It’s been challenging at times, gathering people from different churches, but God has been faithful and we’ve been able to gather very powerful prayer team who have prayed throughout the crusade and it’s really been an awesome time.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:12):
Brother Jacob, what have you been doing while you’ve been here?

Jacob Habiye (14:16):
Before Crusade, I was helping in promotion. So to put all material

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:22):
Posters for How long have you been here in the city

Jacob Habiye (14:24):
For three weeks here, inand

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:26):
Chica. Okay. And so you were helping to put up the posters?

Jacob Habiye (14:29):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:30):
You have done a good job. The wall in front of our hotel, it’s a big wall. Every inch of the wall is covered in a yellow poster. It looks like a billboard. And so you were helping to coordinate the local teams that were

Jacob Habiye (14:47):
Putting out the publicity? Yeah, so the local team, we start with a three by two billboard and then we come with light poles. And then the last week before crusade we put some posters. And so that is before crusade. And during the crusade I’m helping in security and technical.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:05):
Wonderful. Yeah. Well, God’s call is upon each one of your lives, and I want to hear a little bit about what you feel that God is calling you to do in the future. You’ve got your training, you’ve come here and you’ve done work on the ground. What do you feel God is calling you to in the future?

Jacob Habiye (15:28):
For me, this is what I feel, and I already start even doing is for youth ministry. That is what God called me to do to evangelize with youth. So I did like for 10 years ago, before even I meet with Han, so I was doing in the local, preaching the schools is what God put in my heart to do. So when I go to the bootcamp, I’m learning also, it is not about going to the maybe pulpit to preach. You can evangelize, you can do evangelism, even one by one, everywhere in the bus, everywhere you can do that is really what I learned before. It’s like, okay, maybe I need to go on the stage to preach, be Avengers. But when I went there, no. So there’s Jesus at the door one by one. And then so for me, everywhere I go, even when I came here, when I saw those youth and kids, and it is really touched my heart is what God’s called for me to really put to help youth to know Jesus,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:36):
Maxie and grace. What do you see God doing in the future in your ministry?

Maxie Smith (16:42):
Yes, we feel called to crusades and we would hope to step out and do some mini crusades. We’re learning all the time, learning how to,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:51):
Where do you want to do crusades? You’re from Great Britain and Jamaica and Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe. So those are three good countries to start in. Do you see yourself doing crusades in those countries?

Maxie Smith (17:05):
Yeah, we would love to go to Zimbabwe to do a crusade and looking at Jamaica also. But the first goal would be to go towards Zimbabwe.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:15):
My wife and I, we did a crusade in Jamaica in Montego Bay. One week after our honeymoon. We took a big team with us and we took all the money that people gave us at our reception and we used it to pay for the crusade. That’s amazing. And the team was out to ministering every day. But we were just home from our honeymoon and we mostly stayed in the hotel. We were not interested in going out and ministering. We came out to preach at the crusade, but we pretty much stayed inside the hotel the rest of the time. But I believe God will use you in Jamaica. Jamaica needs a touch from God and Zimbabwe and even Great Britain. When you see what is happening in the news in Great Britain right now, it needs a revival. So many people there are in a post-Christian world, they don’t even consider themselves to be a Christian heritage anymore. And so I believe God will give you an opening in each of those nations and to other nations across Africa and around the world. In Jesus’ name. Anastasia, you speak Russian, you have a heart for the Russian speaking world. Tell me, what has God put on your heart to do in the future?

Anastasiia Dvoinikova (18:43):
So after finishing bootcamp, I’ve really felt to organize not only a massive crusades in the countries where nobody wants to go, like Russia, Mongolia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Stan, even South Korea, North Korea, in the countries where I don’t hear people doing a crusades or if they had a crusades. It was long time ago, and I don’t hear anything at this point, but I really want to see not just like a cities coming to Jesus, but like a nations, a massive transformation of a whole nations coming to Jesus and just coming to him and finding him again because for the Slavic, we have an inheritance in the Christianity, but the more generation is going, the more people forgetting about it. And I want just to see them coming back to the feet of

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:42):
Jesus and to have the fire of the Holy Spirit.

Anastasiia Dvoinikova (19:44):
Amen.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:46):
Amen. Jasper, what’s God put on your heart?

Jasper Kim (19:50):
Oh yeah. I believe the Lord has put on my heart just really like Asian nations. I just always felt like a, now

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:00):
You’re Asian in

Jasper Kim (20:01):
Heritage

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:02):
From South Korea.

Jasper Kim (20:03):
Yeah, my parents are Korean. But

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:05):
You grew up in

Jasper Kim (20:06):
Born and raised in America.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:08):
America, born

Jasper Kim (20:08):
And raised in America. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:09):
You’re American by culture, but you look like you’re

Jasper Kim (20:12):
South Korean. My blood is Korean, but I am actually born and raised in California. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:19):
Yeah. So God’s put Asia on your heart.

Jasper Kim (20:21):
Yeah, God’s put Asia on my heart even I kind of feel even Asia, Africa obviously, because here now, and I’ve been here for the past couple years with C fan kind, I feel like this is a preparation season for me, but also our home nation of America. I know the Lord is going to, there’s going to be a time where the Lord calls me back to our home and really start evangelizing out there because the Lord knows America needs it. Amen. Really bad America needs him right now.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:52):
Amen. Especially la, the area you. Exactly. California. They need Jesus.

Jasper Kim (20:58):
Pray for California.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:59):
Amen. Amen. Well, let’s finish with a word of prayer. I want to just pray over each one of you a dear heavenly Father, I thank you for these mighty evangelists. They’ve graduated from the Evangelism Bootcamp and they are pursuing your call upon their lives. Lord, I pray that you would open up great doors of ministry for them. Lord, I pray that through their ministries, through their influence, many thousands of people all over the world would come to know you. Lord, I thank you that you are raising up an army of evangelists that will go all over the world preaching the gospel. In Jesus’ name I pray, amen. Amen.

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Mike Kasonde | Crusade Organization in Gandajika, Congo

What is the process for setting up a crusade? How long does it take to organize a crusade? What are the vital phases of crusade organization? On today’s Evangelism Podcast, I speak with Pastor Mike from Zambia. He has just finished organizing a successful crusade in Gandajika, Congo. If you want to learn how to organize a crusade, today’s episode is for you.

Transcript:

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast. I’m Daniel King and I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. Today I have a very special guest with me, Pastor Mike Kasonde.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (00:10):
Oh yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:11):
Welcome to the Evangelism Podcast.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (00:13):
Thank you very much, evangelist. I’m so excited.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:16):
It is very special being here with you. We are in the city of Ngandajika, Democratic Republic of Congo, and you have been living here since last February as a crusade director for the Crusade, which we have done here this week, and we have seen God do amazing things. Tell me what excited you about what you saw God do this week.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (00:45):
Wow, wow, wow. I think first and foremost, it was really, really an honor to have you come as a guest evangelist to Gica and just how God uses you, especially when it comes to delivering the gospel. It was more than I expected to see. I’ve been in different crusades, but this one I really want to really, really keen into one particular thing, the delivery of the gospel, how people receive the gospel, how connected they were, and we could see instant transformation. I would set an example when you did the children’s crusade, how before that, how the children were so they could move around. They were so

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:41):
Yeah. One night the kids were at the front, they were pushing, they were fighting and the people from the back were pushing them and it actually was a little dangerous. It looked like in a moment, very, very dangerous. It could all get out of control. But then we did the children’s Festival Festival and the demeanor of the children completely changed. Exactly.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (02:01):
It completely changed. And when they came in the afternoon for the bigger crusade, they were calm. They were just there enjoying what was happening. And of course, talking about the great miracles that God did, healing the people, especially the brother who had an injury in his chest because he had an accident of the motorbike.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:23):
Yeah, he was driving down the road on his motorbike. He hit a hole in the road and it threw him off the bike. He hit his chest and for one year he had trouble breathing. One

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (02:32):
Year he had trouble breathing and you could even tell the excitement after God touched him. And also not forgetting the fire conference man, when you did that, the pastors rejoiced the bishops. It’s something that they’ve never experienced, where pastors come together and experience the move of the Holy Spirit filled with the Holy Spirit where we could see people speaking another tongues. And in the evening you did the same on the crusade. I saw this guy sl under the Holy Spirit speaking in new tongues. So God has really, really did wonderful things on the field. I’m super excited.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:17):
So you are working with Christ for All nations. Yes. Tell me, where did you first get connected to CAM?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (03:24):
Alright, so way back in 2022, CA came to Zambia to do five crusades. They plan to do 10, but because of one or two things, they scheduled for five. So now our city was among the five that they concluded.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:41):
In which city were you in?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (03:42):
That was in Zambia, the city called soi, the north part of Zambia. So the city called soi, that’s where I’m coming from. So Chan came, did a crusade. I was just the vice, I mean the secretary for the youth committee because they have different committees. So I was helping out as a secretary in the youth committee, and I remember working, just gave myself to just work to see people saved. And after that I joined the protocol team during the crusade so I could ritually get on the field early leave. I would be the last person to leave the Sade field because I needed to make sure that everything is done, the evangelists are well taken care of, and they leave the field and everything is done. So from there now Chan came back to Zambia last year. They wanted to do do 10 crusades. They ended up doing 11 crusades.

(04:50):
So they were looking for local people whom they saw really had put in, sacrificed, like they really worked. So they were getting recommendations from the five cities prior to that year, last year where they did those crusade. So they were getting recommendation for local people who will be trained by C fund and they work as managers, which means that last year they had a director and the director had a manager. So they were looking for 10 people. And by God’s grace I was picked to be one of the 10 people they were looking for to work as a manager. So it was last year that I was fully, fully direct connected. I worked as a manager where I was helping the director. When the director is away, I was literally doing anything. And my director last year had two cities, one big city and a smaller city.

(05:55):
So we were two managers under him. So he took this other manager to the big city because it had a lot of concentration. Then this smaller city said, Mike, I want you to manage this ritually directed. So he just gave me what to do. He gave me what to do. So basically I could give him reports where I got stuck, I could call him, hear from him. So I literally directed and managed the crusade. So from there it is where Chan saw something and they asked me if I am willing to help in different crusades because of the outcome. Then we did the fire camp with them. So I’m a graduate for fire camp, which they did last year.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:44):
And so you were chosen to come here to Ngandajika you came in the month of February. Exactly. And now it is August. So you’ve been here for a long time. Many months. You’ve been working very hard. And first I want to say thank you so much for your hard work. I know that it is not easy to organize an event like this. There are many challenges, but I’m very grateful for you because you have done a good job. You can always tell the first night if the manager, the director, has done a good job because the number of people that come the first night is up to the organization, the posters, the flyers, everybody knowing about it. And then I always tell the crusade director, how many people come the second night is up to the preacher. If the preacher preaches good, then many people will come the second night after that, it is in the hands of the preacher, but the first night is in your hands. And every night here we have just seen God do amazing things. So tell me a little bit about the process each month, what were you doing to prepare for it? So you got here in February, what was the first thing you did?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (07:56):
Alright, so the first thing we did is to scout the place, like go around the place, be familiar with the city. Then you do a Google mapping of all the churches. You ritually go around, you try to map the churches. How many churches are there? So the first thing we do is you do that. Then you must make sure that you find a hotel, a place to live. That’s the first thing you really want to do. So when you are settled, then you create a relationship with the big fathers of the city. So you literally ask around how many fathers are here? So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (08:34):
You went and met with them, you ate with them, you became friends with them, and you began to share the vision of doing a crusade. Yeah.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (08:44):
So when you meet those fathers, then you organize a meeting for them, and then the senior director who is Voer would come to the city and Mr. Brett probably, if he’s around, they’ll come to the city to meet these fathers. So that they’ll be the one really just emphasize on what already you’ve been talking to them about. So they really emphasize about the vision of C fund. They really need to ask them from a personal level, do you really want the crusade here? And then it is from their response and their involvement that the crusade will be chosen

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:24):
To you either say yes or no for the city.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (09:26):
Exactly. Exactly. So once,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:28):
If there’s disunity among the pastors, I think you shake the dust off your feet like Jesus said, and go find a city that really is ready for a move of God. But thank God this city said yes, yes,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (09:39):
Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (09:40):
The bishop was ready,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (09:41):
So excited. The fathers were so excited. So when we did that, then we had to break. Then we had to come back again for the second phase. Now the second phase is where now you need to run because now the BOA, the board of advisors who are the fathers of the city, they needed to give us the person we call the ECC executive committee chair person. So the executive committee chairperson needs to have his vice. So there are two people, these people are pastors. You want to choose a pastor who is young, not like a bishop, a young pastor, but well respected, well connected and has got influenced over the pastors and over the city. So when the bureau, the board of advisor gives you that person, that is the person we call the engine of the crusade because he’s the one now that needs to supervise different committees. So the first two committees that we start with is the prayer committee like Evangelist Rena Bon always said one leg preaching the

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:49):
Phe,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (10:50):
One leg prayer. And we have a successful crusade. So you have the prayer committee, which consists of 10 or five to 10 people. So now when you have that prayer committee, they need to begin to pray for the crusade. They need to begin to pray for churches. Then the important committee that you form immediately is the church mobilization committee. So remember in the first time you did the scouting and mapping of churches, so you have an idea. But now these people comes to give you now the reality of what is on the ground, how many churches are on the ground. So you have 10 people in that committee. So those are the people who go around the city to ritually mark the churches. They get the phone number for the pastor, they get the name of the church, and at least they get an approximation of how many people are in that church.

(11:45):
But what we’d want them to do is to get all the churches, small, big, large, all the churches in the villages. So you work like with them just marking the church, marking the church. Then when they bring these churches together, then we do now what we call planning for the FTM, which is the all pastors meeting, where now we need to bring these pastors together in one big place and so that we can sell the vision to all the pastors. So these two committees are very critical in the second phase as you’re preparing the crusade. So when they bring the contact of pastors, you now come up with what we call a call center. So the same committee begins to call the pastors the same committee. You come up with letters like letters, invitation letters to the A PM. So they need to go to give letters they need

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:46):
To find And do they take them by hand to each church and deliver them to the pastors?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (12:51):
Yes. So you divide the city in zones like this. JI was divided in four zones. So we had kaban, kaban, jiji and Luga commune, we call them zones. So you divide these guys into each zones. So this person maybe let’s say three of them in one zone. So they’ll ritually go and hand over the pastors in that zone, the invitation letters. Then you do calls. Then we do bulk SMSs where you send messages to these pastors, the invitation for the A PM, then I did radio. You need to go to radios to make an announcement. All the pastors, we are calling you to this important A PM. So now when the pastors come for the A PM, that’s when it’s like now the crusade begins to run. Now the executive director comes, the senior director comes and all top C fund officials, they come to meet these pastors. They sell the vision to them. And what do in that all pastors meeting, we ritually give them testimonies of their past crusades that we’ve done. And then we encourage them about volunteers, about counselors. We tell them we need your counselors, we need your,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:15):
How many counselors did we have trained for this crusade?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (14:18):
Alright, so registered counselors, we had 8,000. Then I did training for those counselors. I did 4,000. I trained like 4,000 because the other 4,000 actually discovered that they were counselors from the far villages.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:37):
So they didn’t know if they could make it.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (14:39):
Exactly. So in the A PM, the old pastors meeting, we discovered that 40% of the pastors came from these villages around because the radio message could reach them. So they had to come

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:55):
Do people from those villages, are they coming to the crusade? Yes, yes,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (14:58):
Yes, yes. I had one lady give the testimony, I can’t just remember the testimony that she gave. She said she literally came from one of the five villages. She literally came from there. So we trained counselors. So we encourage the pastors to give us volunteers. And so what follows after the all pastors meeting is now to begin to run with the volunteers committee to go and get now the names of these counselors, they begin to call pastors or we want names. So what I did is that before we can push the pastors to give you counselors, we needed the pastors to give us two key leaders in their church. These are the people we trained as captains and we trained about 400 captains. And this time around CfAN had introduced a very wonderful thing. They gave them certificates. So if you’re trained as a captain, we give you a CfAN certificate signed by Daniel Kolenda.

(16:02):
So to them it was like an owner, they felt this, they bought into the vision. So when we train those two people, those people are very key because they’re the ones who will give you volunteers from their church. The pastor is busy, can’t start writing down names. So those two are the point of contact to that church. So they’ll give you counselors, they’ll give you volunteers, and then after that is done, you think of forming. Now the different committees. So the committees we have apart from the prayer committee, church mobilization volunteers committee, we have what we call the youth committee, youth promo committee. We have the women’s promo committee, then we have the promo committee itself to help us to do the promotion and everything.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:54):
That’s putting up all the posters. Exactly, the banners, the billboards.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (16:58):
Exactly.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:59):
When do you put those out at what point?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (17:02):
Third phase. So the third phase is for promo. So when you have those committees and you have all the committees put together, then you need to look now at the promo budget. So now Chan will tell you, okay, we are doing prints from this company, the poster, this is the prints that we are doing. So when C fund gives you the budget, then as a director you really want to sit. You look at the city, how many banners do I want? Should I go for three by four? Should I go for two by one? Should I go for posters? So you have to really sit down and have plan for the city

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:46):
And to know where you’re going to put the publicity.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (17:48):
Exactly,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (17:48):
Exactly. And so do you remember the numbers for ganja dica? I’ve seen posters everywhere. I mean even in front of the hotel where we are, there’s a wall and there are hundreds of posters on the wall covering the entire wall. So the whole wall is yellow? Yes. And I think this is very good. Instead of just putting one poster on the wall, you make the wall into a billboard and then if someone tears down one, they cannot tear down all.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (18:18):
And the idea behind that is also to attract people. Because from a father looking at this, what’s that? What’s the So they really want to look at it. So got gca, if I can remember very well, we had about 40,000 posters. Then I had ordered for 252 by one. Then I had 53 by two. Yeah, I mean one 50. And then I had 24 by three the big ones. Yeah.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (18:56):
Well you have done a good job when you come into the city, you cannot miss it. So there’s a lot of anticipation. You also go on the radio and you’re telling people and you’re running radio advertisements. Yes. And so is there one station or many stations?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:12):
Okay, so in Gand, GCA is three station. We’ve got the main one in the second, then the third. So you pay for all those radios. So in this city they did 28 jingles per day for three weeks.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:27):
Wow. So how much would one jingle cost?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:30):
Okay, so one jingle would cost probably a dollar. But because you’re paying for a long

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:36):
Time, you negotiate for a good deal, you negotiate for a

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:38):
Good deal.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:39):
So you’re running all day long. Yes, they play a song, then they play your jingle. So it’s like

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:44):
Every after one hour at

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (19:46):
The radio, everyone knows

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (19:48):
The jingle plays in all the three radio stations and it runs for three weeks. From the three weeks before the day of the crusade. And you do interviews also at the radio.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:02):
How long before the crusade do you start to train the counselors?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (20:05):
Alright, so we do three weeks before the crusade. Then we also do a second training two weeks before the crusade.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:15):
And the counselors have books. The books for the adults are given to the adults and they capture their name. And then we also have books for the children as well. And so how are the counselors trained? What are they told to do?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (20:31):
Okay, so the counselors, they’re told about field logistics where we tell them ritually what the field looks like, what happens on the field, when do the evangelists come on the podium to preach? Then the most important thing is about on how to use the book. So we tell them this is what we do. There are three important things you don’t want to miss in that sleep. So we show them the name. You need the phone number, which is the most important thing because your pastor need to do a follow up.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:07):
And so the name and the phone number is used to follow up on the new believers? Yes,

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (21:10):
Exactly. Exactly. So the phone number and the address. And then when they do that, then they have to take off that slip and they give the book to this person. They keep that slip, but the slip is also divided into two. The lower part is just the signature and the date. So that is for chan to do the counting. Then that which has got the name, phone number and address goes to the pastor so that the pastor comes up with a committee because we also train the pastors to do follow up. So they come up with a committee so that they can begin to call those names.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (21:54):
Well you’ve done a wonderful job through all this process. I know there’s so many details, but you have worked very hard and I can see that your work has been successful. Amen. And tell me what have you thought about the crusade? Are you happy with the results that we’ve

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:11):
Seen? I’m so excited. I’m super excited. The second day I literally wept. I was on the stage, then I went behind looking at the people, looking at how they were involved just to receive Jesus Christ. It is so emotional. You like

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:30):
Even people crying, being touched by Jesus.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:34):
Yes. So you saw that, okay, thank God that God that to use me to put in my effort. And this is more than we expected. So I’ve been super happy, super excited.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:47):
And would you say that Congo is more difficult than Zambia for organizing?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:53):
It’s more, it’s like triple difficult.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:55):
Triple difficult. Yeah.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (22:57):
It’s like Congo is.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (22:59):
What are some of the challenges of organizing? What have been the biggest challenges that you faced?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (23:04):
Logistics. Things are super expensive.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:09):
The roads are not good. The roads are not good. So if you buy anything, it must come from far away. Exactly. Over bad roads.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (23:17):
Exactly. And here, inand gca, you discover that they don’t have a lot of stuff. So you want to get them from Bji Ma. And you could literally go with a bike on the bike. You are five hours on the bike with this road full of sand. It has not been easy. It has not been easy. Congo has not been easy. And people ritually.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:46):
Now this is the first time anyone’s ever done a crusade in this city. And because of that there is lots of excitement. But there are also some very significant spiritual challenges here. And each night we’ve been praying to break every curse. Yes. As you’ve been living here, you have learned about some of the spiritual needs of the city of Ganja dca. What are the needs of the people here?

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (24:14):
Alright, so two needs. I’ll talk about the most. One lack of development. The city needs development. This city needs just God to make a way. There’s this too much of lack of development, poverty

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:30):
That will come tonight is blessing night. Exactly. We’re going to pray for a blessing on Ika. And when the blessing of God comes, God will elevate the prosperity of the city. Exactly.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (24:44):
But the other thing is the premature death of young children. When I came to this city, it is my first time to see small coffins like carpenters are ritually, making small coffins to sell out. And you’d see when you’re going in the roads, those small coffins, actually they are more than bigger coffees. So that would tell that they usually have these deaths for young children.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:16):
And so there’s a very high childhood mortality rate here.

Mike Kasonde | Crusade Director (25:20):
Mortality rate is very high. So I asked the pastors about that. They said, yeah, the child mortality is that high. It’s like every week they have to bury a child.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:33):
Wow. Well, we broke the curse of childhood mortality. And I believe that Jesus is working here. We did the children’s festival, which was something I thought the pastors found very interesting because they saw us minister to the children. And I believe that as they minister to the children, that we will see many children get saved here in the city. And I also believe that as prosperity comes, the childhood mortality rate will go down. A crusade like this brings God’s blessing upon the entire region. And so I think this will have a significant impact on ganja dika for many years to come. Definitely. So Pastor Mike, I want to say thank you so much for your work. Thank you. Thank you. You have been a great blessing. I am very honored to work together with you. I know that the crusade does not just happen because of the preacher.

(26:31):
There is a lot of work that it must be done. It’s like an iceberg out in the Arctic Ocean. A small bit of the iceberg can be seen above the water, but under the water there is so much. And so in the months you’ve been here, you have put so much work into the crusade. But we have seen God honor your work. Thank you. And it is an honor to serve God with you. And I want to say thank you. And I hope that we can work together again to do more Crusades. Yes. Let’s go for it. Let’s bring all of Africa to Jesus. Amen. Amen. Amen. And thank you for being on the Evangelism podcast. Thank you very much.

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Peter Youngren | It’s All About Jesus!

For fifty years, Peter Youngren has been reaching people for Jesus. His ministry reaches out to people from many different religions through his Friendship Festivals. He is known for pointing people to Jesus. On today’s episode of The Evangelism Podcast we talk about the importance of reaching unreached people, the role of grace in evangelism, and the central message of preaching Jesus Christ. Pastor Peter Youngren also talks about his global mission center in Kenya and his goal to train young evangelists. He emphasizes the need to strip away “Christianese” and adapt the Gospel message to different cultures while keeping the central message of Jesus Christ. Pastor Peter also shares some of his greatest memories and victories in ministry, as well as the challenges faced.

Learn more about Peter Youngren’s ministry: https://peteryoungren.org/

Transcript:

Evangelist Peter Youngren (00:12):
Well, thank you, Daniel. It’s my pleasure and I haven’t seen you for a while. It’s good to see you again.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:17):
Well, I want to start by saying how grateful I am for you and for your ministry. I was attending Pastor Charles Neiman’s Church down in El Paso, Texas as a young evangelist. I told him, I really feel this call from God on my life to be an evangelist says, you need to meet my friend Peter Youngen. So I called your office up in Canada and asked if I could come meet you. And you said, no, I don’t want to meet you in Canada, but if you want to come meet me in the middle of Africa, I would love to see you in Africa. And so I went all the way to Goma, Congo and got to see a great gospel crusade there, a festival. And God moved in a tremendous way. And that was where I met my beautiful wife, Jessica, who was working for you. And so I apologize, I stole her away, but she is a great worker there. Jessica is a great blessing.

Evangelist Peter Youngren (01:16):
Lemme give me, give you the first impression. I knew that this man, Daniel King, was going to meet me in Goma. We somehow arrived in the city and I saw this, obviously you look different than the locals with your white skin, but you were all dirtied and you had been really in the trenches. And I said, who’s that man? They said, oh, that’s the Daniel King. I said, I like him right away. He’s not afraid of getting his hands in the dirt and doing the job. So that was a good start for both of us, I hope.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:48):
Yeah. So just this week I got back from Congo. This was the first time I went back to the Democratic Republic of Congo. Since I met you there about 17, 18 years ago. That’s a

Evangelist Peter Youngren (02:00):
Long time ago. Yes.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:02):
Yeah. And we had a great, great gospel festival in Ganja Dika, and God is moving in the nation of Congo. That’s

Evangelist Peter Youngren (02:11):
Beautiful. I saw the pictures that look really wonderful. So

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:14):
Tell me a little bit about what you’ve been doing and what you’re planning right now.

Evangelist Peter Youngren (02:20):
Well, we continue to do the festivals. I call them festivals instead of crusade. A lot of them are in areas we are trying to reach out to people of other religions other than the Christian religion. And so the word festival works very well and parallel with that of, because we have our Bible schools, we have Bible schools in Myanmar, which is formerly Burma. We have a many East Africa. We have two in Indonesia, one in the Sumatra on the one side of the country, another one in Papua, the other side of the country. But we’ve been working on our school in Africa, in Kenya and creating a global mission center there where we train to train evangelists. And we are also just about to start inviting pastors, evangelists, believers who feel called to evangelism to come and spend 10 weeks in Africa. Years ago, a dear friend of mine, he had a tremendous idea.

(03:20):
He bought a hotel in California and invited students from all over the world, India, Africa, come to San Diego. I’m talking about a person who had profound influence of my own life by Morris Cerullo, inviting people to come and study in San Diego, be empowered by the spirit. And that was a tremendous idea to spend three months like that. But there was one little problem, which I think he discovered that was once all these folks from Africa and India and Pakistan and had come to San Diego, they didn’t want to go home again. They wanted to stay in California. Who can claim that, Daniel? I think I would’ve stayed as well. California is beautiful. So what we are saying is that come and join our students for 10 weeks or eight weeks in Africa and be trained and then have your own campaign, your own crusade or festival in Africa. We will help you set it up and then we’ll send you back to wherever you came from, whether that was California or Europe or wherever you came from. Because we need to train workers for the harvest. We need to train people. And I think our particular gift maybe is to reach people, communicate the gospel with Muslims, Hindus, Buddhist, people of other religions. And so I want to pass that on to others. I’ve been doing this for 50 years now, so I’ve been doing this for a while.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (04:40):
Well, let’s go back to the beginning. How did you know that you were called to be an evangelist? How did you come to know the Lord as your savior? And then how did you get started doing evangelism?

Evangelist Peter Youngren (04:51):
Well, we just got 20 minutes or so. So let me say that I received Christ, it was obviously very meaningful. I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. That was a big change for me, made me very bold so that we could talk a long time about that. But then for me, one of the great influences of my life was the late Dr. T.L. Osborn, who by the way I got to know later on, spent time. He came and celebrated my 50th birthday spending a week with me here in Toronto. So we became friends. So, but he influenced me a lot. And I heard him one time say, all you need is a call, is Mark 1615, go into all the world that preach the gospel and some of that. That really touched me in a profound way. It may seem like it is a statement, but it touched me very profoundly.

(05:40):
So what I did, I started to just share the gospel. I always said that in the town where I was raised, there was a lot of alcoholics and they gathered in a certain park and I would go to that park and preach, you have to start where you are. I wasn’t looking for a ministry. I wasn’t looking to start any great ministry organization. I was just sharing the gospel with Pete. Well, one thing led to another, some pastor heard about it, said, can you share on Sunday night in our church? And so that led to that and that led to other things. And so I, I’m a firm believer is just start where you are, do what you can. Don’t wait for some great opening, don’t wait for some great opportunity. Start with what’s in your hand. Because as I look back, this wasn’t some plan I had at the time. I just looked back on it what caused doors to open for me. I was just doing what was before me to do and the one thing led to the other. So that’s the advice I give to young men and women who are starting in ministry. Don’t wait for some great opening that you’re going to be invited to the world’s largest church and suddenly it’s going to put you on the map. Just love and reach people where you are.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:53):
Amen. Well, you are a very innovative thinker and you have brought some great innovations to evangelism and there really is a huge need for evangelism. I was looking at one page on your website and you have some statistics there. It says, of finances that are given to foreign missions, 87% goes for work among Christians. 12% goes for work among already evangelized. And only 1% of money given to foreign missions is used for work among on reach people groups. And then 0.1% of all Christian giving is used for mission’s efforts into 38 least evangelized countries. Christians spend 95.4% of offerings on home-based ministry, 4.5% on cross-cultural efforts among already reach groups and only 0.1% to evangelize the on reach. The average Christian only gives an average of about one penny a day to global missions. And so your whole life, you’ve been talking to the body of Christ saying, we need to change our methods and our focus. We need to put more resources into actually reaching people who are unreached. Talk to me a little bit about that.

Evangelist Peter Youngren (08:09):
Yeah, because it is very natural. We don’t need to beat ourself up about this. It’s true about all of us evangelists and pastors. We tend to go where we’re invited and if we are invited to a certain place, it means they’re already believers there. Sometimes somebody contacts me and says, oh, we can guarantee a hundred thousand people. We’ve done it before. I’m thinking I don’t want to go there if they’ve done it before, if they’re so sure, they just have such masses already, that doesn’t appeal to me so much. And so to go to areas where there’s not a lot of people to celebrate you, but to break into those areas, you need more money because the television station owner doesn’t feel led to give you a special deal or the radio station has it. So you have to believe God for the finances and then seek a way into these areas.

(09:02):
What I have developed is an approach I call simply the friendship approach, which sounds innocent enough, but we search out religious and governmental leaders that are people at least open-hearted, whether they’re Muslim or Hindu or whatever they are. And we try to make an inroads with them. And once we get to know the leaders, and your wife used to work in this area and she was like, so good. Let me tell you, you took a good worker there, Jessica, I can still see her. She was so good in organizing these things. And once you meet the leaders then and you’re able to, and the people see, oh, this foreign preacher here, he’s here with our head of the Buddhist Monks Association, so then he mustn’t be too dangerous so I can go and hear him. So my friendship approach to these people of other religious is not for the purpose of religious dialogue in the conventional sense.

(10:04):
I stand for a hundred percent for Jesus. I’m not dialing it down. I’m just creating friendship approach. And thereby I eased the way for the people in the certain city to come and listen to my message. After all, I’ve already befriended their leaders. So some of the things we work on and it takes a little bit more effort and we try to work with, I’m just going to be in Madagascar in a couple of weeks time. And so when I was there last year, the Lord really opened the door to the President and to his advisors. And so we are looking for openings to really touch the whole nation, not just have a church meeting or a church conference.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (10:45):
God has given you a powerful revelation about the grace of God. How should God’s grace flavor the message of the evangelist?

Evangelist Peter Youngren (10:58):
Well, I say, I know people say you preach grace. Well, I preach Jesus Christ. Really. I say to people, we don’t preach miracles. We preach Christ, but miracles follow the proclamation of Christ. And so to preach grace is to preach Jesus Christ, who he is, how he reveals God and what Jesus has done, we call it the finished work of the cross, is one theological expression, the finished work of the cross. So we preach Christ and people say that’s a message of grace. And I think that’s true. Jesus Christ is the personification of God’s grace. So that’s very accurate. And my focus there in preaching that is focusing on very Christ-centered. I make that very clear when I train other evangelists, I was training someone and he was preaching and he was telling all the miracle stories. So it is good to tell the stories of what God has done in other cities, but don’t build your whole sermon on those stories. Preach Jesus Christ and let the miracles fall of the proclamation of the gospel. And in some parts of the world, I don’t need to tell you, but maybe your listeners don’t realize how much they talk about miracles, miracles, miracles all the time. So I want to really make a distinction. We don’t preach miracles. We preach Jesus Christ and miracles follow.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (12:26):
So what does it sound like to preach Jesus?

Evangelist Peter Youngren (12:30):
Well, I published a book called You are There where I published eight of my most favorite sermons that I preached. And so I usually start the first night and I receive this I think with the watching TL Osborne, I preached Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever because I find that message introduces the city to the concept that we expect to happen today. What happened 2000 years ago. So that’s the first installment of my series of sermons in the festival. I want to introduce the people to Jesus Christ today, not just Jesus of history, not Jesus of the future in heaven, but Jesus today, I say, if you are sick today, it’s wonderful to know that he healed people 2000 years ago. It’s wonderful to know you’re going to be in heaven one day, but if you have cancer right now, you need to know that Jesus Christ is today. So I see my producer brought me this book. You Are There is the book that I published with about eight messages. I give it to future evangelists. I said, listen, these eight messages, some of them I got on my own. Some of them I probably got from listening to somebody. I can’t remember after 50 years I got them. But I tweaked them and I said, take these sermons, preach them. They will work for you. So I have different questions.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (13:57):
Well, I know I’ve preached a few of your sermons, so thank you for lending those to me.

Evangelist Peter Youngren (14:03):
Well, I probably received them from others. And so our message, people say, well, what do you preach in different countries? What do you preach to Buddhist? What do you preach? I preach Jesus Christ. It’s not that complicated really. You don’t have to adapt your message and make some fancy new formulation. People all over the world understand sin, shame, guilt, fear, bad karma. These are all negative emotions and beliefs that people have. And Jesus Christ answers all those problems. Guilt, shame, fear, bad karma, whatever you want to call it. Jesus Christ responds to all of that. So if you preach him, you don’t have to worry about, well, what do I say to this group? And what do I say to that group? Now, your illustrations of course adapts to your circumstance, but the central message is the same.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (14:54):
So you’re launching this global mission center in Kenya where you’re bringing evangelists in from different parts of the world to train them. What are some of the key things that a young evangelist should know before they launch out in their evangelistic ministry? Well,

Evangelist Peter Youngren (15:14):
Our emphasis is on reaching people without Christ. So frankly, some young preachers who start, they have to be stripped of their christianese. They’re so full of

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:26):
Hallelujah

Evangelist Peter Youngren (15:27):
Church language.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:28):
Hallelujah. Praise the Lord.

Evangelist Peter Youngren (15:29):
Yeah, so Africa, east Africa won. They’re so full of that that they can’t communicate with someone who is outside their realm. They’re so used to God’s going to send a reliable God’s making a way where there’s no way, and he’s opening the Red Sea. 40 people, Buddhists don’t know what you’re talking about. So we want to help them. And I think that act, chapter 17 to me, is a great teaching chapter for anybody who wants to evangelize outside of the church realm. How Paul, though he initially was grieved by the idolatry of the Athenians, he initially was disturbed, probably felt like rebuking them, like maybe we do. But he somehow simmer down and he didn’t. And instead he commenced them. He says, oh, I see you Athenians. You’re so religious, so you have these altars. See, his approach really teaches us a lot about how to approach people that are not from the church world. So act 70, that’s just one thing. But there are many things that we teach people. I’ve written a whole book about menacing to Muslims, how to present Christ to Muslims. That’s the answer for everybody.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (16:52):
Yeah. I have a copy of your book here, my Muslim friend, which I have read through many times. I also have your book Triumph on the Enemy’s Turf, which tells about some of the early victories over in the former Soviet Union. I mean, you’ve been doing evangelism for a long time. What are some of the greatest memories and greatest victories that you’ve experienced? And then what are some of the greatest challenges that you’ve faced in ministry?

Evangelist Peter Youngren (17:24):
Although that’s very nice, you obviously are in this work yourself. That’s why you ask us good questions, Daniel. But to me, not to another person name is, oh, I saw this person who was paralyzed in a wheelchair or carry it in. That will be the greatest thing. And that is a great thing. I’m not taken away from that. But to me, our greatest victories have been on the occasions where we have gone to a, not just where they haven’t had a festival or a crusade before, but where there are so few Christians that you really couldn’t do it. And we have seen a great breakthrough in a place like that that I consider the highlights where we were allowed to go in somehow got the permit because you always got to work with the politicians and the police to get the permit. And we’re able to do that.

(18:13):
And with our friendship approach, we kind of paved the way for any future resistance. For example, in the Muslim community, by the third, fourth night of the festival, when there are Muslims coming up, Mr. Muhammad is on the stage saying, Jesus has opened the blind eyes of my daughter here, and it can cause quite a ruckus in the community. So if I’ve already taken the leaders to dinner, I’ve already spoken with them, it gives me that opening. So I consider the greatest, I’m thinking of Kuta Pakistan, which is right on the border of Afghanistan where we had an enormous campaign and several like that in Burma. Some places where the total number of Christians, if you count every Anglican, every Catholic in these big cities will be three, 400. And where we see tens of thousands of people come, that got considered great. Now, the greatest challenges have been when we, for some reason, maybe it was a time limitation or whatever limitation, we didn’t maybe communicate adequately with people about the religions.

(19:18):
So we’ve been stopped, like I was in one city in Indonesia. We had, according to the chief of believe, 14 death threats against me personally. I have no way to verify. He was showing them to me, but they were in the Indonesian language. It was a here, 1, 2, 3, 4. That’s why I know it was 14 because he counted them out for me. And of course then they say, we have to cancel your permit for your own safety. And it’s very hard to argue with that because I’m saying I’m willing to go, you don’t have to cancel it for me.

(19:51):
You don’t know whether they’re playing a game with you or whether in that case it probably was actual threats, some of those things. Because I hate to waste the partner’s money. So we have already advertised, we have the stadium, we have the printing. We’ve already spent a lot of money as you know, spend that upfront. And so then suddenly you are faced with these kind of challenges. I find that very frustrating. But my partners, I mean this happens rarely. And our partners have been very understanding. I try to tell ’em the truth. Listen, in our kind of work one time Paul had to escape over the wall and a ladder. So it’s not a defeat just because we have to chased out of town, which happens rarely. But it does happen maybe once every five, six years. So our partners have been very good in understanding on the risk with the work that we,

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (20:48):
Amen. Well, if someone is listening and they want to partner with your ministry, or if someone maybe wants to attend your school of evangelism in Kenya, how can they find out more information about you? What’s your website?

Evangelist Peter Youngren (21:06):
Our website, like everyone peter youngin.org, and there’s phone numbers there that takes some people to what we call the Grace Prayer Center. But this information there, including what we call the Global Evangelism Institute, just to paint a picture of that, we have purchased a very nice facility. There’s even a nice swimming pool there, but I don’t promote that a lot. It just came with the property already. And our Bible school assessment, there’s students from all over East Africa, they’re already, they’re studying a two year program. So when we invite people international to come, they come for eight weeks of studies where we give some very key courses for evangelists and they study some of them side by side with the African students and some will be separate. And then at the end of that, we’re saying if you want to test your own wings, so to speak, you say, I feel a call of God.

(22:00):
We will set you up, we will help you. We’ll facilitate you with a pastor or a group of pastors to have an outreach campaign and connection with a local church. And we’re not going to send them out in the booty, so to speak, and they can test it. I’m a firm believer that theory is very good, seminars are good, but when somebody experiences Jesus Christ working through their eyes, their hands touching people and they see a miracle that changes a life. Many people come with me and 20 years later I meet them and I say, now, when you were with me in such and such situation, what do you remember? Or they say, I remember the time when you sent us out on some street evangelism and this mother brought her the death boy and I prayed. And Jesus healed the, that’s what they remember the most. They don’t remember all the Americans in our meeting. And that’s okay. They remember Jesus working with them. That’s the experience I want to give to people.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (23:07):
Well, one of my memories from Goma was we got to go to a Pygmy village. I think you and I went and minister to the Pygmies, gave them some food to be a blessing to them because they’re very hunted there and you preach Jesus to the pygmies. I remember it was a very short sermon, which is appropriate for Pygmies, but it was a great experience, something they should

Evangelist Peter Youngren (23:34):
Explain to you, the audience that Pygmys are kind of short people. So I remember that very well because there was a very, their plight, I remembered well, they were poor people, very poor and suffered a lot. Of course within their culture there’s racism in every culture and the pygmies are kind of looked down upon, and I always like to root for the underdog. So I’m glad we could maybe be a little small blessing to them in some way that day.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (24:07):
Yeah. Well, pastor Peter, I honor you for your many years of dedication, serving Jesus and proclaiming Jesus to on save people around the world. What a great impact your ministry has had in so many lives. And I want to thank you again for giving me your great staff member, Jessica, she has become a great wife, and you actually performed our wedding ceremony. And so we have many wonderful memories. Jessica really greatly enjoyed her time working with your ministry and you’ve had a big impact on our lives, and I’m very grateful for you. So thank you.

Evangelist Peter Youngren (24:49):
Well, let me just respond by saying that Jessica was a great blessing. She was a general, I mean, when she took charge of something, she took charge of it. I’m sure you ever seen much blessing in many ways from her, but also in that area. And so she is, I always think very fondly about what a blessing she was. And then I want to say I rejoice, Danny, when I see you post something on Facebook someplace in the world where you are, it brings great joy to my heart. So God bless you and thank you for this opportunity to share with your listeners.

Evangelism Coach Daniel King (25:24):
Thank you for being on the Evangelism Podcast.

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The Evangelism Podcast is also available oniHeartRadio

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Listen to The Evangelism Podcast on Amazon Audible

The Evangelism Podcast is also available oniHeartRadio

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 oniHeartRadio

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 oniHeartRadio

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 oniHeartRadio

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 oniHeartRadio

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

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Watch a video from a recent outreach we did at Youth Hope

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